JerryTodd

BTWY: You should resin the inside thoroughly before attaching anything inside the hull. Deck clamp, mast steps, framing, etc can all be epoxied in after, but if resined after attachment, there's a place for water to get in. If water gets in, even a small amount, it will swell the wood causing joints to open, the glass to separate, and make more places for water to get in. Holes in the hull, for prop shafts and the like, ought to be over sized, filled with epoxy and redrilled to the correct smaller size to prevent any wood from being exposed. You might consider painting bare wood with Ethylene Glycol (automotive antifreeze - not Propylene Glycol). Glycol soaks into the wood and crystallizes which doesn't allow in water or mold which causes rot. All my models get this treatment. Allow it dry thoroughly and then resin it. If you look close you'll see the wood has little sparkles in it because of the crystals. A lot of wood objects recovered from shipwrecks are preserved this way it keeps out water without shrinkage. Be very sure to follow the safety precautions on the container, I had a neighbor whose dog lapped up a puddle of it from a leaking bottle and it later died as a result - they thought it was rabid until it was tested.

These boats didn't rely on firepower, but on speed and the ability to sail close to the wind. Most were armed with 6 pounders, or a single 18 on a pivot amidships, and maybe a swivel or so on the rail. They carried large crews not to board and fight, but to send onto captured merchant vessels to take back in, each prize crew depleting the schooner's crew - the more men they carried, the longer they could stay out and capture prizes.

That's a lot of thick ribs in a hull that even at that size, doesn't offer a lot of space. With the outside glassed and the inside given a coat or two of resin, you really only need a couple of those. I kept one to brace the dagger-board trunk, and one for the motor mount. The thing that really made the hull solid was the deck clamp and beams. What ever you decide to do, remember to make it possible for water to get through fore and aft. Water WILL get in, if only a little, and you want drain holes in any bulkhead so it all goes to the lowest point where it can be pumped and dried out - otherwise you get mold in there and that gets really disgusting really fast. It'll be a very hard hull to reach into and clean. Consider too keeping the hull as light as you can. That gets more weight onto the removable ballast which is deeper and stiffens the boat more, and allows you to trim her easier with internal ballast. It also makes handling the model a easier if the 20-30 pounds of sailing weight can be shed when she's not sailing.

I'm sorry, but every time I look at the lines of a French frigate the rap song "I like Big Butts" pops into my head. I can't figure out why. Happy Birthday

Mock up and operate the main brace to see if it fouls anything without the bumpkin - though I would wager she had them, I haven't seen an original plan of an American war ship that didn't have them right into the 1870's. There's other things "missing" from the Hull model, most notably the ship's wheel - I wouldn't take so minor a detail as written in stone.

This seemed the quickest way to get the spar dimensions to you...

Um, there's 3 heads'ls; forestays'l, jib, and flying jib. You'll need to make the main tops'l, fore t'gallant, and flying jib removable except when the air's are light. You might be able to shorten the foot on the forestays'l and jib to minimize the overlap. A sliding sheet would work well in that case; that is the sheet runs through the clew grommet and back to the servo in a loop. A pair of knots or beads on the sheet on either side of the sail grab the clew and sheet the sail home when the servo's nearly at full travel. Using this, you shouldn't need booms on any heads'l. There were several historic privateers the size of Pride (90' on deck) armed in various ways; a swivel gun amidships could be a 12, 18, or 24 pounder, or even a 32 pounder Carronade. 4 and 6 pounders in the broadside was most common - remember these boats were meant to intimidate merchantmen, not go toe-to-toe with men-o-war - although a few did. You ought to look up Tom Gilmer's "Pride of Baltimore" ISBN: 87742-309-1 and Howard Chappel's "The Baltimore Clipper" ISBN: 0-51202484 (I have a paperback version of this one you're welcome too if you'd like it) These books go into the history of the type, how they were built, armed, and used. One thing to remember if you're looking at my model, either of the actual Prides, or any "recreated Baltimore Clipper" that may be sailing about now-a-days; NONE OF THEM were/are built, rigged, or fitted out like a Baltimore Clipper of the early 1800's - they were/are all modern vessels with modern adaptations; for instance: They all have wire standing rigging which will be much thinner, noticeably so, than natural rope rigging was on the originals. They have cabin trucks all over the deck for crew and passengers when the originals would have had little or nothing in that regard. Many, including the first Pride, had "roll-bars" made of steel tubing on the taffrail for the boom to sit on - none of the original boats would have had such things. The point is, are you modeling a Baltimore Clipper or a modern recreation? I'm doing the latter, I think you're after the former. You should keep this in mind in line with the level of detail you're after and the simplifications needed for a working model. BTW: Can you open an Excel spreadsheet or should I put this spar table in a PDF?

Working on tabulating Pride's spar dimentions for you; ie, I went to the other house and got the plans out.

By 1800 speaders were in use as sprits'l were going away. The Chesapeake schooners, or Baltimore Clippers, had long nearly horizontal bowsprits that couldn't mount a sprits'l - no room below it. A dolphin striker and spreaders were standard fare. Netting on the other hand, didn't start showing up until the 1840's or so. The original Pride didn't start out with bowsprit nettings, but got them after soon after her first cruise down island for the safety of the crew. That low long bow sprit on that low almost sheerless hull was a dangerous place to be in a seaway.

Qwerty, you'll find that despite the large scale of the model (1:20) there's not going to be a lot of room inside. The depth of the hold is minimal with all that drag to the keel. Back aft there's almost no place to install steering gear. Because of that, in my 1:20 Pride of Baltimore I built the hull much the same way and left out the frames. Two were cut down and reinserted as a motor mount and bracing for the daggerboard trunk. A deck clamp was glued in set down for the thickness of the plywood deck plus the sheet bass deck planking. This clamp was the same pine I planked the hull with. The deck beams were installed and additional pieces were glued in between the beams. In effect, the clamp is laminatedand the beams are morticed in. The actual main hatch on Pride I wasn't large enough to be practical for an RC sailing model - the battery wouldn't even fit through the scale hatch, much less my hand. The model's hatch is about 8 x 15 inches - about the same as that on my 1:36 scale Constellation model. below the deck clamp and beams in place on Pride. Part of the hull form is bracing the daggerboard trunk for the removable keel and external ballast; another part is the motormount at the bottom of the photo near the purple pencil sharpener below the main access hatch is much larger than the scale main hatch so I can actually access something The plywood deck is another matter. You have to bend it in two planes; sheer and camber, something plywood doesn't like to do. I cut groves about an inch apart and half the thickness of the plywood on the underside of the subdeck to allow it to take to the camber. The subdeck has since been divided into sections because the "plumbing" for routing the control lines, sheets, steering tackle, etc, has to be installed as the deck goes on. This way I don't have to have it all in place at once but can do each section and make adjustments as I go. There's tubes for routing the main sheet, fores'l sheets, running main stays, heads'l sheets, tops'l braces, etc below to the servos and winches that will control the rig and rudder.