ancre L'Amarante 1744 by Heinrich der Seefahrer - 1:72 - trial for POB&F techniques

[Heinrich der Seefahrer]

Hello friends of the smaller ships out of the line of sight of the three-decker-enthusiastic public!

 

An additive foreword: Due to my working situation I am parttime in the NL in a small hotel without any possibilities to model anything. And the problem is for me being so tired that I'm not able to concenreate to do anything more than monkey work or pure reading. But in the other hand there is nothing to do elsewhere in town - so I'm forced to stay in my hotelroom filling my time. (I do not use the TV due to semireligious matters.)

 

 

By reading Ian McLaughlan's fantasic book „The Sloop of War 1650-1763“ - I came across the chapter about the French Corvette and Privateer Construction. In here I saw her the first time and fall in love to „La Amarante“ a little masterpice of Blaise Ollivier.

Built at Brest in 1747 she shows all the decorational pomp of the late baroque/early rokkoko in a limited area on a ship able to fit a flat's livingroom even in 1:36. But for my travels dutys I halfed the size. 

 

The ship is drawn by the fanstastic Delacroix and publiced in a Ancre style monography for around £90.

The drawings are amaizing and due to my future regular business travels to NL I can't work on a model in hotel. (Okay I could, but than I would need a new hotel to stay.) I am too tired not to harm even a card model. So I'll spend my free hours far away from family by recherche work on L'Amarante.

 

This due to the factum that Delacroix's drawings and the contemporary drawings of the transom differ. Also I like to figure out more of the details. This work will be the fundament for the scratchbuilding and for several month hardly anything will happen on the shipyard.

The fact is I can only work with the very „omni-glot“ part of the book - the drawings; as I never had had got more than a couple of French lessons at school at all. In the 80th Delacroix book was still unwritten and my person didn't know about him - but if, I would have been more enthusiastic about French lessons if I would know about L'Amarante!

 

Inbetween I was able to scale the drawings down to 1/72 to start a mobile try-it-out project. You find the photos arround here. As I do not own a mill a PoF-model is impossible - so I do plan a vaneer covered plywood pile hull. My idea is to use the drawings of the frames to cut out as filled - so as bulkheads. The bulkheads pileon bukkheads with fillers between them to a hull - a PoB-model with the number of bulkheads as frames would be on a PoB&F-model.  I have th number fo the 52 frames but I'm building 52 bulkhads plus filling pices. So the surface is very large to glue 1 to 1,5mm vaneer on it. But I never tryed! 

 

So I have got the one and only question: Is my way a silly thing to do to a 550mm hull?

 

So I'm singing „Richmond is a hard road to travel“ and do start with some pictures from my collection for you. Best wishes to all of you.

 

 

[Heinrich der Seefahrer]

Here some comparements between the Oliveer original ink drawings and the Delacroix drawings from the first decarde of the XXI.century. An interesting job to lay the two drawings side by side and look for the differences. It is not that easy to figure out these little details - and to change them to the historical correct pattern.

There is an error in the upper left corner of the side badge - not easy to find as the  source but the impact is important. (I arranged the twi drawings side by side for you, too.) The same thing happens with the massive gallion decoration - Delacroix minimized it, so I think about a decoration between the craftsmans sales oriented drawings and the modern minimalism-orientired workout.

 

Mr.Scale is added to show how tiny the L'Amarante was.

 

Edited November 2, 2018 by Heinrich der Seefahrer
Mr.Scale and his text added

[Heinrich der Seefahrer]

Here short shot from the frame's drawing.

[Heinrich der Seefahrer]

I managed to copy some of thethe decoraton work on transparent paper and to compare it to the Olliviere ink drawings:

On the transom I took the windows high for the indicating factor and made all the copies to this scale.

I also trief to fix the existing points of the Delacroix drawing onto the Olliviere design inks.

 

[Heinrich der Seefahrer]

I managed to copy some of thethe decoraton work on transparent paper and to compare it to the Olliviere ink drawings:

On the transom I took the windows high for the indicating factor and made all the copies to this scale.

I also trief to fix the existing points of the Delacroix drawing onto the Olliviere design inks.

 

[Heinrich der Seefahrer]

Back from the copyshop again...

[Heinrich der Seefahrer]

 

 

The formers are 4,5mm thick and the gaps between them 2,4mm. 

 

Less impressive is my progress with measurements.

At the moment I'm dealing with the formers thickness.

So if I make some error in here now nothing will fit at the very end due to the massive number of erroral parts and their addition of oversize to a very big fault. 

So my question is - is it cleverer to measure on the 1/36 original plans and half the number by my calculator - or to use the downsized copies? This due the the fact of the paper that has been working in the heating and cooling of the copying process and in minimum was enlarged and shrinked.

 

What is your yard workerman's best practice?

 

Edited November 4, 2018 by Heinrich der Seefahrer

[mtaylor]

I can't speak for others, but use the prints that have been reduced to keep everything in proportion.   Going back and forth between the original and the reduced prints can create all sorts of mismatches.

[G. Delacroix]

Hello,

 

You can find a chapter that discusses the dimensions of all pieces of wood in the monograph (page 85).

 

GD

[Heinrich der Seefahrer]

Hello GD I am still struggeling with the French language (,I've got a French textbook).

So I do translation work very hard - I am lerninh French from books autodidactically.

[druxey]

I like to draft on frosted Mylar sheet: it doesn't expand and contract like paper.

[Heinrich der Seefahrer]

I have now to identify the PoB-bulkhads being identical to the PoF-frames and then I'll have to transfere the frames into bulkheads. So the very first thing I do need are three fixed points in the empty over the keel's groove.

 

So lets walk to the copyshop again and copy all the frames singulary, numbering them and then I'll be back at the drawing board doing some fine scale work. 

 

At the very end I hope to have transformed all the frames into bulkheads. That's the very idea of the hole process.

[Heinrich der Seefahrer]

On 12/23/2018 at 1:45 AM, druxey said:

I like to draft on frosted Mylar sheet: it doesn't expand and contract like paper.

thank you very very much for your advice!!! And then I'll copy everything on frosted Mylar sheets by hand... 

[Heinrich der Seefahrer]

On 11/4/2018 at 7:52 PM, mtaylor said:

I can't speak for others, but use the prints that have been reduced to keep everything in proportion.   Going back and forth between the original and the reduced prints can create all sorts of mismatches.

Thanks a lot, I'm still working with the copies now only. The 1/36 scale is so wonderful big but will give such a massive hull it couldn't be placed on my resting shelf. 

[Heinrich der Seefahrer]

On 11/4/2018 at 7:52 PM, mtaylor said:

I can't speak for others, but use the prints that have been reduced to keep everything in proportion.   Going back and forth between the original and the reduced prints can create all sorts of mismatches.

Thanks a lot, I'm still working with the copies now only. The 1/36 scale is so wonderful big but will give such a massive hull it couldn't be placed on my resting shelf. 

 

Here my scetch for the three points (A,B,C) in the bulkhead (E) and also in the frame (F)

 

The points are definited by

 

(B):

the crossing of the construction water line (CWL) and middel line (ML)

 

(A & C): upper outside edge of a square wood to fiddle the bulkheads behind each other. 

 

(I'll later do a propper drawing on transpatentpaper with differend coloured lines.)

My question to the public is the followering:

 

Under (B) is the long groove to put in a kind of middle board

or

shall I  cut a short groove to just to lay in the keel? 

 

Thanks for your help.

 

[Roger Pellett]

Considering that ANCRE prides itself on producing historically accurate monographs of age of sail French shipbuilding I cannot understand why they include details, that differ from those for which accurate documentation exists as with the bow headrails and stern quarter carvings shown above.

 

Any thoughts?

 

Roger

[Heinrich der Seefahrer]

13 hours ago, Roger Pellett said:

Considering that ANCRE prides itself on producing historically accurate monographs of age of sail French shipbuilding I cannot understand why they include details, that differ from those for which accurate documentation exists as with the bow headrails and stern quarter carvings shown above.

 

Any thoughts?

 

Roger

Hy Roger Mr Delacroix will hopefully answer a bit more detailled than I can do.

But I estimate that the decoration is certainly a marketing feature from the Italian Rokkoko artist Casselli... and on the other hand the construction of the basic (undecorated) transom is a mathematical result of given data by Ancre. Than (so I do imaginate) the decorational artwork is resized to the transom/over the transom - by both the shipyard and Mr.Delacroix. It is in both times only one interpretation. .  And that I found this error in the sidegalllery is a lucky punch. Other modelbuilders built a masterclass 1/36 model not being aware of this ornamental irregularity... i saw it due to the fact that I live near Sans Souci and have had visited hunderts of southgerman barqoue churches and rokkoko mansions during my youth time.

So let us be sportsman's fair wait for Mr.Delacroix's point of view.

 

 

Edited December 29, 2018 by Heinrich der Seefahrer
Imserted pictures

[Heinrich der Seefahrer]

And the technicak drawings are high end toplevel craftmansship.

Behold A for it is all the under transoms parts in min. two perspectives: