HMS Bellona 1760 by SJSoane - Scale 1:64 - English 74-gun - as designed

[druxey]

I agree that a strap or plate for the backstay would be appropriate, Mark.

[Siggi52]

Good morning Mark,

at one draughts for the Dragon there are these extra stools for the mizen backstays, but an other draught of the Dragon did't show them.

 

 

and this picture is from the Thunderer/Hercules, which I believe is the Dragon. The Superb did't have them

 

Also the Centurion once had them, and the 60 gun warship has them. That are 60 gunners from the 1740's

 

 

But also newer ships have these stools, Standart 1782, Glory 1788 and Prudent 1768, just as examples.  So it's not unusual. 

 

 

 

[SJSoane]

Thanks so much, Siggi, I have been away from the shop for a long while, and only today saw your posting. I seem to recall that you did put the stools on your model of the Dragon. It looks like it was a detail that changed back and forth, so either way would be correct. I will follow the image you included of the Dragon, showing a stool. It is more consistent with the rest of the ship!

 

I have been taken away from the shop for a good period of time, only able on occasion to install more planking. I have just about finished up to the waist rail, needing only the strakes at the bow which bend outward to support the cathead. It was a fairly simple matter of spiling to the plank below, trimming for ports, and measuring the widths in the normal way using a planking fan. Slow but steady!

 

 

This then brings me to the fun part, installing the waist moulding. I have taped a sample to the side to see how it will look, and how I will install it. I read in Ed Tosti's Naiad book that the moulding should be installed in long lengths, then cut away for ports later, to ensure a smooth curve along the sheer. This makes sense to me. I am thinking about clamping a former along the upper edge of the planking, then pushing the moulding up to the former and drilling for pins. The pins will later be used to align the moulding as it is glued. I still need to think how I can clamp this against the hull, without damaging the very delicate moulding.

 

 

In preparation for this, I also had to look again at the sheaves in the sides for the fore sheet and spritsail sheet, the main tack and the main sheet. Brian Lavery's book on the Bellona showed the first three as separate blocks in the sides at the waist. But I was unable to find other examples of that in the period, and Lees' book on Rigging says the fore and spritsail sheets were combined in one block at the middle of the waist during this period. So, I followed this, as seen below. The main sheet is to the far left in the drawing, and the main tack is just under the fore channels to the right of center.

 

 

 

I also puzzled over how these blocks fit the sides. Every image I could find of ships in the period  show the forward most blocks above the waist moulding, not cutting into it. But when I drew this with the blocks horizontal to the waterline, they cut into the clamps inboard. I did not think this would have been done, given the structural importance of the clamp at the waist. Then I noticed in the John McKay book on the HMS Victory that the blocks were perpendicular to the sides, not horizontal. So I drew it this way, and the blocks clear the inboard clamp very nicely. This is how it looks:

 

 

 

All for now!

 

Best wishes,

 

Mark

 

 

 

 

[druxey]

Nice to see you back in the shipyard! 

 

I think you are on the mark (pun intended) for the fixed blocks with the degree of tumblehome you are dealing with. For the moldings, how about predrilling them and temporarily securing them with pins rather than clamping them? Of course, you will need to pre-bend the moldings at the bow. Replace the pins with treenails once glued in place.

[EdT]

Looking as fantastic as always, Mark.

 

Ed

[SJSoane]

Thanks so much for your comments, druxey and Ed.

 

druxey, good idea about pre-drilling the mouldings. The trunnels will be noticeable when finished, and predrilling can keep them all in a constant position up and down. It is a small target for the drill in the concave part of the moulding, so using a fence on a small drill press can keep me in the safe zone. I have been concerned about how stiff the moulding is, and how it is not easily forming the sheer curve without something to pull it up to. But I discovered last night that my test piece was cut too thick. I am thinning it down today to the correct thickness, and hopefully it will become a little more pliant.

 

Ed, I regularly look to your books on the Naiad for advice on construction methods; you provide a great road map for the these specific kinds of details. Along with David Antscherl's Fully Framed Model books, I have some great published guides in my shipbuilding apprenticeship!

 

Best wishes,

Mark

[EdT]

I'd say you are way beyond the apprentice stage, Mark. Glad to see your work progressing again.

 

Ed

[SJSoane]

Thanks, Ed, it has been a pretty long apprenticeship!

 

I started working on mass producing the waist mouldings. In my first experiments, I scraped the moulding on the edge of a wide blank, then cut off the moulding at its appropriate width. I have to use the angle table on the Byrnes saw, since my moulding is angled for the extreme tumblehome. This turned out to be exceedingly fussy, resetting the fence for each new cutoff, and aiming for a tight tolerance to keep them all the same thickness.

 

I decided to try another idea, which is to cut the blanks to the right thickness, and then use the scraper with a depth stop to avoid cutting beyond the correct thickness of the final moulding.

 

The first step is to produce a number of parallelogram blanks of exactly the same thickness, on the tilting table.

So, I built a jig. It lets me slide an auxiliary fence up to the saw blade, with a spacer of the appropriate size to offset the auxiliary fence from the blade:

 

 

I then slide the blank with its angled edge already cut up to the auxiliary fence. This allows me to slide the tilting table fence down to the blank, thus setting the fence for that particular blank at the exact distance needed beyond the saw blade:

 

 

And then I remove the auxiliary fence, and cut holding the blank firmly against the tilting table fence:

 

 

Only a day's worth of thinking and building. This is why this project is taking so long!🙃

 

Mark

 

 

 

 

[SJSoane]

Much fun figuring out how to get decent mouldings! But I finally figured it out.

 

First round: I used an old exacto knife blade, shaped with a grinding wheel in the lathe. At this point, I was still trying to cut the blank at the angle of the tumblehome. I mounted it in a holder:

 

I expected the handle riding against a fence to stop at the right depth:

 

 

But this failed miserably. For some reason, the depth was not controlled at all, and the top edge waved up and down. And the cutter did not define the outer edges, just the face; so the moulding top curves did not gracefully flow into the sides of the profile; there was always a little ridge or the curve got cut off.

 

Next idea. I made a new cutter, now abandoning the idea of cutting the moulding at the angle of the tumblehome. It was too complicated, and at this scale did not show at all. So now I tried a simpler profile, straight up and down, and I provided sides to the profile that would run against the blank so the curves would flow evenly down into the edge of the blank. The edges of these sides were softened with a file so they would not cut, only guide.

 

I cut the profile in a Lie-Nielsen A2 steel blank (for his moulding plane; https://www.lie-nielsen.com/products/beading-tool-blade-blanks, 5 for $10). This made a fantastic cutter. I was able to shape it partly with ball end mills in the milling machine, and partly with files. And its greater thickness greatly reduced chatter. Lie-Nielsen claims it does not have to be hardened, and I will see if it starts to dull or not before I am done with this shape.

 

At first, I tried just running the cutter along the edge of the blank, counting on a fence to stop the cut at the right depth:

 

This did not work well at all. The upper edge was amazingly wavy. Perhaps the more powerful cutter grabbed at grain more aggressively.

 

So the final idea, which works perfectly, was to build a holder for the cutter, angling the cutter at 15 degrees, and with a fence riding against the side.

The workbench top now acts as a stop. I put a number of slips of manila folder and typing paper between the cutter and the workbench top to lift the cutter up so it just takes a whisper of a cut. When it cuts no more, I take away a slip of paper from underneath, dropping the cutter down slightly, and cut again. I do this repeatedly until the full profile is cut. You can see below the sweet curl of a cut coming off the cutter. The exacto blade cutter only shaved off sawdust.

 

 

I then cut the blank to the right thickness, keeping a piece of typing paper against the fence. In my earlier efforts, the metal of the fence was discoloring the moulding; the paper keeps it clean.

 

 

And voila, perfect mouldings:

 

 

This turned out to be much more difficult to control than I had originally expected, but a lot of experimentation and I got there.

 

 

 

 

 

[Hubac's Historian]

Extremely well done, and patiently realized.  BRAVO!

[SJSoane]

 

Thanks so much, Marc, it is a good thing I am not doing this for a living!

I wish I could think that everything I have learned will be applied to another model, but at the rate I am going, this is pretty much going to be it!

[Hubac's Historian]

Yeah, I’m with you on that.  After my current project, I’ll take on one small fully framed model - probably La Belle - to learn the craft, and then, it’s off to my masterpiece!  I only hope that my eyes and hands hold up to the challenge.

[druxey]

The method that works for me is to make the cutter profile in a softened piece of hacksaw blade. As you discovered, you can't do undercuts, so any angle on the molding needs to be shaped afterwards, but is usually not necessary except for entry steps.

 

I pre-cut strips the width and maximum depth plus a whisker of the molding to be cut. I then either rubber cement (larger strips) or white glue (smaller ones) to a flat, hard surface. This will act as the depth stop. Cut until the cutter rides along the base surface and you have a nice, even molding. The trick is not to use too much downward pressure on each pass. Many light cuts are better and there is less chance of the cutter digging in.

 

Your method is far more sophisticated!

Edited July 22, 2021 by druxey

[SJSoane]

Hi druxey, for some reason, maybe having to do with the grain or the stiffness of the wood, or poor hand coordination, I could not keep the cutter at a consistent angle to the table top. So the top edge wavered too much. Mounting the cutter in a handle at least keeps the angle constant for me. Still much to learn!

 

At last, I was able to start putting the waist moulding in place. I tried drilling holes for pins to keep things in place, but it was too sloppy to force the gradual curve and keep it there while the glue dried. So I made some battens that ride on the top of the planking edge underneath the moulding, clamping them to the ship side. Then it was a simple matter of clamping the moulding vertically to the batten. It is making a perfect, sweet, curve.

 

 

 

Edited July 24, 2021 by SJSoane

[Stuntflyer]

Looking wonderful!

 

Mike

[druxey]

Well, that worked out! Looking sweet, SJS.

[dvm27]

All of your planking has such sweet curves. Love your use of the thicker batten as a form for the moulding. Such a simple solution to the  problem of wavy lines.

[AnobiumPunctatum]

I hope that you will publish your drawings some day. Your Bellona is really a masterpiece

[JANRUS]

Hello Mark, just came across your recent posts  - you're just a perfectionist, and love the fact you are taking time to built this masterpiece by Anobium Punctatum and all of us following your log. You can always count on our support 💪.

 

   In regards to your quest regarding mizzen backstay's stools, there are quiet few strong arguments Bellona had them installed at the time of launching:

1. From R.C Anderson "Rigging of the ships in the days of the spritsail topmast, 1600-1720", p. 74 -

       " The mizzen topmast began to have standing backstays in 1685 on all 3-Rates. In 1717 they had stools just abaft the after end of the

          mizzen channels  and as high up as possible."  

2. Quiet few ship models on NMM in Greenwich from that period are showing this fixture, ex.:

    - SLR0479 - 50 gun of around 1747,

    - SLR0422 - 100 gun of around 1725,

     - HMS "Victory" of 1737 had them too - important argument as this model was used for educational purpose in the British Naval Academy,

     - HMS "Centurion" of 1732 - very interesting fact about this particular model is that it was built in 1747 by master shipwright Benjamin Slade, the

       uncle of Sir Thomas Slade, the designer and builder of Bellona.   

3. All French ships had them on at this period already - Britons copied a quiet few French features/solutions  to their ship; all historians agree French led

    the way in  the changes to sail ship's design and rigging.  J. Boudriot classic vol.1-4 is very useful to understand those days of sail ship's.

 

 

In regards to the spritsail and fore sheets: 

From R.C. Anderson again

 

and on the 60-gun model of 1735

 

and on the French L'Ambitieux of 1692 (as the curiosity)

 

 

or 74- 

 

 

It's a quiet challenging to find reliable sources for this period of Bellona history (her launching); the time after her rebuilt in 1780 is much better documented. That's why I started my researches from R.C Anderson treatise and models of the first half of 18th century to better understand the evolution of ship's rigging. Some historians claim Britons had things standardized, however, models show each ship had its own special features. Darcy Lever "The Young Sea Officer's Sheet Anchor" of 1808, describes variable methods of rigging existing in the fleet at his period. 

Therefore it will be your decision how to approach any challenge you may encounter, without jeopardizing historical facts. 

My Best Regards,

JR 

[SJSoane]

JR, thank you so much for the information on the aft stool or not. It seems compelling that the stool was in use by the time of the Bellona in 1760. The only remaining question is that the rig at this time, as best I can understand it, had only a topmast with a pole on the mizen, no topgallant mast. So there would not be a backstay for the absent topgallant, only a backstay for the topmast. So there would be only one line rigged to the stool. Maybe that the way it was. Or, maybe there was a backstay on the topmast pole running to the stool? Any guidance here would be much appreciated.

 

Best wishes,

 

Mark

 

 

 

 

[SJSoane]

Christian, you really got me thinking as a result of your kind comment and suggestion in July regarding my drawings. Indeed, your comment caused me to spend the last several months redrawing and expanding the set.

 

Why have I backtracked on the drawings, and not kept up with the planking on the actual model, which is now tantalizingly close to completion?

 

I realized that I have invested decades of research into this particular ship. And yet, I have only a number of incomplete and inconsistent drawings to show for it. They were more like notes to myself done just in time for the next part of the build. They had grown incrementally over time, as I learned more and went back to adjust things in areas where I needed. They had become a real jumble of information, sometimes contradictory from deck plan to sheer to body plan.

 

I also realized that I had drawn them decades before I became aware of Steele’s instructions in the 18th century on drawing a ship’s draughts. I realized that my original drawings were pretty rough and ready. Good enough for building the model, but not entirely accurate in their construction.

 

For the sheer, for example, many years ago I had painstakingly measured height of things like wales from the Xerox prints I had obtained from the National Maritime Museum, then plotted these on each station line. I then linked them together with a long flexible ruler. I had no idea at the time that these lines were actually created as arcs of a circle with 3 defined points at the head, midpoint and stern. Mine were close, but not the real thing.

 

In the spirit of creating an accurate record of my research, and enjoying the challenge of recreating the drawings as Thomas Slade would have done, I started a redraw.

 

And then I came to realize just how distorted the original Admiralty prints had become over 250 years. The height of a toptimber in the body plan was as much as several inches off relative to the same height shown in the sheer, and the scale at one end of the sheer was several inches different from the scale at the other end of the same drawing. The scale itself was so fuzzy that measuring against it could be interpreted as much as an inch or two either way. The inboard works drawing was off by half a foot in some places. This didn’t matter for a 3/16” = 1’-0” model, but it mattered a lot when trying to draw the body plan according to the Steele instructions, when a few inches off meant that the geometries in each frame would not line up.

 

So, I had to measure and fudge, until I could get the geometry to align with the measurements off the original prints. I made tick strips of relevant heights from the body plan, then adjusted a little where the sheer showed something different, then tried the geometrical construction; going back and forth until everything lined up.

 

 

I learned more precisely how the geometries of a frame related to each other:

 

 

and here is the complete body plan now accurately constructed:

 

 

From this, I began redrawing the inboard works and sheer. I also decided to draw the orlop and holds including the magazines. I never drew those, because my dockyard framing system omitted the magazines; and everything below the gun deck was a mystery to me. Now I know much more about what was going on down there.

 

 

These are still works in progress, shown here mainly to let you know that I have not fallen off the face of the earth, or stopped work on the Bellona.

I may post some insights I gained while drawing these, about the design and construction of these ships. For example, I finally found an answer to a question I posted several years ago about the quarterdeck beams seeming to raise their roundup as they approached the stern. Now I know what is going on, and I will share in a subsequent post!

 

Best wishes,

 

Mark

 

 

 

 

 

 

[AnobiumPunctatum]

I know the work which is in the reconstruction and drawing. Last month I did the frame design of my Triton a second time  to become more satisfied with the results.

Edited October 7, 2021 by AnobiumPunctatum

[JANRUS]

 

Hello Mark,

  Just reviewed my notes, and from the drawings, existing models in various collections and treatises there seem to be two ways the mizzen top mast rigging has been arranged in those days. See below:

I chose these two models because according to naval historians the Ipswich along with the Medway, is one of the most useful rigged models of the period as major part of it  is contemporary with the ship.

Here is also the lithograph of the Royal George of 1757, from the moment she sunk in 1782 at Spithead, with visible mizzenmast.

 

Other popular models like Victory (1737), Centurion (1732), Yarmouth (1742), Royal Oak (1741),  SLR0313 64-gun from 1775, were fitted in the same way.

 

Medway and Centurion (1732)  had the topmast extended with flagstaff and hexagonal hounds,  similar to French 74-gun ships, however, on the French ships the topmast pole served as a topgallant mast, when a topgallant sail was hoisted.

 

 

In his treatise R.C. Anderson was referring to the 1st method represented by the Ipswich,  providing the measurements of the trestle-trees and cross-trees on the p. 50-51:

 

Hopefully it did help you a little bit.

Thanks

My Best Regards,

JR

[druxey]

Again, caution should be taken as many models with 'original' rigging have been repaired over time and not all the lines may be OEM!

 

[SJSoane]

Thanks, JR, for this really helpful look at this issue. Many years ago, when I was first researching the Bellona with only limited references, I convinced myself it would be rigged as the Medway you show, with no crosstrees on the mizen topmast, only an octagonal stop and then a pole. If I see your images correctly, it looks like a single backstay from the octagon to the stool. So there is only one line anchoring to the stool. I am convinced by the stool, by the way; there is no reason we can't have a stool with only one line!

 

Best wishes,

 

Mark

 

[SJSoane]

HI everyone,

 

I stopped drawing long enough to share some of the things I have learned about the Bellona, and mid 18th century British ships generally, while following the 18th century drawing process. I will do this in a couple of posts, to keep to a topic at a time. And I will title these, Drawing Lessons from the Bellona, in the spirit of what lessons I have drawn while drawing!

 

Drawing Lessons from the Bellona, Part 1.

 

First of all, I want to acknowledge the essential help of David Antscherl's article in the Nautical Research Journal, Vol. 53, NO 2 Summer 2008, titled "Understanding Eighteenth-Century Admiralty Drafts: Making Contemporary Drawings Useful for the Modelmaker." This really helped me understand the principles and processes of these drawings. With this help, I turned to my facimile copy of David Steele's "The Elements and Practice of Naval Architecture" and followed the instructions given starting on page 234, Chapter III, Instructions for Delineating the Several Draughts and Plans of a Ship.

 

The first thing I learned is that Steele does not explain how to design a ship, only how to draw one from "Given Dimensions" already set down by the ship's designer. How the designer determined a number of key design elements, like ratio of length to width, or heights of various elements from the baseline, or even the diameters of various geometrical elements making up a frame, remains a mysterious art.

 

As an example, let's look at the cross section in the body plan. At first glance, this seems like a very straightforward geometrical process:

 

A number of arcs are formed to create the frame shape. One of the most important, stressed in the instructions, is the "floor sweep" shown here in green. You can see here at midships that it forms the lower curve of the frame. The height of the centers of all of these arcs are shown in the sheer diagram as a line curving up from midships to fore and aft. The distance of these centers from the hull centerline are shown as a curving line in the half breadth plan, widest at midships and curving towards the center line fore and aft. The radius is a constant along the entire ship, 11'-0" in the case of the Bellona. So imagine a 22' diameter cylinder touching the lower surface of the hull, and then bending upward and inwards as it progresses fore and aft to help shape the hull form.

 

Seems straightforward, plot the center on the body plan, and draw the frame. Until you start looking at frames moving away from midships. Then we discover that the radius of the floor sweep starts to leave the frame, as seen here at frames 18 and N. The floor sweep gives no guidance to the shape of the hull at this point, and suddenly we are at the mercy of "art", as the lower body shape now has no obvious geometry guiding its form.

 

Indeed, if we look at the rising line (the curved line below the wales which gives the height of the center for the floor sweep) on the Bellona sheer, the rising line only shapes the hull in the middle third of the hull. everything fore and aft is presumably shaped by eye, using waterlines to ensure smooth fairing. This would have had a great influence on the sailing qualities of the hull, I imagine, but no obvious geometry to help.

 

I read somewhere that the line fore and aft of the midships still had some "theoretical" value to the ship designer, but what value this is remains a mystery to me.

 

I would love to learn how the ship designers were making these decisions, but alas, not to be found in Steele!

 

All for now,

 

Mark

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

[druxey]

Perhaps a pedantic point, but the Steel you refer to has no 'e' at the end of his surname. I mention this as a Steele with an 'e also wrote a naval architecture in 1917. This can cause confusion between David Steel (1805) and the later J.E. Steele.

[SJSoane]

Thanks so much, druxey, for the spelling clarification. Steel was writing almost a half a century after the Bellona was designed, but I understand he lifted a great deal from earlier treatises (is this true?). And shipbuilding did not change radically over this period. So I assume much of this stayed similar, although I have to check things against the Bellona drawings themselves on a regular basis, even though they are crudely drawn by later standards. (more on that later).

[JANRUS]

Hello Mark,

   1.  In regards to the mizen backstays:  indeed there was only one rope rigged to each side of the ship at this time. 

 

    2. In regards to your later posts:

Naval architecture in the second half of 18^th century was already well established discipline based on scientific principles, as the  concept of the ship had evolved from a building strong enough to float in all seas and seasons to a moving fortress that required a floating caissons below and a propulsion above. These ships were engineering masterpieces, which sailed swiftly with and against the wind, having thick sidewalls protecting seamen  against cannon balls.

There were contemporary works available to D. Steel, like:

 

 

or

 

 

Also earlier works , just  to mention  „Architectura Navalis”  (Ulm 1620) by Futtenbach and treatises of Pierre Fournier,  Dutch construction engineers and Spanish shipbuilders.

 

The top three may have an answer to your question regarding workflow in drawing implements-scales-projection-sections-development-drawing estimates- molding room..... and the role of the Master Draftsman.

 

Thanks 

Best Regards,

JR

 

[Chuck]

Mark…your model is looking spectacular.  Its always a great source of inspiration.  The molding will look great once added and I look forward to seeing it.  
 

That ship’s hull has such a beautiful shape….its hard to stop admiring it.