Albatros by Dr PR - Mantua - Scale 1:48 - Revenue Cutter kitbash about 1815

[Dr PR]

I have been doing a bit of calculations for the anchor buoy and ratlines.

 

ANCHOR BUOY

 

Marquardt (p 192) says a "normal" anchor buoy was 54 x 30 feet (1.37 x 0.67 meters). At 1:48 scale this is 1.125 x 0.625 inches (28.6 x 17 mm). This is almost as long as the shank of the anchor on my model! Marquardt does say smaller anchors had smaller buoys.

 

I looked for photos of models showing the anchors and anchor buoys. I found four.

 

A = length of anchor shaft (head to crown)

B = length of anchor buoy

 

Photo     A          B         A:B

    1      0.938  0.3215    3.00

    2     0.319   0.109      2.93

    3     2.78    0.922      3.02

    4     0.328  0.147       2.23

 

So actual anchor buoy length is about 1/4 to 1/3 the anchor shaft length.

 

Since my model's anchor is very close to actual scale for a schooner of the model's size, and the anchor shaft length is 1.716 inches (45.2 mm), the anchor buoy should be about 0.57 inches (14.5 mm) long, and (using Marquardt's proportions) about 0.318 inches (8.0 mm) wide.

 

RAT LINES (Ratlings)

 

Lever (p 25) says ratlines were spaced 12 inches (305 mm).

Marquardt (p 172) says 12 to 16 inches (305 to 406 mm), with 13 inches (330 mm) most common.

Lees (p 44) says 13 to 15 inches (330 to 381 mm).

Mondfeld (p 288) says 15 to 16 inches (381 to 406 mm).

Chapell (Fishing Schooners p 586) says 16 to 16.5 inches (406 to 419 mm).

 

So there you have it. Ratlines were definitely spaced just about any distance you want!

 

For my model, an American schooner, I will go with Lever, Marquardt and Lees 12-13 inches, or about 0.25 inches (6.4 mm) at 1:48 scale. I would rather use Chapelle's 16 inches because I would have to tie a lot fewer knots!

Edited Wednesday at 04:49 AM by Dr PR

[Dowmer]

If you need ideas on how to do a flag that is light and drapes naturally, Chuck Passaro on this site does a nice tutorial on how he does his flags and they look very realistic. It might be in his Cheerful cutter build. I followed his method for the small flag on my longboat.  Link is in my signature.  It turned out pretty well.

[Dr PR]

Dowmer,

 

Thanks for the link for the flag. I don't know if my printer (Brother LED printer) will print on paper that thin. It is a laser-like printer with a very hot fuser, and I can't run anything through it that might melt (would destroy the fuser). That rules out taping the tissue to a heavier sheet of paper. I'll try hand feeding the tissue paper - the worst that can happen is a paper jam.

 

Farther down in Chuck's post he shows how he makes the anchor buoys. The longboat buoys are a bit simpler than what all the books show.

[georgeband]

Phil,

 

Congratulations on being on the final straight, it's just irritating that someone keeps moving the finishing line a bit farther away. You'll get to cross it some day soon. 

 

Anchor nun buoy. 

I made one for my Sherbourne cutter from plastic left-over bits. Think model aircraft drop tanks, bombs, pen tops, there are lots of things that take you along the way. The trickier part is to create the ropes and hoops that all go over each other. The attached pdf is about anchors and describes the buoy in more detail. 

Anchors.pdf

The difficult question is where to store a buoy and its rope. Tying the buoy to the shrouds is reasonable though it would take several sailors to lift it while one ties the first knot. I cannot really imagine where else it could go on a schooner with cramped accommodation below. The rope from the buoy to the anchor is 17 to 18 fathoms (Lever page 68) which on your 1/48 model is well over two feet. That is a big, unwieldy coil to hoist up on the shrouds and then tie in place. Could the rope be kept in the cable tier and spliced or hitched on when needed?

 

Flags.

I spent time with a hand towel looking to see how it would hang. Hold it up by one corner and pull another corner so that a short edge hangs vertically. You can now play with folds in the towel/flag to bring forward the bits you want to show. The critical feature is that some of the flag (ideally 50%) falls forward of the halyard; if you want the flag to be fluttering to one side of the halyard then gravity will win and the short 'vertical' edge will hang at an angle unless you put on a scary amount of tension. 

I will be laser printing onto tissue (teabag paper) later this year when I start on the sails for Whiting. Like you, I am concerned that sticky tape will ruin the fuser in the printer if I have to attach the tissue to stiffer paper. A fall back method that I am considering is to glue the edge of the tissue with a glue stick (Pritt stick in UK). I don't know if anyone else has tried that here, or experimented with different tapes. You could run some trials with that small iron you use for bending planks. 

 

George

 

 

[Dr PR]

George,

 

Thanks for the information. The file about anchors is well done. I have found most of the information, in bits and pieces, in several of the books I have. I was wondering how to tame all those loose ends and your idea of using a (very) small rubber band is good. I don't think I have any here, or if I do I don't know where to find them! I will try a thin strip of painter's tape. But I expect Murphy to be right there to "help" me!

[georgeband]

It was a few years ago and I think that tiny rubber band came from a cocktail umbrella. We had bought a small box of them and each rubber band kept an umbrella closed.

George 

[Dr PR]

ANCHOR BUOY

 

Here is a drawing of an anchor buoy and anchor from zu Mondfeld's Historic Ship Models.

 

The buoy could be anything that floats. Some were made of layers of cork, some layers of wood, and some were made with staves like barrels. One reference said they were covered with canvas and tarred to make them watertight and resist the effects of water exposure. The length of the buoy was 1/4 to 1/3 the length of the anchor shaft.

 

The buoys were fastened into a rope "cage" made of slings and hoops. Every reference I found showed this same arrangement with four "arms" for each sling, all gathered into an eye. However, for small boat anchors there may be only two arms for each sling.

 

Each arm of the sling had an eye. The rope hoops passed through the eyes and the ends of the hoop were spliced together to form a circle. When the hoops were pulled tight the slings were stretched and tightened to hold the buoy securely.

 

The upper eye on the buoy was attached to a lanyard that aided in retrieving the buoy and fastening it to the foremost shroud. The lower buoy eye was attached to the buoy rope. Several references said the buoy rope was 1/3 the diameter of the anchor cable and a minimum length of about 18 fathoms (108 feet or 33 meters).

 

The buoy rope was tied around the anchor crown with a clove hitch. The end of the rope was laid out along the anchor shaft and tied to it with seizing. There were usually two seizings near the end of the rope, with a buoy knot at the end of the rope. Most references show another seizing around the shaft and rope close to the crown and clove hitch.

 

The buoy rope was coiled and lashed to the forward shroud at the deadeye. For modeling purposes the rope doesn't need to be a scale 18 fathoms.

 

 

Several posts on the Forum tell of clever reuse of beads, toy footballs and other similar objects for the buoy. I just carved my buoys out of a round dowel using a hand drill and files as my "lathe.".

 

 

 

One reference gave the dimensions of a "typical" buoy, but it must have been for a "typical" ship, whatever that is. It was much too large for my 1:48 scale schooner model! I used 1/3 the length of the anchor shaft for the long axis, and that came out to be 0.572 inches (14.5 mm). The diameter is 0.318 inches (8 mm). Of course these are approximations. What I ended up with is what came from carving the buoy from a 3/8 inch (9.5 mm) dowel. I coated the buoys with shellac to seal them.  When the shellac dried I painted the buoys with burnt umber (dark brown) acrylic to simulate a tar coating.

 

The next step was to make the slings from eight lengths of 0.025 inch (0.63 mm) rope with eyes at each end.

 

 

 

I made a tool by driving two pins into a scrap piece of wood, then cutting off the heads of the pins. The spacing between the pins was a "guestimation" based on measurements around the buoy bodies with extra rope for the eyes at the ends and an eye in the middle where the slings will come together. The only way to know for sure if the length was correct was to make one of these things - if not I get the pleasure of making more slings. I tied off the end eyes with small black thread but you could just glue the two strands together. These things are pretty small and the seizing is not that noticeable.

 

Two of these pieces were tied together in the middle, with an eye loop in both, to form George's "4 legged spiders" or what I called "quadropuses."

 

The next problem was to figure out how to control the eight ends of the slings while trying to wrap them around the small buoys. This looked pretty tricky and I was prepared for "the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune" (pardon the pun, with apologies to Shakespeare) to befall me. Fortunately Murphy took the day off and what I had imagined to be a trying exercise turned out to be pretty simple.

 

 

I placed a small drop of Loctite CA (cyanoacrylic) gel glue at the point of the buoy, and another on the sling below the central eye. I held the sling in place until the glue set. Then the buoy was inverted the the second sling was glued to the other end.

 

I don't like CA, primarily because I have always had bad luck with it. Every tube I have used hardened almost immediately after I first opened it, so I usually got only one use from each tube. I prefer Duco Cement (nitrocellulose dissolved in acetone) because it sets pretty quickly (20 to 30 seconds) and I have had tubes last for decades. But for this job I wanted instant gratification when I placed the slings on the buoys. As my luck would have it, the cap of the CA bottle was glued permanently in place. But the entire top of the bottle screwed off so I got a few more drops from it.

 

I didn't have any of George's small cocktail umbrella rubber bands - actually they reminded me of the little bands dentists place on kid's braces. Instead I cut thin strips of blue painter's tape and wrapped them around the slings and buoys.

 

 

 

This actually worked pretty well. I could reposition the ends of the slings under the tape to get fairly even spacing around the buoy. Then the hoop ropes were threaded through the eyes on the sling arms and pulled tight. Looks like I guessed correctly for the length of the sling ropes!

 

I only wrapped the ends of the hoop ropes around each other with one turn, and no knots. I put a drop of Duco Cement on the junction and worked it in with a needle point. There should be no strain on these ropes so the simple glue joint should be strong enough!

 

Here are a finished buoy on the left and another in progress on the right.

 

The CA cement left a white blob at the ends of the buoys and the Duco Cement leaves a shiny film. I will need to touch up these areas with burnt umber and flat black paint. After everything is dry I may coat the entire buoy with dilute white glue to hold the slings and hoops in position.

 

I will have to wait until I have finished the ratlines before I can tie the buoys to the fore shrouds.

 

My anchor cables are 0.065 inch (1.65 mm) diameter. The buoy ropes should be about 1/3 as large, so I will use 0.018 inch (0.45 mm) or 0.025 inch (0.63 mm) diameter tan rope.

Edited 11 hours ago by Dr PR