New England Stonington Dragger by FriedClams - FINISHED - 1:48 POB

[G.L.]

Meticulous research and beautiful work, Gary.

[KeithAug]

Gary - Lovely job on the gallows - but that is par for the course on this build. Once again very realistic paintwork.

[michael mott]

Gary the fine work on the lighting and the gallows are amazing.

 

Michael

[FriedClams]

 Thank you John, Chris, G.L., Keith and Michael for your nice comments and support.  And thanks to all for stopping in to take a look.

 

Finishing the Gallows Frame

 

Here is a small update on the dragger.

 

Some cleats and an angle iron bracket for the mast brace were made from styrene and glued to the frame.

  

 

A very thin wash of acrylic was applied to give it a barely perceptible hint of blue.  Then a little rust and dust was added with pigment powders.

 

The reverse side.

 

The tow blocks are made from styrene and wood dowel.  The pulley sheaves needed to be a scale 12” diameter so ¼” dowel worked out perfectly for this.  Black primer and “steel" enamel along with a couple of dirty pigments completed the look.

 

Blackened copper wire was bent into eyebolts and attached to the top of the tow blocks.  These were then pinned into the gallows frame with brass rod and are allowed to dangle freely.  The frame was glued to the deck and a short piece of brass tubing representing a 2” pipe brace is rigged between the frame and the mast. 

 

The deck surrounding the gallows frame will need some additional coloring and wear, but that will be done after the winch is made up and placed.

 

This image below provides a good look at the forward support chain.  I really like this miniature chain because it has elongated links like real chain.  More often than not, tiny scale chain is comprised of links that are round (and sometimes flat) and doesn’t replicate real chain very well.  This chain is pre-blackened, 15 links per inch, #29221 from A-line in California.

 

A little rust colored pigment was added to the chain and turnbuckle.

 

In this top view you can see how the support chain attaches to a post that is bolted between the two gallows frame head plates.  The forward edge of the chain terminates at a turnbuckle.  From there a rod penetrates the covering board at the same steep angle as the chain, and presumably bolts through a heavy timber below deck.

 

And a couple more views.

 

 

 

 

 

 

And finally, I would like to wish everyone a happy and peaceful holiday season. 

 

 

Gary

 

 

Edited April 14, 2020 by FriedClams

[Jim Lad]

More great work, Gary - and a very merry Christmas to you and yours.

 

John

[KeithAug]

Always a pleasure to catch up Gary, Merry Christmas to you and your family.

[mtaylor]

Your aging and weathering is incredible.   And may you and your family have a wonderful Christmas and New Years.

[Moab]

Gary; wow!!! An awesome model and build. Have a wonderful and peaceful holiday...Moab

[jgodsey]

As always, you make old look fantastic!

Merry Christmas and Happy New Year!

Jim

[KORTES]

Dear Gary, Your work doesn't cease to amaze with its mastery and quality. Its with enormous pleasure that i follow Your posts. Merry holidays,

my best regards.

[FriedClams]

 John, Keith, Mark, Moab, Jim and Alexander - thank you so much for the kind remarks and continuing interest in my model build.  I truly appreciate it.  And thanks to all for the "likes" and for swinging through.

 

 

Here's a short update on the beginnings of the trawl winch.

 

I’ve spent an honest amount of time digging up details for a winch to go on this model.  Like the gallows frame, I didn’t find a standard "this is what everybody used" winch.  If I could time travel back to southern New England in the 1920’s, I’m sure I would indeed find boats using standardized equipment.  Hardware and especially machinery such as a trawl winch were most likely purchased from marine distributors or direct from the manufacturer.  It seems unlikely a winch would be built locally.  Fisherman needed a trawl winch that worked flawlessly and was practically indestructible.  And repair parts had to be available off the shelf to the get the boats back up and running quickly.

 

It would be great to have model numbers, catalogs, and exploded views of these winches, but I have none of those things.  But the few drawings I do have include block outline dimensions of the winch and period photos show me what the winches looked like.  So along with materials of more recent trawl winches, I have enough information to construct a winch that is at least historically honest if not precisely identical.

 

These draggers were small boats and their gear was sized accordingly.  Below is a plan view of the winch I drew up for this model.  Though small, it is actually larger than some I have seen.  Notice the auxiliary winch head at the upper left in this drawing.  It is driven off the main shaft with a sprocket and roller chain.

 

Here’s a small winch in place on a 1940s dragger.

 

And here is how I will position mine on deck.

 

These winches were pretty simple and consisted of drum reels with adjustable drag brakes and a clutch to engage them.  Below is an end view of a 1960-ish trawl winch showing the clutch lever, the hand wheel for brake pressure and a winch head on the end of the main shaft.

 

Here is my version of it.

 

And then a side view.

 

This winch has no automatic mechanism to spool the cable evenly onto the drum as it is being wound.  This was common on these boats and may be because the reels were quite narrow and therefore spooling unnecessary.  Also, on many of these boats the cables wind/unwind at a very steep angle directly to the towing blocks, so if any spooling was needed it might have been done manually with steel push bars.  The image below shows the steep take-off angle of the winch to the towing blocks.  Also, I like this photo because it shows a net heavy with catch almost pushing the rail of this little dragger under water.

 

Below is a photo crop of a 1970s Cape Cod Eastern-Rig fishing boat.  I wanted to show this image because it is the only one I've seen showing the use of steel bars to guide the cable onto the winch reels.  Notice that the foot of the bar is placed into a wooden plate with sockets providing a choice of leverage positions.

 

In 1:48 the winch for my model will be a little over 1-1/8” by about ¾”.  In the next post I'll make up parts and put it all together. 

 

Thanks for stopping by and have a wonderful new year.

 

Gary

[vaddoc]

Gary, I just finished catching up with your log. Not only you are creating a wonderful model, you are clearly having lots of fun! Now, your boat is a source of inspiration but one issue I ve always had was the colour and texture of the masts. Strangely, it never occurred to me to paint the masts with acrylics. I do not have your skills in mixing paint but this is definitely something to try in the future. 

[KeithAug]

Nice little project Gary. I look forward to seeing the winch develop.

[Jim Lad]

That's some serious fishing going on in that image of the boat with the net over the rail!

 

I'm sure your winch will turn out nicely rusted up, Gary.

 

John

[michael mott]

Happy new year to you and your family Gary. I like the drawing of the winch and look forward to seeing it come together in your capable hands.

 

Michael

[druxey]

Happy New Year. Terrific work as usual!

[Roger Pellett]

Gary,

 

A great job!  What drives the winch?

 

Roger

[FriedClams]

Keith, Michael and Druxey - Thank you so much for the nice comments and for your continuing support.  And thanks to all for the "likes".

 

 

 

On 1/3/2020 at 3:08 PM, vaddoc said:

you are clearly having lots of fun!

 

On 1/3/2020 at 3:08 PM, vaddoc said:

it never occurred to me to paint the masts with acrylics.

Thanks Vaddoc and yes it has been a fun model to build.  As far as the mast color goes, it wouldn’t have been my choice for the model, but it is a toned down compromise of the bright orange often used on these boats.  I used acrylic here knowing that I was going to use dry pigment powder on top of it.  If I were considering mixing the powder with alcohol, clearly a water-based paint wouldn’t work.  I always lightly sand acrylic paint because I feel it brings the look down to scale, and even though pigment powers contain an adhesive component, a little extra tooth is always good.

 

 

On 1/3/2020 at 6:34 PM, Jim Lad said:

I'm sure your winch will turn out nicely rusted up,

I think more grease than rust this time.  Thanks John.

 

On 1/3/2020 at 11:58 PM, Roger Pellett said:

 What drives the winch?

That’s a good question Roger.  The main engine supplies the power, but the actual power take-off configuration and how it mechanically attaches to the winch is something I haven’t seen drawn out.  The drawing below makes me think it could have been a direct chain drive as there seems to be a PTO point on the engine just left of the text.

 

The image below is from a 1928 U.S. patent submittal and it shows a winch with a sprocket and roller chain (items 24, 26) that the accompanying notes state is the power connection point.

 

 

At first this sprocket/chain arrangement seemed grossly undersized until I noticed the small diameter of the pinion gear (20) and considered the huge mechanical ratio advantage it had to the large bull gear (34).  So a chain drive off the main engine seems probable.  And there must been a lever or something somewhere to de-couple the two.

 

As a side note, the patent being applied for here was the idea of clutch surfaces that are integrated into the bull gear - one facing in each direction.  The reels (36) are forced against the clutch plates with variable pressure by turning hand wheels (56).  Hand wheels (64) are the drag brakes.  Thanks for stopping through Roger.

 

Gary

[archjofo]

@FriedClams

 

Hi Gary, 

you visited my construction report for a French corvette today. In this respect, I took this as a reason to pay a return visit.
Now I know what I've missed so far.
You build a fantastically good model, very clean, precise and extremely realistic.

I'm excited.

Edited January 8, 2020 by archjofo

[Hubert Boillot]

Amazing work continuing !

 

Hubert

[FriedClams]

Thank you Johann and Hubert for visiting and the for kind comments.  And as always, thanks to all for the likes and stopping by.

 

 

Trawl Winch Continued

 

Work on the trawl winch has been intermittent and slow, but here’s where it stands.

 

Some of the materials for the main section of the winch are shown below.  The round disks that will make up the drum reels were cut from .02” styrene sheet using a paper circle cutter.  The two hand wheels are 1:87 boxcar brake wheels injection molded in Delrin.

 

I decided to change the position of the bull gear from where I had it originally drawn.  The gear has been moved from the end of the shaft to the center and now has a drum reel on either side.  I did this after additional research convinced me this was by far the most common configuration of double drum winches regardless of time period.  Once this fact penetrated my skull, I changed the drawings accordingly as shown below.

 

The drawing below describes how the drum reels are assembled.

 

I used solvent and CA gel to put these reels together - solvent when the pieces could be dry fit and gel where the parts were placed freehand and a brief window for position adjustment was needed.  The shift ring slot will be cut later on.

 

The base frame is made from six pieces of styrene “I” beams.  Cutting templates are drawn and the pieces cut.

 

The base frame construction is simple.

 

The frame is simple, but placing and riveting the corner angle iron plates was time consuming.  I didn’t have any injection molded rivets that were small enough for this application, but the detail is easy to simulate.  A rivet in the 3/4" diameter range was needed, so I heat stretch some plastic sprue frame to the diameter required.  I hold the piece of sprue over a flame and when the middle begins to slump, I pull it apart (stretch it) to a fine thread.  Somewhere along the length of the stretch will be the diameter I need and a one-inch section is found that calipers at .015".  Monofilament fishing line also works great for things like this if the right diameter is in your tackle box.

 

The angle iron (and "I” beam) is styrene strip material from Evergreen.  This structural shape material is a real time-saver if one of their available dimensions matches what you need.  Here I’m using angle that is .060" (1.5mm) per side.  That scales to 2.88" in 1:48 and is close enough to the 3" I was looking for. 

 

Now it’s just a matter of drilling holes into the angle iron, gluing the end of my stretched plastic into the hole and trimming it with a slight reveal sticking out.  I use a piece of brass shim stock as a height gauge to trim them off.  I could round over the heads with fine grit paper - but my sanity is more important.  

 

Some rivets were placed along the upper I-beams.  Bolts and plate washers hold the base frame to the deck.

 

Pillow block bearings are made from copper tube and .010" styrene.  There are two layers of styrene, one under the bearing and another wrapped over the top.  The main shaft is .070” diameter brass rod. 

 

In my parts stash I found this white metal gear.  It is about the correct diameter and thickness for the bull gear so I’m going to use it as such.  I cleaned it up and drilled out the hole for the shaft.  The lower portion didn’t cast very well and is missing teeth, but I’ll rotate that to where it won’t be seen.  A drum reel disc is shown as a relative size comparison.

 

A section of angle iron will be bolted to the I-beam base to support brackets for the brake wheels and clutch engage levers.  The brackets are made from .020” x .040" styrene.  The clutch lever bracket gussets are .010” material.

 

 

I’ve started on the clutch levers and yokes, but there is still a lot left to do - brake pads, pinion shaft, main winch head, frame and sheet metal guard for the auxiliary winch head, etc.  And of course, the coloring and weathering. 

 Thanks for stopping by.

 

Gary

[KeithAug]

Really neatly done Gary. I particularly liked your recycling approach to rivets. I must use your method for pillow blocks some time.

[Jim Lad]

That winch is really looking the goods already, Gary!

 

John

[druxey]

Very nice progress, Gary. If you want an easy way to round those rivet heads and keep your sanity, I believe that you can obtain cup burrs in small sizes. An example:

 

https://www.eternaltools.com/cup-burrs

[TOM G]

WOW !   were talking about a scratch build............. Great workmanship Gary.👍

[michael mott]

Nice work Gary innovative solution on the rivet detail.

 

Michael

[jgodsey]

Great work Gary and an excellent tutorial.

Jim

[FriedClams]

Thank you Keith, John, Druxey, Tom, Michael and Jim for your nice comments and encouragement - I truly appreciate it.  And thanks for the likes and to those following along quietly.

 

On 1/18/2020 at 8:00 PM, druxey said:

If you want an easy way to round those rivet heads and keep your sanity, I believe that you can obtain cup burrs in small sizes.

Thanks for the suggestion of the cup burrs Druxey - I didn't know there was such a tool.  I couldn't find one small enough that would have worked in this instance, but I can see where they would come in very handy at other times.  Thanks again and for the link.

 

 

More Winch Stuff

 

Progress on the trawl winch has been slow but inching forward just the same.

 

The drum reels have already been made up from styrene but still needed to have the brake drum reinforcing segments added as shown below.

 

Here is a 3D drawing screen shot of what the real brake drum would look like.  This is my first stab at 3D CAD and the result is rudimentary and crude.  I’ve done isometric projections before but not actual 3D constructions because I haven't found them terribly useful.  But with advancements in 3D printing providing finer, crisper and more affordable parts, it’s an option I want to be prepared to take advantage of  – and the printing technology is getting better all the time.  Services are even available to print in wax for producing lost wax process metal components.  But I’m a little conflicted about computer generating parts for a model, which is sort of strange as I have no problem using injection molded bits and pieces or white metal castings when it’s to my advantage – well, some other time.

 

 

Some detail has been left out (back plate with bolt heads) because my circle cutter won’t go that small and I don't have a punch that size.  The reels and drums were painted with enamel base colors after being cleaned in alcohol.

 

I pushed the reels onto toothpicks and placed them in my portable hand drill to strip off some of the paint thickness and to scratch annular rings into faces of the reel surfaces.  Pigment was applied hear and there.

 

 

I wanted to wrap some wire cable into the reels as a separate piece from the cable and chain on the outer most layer that will travel out to the gallows frame.  This lower cable will be clean and bright so a glimpse of it can be seen below the looser and rougher looking surface wrap when that eventually gets placed.  Having the reel loaded with cable separately allows me to screw-up and rework the cable/chain leading to the gallows frame without having to rewind the reel itself.

 

I’m using 7 strand stainless beading wire with a .019” diameter for the cable.  Due to its stiffness, it resisted my every attempt at winding it onto the reels.  So a simulation was in order.  I first wrapped a strip of .010" styrene sheet repeatedly around the reel to build up the height.  This was glued at every wrap.  I then glued short lengths of the beading wire to a piece of paper (and to each other) in a width that would fit the reel opening.

 

 

The wire slabs were cut to length, pre-bent around a ¼” dowel and popped onto the reels like wrist bracelets.

 

Drum brake bands are made from .010” styrene.

 

The bands are primed flat black enamel and sprinkled with green pigment power while still wet.  Once totally dry, they were lightly sanded with 1500 paper for wear and then glued to the drums.  Every sharp edge on these reel/drum assemblies was rubbed with the side of a #2 pencil.  This helps define the outline of the shape and provides a metallic/chrome sort of sheen.

 

The bracket frame for the hand wheels and clutch levers is glued to the winch frame.  Some injection-molded nut/washers are glued on and the whole thing gets a base coat of black enamel primer.  Several tones of grungy looking pigments are scrubbed in along with light rusting around some of the hardware.

 

The main winch head is made from 1/4" dowel that is placed in the hand drill chuck and profiled with needle files.  It was painted with silver over brown then spun in the drill, scratched with a pick and finally penciled.

 

A washer and nut head is glued to the end of the main shaft.

 

Then winch head is glued on.

 

 

The main shaft, drum reels, bull gear and brake hand wheels are all glued into place.  This winch is far from being done, but here’s what it looks like so far.

 

 

 

 

Still left to do are the clutch shifters/levers; the sheet metal guard cover for the auxiliary winch head, the aux winch head itself; coloring touch-up, and other stuff that I’ve forgotten. 

 

Thanks for looking in.

 

Gary

 

 

[Ekis]

Really impressive realism ...

[KenW]

I've been following this build and I must say - You are modeling on a whole different level; way above what I could do.

Really impressive.