AGATE 1853 by Heinrich der Seefahrer - 1/64 - Whaling Schooner built in Essex, Massachusetts

[Heinrich der Seefahrer]

Dear friends, 

 

The Whaling Schooner AGATE is a motivation project that will give some successfully moments to me. Whalers are an other side of my intrests hidden to public as it is no good for your career to stay too close to this blood soaken side of shipbuilding in the eyes of a TV-educated population.

That is what she will look like.

I'm not completely shure with my choice of scale and may alter it to 1:64.

 

The Ship is an ordinary schooner of the mid-fifties. Some quite little whaler  with her four boats. 

The boats will be a chapter of its own.

 

Our sources are very simple as these are two:

Howard Irving Chapelle 

American Fishing Schooners p.80. She appears in this book as she is relatived to the Grand Banks Schooners.

Chapelle gives a fine set of drawings to us - telling us she was built for whaling especially. Traditionally she was the last vessel of large size (Lpp 74"-10' 1/2) built at Essex/Mass. built from local white oak and pine.

 

 

V.R.Grimwood tells us in American shipmodels and how to build them

some quite simpler drawing - but added some

transom

and stem decor to us plus details of the galion. There are added

some details for the rigging

 

...and hull,too.

 

Also the cutting station is drawn in detail.

 

Trypots and deck furniture is also passed over to us.

 

These were all my sourcrs and I think about the scale changing to 1/64 sceptical because of the built of the whaling boats. On the otherhand why not to try it out by plastic stripes planking?

 

Hopefully AGATE of Privincetown brings me back to some good mood.

 

EDIT:

I due to the legth of the rigged model of 23 1/2inch or 588mm and nearly 22inch or 550mm tall at 1/64 I decided to reduce the scale factor down by 25% so the model will fit to an usual book shelf.

[Heinrich der Seefahrer]

Notice to myself:

There is no sign of some

iron eight for the lookout in the main mast... donot forget this characteristic detail.

Edited May 5, 2019 by Heinrich der Seefahrer
Added picture from the book GREASY LUCK by Gordon Grant

[Heinrich der Seefahrer]

4 hours ago, Heinrich der Seefahrer said:

 

As there are no plans of ESSEX sunken by a whale... I decided fore some simpler ship design.

Edited May 5, 2019 by Heinrich der Seefahrer

[Roger Pellett]

An interesting project, Heinrich, i’m Looking forward to following it.

 

Roger

[Heinrich der Seefahrer]

9 minutes ago, Roger Pellett said:

An interesting project, Heinrich, i’m Looking forward to following it.

 

Roger

Thanks for the interest, Roger, and take you a seat on the aft'deck!

[KeithAug]

Heinrich - I love schooners and I am pleased to be able to follow along.

[Jim Lad]

This will make a very nice model, Heinrich.  Something very different to the usual whaler we see.

 

John

[Heinrich der Seefahrer]

Thanks Keith and Jim for the encouragement! The schooner is a very nice rigg. Did anybody of you know if theses whalers do wear redbrown sails (without the jibs) of an oceangoing workhorse? Or is it realistic to keep them in the shorter surviving light tan looking more romantic? 

As some example Thames sailing barge WYVENHOE of London - the sails seem to be of nylon due to their glossy surface.

 

To get the sailplan into a workable condition I'll have to do some tricks with the book in the copyshop. The masts, gaffeltree and blocks lengths ans sizes will hopefully be able to taken out by a pair of compasses. I am absolutely unfamiliar to the spreadsheets and what they do tell me.

Edited May 6, 2019 by Heinrich der Seefahrer
Thoughts about copying the masts and sailsplan

[Heinrich der Seefahrer]

Hello! So in my second week of illness after the doctor will press me into bed again I managed to escape for a few minutes to my copyshop resizing by 75% copying

all the 1/48 drawings down to 1/64 - not to die by boringness. (Btw: My health insurances deny to pay this bill... ...penny-pinchers!)

 

The reason for this is a typical space/model-kind question:

The 1/64 fully rigged model will fit on a standard Ivar shelfboard...

 

...the 1/48 sized model will only allow for a hull model and then a 1/36 or 1/32 scaled hull model might be the better choice as it fits completly the given space.

 

I cut out the center board and glued it on the plywood. Next will be the grooves for the

 

bulkheads - on weekend I do hope to be able to cut both out.

 

The 28-ft NewBedford whaleboats are scaled down into 1/64 only 133,35mm long - and I do think about planking them in the plastic way. There is a huge amount of brainwork to be done on these tiny boats their interior, how to get the lances, harpunes, buckets, all these odds and details build.

 

The detail drawings are also copied and give something to think about how to build. 

Sorry but as I do write on my old smartphone I am unable to shift/pull the pictures in a direction as I like to get them.

 

And as my girlfriend is interested in my building the AGATE, too - I made some copies more. Hopfully this will help her to decide...

...to join the dark side of modelbuilding warships and whalers and how to build her first modelship at all.

 

So I credenced today to her

A.B.C.Whipple's book "The Whalers" to yhe most of us well known from the old Seafarer Series that ignited my mind to modelshipbuilding 42 years ago... 

 

So sorry for my slow progress.

Edited May 8, 2019 by Heinrich der Seefahrer
Added book picture

[Heinrich der Seefahrer]

Hekllo colleagues! So today I worked a bit on the bulkheads and the maindeck's stucture in the 

Chapelle-drawing:

Here ist the Underside of the Deck at side - were the topside of the

 

Decks plywood board is. (Here the drawing from the Mondfeld book of a decks plywood board.) Due to this

the centerboard has to be cut smaller by subtracting the decks planks and the plywoods thickness. Okay I've got it.

 

But at the outside thinks look different!

Is this green marked line from the transoms edge to the )0(  the Underside of Deck at side again? Or is it a differend kind of line? As it might be decks topside, waterways topside, or s.th. else I cannot guess.  

And as this dashed line also the same line towards the stem, I have to figure the stanchions to keep the one layer planking in shape. But can I really use

 

this green marked structures as my reference for the stanchions size? Here were the grooves seen long the side shown on the Mondfelds drawing.

 

The right size of the centerboard and of the bulkheads depends on the planning made here - due to this I do ask instead of running against a wall at the very start of AGATE. I can saw off a millimeter - but if it is gone but essentially needed thinks get worse. 

Thanks for your patience.

 

B.t.w.: It is a complete other kind of thinking than with SAINT PHILIPPE were I have to join some annangement with the given kit. Both fun but from completly different kind of challenging.

Edited May 9, 2019 by Heinrich der Seefahrer

[Heinrich der Seefahrer]

Hello, thise days not too much happend:

 

A bit of historical research

besides my email to the Provincetown Historical Bureau with a little pile of questions. Who owned the AGATE? Do wo know anything about this company's painting sheme or jtheir hauseflag? And some other questions about the whaling history of Provincetown. 

 

Something ideas about sails

So here a little physical step forward. Some copied patchwork to get some feeling for the size of the model 

and the first scetch of the colours. My idea was by colouring  of the sails to point out "This is a two masted ship"  and to avoiding your eyes to lost not a mess of brown sails over a black hull. The paining of the wales and planks in verdigris is pure guesswork to give some spot of colour onto the black hull.

 

I found some wonderful painting at the "electric bay" to get some reference colour to the sails red.

William Bradford, Whaler and Fishing vessels near an iceberg 

 

He does give us some idea of brown but not red bown sails. But is my idea realistic to do so? And is this done in a historically correct way?

 

 

 

[Heinrich der Seefahrer]

As I think about a caputred sperm whale beside the model as some kind of scale I looked around and found impressive lengths

up to 90ft some 28m for the Moby Dick - but even the Mocha Dick sinking the ESSEX in 1847 was a monstrous 70ft long whale. Something like this is nearly as long as and would on the fluke chain list the AGATE keel up or making the masts to break (through mastfoot and keel?). 

So some smaller 50-60ft long whale will do the job.

[Heinrich der Seefahrer]

As the line ends up

here in the transoms corner I have got no idea what line this is - do you have got?

 

[Jim Lad]

Exactly which line are you talking about, Heinrich?

 

John

[Heinrich der Seefahrer]

On 5/10/2019 at 12:27 AM, Jim Lad said:

Exactly which line are you talking about, Heinrich?

 

John

@Jim Lad

 

Hy John - and here I do come to the problems of translation textes. But drawings are very polyglot.

 

It is about the correlation of these two lines on the very right side it  is the "Underside of the Deck at side"  - to quote H.I.Chapelle - on  the left side it is my guess theat these is the same line.

 

Here in front...

 

...and aft view yellow ligthed..

 

 

and the two points - I do hope belong together. Is this possible?

 

Thanks for your patiente.

 

 

[mtaylor]

Christian, 

That should indeed be the deck line for the top of the deck.

[Heinrich der Seefahrer]

On 5/12/2019 at 8:10 AM, mtaylor said:

Christian, 

That should indeed be the deck line for the top of the deck.

So it is the top of the deck all along the side. Okay that makes sence in this drawing. Thank you very much.

 

[Heinrich der Seefahrer]

Nothing big to tell just enlarged the

 

Chapelle planset up to 1/32 due to measurement issues.

 

And I do think about some kind of "double-muck-up-model". A pure deck model in the some size to deal with the decks detailling and do do some precise furniture work with some possibility of variations.

 

Edited May 15, 2019 by Heinrich der Seefahrer

[Roger Pellett]

Heinrich,

 

I have seen no evidence that red/brown sails were common on American sailing craft.  Americans in the Nineteenth Century had access to cotton canvas which is slightly off white.  The red/brown color associated with European small craft sails results from the “tanning” of sails made from flax to prevent rot.

 

Roger

[Heinrich der Seefahrer]

@Roger Pellett Thanks Roger for your help,  his tanning was a crictical optical point. 

 

The Model Shipwright N°92 of June 1992 came to me with an article by Peter Rogers about his 1/30 RC-Model of AGATE starting at p.8 and at p.28 a nice Bedford Beetle Whaleboat at 1/24 gives additivly to the Ronnberg information about the detailing.

Here the lovely detailing of some of the decks furniture ready to sail.

 

[Heinrich der Seefahrer]

The plans of the conpemporary KATE CORY may help in some questions of detailling. The New Bedford Whailing Museum has not got them any longer in their shop. Searching around I think I ordered them and "archivated" them in my pile of rolled plan copies... 

The kits handout is far too expensive at E-boy... and my question is if it may be helpfull at all?

[Heinrich der Seefahrer]

Hello friends of the AGATE, as I am after a stroke in rehabilitation hospital I drcuded to focus on only three projects. Three due to the fact that I need to close unfinished businesses and leave stress behind. 

So I voted AGATE as one/third of the trio the other is SAINT PHILIPPE and a "single short term project (SSTP)" - not allways some swimming object.

 

What I do hope for is some of your well balanced criticism on my reconstruction work of the schooners galley; as I was leaving behind my main souces Grimwood and Chapelle. So please let me know your opinions.

 

I.Galley detailing:

The AGATE has a plenty of traps in the several drawings I found in the books of H.I.Chapelle and V.R.Grimwood.

 

So I started with the galley and enlarged it due to easier drawingwork up to 1/32. 

 

Here the galley highlighted in green on the more trustfull and detailled Chapelle drawing. My only doubt I noticed on this "doodling copy" was the doors position and the fact that Chapelle set the hinges aft - so the door opens to the stem.

 

So I changed this into a sliding door as seen in Church's book on board of J.R.MANTA and is a babour scene in the background. 

 

This I my working space and drawing material in my little room. Without any lamp I am only able to draw at daylight.

 

As the arch of the deck I am unable to daw properly I used the tree point method - and didn'd draw the aft-wall as it is exactly the same. On the left you can see the slidingdoor's stopper pattern (HdS-design - still looking for some historical sources) and the roofs' framing. The portside is drawn with wood panels.

 

These panels in detail in here ant the position of the bulkheads below.

The roof framing enlarged up to 1/16 with the 1/64 measurements.

 

II. Hull planing:

By the way I do think about the hull. 

When I add three longitudinal bulkheads to the bow I hope to get some finer lones with better details.

Following the lines to the first four bulkheads.

Here my pair of inversed copys I do work with on my smartphone.

 

That is it fpr now folks! Further news from my little shipyard next week.

 

Take care!

 

Edited July 20, 2019 by Heinrich der Seefahrer

[Heinrich der Seefahrer]

P.S.: I got some answer from the archiv of Provincetown and will show these results in here later. Sadly till now I didn't find any compagny colours or something like this. The most important information was the name of the "agent/owner" from 1877 to 1891: William A. Atkins. Several Atkins were captains aboard (members of the family?) and there is the intersting publication "Wooden Ships and Iron Men" where several details occure: http://www.provincetownhistoryproject.com/PDF/mun_001_852-wooden-ships-and-iron-men.pdf  So there may have been anything like an "Atkins Whailing Company"? 

 

 

 

 

Edited July 20, 2019 by Heinrich der Seefahrer
added pdf-lnk

[Heinrich der Seefahrer]

Hello everybody... 

 

after nearly one year I reboot this project do to the simplicity of the lines and the fact that I am thraitwn to fail in my baroque projects as I am unable to deal with some problems I never met on a lower tier... So I do follow the helpful hint of a friend who warned me not to overdo it my a too big project. And so I stopped all the work on SP and do store it in my archiv untill I have got developed the needed skills. 

So I do open my whaling drawer and continue this project as it is easier in the hull to build. This is the state of the project recently. 

 

Edited April 23, 2020 by Heinrich der Seefahrer

[Heinrich der Seefahrer]

Hello friends of AGATE,

 

as I can tell you proudly during the last days there was a bit of a progress with the hull itself and a start with the whalingboat after sever l month of quite on this shipyard. 

 

 

RESTARTING THE BUILT

I figured out my planset and the centerboard again - archivation isn't my thing to do. (By this I recognized that I still didn't recived the rest of the KATE CORY ans LAGODA plansets from NewBedford - so I wrote to there.) 

 

I also found the 1/48 copies for a hull model I still think about to come into deeper darker detailling. 

 

So I started by glueing the frames cutouts on the wood and I voted for 4mm beech plywood for its stiffness. (Here the typical HdS mess on my working brench.) As allways I secured the side of the paped edge by wiping some extra Uhu on it to avoid any wobbling during the sawing. 

After some hours on my brandnew but preowned bandsaw I have got these results - and killed a sawingband by my stupidity of too much torsional force. 

combining the saw with a vacuum cleaner I got nearly no dust what is a grwat deal - but the vac is noisier than the saw. 

But as it runs without those mechanical jiggsaw vibrations the cuts are more precise and I am really happy about the result. 

 

And I do have got less to sand on. 

My only problem was the arm so I sprayed the backside black cut the grooves on the table saw and added the groove ending line with a scriber... so I could turn it arround and cut the rest easily - but how to deal with the 900mn centerboard of SAINT PHILIPPE 1693??? (But I do this small ship to research for the pittfalls of her!) 

To sand the concave parts I will build a little drumsander from my Proxxon hand drill and this UHZ. The headache comes from how to build the little workingtable to bring the parts horizontally to the drum sander. 

 

So here the centerboard with its grooves for bulkheads and masts. I do still think about opening one staircase hatch to show down into the hull (or shall I transferring it into the 1/48 hull model?). I also think about a sperm whale in the cutting station to show the spectacular dimensions of a usual 70ft whalecow beside a 74ft schooner! 

 

 

KEEPING THE HIGHT

 

Main central point of sorrow was how to bring the bulkheads into a correct row? so I decided to glue a pair of 2mm poplar plywood cubes onto the centerboards over the WL N°4 and on each bulkhead under WL N°4 - so the bulkheads are all in order. But I canged my mind due to the little gluing area and went cut out to 2×5×5mm stoppers from poplar plywood.

Here my construction to bring them exactly aline at a steel ruler clamped onto the centerboard. Aquite primitive way to deal with this problem. Here my way of gluing the stoppers on both and what it looked like on the very end. 

And that is what it looks like now and how it does work. 

 

On the Bulkheasa N°s 1 and 2 It does not fit too goodly and not all the bulkhead's stoppers touch to each other. 

So I sanded the grooves again with a nailsander with gold glitter in it... 

But exactly my needed 4mm thick - so this work was a really fast and easy job to do. 

 

This is my cliffhanger fot the next step of progress - the transom: From the rectabgular drawing to the real size with the light bent from the drawing. 

 

WHALINGBOATS

 

My next troublemaker are tbe three (and surplus) whaling boats I have taken the plans from this well received and highly recommended book with eight plans.  

I decided to scale them down onto 18,7% and the do fit to the Grimwood drawing. 

 

The are only 130,5 mm long and arevquite flimsy. 

And due to this  I will try to build them in cardboard. 

 

 

The hull is a clinker-kraweel mix interestingly. Whalingboats capsized that often, that there was installed a groove by a clinkered plank for the fingers at the sandplank to the common design to give the whaleman a change to left the water. By this it is clear why Sir Arthur C. Doyle called his book about his time aboard of a whaler "Dangerous Work". I will show the ship after a successful hunt with weathered boats and tje a spermwhale beside the hull and the flag still in the body. The tugs for the ropes mainly empty, harpoons damaged and such details from after the fight. 

So I started with the mould for the whalingboats scribed the centerline into the frames plane CL and folded it cut out both and got the bulkhead. (As the copies are never mirrowed 1:1 exactly this is the most accurate way for me to do so.) 

 

Than I chose WL N°2 for the right hight of the bulkheads gluing the drawings onto 0,55mm cardboard. 

At the moment I do deal with the idea of doubling the cardboard to 1,1 - 1,2mm so I have got the width of my bandsaws cutting goove. 

 

Here three of the bulkheads a ligned to the centerboards redy for the "case hardening" by superglue due to a better usage of the "machining allowance" on the mechanical sanding. Dueto this the keel is still on the centerboard. The keel is only 1/2mm thick. And I still think what it could be made from? 

 

This is AGATE's progress for today. 

 

Edited May 10, 2020 by Heinrich der Seefahrer

[Heinrich der Seefahrer]

Today I just "hardened" the whaling boat's bulkheads and the centetboard by adding CAglue to the "machinery allowance":

 

The glossy wet looking is the CAglue... 

 

And my MOBBY SLIM in the backgroznd is still smiling...

[the learner]

What scale have you actually decided to build in?  Glad to see you have rebooted. Look foward to following your build!

[Heinrich der Seefahrer]

 

Thanks for the kind comment and your question. 

 

I do build in 1/64 (from the scale down line of 1/2 -> 1/4 -> 1/8 --> 1/16 -> 1/32 - >1/64). I voted for this firstly as this scale does made ships that will fit into my flats limited space and secondly as the degree of detailling is limited. A German modelshipbuilder wrote in his "Handbook of Historical Modelshipbuilding" 30 years ago allways 1/48 or 1:50 for specialists 1/72 or 1:75 for the beginners. So I did came to this scale often used on English and American model kits made from wood. 

 

THE TRANSOM

So here I am with the topic of the transom's complex curveature. 

There is a convex area bent 1,5mm in hight and with a edge of 64, 5° to the WL. 

The area is between 23 at the sides and 26mm in the middle high. On the top runs a beam 1,2mm high. 

So the transom is a tricky bit of a part of the hull's construction. 

I copied my technique from the whaling boat's frames to... 

fold the second half of the paper under the frames line...

...along the CL by scratching a groove into the paper and cut the line of the frame out as exactly as I am able to do...

 

...the I glued it onto the beech plywood's fitting cutoff...

 

...cut off what wasn't needed at the bandsaw and used the little additive wood for sanding machinery work...

 

...and got my upper horizontal transom's frame.

 

The much longer lower frame had had to the curved in the very same way.

So I used the upper frame as a curved ruler, took the triangle of the lifting onto the other side and wasvby this able to copy my line from the portside in a second run...

... cut it off the paper and glued it on the same pice of cutoff and after doubling my same procedure from above I got the lower horizontal transom's frame. 

Here we do see both frames together...

the length is right at the upper and the lower boardside and... 

 

...also the curves do look quite parallel.

So I hopefully can put these parts aside to use them later on.

My idea is to fill them like a multi breadslips sandwitch with layers of softwood. So I want to sand this pile of wood with hardwood fames into shape. What I was affraid of disappeare immediadly when I calculated that the angle of inclination of the hull's sides will come into the construction by this sanding, too. 

So I will get a solid "transom block" that will give the sides planking a good surface where they will be bond onto.

Are my ideas right or is there any error in my future's calculation. Or are there in this construction any mistakes I did not be aware of?

 

 

EDIT:

But I did really run in a horrible mess:

 

The transom block will pierce through the quater deck's planking. What can I do due to this horrible error? 

 

Edited May 14, 2020 by Heinrich der Seefahrer
Added picture of the problematic situation.

[Heinrich der Seefahrer]

What do you think about this solution? 

When I do only put only in one transom's frame... 

It has had 17mm space on the backside towards the deck's highest level. (The deck is bent down towards the sides!!!) 

If I do cut o groove in the very middle of the frame by 4mms width and 8mm length...

 

...it will gently pass into the 4mm groove in the centerboard - so I do get a single transom hardwood frame.

 

And best of it 😁

 

There is no collision with frame/bulkhead N°35!!! 

 

What may be added with a second frame (the lower one so these two are the "rulers" in the sanding.  Is this possible to be done? Will it work properly? 

 

Edited May 14, 2020 by Heinrich der Seefahrer