First Class Sloop of War Constellation by Jerry Todd - 1:36 scale - Radio

[Omega1234]

Woohoo Jerry!

 

Seeing the boat in the water will be a massive milestone. I'll be looking forward to seeing the photos as well. At least then, you can look back and admire your hard work.

 

PS - No photos of the crabs???

 

Cheers

 

Patrick

[JerryTodd]

Well, I managed to get a sail in before it got cold.

I had a short list of items to "test" with this expedition...

• Boat will fit in my Toyota Matrix.
• Launch trailer worked well, needs some tweaks to keep the boat from sliding off the end before you want it too, and there's too much slop in the flag-bracket handle holder.
• Self-tending bowlines worked well.
• Bracing only the tops'l yards worked well.
• Jib-sheeter worked well despite not being adjusted as best it could have been.
• Finally sailing in open water again where she was intended to be since I started her in 1999. I held my breath every time a gust made her heel. She did great.
• Remember to bring extra batteries for the camera next time. I brought tools, line, tape, glue, reading-glasses, tripod, and the camera batteries died. Fortunately Captain Rooney was on hand and took some stills and video with his phone, while sailing Son of Erin and keeping an eye on the two grand-kids - but he's a tug captain and used to multi-tasking.

Here's some pics from today's outing.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

and 16 minutes or so of video...

 

Edited November 10, 2016 by JerryTodd

[mtaylor]

Congratulations, Jerry.  She appears to be a fine sailor and very majestic.  You ought to be popping buttons off your shirt with pride.

[captainbob]

She looks great on the water.

 

Bob

[yancovitch]

gorgeous....congrats jerry!!!.......me, i would loosen the sails somewhat, although they may not be as efficient....but of course, i always go for sex appeal .......and purple the sails, and so perfumed, that the winds were love sick with them......(shakespere's anthony and cleo)

what a great feeling, seeing the working model for the first time..there should have been a crowd of people cheering:).........hope i live long enough to experience the same with mine ....jolly good jerry...jolly good!!

[John Allen]

Jerry,

 

Your perseverance has resulted in a thing of beauty. You might want to add a 12 volt winch and rubberized side rails covered in cloth about 2 inches above the water line then run a double block under the center of the trailer with the winch having a reverse for launch and retrieval. kidding

 

Kudos well done this one is for you

[6ohiocav]

Jerry,

 

Simply awesome. My hat goes off to you trooper. The video is really neat. What an amazing ship. It actually beats to windward!.

 

I have an idea.  My father was a model train nut, and he had some liquid that when a dropped into the stack created smoke. Not sure how it works, but it would be really cool to rig up all the cannons and let loose with a full broadside.

 

Congratulations again!

[Timmo]

Well done Jerry.

She looks great on the water. It must be very fulfilling seeing her cut such a graceful line.

So is there just the one set of braces running up each mast to the tops'l yards on the opposite mast? I presume the other yards just follow around by dint of being attached by the sails? Will you leave it like that or add more braces in future?

I'm hoping just the one set on my brig to save stacking servos with drums as I'm not blessed with a cavernous interior.

[JerryTodd]

I almost feel bad for down-rigging her already, but there's bolt-ropes to sew, chain plates to make, and rope to walk so that next time she sails it'll be with a permanent rig; shrouds, stays, etc.

 

[lambsbk]

I loved seeing her sail Jerry. Good choice of music too. It has been a while since I have heard it. Vivaldi? Bach?

 

Dave

[JerryTodd]

Entrance of the Queen of Sheba and a couple of others I'm actually not familiar with.  I spent more time searching for music that fit and that YouTube wouldn't get all wadded up about, than I did editing the video.

 

My aircraft ply order finally arrived so I got right into making a new pair of winch drums:

 

The drums are 1/8" ply, the flanges are 1/16" ply.

 

After gluing them up, they got a couple of coats of spray lacquer for good measure.

 

I reused the plastic servo attachment disks and threaded rods from the last drum failure using the existing out-of-whack holes.

 

Set in place waiting for a rig to grow around them again.

Edited October 29, 2016 by JerryTodd

[JerryTodd]

I know, she dresses up, goes out for a sail, and gets ignored.  Not so, you see I made a new set of winch drums, and while the glue sets up on Macedonian I've been installing jack-stays on Constellation's yards.  The main tops'l yard was already done, I've got the both course yards done, three tops'l yard, and two t'gallants done so far.

 

Drilling holes in the yard for the eye-pins on the drill press.  I use a shooting board with a V-groove I use for planing the spars when I'm making them, to hold the yard for drilling.  Line up the bit with the bottom of the groove and the mark on top and you're drilling right through the center.

 

The "eye-bolts" on the left are finer gauge copper and I don't think are up to the task so I use the eye-pins on the right that I get from Bluejacket.  I use the .032 brass rod for the jack-stays.  It's a little over-scale for Constellation but not too awful, and it does the job.

 

I put a 90° in one end, thread the rod through the eyes, which are about 24" apart in this scale (5/8"), bend the other end back, and snip off the excess with flush cutters.

 

Edited November 7, 2016 by JerryTodd

[JerryTodd]

All but three yards have jackstays now.  I ran out of eye-pins and had to order some more.

 

11/15/2016: 144 More eye-pins arrived yesterday and the last three yards got their jack-stays today!

 

And all three models to scale relative to each other:

 

Edited November 15, 2016 by JerryTodd

[JerryTodd]

My friend Mark gave me a bit of LED strip left over from something he did to his old truck's dashboard.  I hooked them up to ta 12volt battery and stuck them in the model.  I've been thinking about some sort of lighting inside the model, I'm finding I need more light to see anything, as well as reading glasses for things close up.  The LEDS are red which lit up the inside alright, but everything is red.  I'm not trying to preserve night vision, but I may need to see colors when digging around in the model's guts.  So, while I like this LED light strip, I don't think red LEDs are gonna do it for me.


 

Mr Taylor will appreciate this bit...

I began building the aft drop-bulwarks.  Like the forward bulwarks, I'm not modeling the nine or so separate panels that make it up, rather I'm building it as a single unit and engraving the seams to imply the separate panels.  Unlike the forward bulwarks, I'm building this one in place.

 

I dipped a cut-off strip of poplar from another project in some ammonia and bent it around the stern cap-rail.  Then I glued and nailed it down.  Then I cut off sections of 1/32 bass sheet, with the grain vertical, and glued it on the outside edge of the strip I just nailed down.  This is the outer sheathing of the bulwark.

Another strip was dipped in ammonia and clamped on top of the lower strip to take the shape.  Then it was glued at the top of the sheathing.

Next the openings for the main braces to come inboard from the boomkins will be made, then the inside will be sheathed in the same manner.

[mtaylor]

It's probably a good thing not to have the bulwarks folding on an RC ship.  I could see water coming over the stern (gust of wind or a wake from someone else) and suddenly a wet deck.       I'm liking what I'm seeing overall... looks and sails great.

[JerryTodd]

They really won't make much difference in keeping water off the deck, but if they were functional there would be a chance of one or more panels being knocked off or damaged in such an occurrence.  The bigger problem is snagging rigging, though probably less of an issue than the ones up forward would be with the heads'l sheets hanging over them.  The biggest problem is making the hardware to make them functional.

 

This is one of the ship's original hinges from the forward bulwarks.  It's bronze and the were 12 port/starboard pairs, each pair different.  Back aft they are probably all alike, or  more-so than the bow.

 

I don't know how many panels there were back aft.  The drawing in the last post shows one in the center, and another beside it about the same size.  The drawing makes no implication at all of any other panels.  If they were all about the same size, as would seem logical at the more symmetrical stern, there should be 9 panels based on the drawing, but...

 

I've only ever found one photo that shows a stern panel open or removed.  They were removable as this 1907 image shows...

 

This 1884 image implies there were more narrower panels than the 1959 drawing implies; or something's changed since 1859.

 

In this image from the same time frame, it's impossible to see there are any panels at all.  There's at least one where the crane is, right of the sailors, and it has the opening for the main brace to come inboard.  BTW; that horizontal timber below the hole isn't the bumpkin, it's a knee that braces it, where the bumpkin meets the hull is obscured by the crane.

 

This 1890's image shows at least two panels aft, by the tell-tale support rods, but notice the center portion is now a fixed, solid bulwark.  I'm guessing after the pivot guns were removed, the stern bulwarks were changed, but a few retained to facilitate handling the boats (note the jacobs ladders hanging aft in the 1880's images.)

 

By 1914 there were no folding bulwarks on the ship's stern at all, just a wainscoted taffrail.

 

I'm modeling the ship circa 1856, three years before the dry-dock drawing.  I've never been able to find any information on the appearance of the stern, the pivot guns, and the folding bulwarks, fore or aft, from her early years - the dry-dock drawing is all I have ever seen.  So, based on that, and that they were there to facilitate the function of the aft pivot gun, I'm assuming, they were all generally the same size with a center panel right aft, and four panels around either side, nine panels in all.

Edited November 20, 2016 by JerryTodd

[mtaylor]

Best guess is about all we can do on this ship with some things and these are one of those.  Pity that some of the drawings were destroyed or changed...  but I think you're doing a lot better with the research that I was able to do.  

 

Interesting on the bronze hinges.  I would have thought they were iron.  Where did those photos turn up?  

[JerryTodd]

I took the pictures when I when to see Paul (director of the ship) years ago.  The ship still had the forward bulwarks when she came to Baltimore in 1955.  When the removed them during the conversion into a frigate, they just threw them, and the hammock irons, in the bilge.  They reused all the hammock irons, but I suppose replacing the folding bulwarks hasn't been a cost priority.

[mtaylor]

I've noticed they've done nothing for the bulwarks except some netting.   Make her look a little bizzare in many ways like you know there's a reason but not why.   I guess the project to give her pivot guns went away also as I've not read about it for several years.

[JerryTodd]

They're claiming now her pivots had iron carriages.  I don't know their source for that - I think they've confusing them with the big guns installed on the gun deck for a short time.  Those did have iron carriages, but that was 1871, not during the Civil War.

 

I blocked out the brace holes in the bulwarks...

 

and sheathed the inside.

 

[JerryTodd]

Card "hinges" applied

 

Eye-bolts added

 

Some white paint

 

And some black paint too (still wet)

[yancovitch]

came out really nice.............so nice to build a ship where so much info is available......

[JerryTodd]

So, here it is with some filling, sanding, seams marked, and dry paint.

 

I found a little stamped lion face, (I may have got this from you Vic), and wanted to make Constellation's cat heads by pressing it into some clay and casting them in resin, but I can't find my casting resin, so I tried 5-minute epoxy.  That set up more like rubber than plastic, so we'll have to come back to that.

 

The extra epoxy was used to glue in the starboard forward bulkheads.

 

Today I made another attempt at making a parrel collar.  I have some thick sheet copper chimney flashing left over from an old job that I use for lots of things, Constellation's and Pride's tillers for instance, are made from this stuff.  At this scale it looks more like the actual parrels than the thin sheet-brass attempt before.

 

 

So I cut off a strip slightly more than 3/16", formed it into the size circle I wanted, and cut it into two halves.

 

 

Soldiered some brass tubing on the ends....

 

 

And cut the tubing to make the hinge portions.

 

 

If it were only that easy.  I had to re-solder the tubing on a couple of times, and finally when I thought it was done and was cleaning it up, another section of tubing came off.  This would have been perfect, but obviously it wouldn't hold up to actual use, so it's on to plan C.

 

Plan C: Hammer out the ends of the copper strip enough that I can roll them back to form the tubes like I did the sheet brass one before. 

 

 

[yancovitch]

hmmmm...a micro welder would sure come in handy.....

[JerryTodd]

Maybe when America is "great again" they'll be giving those little beauties away, but I think it's more likely that getting one will be even less likely in the future.

I'm pretty much stuck with stone tools and flints.

[yancovitch]

haha.........actually i'm in pretty much the same boat

[JerryTodd]

I tried plan C on a bit of scrap and it seems like it should work out.  I hammered an end a little thinner, and worked it back on itself.  I put a steel rod where the bolts pictured about will go and pinched it shut in the vise, then tapped it round.  I can cut the notches that make it a hinge with a jeweler's saw

[yancovitch]

how wide were those lions heads?

[JerryTodd]

Um, 3/8" square - ish

[yancovitch]

i have some but they're too small....i keep forgetting how big your ship is......i'm sure you'll work it out....too bad you don't have any of the dental mold impression material...works great....can cast in acrylic....