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

[JerryTodd]

Still waiting for the new LCD to get back to printing again... but doing a little 3D modeling in the meantime.

 

As mentioned, I added the rails for the center skid plate on the pivot guns.  Still cleaning up the model, but this is about it.  The bow is on the right, and the stern on the left.

The bow has two firing positions, the center position doesn't need rings as it's a stowed position, not a firing position.

Edited April 29, 2022 by JerryTodd

[JerryTodd]

The part for the printer showed up and after installing the upgrade, I printed the new gun circles.  Checked them for fit, and painted them.  Not pictured, I drilled mounting holes in them and gave them another coat of paint.

I have to clean the decks of the residue of the old deck circles, before I glue these down and then trim them to the hatches (the guns sit on access hatches in the deck fore-and-aft).

Besides CAing them to the deck, I think I'll drill into the deck a little, countersink the holes I just drilled slightly, and fill each holes with a bit of epoxy.

I'll probably give them a silver-black wash as well, to make them look more like iron.

Fresh off the printer

      check for fit

  With some paint

  Gun and guy for scale

 

Jet black just didn't look right, so I went surfing for photos of gun circles to see what they looked like; shiny, clean, rusty, etc.  On active ships it looked like they kept them bright bare metal and probably greased them periodically.  They looked black in some images but I think that was the shine during a sunny day, as there were sharp shadows in those photos.  So I dug out the Testor's "Steel" paint and went to work, then carefully CAed them to the deck access hatches.  The bow circle run off the hatch in a couple of placed, so they were trimmed to the edge of the hatch and cut-offs glued to their place on the deck, and the paint touched up.

    Bow circles alone, and with the gun.

    Stern circles alone, and with the gun.

 

Now those parts of the deck need some more clean-up and clear coating.

Edited May 5, 2022 by JerryTodd
Rambling on and on

[JerryTodd]

Printed the last section of hammocks today.  Now they have their bases trimmed to the bulwarks and get primed, and painted.

I have a couple of through-bulwark items to do before gluing these on, and I have to figure out what glue to use.
I'm basically gluing plastic to wood, so I think the only real choice is epoxy.  I have some slow-setting epoxy and I think mixed with some very fine sawdust from the band saw or sander will double as a filler/putty.

Here's the model in the yard with the port-side hammocks sitting in place.  The starboards are sitting on the deck because I have taken off the balsa on that side yet.

 

[Roger Pellett]

Wonderful!  She looks like the real thing.

[JerryTodd]

So, I got the COVID, and for about a week I basically had the flu and didn't feel like doing much of anything.

Now I can focus and do something without dozing off, so it's back to work...

 

The sky light wouldn't close well, so I remade it, also putting the bars in the sash instead of on it, so it looks like the photos now, and closes better.

Then I found a site with a lot of Constellation images, some I'd never seen, some in better resolution than what I already had.  I also found a better quality image of another deSimone painting of the ship which the site says was done in 1860.  I still haven't found a color version. (remember to click the images to see them full size).

They also had this pic of the ship in drydock in New York in 1904 with one of those night life buoys dangling and the other one missing.

Looking through the images that showed the deck, I tried to figure out the four sets of bitts.  The 1884 spar deck plan shows round ones with pins sticking out athwart-ship.  In the photos before 1914 they appear to be cast-iron, painted black, and shiny.  When the ship was spiffed up for the 100th anniversary of the War of 1812, it seems the iron bitts were gone or removed, and square wooden ones were put in, to look more old-timey I suppose.  I have no idea what she had before the 1880s - even looking for them on other ships in Civil War photos, so I modeled the iron ones.  Printed four of them and painted them,

I held off gluing on the hammocks because I though I needed to install hawse-holes near these bitts, but there weren't any.  In images of the ship tied to a dock or with another vessel tied along-side, the lines go to the gundeck.

Also, I couldn't find any image where something is tied off to any of these bitts, iron or wood.  I'm thinking they were actually more of a fairlead to turn a line so a gang could walk it down the deck, like the tops'l halyard maybe?

         

Next up is a shot at making stuns'l yard irons.  I think this resin is up to the job, and if one does get broken, it's no big deal to print another.  I wish I could print the chain-plates with deadeyes and such, but I'm sure that would be asking way too much of this resin's abilities. 

I'm just modeling part a in the diagram.  The hardware at the end of the yard will be done in brass.

 

Edited May 25, 2022 by JerryTodd

[JerryTodd]

I modeled and printed the stuns'l boom irons, both inboard and outboard.  I didn't make the inboard ones functional (hinged).  Now I have to find or make some brass square stock for the ends of the yard, which is turning out to be more difficult than I thought.  Hammering round into square is too uneven, so I'm gonna try grinding/filing it square next.

     

The bitts got another coat of paint and some matt clear coat...

and I started gluing down the hammocks, though the photo doesn't really show anything different.

The bases will be painted black, and the hammocks the canvas color visible on the forward-most sets.

Any gaps will get puttied, and the seam, inboard and outboard, will be covered with a mahoganyish wood strip.

The big deal with 3D printed parts, resin ones in particular is they are created by curing resin with UV light.  On a model that will be outdoors, naturally occurring UV will cure them more. making them brittle.  Everything needs several coats of paint, and a UV resistant coating of clear-coat.

[mtaylor]

Hopefully you can find square stock at the size you need.   Is 3D printing an option for those?   

[JerryTodd]

It's basically a pin sticking out of the end of the yard, and with the iron fitted, it'll have torquing pressure on it, which I don't think would survive the mildest bump.

I used a bit of bamboo skewer to test fit everything, and found I needed to tweak the models  a bit.

I lengthened the, um, stalk? on the outboard fitting, and shortened it on the inboard one slightly.  I also adjusted the thickness of the outboard iron's hoop to match the inboard one.

The whole group of eight sets will take an hour and a half to print.

 

[JerryTodd]

A couple of pieces failed to print, so I printed another batch to make up the loss and have some spare parts if needed.

 

The stuns'l boom sits better on the yard with the adjusted fittings

While those parts were printing, I started making up the top rails, which are going to require making some netting for them.

Edited January 10 by JerryTodd

[JerryTodd]

Printed some gratings and placed them in the companionway hatches at the capstan.

 

Printed some gunport eyebrows and installed them on the portside.  The hammocks are all glued down, so the hull was turned to work on the starboard side.

 

...and the old eyebrows I started installing were removed along with the balsa that capped the bulwarks.  The new eyebrows got installed and a coat of paint.

The brass square stock came in, so the out-board stuns'l irons got installed.

   

Finally found paint that wasn't priced like perfume, and ordered a few jar, including Olive for the pivot guns.  Loaded up the airbrush and got to work...

   

 

[yancovitch]

super.....!!

[JerryTodd]

 

I'm no contortionist, but I finally managed to retrofit tiller ropes to the wheel so it moves with the rudder.  The lines that connect the tiller to the servo run through cup-hooks mounted in wood blocks epoxied to the inside of the hull.  Another eye with a brass pulley will get mounted in the block for the lines from the wheel.  Right now they're sharing cup-hooks with the servo lines.  The video is taken from astern through the aft access hatch.

 

 

 

 

 

Edited June 10, 2022 by JerryTodd

[mtaylor]

That is a really great modification, Jerry.   Very seldom (if ever) do we see the wheel and the rudder actually work.

[JerryTodd]

Just an FYI, so you don't have to dig back 30 posts or so...

The red thing in the video is the arm on the servo, which is part of the radio-control system.  It has 3 cleats on it,  The white lines going into a hole in the end at the "bottom" of the arm are connected to the tiller on the rudder, which appears briefly at the bottom of the video.  These lines run back to the two cleats at the "top" of the arm.  Using cleats allows for relatively easy adjustment of the line.  The cleat in the center or the servo arm, closer to the "bottom" is for the line that moves the wheel.  Basically, the wheel is not directly connected to the rudder/tiller but the rudder and the wheel are connected to the servo.

 

Anyone that doesn't get that explanation, say something and I'll try again. 

Edited June 11, 2022 by JerryTodd

[JerryTodd]

I painted the pivot guns, but the photos show more touch-up is needed to be finished.  I need them painted before I attach them to the hatches they sit on, then they can be rigged with their tackles and what-not.

With the intent to get the yards fully rigged with foot-ropes, blocks and the like, I've been thinking how I want to handle the stirrups.  In reality, the stirrups are a line with an eye on each end a little over 3 feet long.  One eye is seized to the jackstay and the stirrup hangs over the bank of the yard.  The foot rope passes through the bottom eyes.  I'm still looking to see if is was Navy policy to seize the foot-rope to the stirrup or not.  In photos of the ship where they can be seen, she's already a training ship and the foot ropes have a knot on either side of the stirrup eye.  Since I have 56 stirrups to make for the 12 yards, I'm thinking of just making then from wire as show in the picture, blackened or painted, of course.  I did one to see if I liked it, and was about to go to work making them when I realized I bought all this .020 brass to make the dead-eye strops, so I switched gears and started looking at chainplates again.

I cleaned up the work area a bit, and took the rest of the jury-rigging off the hull, like eyes for the temporary stays, and some of the chain-plates that were screwed on.
I started cleaning up the chainplates sets I had made so far, finished the ones that were nearly done, and fix some soldier joints.  I remember trying to decide whether to uses a #1 bolt and nut to attached the dead-eye to the chain-plate or peen an escutcheon pin (brass nail) to do the job.  The nuts and bolts would be expensive, especially right now with inflation the way it is, so I'm going with the escutcheon pins.  They're a bit hard and peening them is difficult, so I annealed one to see it that worked better, and it did.

Next I started working on some jigs to shape the strops, links, and the strap between the dead-eye and the link.  I also gave one set a coat of primer for the picture.  In all there's about 26 pairs to make almost all a little different as the link gets longer with each set going aft because of the angle of the shroud.  That means each pair has to be assigned it's position on the hull as they're all basically different lengths.

The upper deadeyes have the same sort of strop and each shroud gets a thimbled eye with a pin holding them together.  I plan to 3D print the tear-drop shaped thimbles, and use the same peened pins to attach the strops, but I have a feeling actually doing all that is going to be very complicated and needing of more hands than I possess.

I thing peening the strop to the thimble, then seizing the shroud around the thimble with the upper dead-eye held by a measured bracket so all the upper deadeyes are consistently spaced is probably the easiest way to deal with it.  We'll see when I get that far.

[yancovitch]

boy,  you're sure flying now......another creative dinosaur left in the world....fewer and fewer they are becoming....replaced by virtual reality.........cheers to you jerry....

[Roger Pellett]

Re: Post 455

 

Jerry,  

 

Beautiful Work as usual!

 

For many years, I have been studying warships’ boats and I intend to add a model of Constellation’s launch to my series of 1:32 scale boats in the near future.

 

Browsing through your posts, I stumbled onto the DeSimone painting in the referenced post.  I am certain that the sloop rigged boat off Constellation’s bow  flying the American flag is her launch rigged to sail.  Rarely to painters of ship portraits depict their boats with any degree of accuracy.  Usually they are shown as a blob with legs, like some sort of water beetle.  De Simone’s painting is realistic and the boat’s rig matches that shown in period seamanship texts.

 

Roger

[JerryTodd]

In this image?  That's a a cutter that probably 60-90 foot on deck.  The launch was only 32 feet and two masted with a sprit-schooner or sprit-ketch rig.

DeSimone had a lot of experience with ships, and their appearance, and while including a lot of detail, left out a lot as well.  I imagine he did a sketch, maybe a quick painting to get the tones right, then went home and filled in the rest from memory and experience.  In the 1856 painting there are no lower deadeyes on the topmast shrouds, or any at all on the off starboard side.  The bowsprit, spencer masts, gaffs, and booms, seem to cycle between bare wood, black, and white and it's hard to say if they were repainted, or the artists just made it up.  In a diary it says the ship was painted while in Naples and the captain had the ship painted all black with no gun stripe.  She went on a patrol of the Med and the gunstripe was repainted when she returned to Naples.  So, it's possible the spars actually were different colors every time DeSimone saw the ship.

If you look back in this thread a ways, you'll see the signal flag issue regarding the signal flown at the mizzen truck in the 1856 painting.  I still cannot find those flags in any signal system.

 

Another painting that's incorrectly IDed online as another ship (I forget which now) but is certainly Constellation pre-1860 and shares odd details with the 1856 painting, like the missing topmast shroud deadeyes.  An all the gaffs and booms are white.  One of her boats, probably the port side quarter boat or second cutter, is approaching from the bottom of the painting.  I've never found color versions of this or the painting above so far.

This drawing of the ship in 1864 by DeSimone at Naples, I just found at the Mariner's Museum in Newport News Virginia.  It has a lot of interesting details shown, and omitted, for instance she has the wrong number of gunports.  Some of her boats are shown, but as you pointed out, they don't really get much attention.

One image I'm still searching for was a photo taken from a hill on St Helena that's mentioned in a diary.  That would probably be the first, and earliest photograph of the ship ever taken.

[Roger Pellett]

Jerry,  the boat is in the foreground so probably appears larger in relation to Constellation.  I have never heard of the US Navy using cutters as commissioned warships.  You may certainly be right, but I believe that Constellation has rigged her Launch  to lead her into the anchorage.

 

US Navy launches of the1860’s were sloop (or Cutter) rigged.  See the drawing of a launch in the 1860 Ordnance Instructions. See also, illustration on page 243 of William Brady’s Kedge Anchor.

 

Roger

Edited June 20, 2022 by Roger Pellett

[JerryTodd]

But that boat has permanent standing rigging and a topmast with cross-trees and trestle trees, as well as a yard lowered across the rails - a very common thing seen in images of naval cutters. Also, based on the figures on it, is larger than 32 feet, It could be a courier boat from the Naval attache or consulate, or simply the mail boat as there's several American vessels at anchor.  It's certainly not a ship's launch.

Edited June 20, 2022 by JerryTodd

[JerryTodd]

Since I need to make spars and sails for the boats, including the launch, I went digging around to find out what I needed to make, as well as other items that go in the boat.

I looked in Nare, Luce, Brady (The Kedge Anchor), the Navy Ordnance Manual of 1866 (haven't found an earlier one yet), and a few other, mostly British works.

 

Besides finding out that two extra oars are to be "triced up" under the thwarts, the rest to be bundled and gasketed to the thwarts (which implies a single "bundle"); the mast and sails to be "kept in the boats" the sails in a "painted cover made for them;" davits boats' rudders to be tied on so the line must be cut to remove the rudder; and a list (with reference to the Ordnance Manual) of what goes in the boat when going boating.  A lot of this I don't need to model though the crew getting things ready to launch the launch is a nice little vignette, maybe even prepping a quarter-boat as well.

 

At any rate, I do have to apologize to Roger for disagreeing with him about the boat in the painting.  Apparently a ship's launch is a far more complex machine than I had come to believe based mostly on what's shown in images, and models (even period models); because in The Kedge Anchor (1849 and in later editions) I found this:

 

That could very well be somebody's launch, but... it ain't Constellation's, cause it's flying a British flag at the peak. 

[Roger Pellett]

Jerry,  Apology accepted, but no need for you to have done so.  I thought that the boat was flying an American flag!  Your picture is much clearer.  Although lines drawings are available, other boat information can be hard to track down.  In one of the appendices to Brady there are some further information about boats.  US Navy launches of the period were fitted with trunks or copper funnels for handling anchors. An interesting detail.

 

Roger

[JerryTodd]

I wish I could find some images of the way all that rig is put up, there's got to be places for the shrouds, stays, sheets, etc, all attach with some sort of corresponding hardware I ought to include in my model.

Not to mention now having an urge to do an RC model.

[JerryTodd]

Made holes in the edges of the tops for the topmast dead-eye strops to pass through to the futtock shrouds.  The futtock shrouds will be brass rod that will attach at to mast to a futtock band, which in this case is a strip od styrene wrapped and glued around the mast just under the hounds, with eye pins inserted.  I thought of making a metal band with eye soldered on, but I don't need it that elaborate.  The tresle-trees also got some brass plates (blackened) for my topmast fids to rest on without damaging the wood.

The middle portion of the pic below is the mainmast, the black line some of what I'll be using for the topmast shrouds and some other standing rigging, rove up and down just so I can see how it looks.  A brass rod is also stuck in there to see how the futtocks will work out.

 

I was out most of today and worked on the rope-walk when I got back, soldering leads and prepping DPDT switches.  I finally had to take a break either because I was tired, or ran out of places to sit thing down.
I think tomorrow the shop will need some straightening up before I can get back to anything else 

Edited June 25, 2022 by JerryTodd

[French Mr Bean]

Good job on this boat !

[JerryTodd]

Out in the sweatshop today I epoxied on the starboard hammocks using a variety of weights from about the shop.
Ground off the outboard edge flush with the bulwark and glued on a 3/16"x1/16" bass strip to cover the seam, on the aft, starboard quarter at least, till I couldn't stand to be in the shop any longer.

   

[mtaylor]

Nice work.  I hope it cools down for you soon.

[JerryTodd]

I took down the print of Constellation at Naples in 1856 by Thomas deSimone to take better pictures and see where some details were I want to add to the hull, as this portrait is what I'm basing my model on.  What caught my eye were the deadeyes and lanyards on the shrouds (topmast shrouds too), or actually, the lack of deadeyes and lanyards.

(remember to click a pic to see it full size)

     

I always wrote this off as deSimone just leaving out some details, like the lack of ratlines on the starboard side, or the thimbles on that side.  I planned on doing deadeyes and lanyards as the ship has now, and in 1914

 

But the more I look, the more I think they aren't deadeyes and lanyards  at all.  deSimone paints deadeyes and lanyards on ships in other portraits, at least a more obvious impression of them, but never on Constellation

     

and then in photos...

     

 

The more I look, the more convinced I get that she had screws for her shrouds, lower and topmast, from the start and didn't get deadeyes and lanyards until about 1900-1901.

 

Anyone have any ideas, or see something different?

Edited September 23, 2022 by JerryTodd

[yancovitch]

...........now that is a first for me.........ha...like turnbuckles

[mtaylor]

I've been staring at this off and on and I suspect you are right.  Screws or turnbuckles?  This is admittedly something different as many Civil War era ships had deadeyes.