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

[JerryTodd]

I looked at a lot of period photos of ships with rigging, and I'm still looking, trying to get a handle on what I'm looking at.  There's not a lot of clear images of these things, which are usually referred to as rigging-screws. 

A lot of Navy ships had deadeyes and lanyards, even steam ships built after Constellation.
 

The design of these rigging screws (some people still refer to turnbuckles as rigging screws today) is sort of opposite of what we think of as turnbuckles.  Where a turnbuckle usually has a central drum that may be open or closed, and opposite threaded ends with eyes or clevis'; these have forks at opposite ends of a central screw with opposing threads on either end.  The ends of the shrouds have round thimbles seized in.  In deSimone's painting the doubled part of the shroud, after wrapping the thimble is very short, but in every photo so far, it's normally long, maybe 3 feet, with 4 or 5 seizings.

The first pic is a very rough sketch of what I think it is.  Next is from a photo of the ship at Portsmouth New Hampshire about 1884.  The last is from one of a pair of photos of midshipmen boarding for a summer cruise at Annapolis about 1888 or 1890.  So far these are the only photos where I can actually see the things.

   

Now I'm trying to determine how I'm gonna make these things.  I need them functional and I'm sure 3D printed ones wouldn't hold up.  Plus I think I need a slightly smaller version for the topmast shrouds.

[Gregory]

Who's going to call you on this if you get it wrong?  😁

[yancovitch]

there must be archives somewhere, where more photos may be available?.....

[JerryTodd]

On 9/23/2022 at 8:18 PM, Gregory said:

Who's going to call you on this if you get it wrong?  😁

Me, of course.
 

Vic,

I've been digging around the Library of Congress and National Archive sites, since they offer the highest resolution images.

[JerryTodd]

I've been very busy and haven't done much of anything to any of my models.  I managed to do a lot for a lot of other people, and not much for myself (hobby wise).  I am officially retired since Frebruary, but don't be fooled into thinking that means you'll have more time for yourself, it seems it means just the opposite.
Anyway, a friend got a Mariner 31ketch named Ashlinka, that needed some work, and I've been helping with that.  We're about to replace the bowsprit with a new made one, and after that, what's left to do is pretty much cosmetic.

I've still been searching for left-handed taps and dies, or even steel screw and nuts, to make the rigging-screws mentioned a while back, with no luck; so I've decided to make them "non-functional" and maybe even 3D print them.  If that works out, I can get to some serious rigging.

The ketch above is normally kept at a private dock on a creek just off the Chesapeake Bay near Baltimore, which is a great place to take Constellation and Pride of Baltimore out sailing.

 

[mtaylor]

Good to see you back, Jerry.  Happy Retirement!  It does sound like you have been busy but hopefully having some fun along thew way. 

[yancovitch]

and hope yer health stays strong!..........vic

[JerryTodd]

I produce wargames of Civil War battles, and that's had me a bit side tracked as well the last 6 or 7 months as I learned how to put them into software so people can play them online.
http://uhlangames.us/

[JerryTodd]

Finally got a chance to work on a draft of the Constellation's rigging-screws.

It will average 2.5" (63mm) long.  It won't be "functional" that is they won't be adjustable but rather one solid piece.  If a test print works out, the length will be adjusted in the software to account for the different angles the shrouds take up so the tops will level with each other, basically, I'll print a set for each mast, port & starboard.

 

 

 

Edited October 14, 2023 by JerryTodd

[JerryTodd]

I got a new 3D printer (Elegoo Mars 3) that has more print volume (larger prints), more resolution (better detail), and actually cost less than my original printer did.

First thing, I printed a test batch of "draft" screws as above. 

They printed perfectly, though the model needs some adjustment; the eyes at the bottom needed to be smaller, and the thimble at the top needed to be bigger around, per the photo of the originals.  I also had them print standing almost straight-up, meaning more layers, meaning more more time to print - it took about 5 hours to print these because of that.

I attached a pair to chainplates and put them on the model to see how much tugging they would stand.  They seem to be tough enough, especially once they're all connected by a sheer-pole.
 

The 3D model's updated and I'll print it more one it's side to take less time to print.  I enlarged the thimble, reduced the eyes, and thickened the screw a little.  I also reshaped the arms a bit.

30 of them printed in 3 hours 20 minutes, and I temporarily put two on the model under tension to see how they hold up.

 

Edited October 20, 2023 by JerryTodd

[JerryTodd]

Continuing on with making 3D printed details for Constellation,

The plan I'm working from is what I worked up for building the models from the original drawings of Constellation's boats from the National Archives. The launch and 1st cutter were built in wood from these drawings. There' no details shown; rub strakes, seats, decks, oar notches, anything; that I've been looking at manuals, photos (mostly Civil War era), drawings, painting, anything I can find.

The first boat built for "Constellation" was the 1st cutter, back at post #493, and the launch around post #727 in this thread.

Being able to 3D print now, I though to do the rest of the boats this way on the premise that if something happened to them, I could print replacements.

I started fiddling with the 2nd cutter a long time ago, came back to it, and most recently started over almost from scratch. I'm still working in Anim8or because I still haven't managed to wrap my brain around Blender enough to be useful.

 
I basically made the keel, then a "clinker" wire-frame of each station/form, move that to it's place on the keel and connected them horizontally to form the outside face of the planking. Then I made a duplicate of that, flipped it's facings to the inside of the boat, shrunk it a little, and moved some bits around to make the two parts about 1mm thick. Using a "slicing" tool, I made stations between those on the drawing, and moved those points around to try and get a less faceted, ie, a smoother surface, to the boat.

Once I had a hull, shaped as best I could, I added a rub-rail, thwarts, a seat aft, which was reshaped later, a foredeck, which got a grating, and started making ribs. It's keep getting details, like floor-boards, knees in various places, notches for the oars, etc. Then, since it's too long to fit in the printer, it'll get cut in half to be printed, and glue it together.

As this seems to be moving along, I started on the quarter-boat (that will hang in the davits on each quarter of the ship). I'll need two of these boats, but obviously only need to make one 3D model.

 

December 15th: 22 of 25 ribs installed, grating in the stern sheets, a lot of little adjustments, oar locks, and a check to see if it'll fit in the printer...

 

December 17th: All the ribs are in, the last two are cant frames, and took a couple of tries to get lined up.  Redid the forward grating, and added a breasthook.  Seat clamps are in, but there's floorboard yet to do, along with some hardware items like a flag-holder on the transom and gudgeons for the rudder.

The rudder itself, oars, and some other things will be printed separately.

Edited December 17, 2023 by JerryTodd
addendum

[yancovitch]

boy oh boy....if i could do that kind of stuff...ooooeeeee

[JerryTodd]

I'm using stone tools compared to you Vic. 

 

Now, if I could figure out Blender, then I could finally do THIS kind of stuff!

Edited December 5, 2023 by JerryTodd

[JerryTodd]

Getting the floor boards in was interesting, but in they went, four to each side; each in two parts; fore and aft; then all mirrored to the port side - so technically I only need to make parts for one side and mirror copy them to the other side.

Each seat got knees on either side, and ring-bolts were placed on the transom, two for the rudder pin, and two for the flag.

The inner and outer planking  was "joined" and the gaps between them closed off, and it was "done."
As I type this it's just at 50% printed (the pic was at 45%) and the planking is looking a bit thin.  I'll see how it turns out, and if need by thicken the planking shell to 2mm and print it again.

The slicer says it'll weight 29.9 grams (1.6 ounces), use $1.05 worth of resin, and take 4h 50m 57s to print.

   

[JerryTodd]

So it's printed!  I was concerned the planking would be too thin, but it's fine, as long as the model isn't scaled down.  Since I plan to share the file, I'll thicken some things up so it'll scale down to 1:96.

I broke off a couple of chips from the bow section trying to get it off the plate, but that's easily repairable at the same time I bond the two halves together.  The two halves are just sitting next to each other in these pictures.

Once the halves are stuck together and the seam cleaned up, it's priming and painting time!  This boat will sit on top of the 1st cutter, on the main hatch, which means making some chocks for it to print along with the oars, rudder, and other little things that'll go inside it.

   

 

Edited December 23, 2023 by JerryTodd

[scrubbyj427]

Wow great print work! What printer are you using? That’s incredible!

[JerryTodd]

The Elegoo Mars 3, pictured in post #490.  It's been really nice, right out of the box, though I've probably jinxed it now

[JerryTodd]

As with everything I do, this isn't "how to do it" but how I did it.  It's not necessarily the right way, best way, or easiest way, just the way I'm doing it; which, by-the-way, is different from how I did the last boat.

That said...

I tossed out the quarter-boat from a couple of posts ago, except for the keel, and started over.  I made a wire-frame cross-section of a single plank 4mm wide, 1mm at the thick end, .5mm at the thin end, and the part's rotation point on the inside edge .5mm from the thick end.  I copy-and-pasted each profile around each station after adjusting it's length to make 10 of them fit in the length of that station, and rotating it so it's top touched the station line.  I wound up with what's in the picture.  Once this was set-up, I started making the ribs.  Each rib is 1 x 1mm and in 10 segments to match the planks.  I set each one up on the keel as it was made.  Part of each plank will be buried in the rib giving the impression that the rib is cut to fit the insides of the planking-it's not.

When I had the ribs represented by station lines, and the transom set-up, I started copying some parts of the 2nd cutter over, and adjusting them to fit the quarter-boat; such as stern-seats, gratings, floor-boards, seat-clamp, rub-rail.  Some of this will need further adjusting once the inside planking shell is in place.

 

To make the "planking" or more properly the inner shell of the hull, I traced the planking profiles described above to get a zig-zag wire-frame of the inside of the planking.  This is placed at it's station and matched up with it's rib, already in place.

When the second once is placed I can join the two as a single part, and connect the dots making a wire-frame of that section of planking between those two stations.  The wire rectangles are made into surfaces which will face the inside of the boat, as this is the inside surface of the planking we're making here.

as you may have noticed, this is all quite tedious, but it's much more precise that how I did the cutter while not being any more work; it's actually a little easier on the brain, which is also helped by my figuring out Anim8or's layers function.

 

As with the cutter, I only need to make the starboard side of the boat.  Once that's all adjusted to fit, I'll mirror them to the port side to get the whole boat.

Meanwhile, I'm trudging along making the the inner planking surface.  Then I'll basically repeat all the for the outer planking surface.  A lot gets adjusted to the inner surface, and keeping the outer surface as a separate part let's me hide it so I can see things relative to the inner surface.  That way there's no little unseen gaps that could mess up the 3D print, like having the end of a seat not connected to anything, or something of that nature.  Yes, the planking is flat between each station; once the inner and outer planking shells are done, I'll slice through them creating 1/2 stations which will give me another adjustment point to help smooth the hull.  I may even slice it into 1/4 stations, since the more slices, the smoother the hull gets.

 

Edited December 27, 2023 by JerryTodd

[JerryTodd]

The quarter-boat was built a little "heavier," learning from the 2nd cutter.  A lot of parts from the cutter were copied into the QB and adjusted to fit, until it was ready to be mirrored into a whole boat and printed.

       

In the slicer software the blue box outline shows the volume the printer can handle.  There was no trouble printing two copies of the boats at once.

     

Like the cutter, the two halves are bonded together by wetting the seam with resin and zapping it with UV light.  The seam needs some clean-up, just like any plastic model.

 

Here's all three boats on the model where they'll be stationed eventually.

Now it's on to the stern boat...

[yancovitch]

gads...that's just soooo amazing jerry......congrats.....vc

[JerryTodd]

The whale-boat was ready to print by the 7th.  The built a whale-boat to these lines for Constellation and fitted her with bronze oar-locks, but I opted to put in thole-pins instead.  I split the model in two, to fit in the printer, and made sure there were no "holes."

The slicer said it would take 5 hours and 25 minutes to print.

   

Here's the 3D models of all three boats together.  As 3D models go, they are very "low poly" so the printed models come out a bit "faceted" but they're still more detailed than the boats I made by hand.

I let it run over-night and in the morning found $.83 worth of resin weighing .83 ounces (23.6 grams), and looking very much like a whale boat...broken in half.

It came off the plate undamaged, and was sloshed about in a tube of denatured alcohol for a bit; then washed in warm water, and finally sat on some paper towels to dry.

 

Here's all the boats together...

the 25'10" 2nd cutter, on the left, is 8.625" ( 219 mm) long,
the 28'2" whale boat, in the center, is 9.625" ( 245 mm) long,
the two 26' 6" quarter boats, on the right, are each 8.875" ( 226 mm) long.

[BANYAN]

Those boats look great Jerry.

 

cheers

 

Pat

[JerryTodd]

Gave the boats a coat of primer.  After I cleaned up the original boats of shop dust, all but the launch got some white paint inside, and black paint outside.  when it gets warm enough, all the paintwork will be fined up with the air-brush, gratings will get painted, etc.

I still haven't found any sort of "official" pattern boat chock, so I just made some simple ones like we had on a boat I worked on long ago.  If I ever find something more "authentic" for Constellation I'll replace these with those.

 

Then I made rudders for the boats, closely followed by tillers.  I don't intend to leave the rudders hanging on the boats, but rather stowed safely in the stern sheets, though I may hang them on the 1st cutter and/or launch once I install gudgeons on them.  I have some fine copper wire eyes in the parts bins that'll be perfect for this I think. 

   

[yancovitch]

 gee, yer gettin more and more refined the older you get.......hope you have a long life 😁

[JerryTodd]

I'm contrary and obnoxious, so I'm bound to be around to bother people for a long time.

 

The launch and 1st cutter got gudgeons on their stern posts, and all the boats got lifting-eyes.  Decent paint jobs will have to wait for warmer temps so I can use the air-brush to get into all those nooks-and-crannies.

I guess I'll work on their rigs next.  spars are easy, but I don't think I'll make the sails, but just roll some cloth and bundle it onto the spars.  I have some little cleats left-over from plastic kits, and some tiny brass belaying pins I'll put on to detail them a bit more.

[JerryTodd]

Getting into a discussion on guns for another member's model of the Harriett Lane, got me thinking about Constellation's armament, and how it changed over her life.

I thought it would be nice to model a sample of all the guns the ship carried over the span of her career. to sit with her when-ever she's on static display.

Modeling 9 inch Dahlgren tubes in 1:96 for the Lane got me thinking of this.

So, the ship was armed as below at various point over time.

At Commissioning

• 16 x 8-inch shell guns on 4-truck carriages
• 4 x 32-pounder guns on 4-truck carriages
• 2 x 10-inch pivot mounted shell guns (removed July 15 1859)
• 1 12pdr Dahlgren boat howitzer (in launch)

During the Civil War

• 16 x 8-inch shell guns on 4-truck carriages
• 4 x 32-pounder guns on 4-truck carriages
• 1 x 30-pounder pivot mounted Parrot Rifle (bow) iron carriage?
• 1 x 20-pounder pivot mounted Parrot Rifle (stern) iron carriage?

1870's

• 8 x 9-inch Dahlgren guns on Marsilly carriages?
• 1 x 100-pounder Parrot Rifle on wood carriage (gundeck starboard #6 port enlarged to 10ft)
• 1 x 11-inch Dahlgren on iron carriage (gundeck portside #6 port enlarged to 10ft)

1914

• 20 x 24-pounder guns borrowed from Constitution for Celebration of War of 1812 in Baltimore

1956+

• 24 x 24-pounder guns

Making one of every gun she's carried will require modeling and printing the following list:

• 8-inch shell gun on 4-truck carriage
• 32-pounder gun on 4-truck carriage
• 10-inch pivot mounted shell gun
• 12pdr Dahlgren boat howitzer
• 20-pounder Parrot Rifle on iron pivot carriage
• 30-pounder Parrot Rifle on iron pivot carriage
• 9-inch Dahlgren on Marsilly carriage
• 100-pounder Parrot Rifle on wood shifting carriage
• 11-inch Dahlgren on iron shifting carriage
• 24-pounder gun (early 1800's vintage)  This was because of her mistaken identity as the frigate, but she carried them just the same.

I'll built these so they'll be scalable from 1:96, up to 1:36, and most likely I'll make the STLs available separately on Thingiverse.

 

[JerryTodd]

The first gun I started on was the on a pivot carriage.  It's not one on my list, but the Lane had a 9" pivot, so this one will be printed in 1:96 scale for that purpose.

The carriage is based on the photo taken onboard the gunboat Mendota or Miami, anyone's guess.  While I think the slide is the "standard" one you usually see under the 11" gun, the carriage is different and looks to be a truck or Marsilly carriage, stretched a bit.

I started building the 3D model while searching for drawings and images that might show me the parts obscured by the crewmen.

The Marsilly carriage, on the other hand, I have plenty of data for, and actually had it's 3D model made inside a couple of hours.  I printed the four 1:96 scale models needed for the Lane which came out nicely, though scaling it down that small lost some details, like the eyebolts.

This gun and mount are on my list of Constellation's guns, so I tried to print one in 1:36 scale and failed twice.  I eventually separated the tube and the carriage into two parts and managed to get a usable print.  The trunnions were a little out of round, but I brush resin on the parts and zap them with UV light to "glue" them together.  Any remaining gaps are filled with liquid resin and zapped, so that wasn't really an issue.  I did lose the eyebolt on the back of the carriage getting it loose from the supports, but I'll drill and place a metal one there to replace it.

     

Here's the 1:36 scale mother Dahlgren and it's 1:96 scale "chicks" and on Constellation next to her 10" pivot mounted shell-gun - both 1:36 scale.

I still haven't found more drawings or images of the 9" pivot mount, except one photo in the series that has the back of the gun in the background, and a much better version of the photo posted above that's easier to see the details in.  Since I don't need it for my list, I may only print it in 1:96.

Edited February 19 by JerryTodd

[BANYAN]

Nice prints Jerry; I may have missed this, but what material are you using (resin/filament)?

 

cheers

 

Pat

[JerryTodd]

I use Siraya Tech "Build" resins ("smokey black" and "sonic gray") in a Elegoo Mars 3.

[BANYAN]

Thanks Jerry, it produces a great result, super clean finish.

 

cheers

 

Pat