HMS Diana by Sizzolo - Caldercraft - 1:64

[Ronald-V]

Looks great!  

[Thukydides]

Great job, the boat looks lovely.

[Sizzolo]

Pinnace hull all done (will do all masts, oars, sails in future). Time to get back to the wales!

[Sizzolo]

Transporting the captains artwork to his new ship. 

Definitely continuing with wales next! (little boats are fun though)

 

[Sizzolo]

Just a text update today.

Three steps forward, three back.
 

On larboard wales I wanted to more accurately place the trenails. I found an excellent drawing in Boudriot’s 74 gun ship book, volume 1 which shows a trenail and iron bolt placement for the outer hull. After seeing that I realised I’d placed my nails aligned with every longitudinal foot on starboard instead of putting nails in per frame (far more closely spaced). I intend to improve on the larboard side. 

However, my original method was to drill holes in the wale every 5mm as this should align well with the frames (if there is not the slightest error in measurements!). However, after getting to the third row of ebony top&butt planks, including bent ones at the bow which were an absolute pain in the top&butt, I sat back and looked at it. None of the trenails were really vertically aligning. I wanted to see nice vertical lines of nails which would give the viewer a better understanding of the underlying construction.  It was looking a bit crap considering the time it took. 

So…I ripped off all the larboard wale planks (v easy as they were just superglued.. I’ve no other glue that works well) and started again. This time I first drew the frames in pencil on to the underlying planking so that I could then put a pencil dot where each hole needed to be drilled in each wale plank. I’ve done the top row now and it’s already looking better. 
 

I blame myself for trying to use a method I assumed would be quicker!(5mm spacing). Ho hum!

 

When the wales are done I might briefly distract myself with some more picture frames. I want to try gilding some as a practice piece (stern decoration will have gold leaf). I’m also considering making a cello and a violin as a nod to ‘master and commander’. Making the ships’ boats at an early stage has helped me better understand what’s possible wrt tiny details in boxwood. 

 

[Sizzolo]

Agents at the port have noticed the captain has ordered the production of yet another launch so that he may more rapidly provide supplies to the ship:

(I’ll do a separate build guide for this one but it’s not slowing me down too much - roughly a couple of hrs per day for a week)

[Sizzolo]

Ok. I'm doing the larboard wales yet again. They weren't aligning correctly (see drawing):

Ebony is really unforgiving so it was extremely difficult to align the Wales. The root cause was just very tiny errors in dimensions. You can see that end A was narrower than end B and that causes all the misalignment issues. Anyway, I've made some new ones which are all identical and when laying them down on paper they look to be just right. Fingers crossed! (this leads me to my next post which I'll keep separately as its specific to trenails.)

Edited November 20 by Sizzolo

[Sizzolo]

So, seeing as I'm doing the wales yet again (!!!) I want to make sure I'm 100% right with the trenail pattern. Looking at Boudroit's Volume 1, page 150 provides me with a good idea of a nail pattern but the frames on HMS Diana are different from the Boudroits French '74. Some are single frames and some doubled up, whereas all frames are doubled on the 74. Also the French used nails and trenails below the waterline and nails only above (According to Boudroit, but his drawing doesn't easily distinguish between iron nails and wooden ones).

 

Anyway, there could be at least two ways to nail the hull planks onto HMS Daina - which one do you think is correct? Perhaps you have a reference to point me at that would make it definite? I'm leaning towards option B; two trenails for every plank/frame instead of just one for single frames.  (on the French side I've shown where the inner iron nail holding inner planks would intercept the frame with 'o' - these are not nails on the outer hull, but is worth considering when thinking where the outer nails would weaken the frame). Maybe there's an option C?

 

 

Edited November 20 by Sizzolo

[Thukydides]

In Steel's naval architecture (1822, so a bit of a later period) there is a section near the end where he describes the process of making ships.

https://archive.org/details/elementspractice00stee/page/167/mode/2up

 

On page 37 of this section he says the following:

Quote

Planking without Board.—The plank of the bottom is secured by a copper bolt in each but, and by only one treenail passing through each timber; these, with the through bolts which ach the diagonal framing placed within board, are considered to be a sufficient degree of fastening, and the timbers and plank are less perforated, and thereby less weakened, than by the former practice of double and single fastening through the timbers alternately.

What is interesting is what he has to say after talking about what is done currently. He says that alternating single and double treenails were used. Maybe something like this:

I will take a look at my copy of Ollivier when I get home. That dates from 1737, but many of the techniques he describes changed very little over the course of the 18th century. He has a surprising amount of detail and maybe commented on the number of treenails used. I know he did mention the fact that the English used treenails much more than the French, but off the top of my head can't remember what else he said.

Edited November 20 by Thukydides

[Morgan]

1 hour ago, Thukydides said:

 He says that alternating single and double treenails were used. Maybe something like this:

The 1805 edition is the same, and given these editions look backwards to recent / current practices it is probably reliable for Diana.

 

Gary

[Sizzolo]

Looking at Fincham 1859 (online) I see:

 

”When the planking is treenail fastened, the strakes are either double, double and single, or single fastened; that is, so as to have in each strake, when double, two treenails in every timber; when double and single, to have two in every other timber, and one in the intermediate; and when single, to have only one in each timber (fig. 17).

164. Formerly, large frigates and all upwards were double fastened, and smaller ships double and single from the black strake (108) down. Above, the large ships were double and single, and the smaller ships single..”

—-

 

Unfortunately Plate 6 isn’t visible in the source but, from the description it sounds like ‘double and single’ might align with Diana’s framing of double width and single width frames. - so when we see frames doubled up to make one timber, the strake has 2 diagonal trenails and when the frame is single width there is one trenail (so, almost like your picture Thukydides.) It’s hard to guess without seeing plate 6… but logically the double/single does align with double/single width Timbers.. and the French 74 was fully double for its whole length which aligns with ‘larger than a heavy frigate’. 
 

I don’t know when copper bolts started to be used however - specifically at the butt ends… I thought they were all trenails for English ships. They’d look nice on the model though and thin wire is a million times easier to get than making hundreds of bloomin’ 0.5mm boxwood nails!

[Thukydides]

This is what Ollivier had to say in 1737:

Quote

The English shipwrights plank the bottom of their ships with plank of the same thickness as used in our French ships, yet instead of fastening them as we do with one nail and one treenail to each frame, they fasten them with two treenails. I have not seen a single nail in all of the planking of the two ships which are near fully planked at Deptford, and in this point I believe the English shipwrights act more wisely than we. Nor have I seen a single iron bolt such as we employ at the butt of each plank;

Note: he previously notes that there were three ships being constructed in the dock at the time he was there, an 80, 70 and 60 guns respectively. I am not sure which two of these he is referring to in this quote.

Edited November 20 by Thukydides

[Sizzolo]

4 hours ago, Thukydides said:

through bolts which ach the diagonal framing placed within board,

Copy/paste typo here  ‘…which attach the…’

However - any idea what a diagonal inner frame is?

[Thukydides]

7 minutes ago, Sizzolo said:

Copy/paste typo here  ‘…which attach the…’

However - any idea what a diagonal inner frame is?

If I had to guess I would say that this is referring to the new steppings bracing system that came about around this time. I believe that Steel refers to to this elsewhere in the document. The key point in the quote above is not what they do currently, but what he says they used to do (2 treenails in one frame and 1 in the next).

[Sizzolo]

I just realised I have a copy of Blaise Ollivier's book from 1737 too! (purchased from https://ancre.fr/en/ a few years ago). I'll have a good read through. Thanks again for the direction!

[Sizzolo]

I’ve a feeling this works for the double/single method?

 

[Thukydides]

21 minutes ago, Sizzolo said:

I’ve a feeling this works for the double/single method?

My interpretation of the statement was that every alternating timber gets a single treenail and the others double treenails. See below I added the number of treenails on each frame as well as a potential arrangement in red. That being said it is possible that the double futtocks were treated as one timber. I think an equally justifiable option would be to have two in each timber as per Ollivier. Ultimately up to you as I don't think there are clear answers here.

 

[Sizzolo]

I think I might avoid doing trenails on the hull for the ‘74! (Next project - HMS Implacable which was originally a French ship so I can use Boudroit’s plans, and the rear and figurehead are on display near me for study). 
 

Edited November 21 by Sizzolo

[Sizzolo]

Progress! Finally! The wales are fitting really well and what’s better is I found a new method of glueing the ebony instead of using superglue!

 

Soak the planks for a few hours in water to loosen up the wood and allow the oils to get out. Then remove and wipe hard with acetone. Lots of the natural oil comes out this way. Try to squeeze when wiping. Then I use the pile drill to make the holes and proceed to glue in all the walnut trenails. When ready to glue into place give the back another wipe with acetone and apply Titebond Original (yellow) wood glue. Press into place and hold tightly. After 3 or 4 minutes I apply some tape to maintain some pressure - and it’s done. Seems quite solid now and so much better than CA glue. 
 

 

Yes, the trenails are barely visible (some are invisible in the pic!) plus I could have done better with some of the alignment (pile drill seems to be where inaccuracies are coming in). I’ll be more cautious when doing the boxwood planks as the nails are more prominent there. 

[Sizzolo]

Pics of current progress (past two days). Almost finished the wales. Once these buggers are done the visible progress will be much faster (as long as I make time). 
 

There’s a nice transition in colour using ebony between glossy appearance and matte / dark where the trenails are visible under certain angles. I expect this is the only benefit of using ebony. I’ll just be painting boxwood for the rest of the black hull sections. 

[Sizzolo]

From Fincham:

“ Formerly, large frigates and all upwards. were double fastened, …”

 

Diana being a large frigate likely means option D.

Soooo… ill leave the wales as-is but will do all the surrounding nails in Option D pattern. 

Edited December 6 by Sizzolo

[Sizzolo]

All ebony wales done. Hopefully minimal ebony work going forward as I did most of the gundeck hatch surrounds a while ago.

 

Finished making the boxwood top&butt planks earlier (interestingly on the external plank plan, the four rows of wales are replicated underneath the wales by four rows of the same alignment but with planks one inch thinner) so hopefully it’s also the last I see of making those tricky things too!

 

Let me know if anyone’s interested in seeing the jigs I built for making them.