Pomeranian Rahschlup 1846 by wefalck – 1/160 scale – single-masted Baltic trading vessel

[wefalck]

Thanks again to all for their encouragement !

 

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Some small progress in the true and literary sense of the word:

Bilge-pump

 

Although not drawn in the original drawings, the ship must have had at least one bilge-pump. Such pumps would be logically located at the lowest part of the hull, usually somewhere close to the mast. As its location is not marked on the drawings, this is a bit of guess-work.

While Downton-pumps or similar existed already, when the Rahschlup was designed, they were comparatively expensive items. As the ship was built in a rather economically marginal context, it is more likely that a traditional wooden pump was installed, that could also be built and maintained with local materials and by local craftsmen, such as a blacksmith. Nicely rendered drawings for such pumps can be found, for instance, in the Danish naval yard archive.

Example for a bilge-pump from the former Danish naval yard (extract from G-2357-09)

 

The trunk would have been fashioned from a single tree, typically elm, that was bored out with the aid of spoon- or canon-drills in a sort of primitive boring-lathe. Iron bands kept it together and served as attachment points for the lever. 

 

https://youtu.be/pj-XKqW29XE?si=9Q8RTsXOMxMuPPVN 

Example for drilling of wooden pipes.

 

I made a rough sketch to fix the dimensions and settled on a height of 4 mm and a diameter of 1 mm, which would be 64 cm and 16 cm on the original respectively. The body was turned from a short length of acrylic rod, leaving the future bands as proud rings.

The mechanism is composed of four lengths of 0.2 mm tinned copper wire. The wire was first bent to shape and flattened at the appropriate places with a special kind of flattening pliers. Initially, I intended to solder the parts together, but they were just too small and flimsy, so I settled on cementing them together with lacquer. The procedure is a bit difficult to document photographically while doing it, so there are only pictures of the finished product.

The completed bilge-pump

 

I am afraid the translucent pump does not show very well in the photograph, but I generally only paint everything at the very end to avoid damage during repeated handling.

 

To be continued …

[JacquesCousteau]

Very impressive work!

[Keith Black]

 Very nice micro work, Eberhard. 

[BANYAN]

That pump looks great Eberhard, although translucent there is enough detail visible to show the craftsmanship that went into making it.

 

cheers

 

Pat

[wefalck]

Thanks again for your moral support, verbal and via the buttons !

 

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A Mystery Resolved

 

When constructing the hull of the Rahschlup, it bugged me that there was no obvious way to free the deck quickly from larger amounts of water taken over in bad weather. The Jacht/Jagt-type vessels often have a gap between the covering board and lowest bulwark plank, but on all illustrations of Rahschlup-type vessels no such gap was visible. Freeing ports, as on modern ships came into use only later and the lead-lined gutters would not be sufficient.

 

Then I scanned through the images of the restoration project (https://www.jensine.dk, but the link does not seem to work at the moment) for the Danish Jagt JENSINE (1852) for a different reason and two images caught my eye:

 They show that sections of the lowest bulwark plank are actually hinged and can swing out. In calm weather they are secured with latches. Subsequently, I noticed similar features on other restored vessels.

I am not sure that this is an ideal solution for securing, as the wedges would need to be removed individually and kept for re-use. Also, the latch is attached to the plank section and could get caught between the plank and the covering board. I think a solution with a hook fastened to the stanchion that engages a staple in the plank would be a better solution.

 

How to represent such parts now in 1/160? Producing the hinges will be relatively simple, although they will be tiny, but the hooks is another matter.

 

For the hinges I took 2 mm long lengths of 0.1 mm tinned copper wire that was squeezed flat on my repurposed watchmaker jewelling tool to a predetermined thickness. These jewelling tools have a micro-meter stop that allows to very precisely set the distance between the anvil and the stamp. By squeezing, the ends of the flattened wire become rounded, which suited well the purpose. There was also a slight dimple in the anvil from the turning, which resulted in a slight boss in the middle of the strip to simulate the actual hinging mechanism. The ‘hinges’ were glued on with varnish.

 

The latches are another matter and had to be much simplified. A double L-shape was bent into a short length of 0.1 mm tinned copper wire to simulate the hook and then one end was squeezed flat to represent the part that would have been screwed to the bulwark. These tiny pieces were then glued with varnish to the lowest bulwark planks and to the bulwark stanchion.

 

I decided to make only every second space between the bulwarks ‘swinging out’ and scored the lowest plank on the outside lightly to mark these sections.

Unfortunately, these parts are so tiny, that they are almost impossible to photograph, unless I use my macro-photography set-up and then they would probably look discouragingly crude …

 

To be continued …

[Bedford]

Yes my friend, some details are better left unphotographed as that could make them look quite crude compared to your normal standard of work but rest assured the bigger picture will suffice as we know they will be very well built.

[BANYAN]

Nice find/observation Eberhard, any other puzzles to resolve?

 

cheers

 

Pat

[wefalck]

Hopefully not too many, Pat !

 

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Another small toolmaking digression

 

One of the great advantages of watchmaker’s lathes is the multitude of work-holding options/spindle tooling. There are collets and chucks of many different sizes and types. One type, however, never seems to have been made and this is collets with square holes. In a way it is understandable, as making exactly centric square holes with the technology available 50+ years ago, would have been quite a challenge and expensive. Today with EDM that would not be a problem anymore. It seems that watchmakers actually had little need for them and when they needed to chuck up a winding stem at the square end, they would have used a so-called 8-screw chuck, which however, is worse to set up than a four-jaw independent chuck.

 

I expect to have to work at the ends of some square section materials soon. While I have also a centric four-jaw chuck for the lathe, it does not fit onto micro-mill and for parts of less than 2 mm edge length it is not very precise. Working on such small parts in a chuck does not feel very safe either. Therefore, I decided to finally implement and idea that I have been tossing about for years: square insert collets. A standard fitting for watchmaker’s lathes is a set of brass insert collets that are used to hold delicate objects, such as small screws by their threads. They fit into a 5.0 mm collet and have three slots to ensure concentricity. The idea was to make collets with two cross-wise slots (like the cheapo brass collets you can buy for handheld drills) and a bore in the centre. By combining an appropriate slot width with an appropriate bore, you can make square stock fit diagonally into the collet and centre it exactly.

 

I worked out the geometry needed for 1 mm, 1.5 mm and 2 mm square stock/parts respectively. The other dimensions were taken from the existing insert collets, i.e. the diameter of 5 mm and the length of 20 mm. Blanks were turned up from some quality old brass rod, bored from the back with 2.5 mm and threaded M3 for depth stops to made at some later stage, if needed. The blanks then were turned around and drilled 1.1, 1.7 and 2.4 mm respectively for the three collet sizes. A shallow groove turned in facilitates the extraction from the main collet. The parts then were transferred to the mill and set up in a vice with a square collet block for slotting exactly across the centre. They were all slotted 0.5 mm.

 

A test turn with a 1 mm square polystyrene rod shows that this works very well.

Size 1 mm, 1.5 mm and 2 mm square insert collets for 5 mm watchmaker’s lathe collet.

 

Back to the Rahschlup now.

[druxey]

I have seen square-hole WW type collets offered on sBay in the past, but they are rare and consequently expensive.

[wefalck]

Really ? I have only seen such 5C collets and other larger types. Schaublin at some stage offered them on demand I think, but don't ask about prices ...

Edited December 15, 2025 by wefalck

[wefalck]

I wish all followers of this building log a peaceful Christmas and a good start into the New Year 2026!

[Keith Black]

 Thank you, Eberhard and a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year to you and yours. 

[JacquesCousteau]

Merry Christmas and Happy New Year!

[BANYAN]

Thanks Eberhard, best wishes for the season to you and your family also.

 

cheers

 

Pat

[Ras Ambrioso]

Merry Christmas and a happy New Year. 

[wefalck]

As for most of us, our collaboration was required for various Christmas-related preparations, such as grocery shopping, decoration, cleaning the silver, but also kitchen-work, which ate into the workshop time. But it is a good and enjoyable time of the year. Workshop activities resumed with

 

Fitting the deck

 

Or rather cutting out the openings for the deckhouses etc. When I prepared for the layout and put the previously prepared deck onto the drawing, I realised suddenly that the engravings of the planks at stern were not symmetrical to the middle line and very noticeably so now. So, it was kind of back to square one with cutting a new deck and fitting it to the model. Using the old one has template sped up things, but there was still an evening of sanding and fitting and sanding again, etc. lost. Then also the planks had to be engraved again, this time taking utmost care not to get it wrong again. This has now been the fourth incarnation of the deck …

Then I started to tackle a job that literally has zero tolerance for error, meaning that the cut-outs for the deckhouses had to be a snug fit and there is no way to correct any inaccuracies. If there was any gap, it would have been again back to square one, with lots of possibilities to get something wrong again.

 After some rough layout, holes were drilled into the square, where there will be an opening and cuts were made with a scalpel and sufficient margin around the edges. Two diagonal cuts allowed to break out the waste in form of triangles. The openings then were cautiously widened by filing and frequent test-fitting until a snug-fit all around was achieved. By taking time, this went smoothly and without further incidents.

 The deck and the deckhouses are only temporarily installed and will be carefully adjusted during the final installation. I now need to make a temporary mast to determine the exact location and shape for it deck opening. This allows me also to determine the position the pump and drill a hole for it.

 

To be continued …

 

[BANYAN]

Looks great Eberhard, I like the methodological approach you are taking with this little gem.

 

Glad to hear you had a great Christmas and wishing you only the best in health and prosperity for 2026.

 

cheers

 

Pat

[Mark Pearse]

Christmas wishes to you as well, Eberhard. The model is really starting to take form now, & a pretty ship she is.

[wefalck]

Happy New Year to all !

[Keith Black]

 Happy New Year to you and yours, Eberhard. 

[wefalck]

Well, it has been almost a month since the last post just after Christmas. I got side-tracked a bit by something that has been on my to-do list for quite a while. Some two and a half years ago I inherited a nearly two-feet pile of naval artillery related photocopies and other material. This came originally mainly from one of the authors of a German book on the history of naval artillery and was passed on through inheritance to another German colleague and when he sadly died some three years ago, it was passed on to me, because I am actually working on some papers on the development of guns in the second half of the 19^th century. The material had to be looked through for its actual value and eventual digitisation before disposal (except for any original material of possible historical value). I also spent considerable time trying to identify the source of the material as the ones who collected it didn’t note archival references or bibliographic details. In some cases, I knew the source and had either the original or a digital copy. In other cases, some detective work yielded results. A new avenue I explored successfully was to plug scanned images or pages of books into ChatGPT and asking it to identify the source (don’t think of the carbon-footprint of this method …). Sometimes, ChatGPT insisted on hallucinated results though.

Although this took a considerable amount of my spare time (and is not finished yet), I managed to work on some pieces.

 

Catheads

 

The catheads are depicted in the original drawings, but it is not very clear how far they extend inboard and they are also unusually placed below the rails, rather than at the same height or above, as is common. There are various designs for small ships like this. Sometimes they are made from a crooked piece of wood and are placed against the bulwark like a crane and sometimes they are straight and are set into the pawl-bit of the windlass. Below, these two variants are shown on museum models from Altona (Hamburg) of the period in question. 

Cathead of the crane design

Straight cathead that extends to the pawl-bit

 

I opted for the straight version, although it would have been interesting to shape the crane design. However, the inboard end doubles also as a pin-rail for the outhauls and downhauls of the headsails.

Blanks for the 1.25 mm x 1.25 mm (equivalent to roughly 20 cm x 20 cm in full size) cathead where cut from a 1.5 mm sheet of acrylic glass and then milled to size.

The openings in the bulwark are located where it is doubled with timbers of the same size as the (cant-)frames. A pilot hole with 0.8 mm diameter was drilled aiming at the pawl-bit. The hole was filed square with a 1 mm x 1mm file, always aiming towards the pawl-bit.

Squaring the holes for the catheads

Cathead blanks in place, meeting the pawl-bit

 

The catheads have to sheaves at the end. Most people would drill just four holes for the runner, but that would lead to a very unnatural run of the rope. I therefore cut two 0.25 mm slots for the sheaves into which discs of the same thickness will be set. This should lead to a more natural run of the rope without sharp bends.

Set-up for sawing the slots into the catheads

Sawing two 0.25 mm slots into the catheads

 

First, I tried to cut the sheaves from 1 mm polystyrene rod, but my old stock turned out too brittle for that. I then tried to punch them with a 1 mm hollow punch from 0.25 mm polystyrene strips, but this kind of thickened the resulting discs and they would not fit into the slots, though the strip itself perfectly slit into it – I had no thinner sheet or strips. So, I resorted to paper soaked in varnish. Perhaps I should have made myself a punch-and-die set with solid punches or bought a commercial one (which are quite expensive for what they are).

Once the sheaves were in place, a thin piece of acrylic was cemented to the front and sanded back to the same profile as the cathead. The front was actually given the shape of a hipped roof on the milling machine, using again the square collet in the dividing attachment.

I didn’t take pictures of the last two operations.

The completed cathead temporarily installed

 

The catheads cannot be installed yet, as their exact inboard length can only be determined once the pawl-bit has been finally installed. There are a few more building steps to be completed, before this can be done.

 

To be continued …

[BANYAN]

Great update Eberhard, they fit nicely.  That will have been a very interesting exercise sorting through that armaments documentation, hopefully a fruitful exercise for you?

 

cheers

 

Pat

 

p.s. I still get tool envy looking at those great little power tools you have built and/or refurbished .