Historical plans via CAD to laser cut parts - Practicum

[TJM]

8 hours ago, catopower said:

@TJM I see there are two versions of QCAD available. Are you using the regular QCAD Professional or is the QCAD/CAM version?

The regular pro version. I think I paid $40 or something like that.

[TJM]

Ørnen, Royal Yacht of Christian VII

 

I have been away from home and with no workshop, and have therefore been adapting some more historical plans. 

 

This time I am looking at a small Royal Yacht called 'Ørnen' (the Eagle). 

 

It is a curious little vessel entirely geared towards ensuring the comfort of the monarch. It is basically a large suite with two bedrooms (labelled king's and queen's, respectively) and a living room. Midships there is a finely decorated dining hall and at the bow a kitchen with two stoves. 

 

Armament consists og 26 4 pound 'houbitzers' that seems to be essentially small swivel mounted carronades. Good for defence! 

 

Here are a few of the many original drawings:

 

 

 

 

 

 

The dining hall is an interesting feature to model, and in general it would be fun to model the interior of the ship to a reasonably high level. 

 

Here are the lase cut sheets I made:

 

Mostly 3 mm MDF and then a little 2 mm and 1 mm ply. Most of these thinner pieces I would do in pear if I was to continue with this model (I would like to, but that will be in the distant future, if ever...), but the ply is fine for checking if it works.

 

And here are a some photos of the puzzle fitted together (very little glue for now, just at the stern and bow):

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

And a few with the test cardboard bulwark patterns:

 

 

It is a small ship, 45 cm at 1:64. 

 

Here it is on top of Bornholm from the last post:

 

 

I am a bit torn on whether I like the ship due to it's curiosities or if I think it is a little ugly with that dining room protruding in the middle. But it has nice enough hull lines, and is a bit of an unicum.

 

But now that I am back home, having spent an evening cutting this, I will get back to planking of Christiania 😁.

 

BR

TJM

 

 

Edited October 20 by TJM
Editorial

[druxey]

That is a lovely and unusual subject! I vote you continue.

[TJM]

7 hours ago, druxey said:

That is a lovely and unusual subject! I vote you continue.

Thank you Druxey, I will definitely consider it. But I am not allowing myself more than one truly active build at any one time, or I would never finish any! So It will be a long while no matter what before I continue, with this, Bornholm, Fehmern or another of these practice projects.

[Doreltomin]

Thank you very much for showing us this lovely yacht! As I have mused through the plans there are some interesting details on it, for instance the deck which curves down to the stem to allow for the cables of the anchor to come up smoothly. A little yacht worth of being considered for a nice model, which at 1:64 would be of just the right size. I also completely agree with you that dividing modeller's attention to several subjects at the same time is a good way to never finish anything. However, I know modellers which work just like that, taking small steps to several models in the same time. Also unlike the girlfriend, a ship model is never jealous of being left some time on the shelf for another ship model! 😉 

Also you did a very nice job in cutting these pieces and putting them together. It seems it takes much less time to project the cut on a computer and then laser it all in a single pass than it would have to cut them by handsaw and then smooth them one by one! Nice one!

[TJM]

8 hours ago, Doreltomin said:

Thank you very much for showing us this lovely yacht! As I have mused through the plans there are some interesting details on it, for instance the deck which curves down to the stem to allow for the cables of the anchor to come up smoothly. A little yacht worth of being considered for a nice model, which at 1:64 would be of just the right size. I also completely agree with you that dividing modeller's attention to several subjects at the same time is a good way to never finish anything. However, I know modellers which work just like that, taking small steps to several models in the same time. Also unlike the girlfriend, a ship model is never jealous of being left some time on the shelf for another ship model! 😉 

Also you did a very nice job in cutting these pieces and putting them together. It seems it takes much less time to project the cut on a computer and then laser it all in a single pass than it would have to cut them by handsaw and then smooth them one by one! Nice one!

 Thank you for the very nice comment! Indeed, many fun features, I had also noticed the dropping deck. 

 

Indeed, it does not take too long to do this, at least not the small ships like this one and only the base structure. I think this one took around 10 hours to do in CAD, another couple to lay it out for cutting and one to cut it on the laser. I am sure it would have taken ne forever by hand and scroll saw!

[mtaylor]

I'd say by all means open a log in the scratch area when you're ready. 

[TJM]

Falster, 1810 - a gun brig with 18 pounders

 

I have been eyeing one of the latest releases from Vanguard Models, the gun brig Adder, and the upcoming Harpy with interest. I like the older ships for their graceful curves, but I am impressed with the huge firepower these later brigs and sloops were carrying! 

 

When the British ran off with the entire Danish fleet in 1807, they got also 6 smaller gun brigs carrying 18 pound carronades. These were replaced by a new generation of gun brigs which carried 8 x 8 pounder long guns and 8 x 8 pounder short guns, not quite carronades, but of similar size for their poundage.

 

This is something in between the aforementioned Adder and Harpy in terms of firepower, but with more long guns in the mix.

 

Here's a few of the very many available original drawings:

 

 

 

 

And here's one showing both the long and the short 18 pounders (actually almost 20 british pounds, as 1 Danish pound was around 1.09 British pounds):

 

And then something a bit unique, at least I have not found other drawings like this one yet in the archive:

This is basically a perspective drawing showing the rigging and deck fittings in great detail.

 

From the PoV of adapting the plans to a PoF model, this is quite simple compared to some of the previous exercises. The plans from this late period are very easy to read and there are plenty of drawings to go with.

 

I have only done the very basics for now, keel, bulkheads, braces and a little at the stern. And the the upper bulwark patterns:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I was very surprised at the size! I should have used 4 mm mdf, not 3 mm! I of course knew how large it was by it's numbers, but it is something else to see it in real life. This is why I think these exercises are so fun! (it is a very good way of procrastinating....).

 

It is also not very pretty, in my opinion! With it's very flat front and generally boxy shape and the slightly disordered gun port sizes due to the mixed gun types. But it does have some character!

 

As mentioned, it is very large for a brig, I think. Here is a few comparison shots with my current Sphinx build (with modifications):

 

 

It is close to as long and the deck is a good deal wider. Quite 'chunky'.

 

Continuing with this, I would have to redo the prow parts, as the fit is not great, and modify the run of the bulwark patterns at the bow as well. I also made a mistake on the deck level on bulwark 15 and I would need the stern piece to be of ply to be able to bend it without cracking it. All of these were very good learnings and I feel that I am beginning to know what works and what doesn't, at least in these very early critical stages of the construction. 

 

Thanks for following along on this journey!

 

BR

TJM

 

 

 

 

 

[Beckmann]

Hi TJM,

I just came across your build log of the Frigate Christiania and this topic about the CAD-plans on the basis of the riksarchiv.

I am myself very interested in the danish navy and have a build log myself about building the stern-section of the orlogskib TRE KRONER from 1742.

Maybe we can get in contact about how to use the riksarchiv best, I have the problem of not understanding danish language very well, but my method of working with the plans is similar to your method.

Matthias

Edited yesterday at 05:44 PM by Beckmann

[TJM]

19 hours ago, Beckmann said:

Hi TJM,

I just came across your build log of the Frigate Christiania and this topic about the CAD-plans on the basis of the riksarchiv.

I am myself very interested in the danish navy and have a build log myself about building the stern-section of the orlogskib TRE KRONER from 1742.

Maybe we can get in contact about how to use the riksarchiv best, I have the problem of not understanding danish language very well, but my method of working with the plans is similar to your method.

Matthias

 

Hi Matthias,

 

I have been following your Tre Kroner build from the start with great interest. It is really fantastic work you are doing! It was partly your work on that that got me inspired to try these adaptions of plans myself - I even started with a stern section like your build! (I have just not allowed myself to progress beyond the design and test cut stage for fear of having too many active projects).

 

I am more than happy to discuss how to best use the Danish National Archive (Rigsarkivet), though I am not sure I have the best way!

 

It took me a while to figure out how things are organized. It can seem like a jumbled mess!

 

There is an index by ship name accessible here:

https://arkivalieronline.rigsarkivet.dk/da/billedviser?epid=17172954#190667,31951582

 

The entry for Tre Kroner, as an example, looks like this:

 

The interesting part here is the section 'Tegninger hørende til skibet' (drawings belonging to the ship), as it lists the know drawings of the ship from the differen portfolios, A, B, C, D and G. The digital archives for A especially is incomplete and some of the references are not available online. This is also to some extend true for B, C and D. 

 

However, I think the missing ones are then available in one of the other portfolios, most likely G, but there are no traceability between these! For instance, A666 is not available. It likely contained either the ornamental drawing or the profile and bulkhead drawing (because it is underlined as the main file). However, these both appear in other files. 

 

The actual drawings are available here:

https://arkivalieronline.rigsarkivet.dk/da/billedviser?epid=17149179#189566,31913766

 

And for Tre Kroner, I find these:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

These are A768, A1200 a-e and G2853.

The others are not available online, but this is where I suspect the they may refer to one of the other files that are available! But I can't be sure of it.

Note that there are two distinct copies of the ornaments - that is actually often the case! Usually, one will carry the handwritten approval by the sitting monarch, in this case the first one, A768.

 

This is how I navigate the archive! If you have any need for help translating something from Danish, I am more than happy to help! Just send me a PM. I am just limited by my lack of knowledge of marine terminology in both Danish and English, so I run into words that I don't know the meaning of in Danish either, even though i am a native! But I'll do my best! 😁

 

 

Edited 9 hours ago by TJM

[Beckmann]

Hi TJM,

thank you very much for your explanations. I did not know, that there exists a list of ship names. I used to spend hours, looking througt the online-archive in search of special plans. This list is of great value if you are looking for something, it contains also ships of similar construction. Thanks a lot for that.

Matthias

Edited 6 hours ago by Beckmann

[TJM]

You are very welcome! And you are right, I completely forgot to mention that ships of the same construction is also shown - that sometimes adds a lot of relevant drawings to a subject! 

 

I just dont understand why, when they went to all of the trouble scanning thousands of drawings and the old analog indexes, they did not make a simple database with a tiny bit of metadata. It would have taken so little effort compared to the work already done to make a searchable database. Instead we have a digital copy of the analog archive, including the analog indexes. And then the system is just not very friendly for browsing! It takes alot of mouse clicks to go through the files!

 

But the index does make all the difference when looking for specific ships. 

 

Another 'tool' is this site:

https://trap.lex.dk/.taxonomy/4677

 

It lists many of the ships by class and includes a few low res images of drawings and models of interest. It is a bit inconsistent in the quality of the data, but it is a good way to find interesting ships and then go to the actual archive linked above to find the information 'first hand'.

 

Edited 1 hour ago by TJM