Rattlesnake 1782 by Gregory - Scale 1:48 - Plans Developed From Line Drawings by Howard Chapelle

[Gregory]

Hi!  It's me again.

I stalled some months ago with my build using the plans from Model Shipways.  I don't want to go into any details about why those plans did not work for me, but I hope to show how I have adapted the lines drawn by Howard Chapelle to start a new build.

 

First, a little history of why I chose this subject.

 

The Mamoli kit of Rattlesnake was my first wood ship kit over 30 years ago.

Here, it is not quite finished.  I gifted it to a relative, and the story of how I caught up with it later will be left for another time.

I have always wanted to do the Rattlesnake again. Now with the idea of seeing what 30 years of  experience, education, and inspiration, particularly from MSW might bring, I am launching this project.

 

All plans for models of Rattlesnake that I am aware of; Mamoli, Hahn and Model Shipways, are derived from the drawings  from the NMM.

The NMM lines are available at WIKI Commons.  I purchased the drawings from the NMM several years ago, and the ones at WIKI Commons are actually much better to work from than what I received from the NMM.

There are 2 additional drawings at the link above that show some deck details.

 

The MS plans were originally drawn by George F. Campbell  for the solid hull version of the MS kit and further refined by Ben Lankford for the POB model .

Chapelle's drawings originally appeared in 1935 in "The History of American Sailing Ships" and later in " The Search for Speed Under Sail " 1967. 

They are also available from The Smithsonian, and include rigging plans that Chapelle would have inferred, based on his expertise.  The NMM drawings do include mast and spar dimensions.

 

Of interest (to me, anyway) is an isometric drawing by  George C. Wales included with the Chapelle  drawings in  "The History of American Sailing Ships".

Amazing drafting skills in light of no computers and no CAD.  I like the idea of the ladders going up to the gangway.  I will consider modeling them if I ever get to that point.

 These are the lines by Chapelle from "The History of American Sailing Ships" on which I am now basing my work. ( coloring is mine )

 

We have  to keep in mind that the NMM drawings were " taken off the ship " and were not construction drawings, so the NMM drawings lack other details that can only be left to speculation, so I think the modeler should feel free to satisfy their own vision based on what is available.  Chapelle, Campbell and Hahn have provided additional details based on their expertise, and I think the modeler can feel comfortable drawing upon their ideas.

Of note, is the drawing of  the quarterdeck bulkhead.

This drawing is by George Campbell and included in the MS plans.

Chapelle did not include it, although it is partly drawn in the Wales isometric.  The Hahn plans and the Mamoli drawings show the bulkhead pretty much as Campbell drew it.

The two sets of doors are indicated on the NMM lines, but with no other detail.

 The windows in the center panels, and not in the doors, do not seem logical to me.  I plan to model the doors with windows.

I have copies of all of the mentioned plans, and for the most part, they match up fairly well . 

 

The NMM, Chapelle and Campbell lines show 12 stations, but for whatever reason, the MS POB plans call for 13.   In the long run, you would think 13 is better than 12 when building POB, but there is some slight deviation between some of the MS bulkhead shapes and the NMM profiles.   I assume this comes from the use of 13 stations and the change in shape along the profile. 

 

Before I document my actual building process, I want to share some of my work flow, the development of which, is what I have been doing for the past few months instead of building.

I ventured a bit into 3D modeling with Autodesk Fusion ( formerly known as Fusion360 ).   It turned out to be more of a learning curve than I want to invest in at this time, so I reverted to my 2D efforts, which is what I will be sharing here.

This shows the difference in station lines from the various drawings.  On the left,  the Chapelle lines are in black with Campbell ( from the MS plans ) in red.  On the right are the Chapelle lines overlayed on the NMM lines.

The Chapelle lines are obviously very close, to the extent that much of the  most of the NMM lines are obscured by the Chapelle lines.   Station 12 is the most notable but slight difference except for the waterlines (?) which who knows why he chose to go off base there.  Campbell  followed Chapelle in that regard. The NMM lines do not include the railings.

 

Getting back to the overlay on the left. There are small but obvious differences between Chapelle and Campbell, but I think using either set would produce models with little apparent difference.  I'm giving the nod to Chapelle since his lines are closer to the NMM lines.

The shaded in bulkheads are scanned and scaled copies of the MS drawings.   Unless I overlooked it, the MS plans do not include any station lines that actually match the shape of the bulkheads as provided, but they are close enough to the Campbell drawings, and as I think the MS kit builders will attest,  the bulkheads and backbone as provided, go together  to provide a nice representation of the ship as drawn.

The MS backbone and bulkheads, which I copied and scaled up to 1:48, just didn't work for me in my scratch endeavors, and I should have made new parts based on one of the three sets of drawings, rather than copying the MS Parts, which is what I am pursuing now.

 

I have been pursuing this for a few weeks now and actually have some sawdust and smoke ( from the laser ) to show for it, but I have a little more story to tell.  For now, I'm running up against the clock and will post some more tomorrow.

 

 

 

[Dr PR]

Gregory,

 

I saw George Wales' drawing of the Rattlesnake in "American Sailing Ships" about 55 years ago and thought it was a beautiful ship (I really like vessels with tumblehome). I started redrawing Chapelle's plans by hand, scaling them to 1:48, with the intention of making a scratch build model. However the little fuss in Vietnam brought that effort to a halt.

 

About 25 years ago I saw the Mamoli kit in a local hobby shop and bought it on the spot. However my job, marriage and a couple of houses to keep up put the kit on the shelf, where it has been ever since. But someday I intend to bring it out and start building it.

 

Hence my interest in your project. I will be following it closely, taking notes for when I start work on the Rattlesnake.

Edited September 29 by Dr PR

[Thunder]

As always going to love following this build. I as well have a Rattlesnake kit on a shelf waiting to be built. An unusual kit and boxed as Revell, not sure if originates from them as have not seen any other than plastic. I have some early MS plans and looks to be the exact same scale.

[Gregory]

Dr. PR, your Albatros is a continuing inspiration and source of information for me.   As mentioned, I had a brief encounter with 3D modeling, with some of your work  being an example to push me in that direction, but I am putting that on the back shelf for now.

 

Regards to Thunder .  Your Corel Resolution is an inspiration for me, and I hope to get back to it someday.  I'm stalled with the rigging after it got into a fight with the cat.

 

A little more about my 2D drafting workflow.

I am using Photoshop Elements 2024 for most of my drafting work . I find it to be very robust for what I'm doing, and at a reasonable price point.   I have been using it for years and I am very comfortable with the interface and tools.  It has a 2 decimal scaling accuracy and a lot of scaling options such as: size, PPI and percentage. 

For instance, the Chapelle plans were on a  9 3/4 x 7 1/4 page of a book that I scaled up to full 1:48 scale,  with a result of one division on the scale ruler being 6.35mm / .25 inch.

The scale on the page was about 1.6mm per division which I scaled up by around 390 something percent.  I tweaked it until I got one division as close to 6.35mm as I could.

 

In the drawing, each component has it's own layer which can be turned off as needed to reduce clutter in the work space.  Above, you see bulkhead 7 on the left, with the 3 parts of the backbone on the profile.

The transparency can be adjusted enable the underlying layers to be visible.

The initial tracing of the backbone was done by following the " top of the deck " and the rabet lines .

 

The bulkheads were developed by tracing the station lines and centerline.  The shape of the deck and gunwales were established in a separate process which utilized the drawing lines of the top of the deck, the underside of the deck at the planking and the shear.  Once I had the half shape, I mirrored it for the full bulkhead.

 

I established the center top of the deck for each bulkhead by aligning the center with the station line.  The top of the deck can be marked with pixel precision, which at 200PPI is about .005"/.127mm.

Then I mark the side of the deck with a tab that will help me set the planks defining the level of the gun deck at the side.  I will show later that this worked out very well.

The curve of the deck was drawn by connecting the center point with the side point using a curved line tool  that I won't elaborate on here, but if anyone has any questions I will do my best to answer.

I overshot the shear with the gunwale a little bit because I want to refine that when I'm building. 

Here is bulkhead 7 ready for the laser.

 

I want to talk just a little about the software I use to drive the Laser.  It is called LightBurn, and has a modest price of  $60.  It is very versatile, and It would take a lot more than I want to go into here to talk about a fraction of it's features.  Here I show where I have imported  a solid Image drawing of a bulkhead.  It imports it at the precise dimensions of the drawing without regard to the resolution.

I invoke a " trace " feature which produces the outline ( pinkish ) seen here, which is essentially an .SVG drawing that can be exported for use elsewhere.

It is node editable, but it's use has a high learning curve that I haven't mastered yet.  If I find a glitch I can't live with, I take it back to Photoshop.

The .SVG is used to drive the Laser.

The piece is cut with pixel/node precision, limited by the accuracy of the laser.

 

This is all I have on my 2D drafting workflow  for now.  I will do my best to answer any questions, and I will certainly listen to any suggestions regarding  a better or easier way to do something within the limits of my software.

I suspect something like " Corel Draw " might be a better tool in some regards, but I don't want to learn how to use it at this stage.  

So, I'm not very open to suggestion that begin with " If you used   " XXX " you could do " XXX "  a lot easier. 😁

 

A little early construction to follow soon.

 

[Gregory]

Now for a  bit of my build process.

I'm cutting the skeleton out of this 6mm Plywood purchased from Amazon.

Its listed as 'basswood' plywood, and the outer layers look as good as any basswood I have seen.   Those outer basswood layers are paper thin though,  if that would make any difference for a project.

The product as a whole is as good or better than any plywood I have  ever used.

It measures consistently a hair over 6mm and a hair under 1/4".   I have not been able to get decent dimensioned plywood from sources like Home Depot for some time now.  The last 1/4" plywood I bought from Home depot measured 5.2mm - closer to 3/16 than 1/4.   The Amazon stuff is a fraction of the cost of sanded plywood at Home Depot.

I cut the stem out of 1/4" Cherry that I thickness sanded to match the ~6mm ply.  I built it up out of 5 pieces.

This shows a little form I used to glue and clamp up the Stem to the rabet strip on the backbone.

The backbone is made of three pieces, and this shows how it is easier to hold, sand and shape the stem before the three pieces are glued together.

 

The stem, pretty much finished with a coat of WOP.  I will be applying any number of coats as the build progresses.  I use very thin WOP to get a lot of penetration to seal the wood.

This is the first dry fit of the bulkheads and backbone.  I managed a very tight fit with the slots.  Inserting, then removing the bulkheads proved to be somewhat difficult, as I didn't have much more clearance than the thickness of the laser char.

Any squaring when gluing is almost unnecessary, but I will still be taking that important step.  The center of the deck on the bulkheads is flush with the backbone except for the small difference in slope from front to back.

Close up of fit.

Could have used a little tighter fit to the rabet on the foremost frames, but that will shim up easily.

 

Looking forward from station 12.

 

A piece of cord to show the run of the deck before any fairing has been done.  There will be bow and stern fillers to get a good shape in those areas.  This left me quite satisfied with my drafting efforts.

 

A little contribution to the " Tips & Tricks " department.  I know that Legos are popular as squaring tools, but I recently discovered these little game/puzzle pieces.  I feel they give you a little more to work with than Legos do.

Very inexpensive .  64 Pieces were $10.

Another view of bulkhead  squaring.

Should be following up soon with filler placement and fairing.

 

[Thukydides]

Looks like you have made a good start Gregory. I thought your previous build was looking good so I will be interested to see how this one develops.

[CiscoH]

Y’now if you had used… sorry wont do that.  in all seriousness i am amazed by your computer skills and how you managed to loft and produce an accurate frame.  did you cut the stem pieces with the laser or by hand?

[Gregory]

Stem pieces by laser.  My hat’s off to the ones who can cut by hand.

If I didn’t have the laser I would resign myself to kits…