Arethusa by Elia - 1907 Knockabout Banks Fishing Schooner

[Elia]

Dimitris,

 

Thank you. Though my work has slowed it has been an enjoyable and rewarding journey.

 

Elia

[Dimitris71]

Happy birthday Elia. Enjoy the day.

[Mirabell61]

Elia,

 

first my birthay greetings, enjoy your Special day and have fun..

 

Coming to your build, it is stunning to watch this ship growing on your slipway. A dream of a gloucester schooner with its wonderful lines, your single planking, your workmanship, this all makes ones heart beat faster...,

Shall stay tuned

 

very, very well done !!!

 

Nils

[russkramer]

Hi Elia,

 

I have been commissioned to paint a substantial oil of ARETHUSA by an enthusiast, and your model of her and all the photos you have posted to date will be extremeely helpful. Thank you! Your work is magnificent.

 

I have the good fortune of living here in Mystic, CT and, being close to the staff at the Seaport collections, willl have good access to Ronnenberg's model as well. I specialize in yachting history, and always try to emphasize the human side of being on the water, and this historic fishing scene will be a first for me. Of course this subject has inspired many others before me, most notably Tom Hoyne who did such fine work, but I will strive to do something unique. You can see my paintings at www.russkramer.com if you are interedted.

 

Anyway, I will be following your progress eagerly and congratulations on such impressive work.

 

Best,

 

Russ Kramer

[Elia]

Dimitris, Nils, Russ,

 

Thank you all for the sentiments and compliments. A good day it has been.

 

I hope to have an update soon. I'm on my third (or fourth?) attempt at making the ships wheel....and I 'think' this time is it. . Time will tell.

 

Russ, your are so fortunate to live in Mystic. I'm outside of Philadelphia and rarely travel up there. I've wanted to see Erik's models and Thom Hoyne's artwork but haven't had the opportunity yet. Your paintings are superb. Wow. I would love to see your take on Arethusa.

 

Cheers,

 

Elia

[captainbob]

Elia,

 

Thanks for showing how you assembled the chainplates and deadeyes.  It helped me with mine.

 

Bob

[Elia]

Bob,

 

I'm glad it helped you with yours. Those were a good learning experience for me.

 

Cheers,

 

Elia

[michael mott]

Hi Elia, a belated greeting for your B'day I look forward to seeing the next update. Russ thank you for your link your paintings are wonderful.

 

Michael

[JesseLee]

Just ran across this log. Very nice. The deck detail looks so good!

 

Oh, & Happy birthday!

[russkramer]

Thank you, Elia and Michael...look forward to the model progress. I'll post an image of the painting when I'm done. Best wishes, Russ

[Elia]

Michael, JesseLee, Russ,

 

Thanks! I'm working towards an update soon. Russ I look forward to seeing more of your art, and oh boy - Arethusa!

 

Cheers,

 

Elia

[Elia]

This past winter and spring I pondered how to fabricate a few of the remaining deck furniture  details for Arethusa.  The steering wheel, the cat heads, and potentially remaking the deck pumps, due to the fact that over time, as I stared at my original sculpey ones, I found them a little less than attractive.  We’ll see if I remake the pumps or not.

 

The Gloucester schooners of the late 1800s and early 1900s employed cast steering wheels over the built-up wooden wheels we see on many earlier period ships.  One of the principal manufacturers of the cast wheels was A.P. Stoddard Company of Gloucester, MA.  The wheels contained a cast rim, a cast hub, and 8 spoke/handles.  The overall dimensions of the wheels ranged from about 30 inches in diameter (of the rim) to 36 inches diameter.  

 

The design I am using was for Elsie, a similar vintage and approximately similar sized schooner to Arethusa.  The Elsie plans from Model Shipways contain views of the wheel, but enlarged to 1/24 scale, twice the size of my model.  This wheel was also printed in a series of articles Erik A.R. Ronnberg wrote from the Nautical Research Guild's Journal in the 1990s. (I think).  So I used CAD at work to create a 1/48 scale set of ‘wheel’ drawings.  Since the wheel details are quite small at 1/48 scale, I only focused on the major geometric details.  The Elsie wheel is 48 inches (true) from brass cap of one handle to the opposite side handle brass cap.  The rim is 36 inches OD, and 30 inches ID.

 

In this post I’ll show you my approach to making the ships wheel.  What follows is my fourth or fifth attempt at the wheel.  I first tried making one from sheet styrene.  No luck.  Then I tried using boxwood and styrene.  Again failure.  I followed that up with an all boxwood wheel’s rim.  Nope, no good.  At the top of my wish list of of modeling power tools is a lathe… but with largish scale home projects ongoing I can’t justify such a purchase right now.

 

What I found I was struggling with was the fact that the flanges and the web of the rim as very thin at 1/48 scale.  Couple that with a detail the cast rims present - ‘cylindrical’ swells around each spoke at the rim - and, well, I was stumped.  Then, one night something struck me - why not make the rim’s web from two thin sheets of brass.  Once I had the ‘rings’ of the web formed it seemed it shouldn’t be too difficult to crimp them around spokes, or at least spoke mandrels. 

In my ‘brass’ box I had a nice amount of 1/64” thick by 1/16” wide K&S brass strips.  I also had brass sheets stock but attempts to cut out the rings to an acceptable shape proved difficult for me.  I annealed the 1/64 x 1/16 strips and found a suitable mandrel with which to form the web rings.  

 

 

The mandrel was part of a VW Passat B5 tie rod extraction tool (from a past project/era).  I first crudely formed the strips into flat rings, re-annealing throughout the forming, to allow the rings to take a smooth shape.  I then used the mandrel to allow final forming along the underside of the bolt head (following picture).  

 

 

The ring’s ends were then soldered together to form what are essentially thin brass washers.  For this step I used silver solder paste and my butane torch.

 

The next picture shows the crimping of the two ring webs around 0.020 brass rod, which at scale is slightly larger than correct, but available and easy to work with.  These are demonstration rings, as my originals had passed this point of the process before I paused long enough to consider taking pictures.  I used the CAD print to mark where the spokes would be placed.

 

 

Once all of the crimping around the spoke locations was complete I soldered the two web sides together.  For this solder step I used Stay Brite silver solder, which has a melting temp in the somewhere around ~500F.  I soldered in every-other ‘bay’ between spoke locations.  I did that so that when I soldered the flanges onto the rim I could alternate bay locations, providing some ‘distance’ between soldered joints in an attempt to minimize secondary or tertiary soldering from undoing prior soldered sections.

 

I used my trusty mandrel to form the inner flange of the rim, fitted it to the inside of the web ring, trimmed it, and soldered it on place, using the designated ‘clear’ bays for soldering.

 

 

I then used a wooden dowel as a back stop and drilled though the inner flange with my dremel.

 

 

Nearing the completion of the rim I used another mandrel to form the outer flange.  I clamped it in place, marked the spoke locations, and drilled the holes using the prior mentioned drill setup.

 

Parts were filed, flux was applied.  I used some of those 0.020 inch brass rods to maintain alignment of the holes to the rim web.  I used clamps to keep everything in place.  I snipped tiny pieces of TIX solder (melt temp around 270F), and located them.  Heat was then applied.  It looked great.  Really sweet.  I took off the clamps and went to remove the brass rods.  Oh CRUD!  [actually, insert colorful sailor language here].  The flux and solder had run…and the brass rods were soldered in.  I tried heat with the soldering iron, but no luck.  I was concerned about applying too much heat and having other portions of the assembly come apart.  So I set about marking and drilling out the brass rod material.  It worked OK, although the holes weren’t quite as well located as the originals.

 

On the second portion of the outer flange I chose to omit the brass rod ‘alignment’ aids and it all worked out well.

 

 

So here is the rim essentially completed.  The swells in the rim web are visible, and the rim flanges are reasonably to scale.   It is a little larger in OD than the plans.  Not perfect, but I’m happy with it.  Now on to the tiny hub.

 

Cheers,

 

Elia

Edited May 4, 2014 by Elia

[michael mott]

Very nice fabrication of the rim Elia.

 

Michael

[Omega1234]

Hi Elia. I'm loving this! Magnificent build and attention to detail! Gob smacked!!

[captainbob]

Fine engineering to figure out how to build the wheel you wanted and skill in the doing.

 

Bob

[Elia]

Michael, Omega, Bob,

 

Many thanks. I had fun making the little ship's wheel rim (with a little excitement thrown in for good measure). Bob - I derive satisfaction in finding fabrication solutions to modeling [and even full scale:) ] and being able to pull them off. Those first attempts were quite frustrating and probably set me back at least 6 weeks (try, fail, ponder, adjust, try agin, fail, ponder,.....). I've schemed up an approach to the hub so maybe soon I'll have something to show on it.

 

I'll post some pictures of the cat heads and installed chainplates soon.

 

Cheers,

 

Elia

[Alfons]

Very nice work Elia, you are truly a skilled modeller!

 

/Alfons

[captainbob]

Bob - I derive satisfaction in finding fabrication solutions to modeling [and even full scale:) ] and being able to pull them off. Those first attempts were quite frustrating and probably set me back at least 6 weeks (try, fail, ponder, adjust, try agin, fail, ponder,.....). I've schemed up an approach to the hub so maybe soon I'll have something to show on it.

 

Elia

 

I understand how that is, I'm in the same situation now. I have the picture but how do I make it?

 

Bob

[Elia]

Alfons,

 

Thank you, and thanks for stopping by!

 

Bob,

 

So true.  I had sketched out all of the steps in that process.  And like many perfect plans...once underway changes and adjustments were made.

 

Cheers,

 

Elia

[Elia]

Earlier than my steering wheel endeavor I had fabricated the cat heads and installed the chainplates. All of the deck furniture remains only temporarily placed for context.

 

 

 

Funny thing about the deadeyes - they don't want to stand upright, as in the photos. They lay over, free on their pivot pins...

 

And last, but not least, thank you to all those who've 'liked' my updates!

 

Cheers,

 

Elia

Edited May 7, 2014 by Elia

[russ]

Elia:

The deadeyes are behaving exactly how you want them to behave. Good work.

 

Russ

[captainbob]

Elia,

 

The deck is looking great.  I like the fish pens (or whatever they are called) along the rails.  It makes sense that they would be there and I see supports in several places where many more pens could be added.  But I have never seen them in old photos of ships while fishing or on the plans of old fishing schooners.  Where does that information come from?  Were they just on cod boats or on mackerel boats also?  Maybe I should add them to my Lettie.

 

Bob

[Elia]

Bob,

 

Thank you. The fish pens shown athwartship of the forward fish hatch were used to dump catch off of the dories. Interestingly I've seen pictures of dories, nested, and placed keel up, on those rails. The guides along the main rails, the sides of the main hatch, the bait gurry, and cabin are called checker or dividing board guides. Boards were placed in the slots of the guides to provide bins for fishing being processes (split, gutted, etc). I've seen only a few models with these, which is kind of funny, since many fishing schooners other than the mackerel seiners employed them. Here are links to a few images I've found on the web showing them.

 

http://penobscotmarinemuseum.org/pbho-1/tags/fisheries

(The very bottom picture of the images on the left side)

 

http://ghwalk.org/story-moments/21

 

In Chapelle's The American Fishing Schooners, 1825 - 1935, page 406 on the lower half of the page, you see a couple of sketches showing a general arrangement of the guides. Also on page 386 in bulwarks subsection, at the top of the page one finds some main/monkey rail checker board guide sketches.

 

If you can find Thomas Hoyne's artwork of the Banks fishermen you find many paintings showing the checker boards. Erik A.R. Ronnberg made an impressive series of 3/8 scale models of the lineage of Gloucester fishing schooners for Hoyne which he then used to develop his artwork.

 

As a last note images from Mystic Museum were posted here at MSW2 of ship models and one of them is one of Ronnberg's 3/8 scale ...Cavalier...and you can readily see the checker boards on it, too.

http://modelshipworld.com/index.php?/topic/3662-mystic-seaport-models/?p=103570

 

 

I hope this all helps.

 

Cheers,

 

Elia

Edited May 8, 2014 by Elia

[captainbob]

Thanks Elia.  That is great.  they must have been used all the time while fishing, but it is rare that we see even the guides in old photos or on models.

 

Bob

Edited May 8, 2014 by Cap'n'Bob

[michael mott]

 

(try, fail, ponder, adjust, try agin, fail, ponder,.....)

Seems to be the story of my life.

 

The model is looking superb.

 

michael

[Elia]

Michael,

 

That ought to be the sub-title of my modeling hobby.

 

Thank you much.

 

Cheers,

 

Elia

[Elia]

It has been some time since my last update and with a little time off of my feet I've been able to do little things here and there on Arethusa.

 

I have begun making masts....first time in oh, about 5 years!  I'm following my method I wrote about in the downloads section some years ago.

 

Here are some photos showing the major steps.  My only process change has been to use a plane to remove material instead of the rasp/file originally shown.

 

On the hull - I touched up the anti-fouling paint and hull sides, made some little scroll art at the bow names, and applied Dullcoat over the outer hull.  It is the first time I've used Dullcoat and I am happy with the results.  The shininess of the acrylic paint is gone and hull details are more clearly visible.  One odd and funny (to me!) aspect of the photos - you may see what looks like scupper run-off 'weathering'.  It isn't.  What you are seeing are reflections from clear, highly glossily packing tape I used to seal the 'work stand' box. 

 

On the deck I finished painting the checker boards.  I've deviated from my 'pristine' modeling approach by applying a semi-transparent paint layer to those details and the deck battens.  I think it gives appearance of worn painted boards and battens.  Also worked on were attached the windlass brakes and connecting links.  Luckily I hadn't glued those down yet - I found one of my soldered joints to have broken.

 

And a final photo showing the two lower masts.  The masts have been tapered and cut to length, only requiring flats and rebates where a host of spar related hardware goes.

 

Cheers,

 

Elia

 

[Perls]

Hi Elia,

 

I can't believe it's taken until today to find this log. WOW! The overall level of craftsmanship is unbelievable and something to which I can only aspire.

 

The "try, fail, ponder, adjust, try agin, fail, ponder,....." Is something I can completely relate to. I know some might find it amusing but today I spent 3 hours trying to fabricate an iron wye for the the bowsprit on the Smuggler. I think I could do one now in about 10 minutes. I wished I had found this log earlier since it was through trial and error I stumbled upon using different solders with different melting points.

 

Anyway, thank you for sharing this terrific build, the things you've discovered and also for the encouragement you have shown me.

 

Best,

Steve

 

ps. I've come to share your fondness for American fishing schooners. I spent a couple of hours last night going through Chapelle's AFS fantasizing about which one I would like to attempt as my first scratch build when my skills get there. S.

Edited September 2, 2014 by Perls

[russ]

Elia:

Those vertical bulkheads on deck are a curious feature. I have not seen that sort of thing before. What is their purpose?

 

Russ

[Alfons]

Really nice work Elia, the photos are also beautiful. Good to have you back!

 

/Alfons.