HMS Vanguard by RMC - FINISHED - Amati/Victory Models - scale 1:72

[AON]

found the following at: http://www.animatedknots.com/rope1.php?LogoImage=L..&Website=

 

Z Twist (Right Hand Lay) & S twist (Left Hand Lay)

Rope Lay

Most three-strand rope has a "Z" twist or a "Right Hand" lay (as the strands progress away from a viewer, they rotate clockwise). What is rarely known is that this is inherited from early recognition that Right Hand laid Hemp was stronger than Left Hand laid Hemp. A Left Hand lay or an "S" twist is normal for steel cables and used to be more commonly found in cotton rope where the Right Hand lay offered no benefit.

[RMC]

Good grief. I had no idea.  I thought rope was rope .. so there you are.

 

I'm off for the weekend where I will contemplate this information over a glass or two.  Thank you both for your efforts.

[RMC]

Alan: in the rope website you recommended, there are a couple of suspicious characters in ads on the leftside of the reference material. They come from Lugarno - the suburb in which I live.  Is this spooky or just a product of technology that I haven't caught up with?

[aliluke]

I guess this right hand left hand thing is very interesting but when you look at a model at 1:64 can you really tell which is which?

 

Bob - yep those left hand pop up dudes know that I'm in Wellington. We are no longer safe...

[AON]

I will admit that one lay rope being stronger than the other seems like a load of cow dung to me.

I have never heard it before and of course anything you discover on the inter-web should be taken with a large dose of salt.

 

I've be looking through my dad's Manual of Seamanship BR67 Vol. 1 1937

page 95 Chapter 3

 

Cordage

 

Yarns are made of Hemp laid up right handed

Strands consist of a number of yarns formed together, the number depending on the size of the rope formed; those intended for right-handed rope are formed left-handed, and vice versa.

A Hawser Laid Rope has three strands, and is laid up the opposite way to the strands. They are usually right-handed. The size of rope is measured by its circumference.

Hemp can be white or tarred. It is used for running rigging, hemp hawsers and small boat cables.  The tarred variety is used when subject to continuous exposure to weather and sea.

 

it then goes on to explain how to determine the strength of rope and does not suggest one lay is stronger than another.

 

If someone has more information on uses for opposite hand rope I'd love to know!

I just know my use of both handed steel wire rope on hoists (1975/76) kept the hook centered and laid naturally into the grooves on the drum.

[RMC]

Well Im not sure what to make of all this. At scale 1:72 does it make any real difference?   I had thought that when I first found that there were two types of ropes, that RH rope may be easier to coil one way LH easier to coil the other and from what Alan has written, this is likely the case.  I certainly found in rigging the guns, that the thread supplied refused to go where I wanted it to go, and the larger diameter threads did not look very life-like, nor easy to work with.

 

I have only just arrived back from a few days away and will look at BE's Pegasus when I get a chance.  We have had some amazingly bad weather (about 100mm of horizontal rain, 100km/h winds and huge seas) and I have things to do as a consequence.

 

Thank you all for your interest and research.

[Blue Ensign]

Hi Bob,

 

Here's a pic of the Morope left and right hand lay line

 

 

Whether it really matters at 1:64 scale or smaller I doubt. Very few people would notice the difference or realise the significance.

 

Of late I've been having second thoughts about using Morope.

 

On the positive side it has great definition, and no fuzz, but I find it more frustrating to work with. It needs to be sealed before every cut to stop it unravelling and certainly at the smaller diameter lines I have used thus far on rigging the Longboat it seems to have a life of it's own. It is certainly more springy than natural fibres which effectively  prevents imparting any 'sag' to lines.

 

The other annoyance I find with it is unravelling the coils it is supplied in. I have singularly failed as yet to transfer a coil to a spool without spending a frustrating amount of time trying to untangle the line.

 

So I guess you pays your money and takes your choice,

 

The crunch time hasn't arrived for me as yet, so I've a little time to make a final decision..

 

Cheers,

 

B.E.

[AON]

Regarding the Morope unravelling and twisting.... I wonder if it is comprised of strands made of yarns and whether they are wound opposite to each other?

This is supposed to keep it from unravelling easily and also possibly tame it somewhat for coiling.

[Blue Ensign]

Don't know Alan, but unravelling is a feature of polyester line, needs to be sealed with a spot of ca although I've found that Gutermann 100% polyester sewing thread is a lot better than Morope in retaining its twist when cut.

 

B.E.

[amateur]

Lees shows a picture of cable laid ropes and shroud laid ropes having opposing twists.

 

shrouds.jpg

 

Unfortunately, the cable laid rope is shown with a left hand twist and the shroud laid one with a right hand twist!

The opposite of what I expected.

No, it is exactly what you should expect: take two peices of brass wire, and try to make it look like shrould laid: you will notice that you have to turn your wires counter-clockwise (which is left)

 

I don't think most viewers of our models will notice the cable-shrould difference in a model scal 1:64. Also the difference in the way the shroulds are round the dead-eyes will be lost to the average spectator. But it is the builder who decedes....

 

Springy rope is a nightmare: I am currently doing the rigging of the Prins Willem (Corel 1:100), and the yards are not heavy enough to counterbalance the springyness of the kit provided rope. Quite frustrating....

 

Jan

Edited August 21, 2014 by amateur

[RMC]

Well the Morope business certainly provoked rather more passion than I expected. Thanks for all your contributions..

 

I have been doing a bit of deck planking. I hadn't heard of a margin plank, nor joggling before. I got hold of a book by Keith Julier and used it as a guide to both the pattern of planking and the rules for joggling etc. I have now done the front deck.  In the followning photos the margin planks are only dry-fitted as I would like to put another coat of red paint on the on the sides.  The deck planks have not been scraped back/sanded nor coated with polyurethane.

 

I first dry-fitted the last deck plank and the margin plank. Working on both planks enabled a little more leeway in adjusting the fit. Once there was a good fit, the last deck plank was glued in place, leaving the margin plank dry-fitted, but firmly in place.

 

The edge over the lower deck has not yet been trimmed.

 

Edited August 22, 2014 by RMC

[aliluke]

Hi Bob

I'm sure you are sick of the rope discussion but I'm going to add that the springiness of the Morope is the very reason I like it. I found on my AVS that it allows you to create a taut looking rope at a variety of tensions. This made doing the shrouds a breeze. That said B.E is right - it is very hard to get it to drape naturally and it does have a life of its own at times.

 

Anyway - onwards. Your decking looks great - tight and accurate. I think adding margins and nibbing, joggling or hooding the planks at the margins adds a great deal to the model's appearance and is well worth the extra effort.

[RMC]

Yes Alistair, I'm really pleased with the decking so far.  There are some quite demanding bits to come ....

 

Last words (from me at least)  I'll use the Morope on the shrouds and for the anchor rope (it comes in 2.5mm diameter as specified in the kit). I'll think about what to use in the other applications.  My only concern with the Morope is it 'having a life of its own'. That may be fine for people (though I can think of some exceptions); for rope - it's a bit of a pain.

[RMC]

I have now finished most of the deck planking on the rear deck. My concern has been to make sure the planking from the front deck along the sides over the lower deck matched up with the planks on the rear. In the process I found my centre plank over the rear deck is a little less than 0.5 mm off centre so that adjustments had to be made.  Moreover the planks varied in width from about 2.9mm (only a few) to 3.3mm (again only a few). Most were about 3.1 +/- mm. On balance these differences  are an advantage as it is possible to adjust the overall width of planking on either side of centre by choosing planks of the appropriate width.  I used a four butt shift as my pattern of planking. After each four planks on either side of centre I checked the gap between the planking I laid from the centre of the rear deck to the planks extended from the front deck.  If there was a difference in the gaps on the two sides I adjusted the total width of the next 4 planks laid on either side of the centre.

 

The first photo shows the gap to be filled on either side.

 

Now the completed decking.  The planks on both sides fit nicely - to my profound relief.

 

Towards the rear, provision has been made for the screen bulkhead assembly.  The planking behind the screen has yet to be completed.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Edited August 27, 2014 by RMC

[RMC]

Except for the planking behind the screen, the deck planking and the margin planks (dry fitted) are complete. I have used a Stanley knife blade to scrape back the planks on the front deck (it gives a better finish than sanding I think), though there is still some work to be done on it.  I have not yet done the tree nails.  I will do those before I coat the lot in polyurethane.

 

This will be my last post for about 6 or 7 weeks. I am going on holiday on Friday, so the whole lot will stay as is. I just hope I remember where I put things when I get back.

 

The first few photos below show the margin planks on the rear deck. The margin planks  were very time consuming, but really make a difference to the finish of the deck.

 

The last few photos show the semifinished front deck.  I'm pleased with the result.

[aliluke]

Every thing I've seen has the chimney facing forward. Except for those pictures that have it facing aft . I reckon it should face with the wind = forwards. Being baffled that works fine for me.

 

Wonderful work in all regards. I look forward to more.

[RMC]

Thanks Arthur and Alistair.

 

Fortunately the chimney is only dry-fitted in these photos.  It does seem rather odd though that the chimney should point towards the stern. I guess that's why I put the thing as shown.  At least I have learned the very hard way that before gluing - check the plans ... and again.

[RMC]

I returned from holiday this morning and am looking forward to getting back to work on my Vanguard. 

 

Unfortunately my camera gave up the ghost while I was away, and I now have a potential problem.  My defunct camera  took photos of 7.1 megapixels (it will soon became apparent that my ignorance regarding all of this stuff is profound), the replacement I bought is a 16 megapixel job. (I deliberatlely didn't buy one of the 22 megapixel cameras as I thought this would almost certainy exceed the maximum file size for the MSW website.)

 

Now I wonder whether the Jpeg file created by the 16mp  camera is too large to download onto the website.  Moreover I have yet to figure out how to download photos from the new camera to my computer. The manual supplied is couched in the usual hieroglyphics so I can forsee much gnashing of teeth in the near future.  Advice is encouraged.

[aliluke]

Hi Bob

I use Photoshop to resize my images, I also use it to saturate the images until they are more like the real colours that I see. Generally they are at 4000 x whatever and click in at 2.5 MB. By resizing them down to 1900 x whatever I just get under the limit and produce big images on the forum. Photoshop is expensive but I have it for other uses. There are other free programmes that perform the same function - Google away!

 

I'm often frustrated by how small some images are here. I want to zoom in. At the same time my images give me moments where - "Hey that can't be seen by the naked eye!"

[RMC]

Here is an experiment.

 

Well I just found out that the file IS too big.

 

Alistair: i don't think I would get my monies worth out of photo shop so I'll look at some of the alternatives first at least.

Edited October 16, 2014 by RMC

[GuntherMT]

For simple image resizing (and rotating and cropping) I just use Paint.  If you have Window's, you have Paint.

For a Photoshop equivalent if you want to do more advanced stuff, check out GIMP 2 ( http://www.gimp.org/ ), it's a fantastic program that's probably at least as powerful as Photoshop (your mileage may vary, I'm not an expert) and it's free.

[RMC]

Hi Brian

 

Thanks for you reply. I have just been playing with Paint. I will try 1700X1150 which should get me under 2 megs. I'll try that now.

 

 

 

This didn't work out - so back to the drawing board.

Edited October 16, 2014 by RMC

[GuntherMT]

Seems to work just fine.  I typically use 1200x900 in my log, but I've seen others use larger like yours. 

 

I like the 1200x size myself just because it fits nicely on the screen, but is still fairly large.  Of course I'm spoiled and have 27.5" monitors, so I guess I should consider that a 1200 pixel image on my screen might be larger than a 1200 pixel image on someone's smaller screen.

I also keep all the original image files from my camera in a separate folder, so I can always get back to the original image size without any editing, which in the case of my old camera is 2816 x 2112.

[RMC]

I have no idea where the picture went to.  But the 1700x1150 gave a file size of 114.42 KB so I'll work up from there.

 

The following photo is 2048x1536 - the same size as my old camera's photos. The bottom of the photo has been chopped off and despite a lot of playing around I can't get the full picture. 

Edited October 16, 2014 by RMC

[GuntherMT]

I have no idea where the picture went to.  But the 1700x1150 gave a file size of 114.42 KB so I'll work up from there.

 

It was there after you posted, but it's gone now. 

[RMC]

I'm having all sorts of trouble in resizing the picture. I have tried 1900x1425 and this only shows a part of the photo in Paint. It's very frustrating. I will try to download it now to show what I mean.

[RMC]

The post above is out of order. Strange things are happening.  Coming back home last night the inflight entertainment for my seat on two flights went down so I'm definitly not winning my battle against technology at the moment.

[GuntherMT]

Paint will not resize the image to fit your screen automatically.  The entire image is there, you just have to scroll around to see it all.

 

Quick Paint tutorial for resizing.

Step 1 - Copy your original image to a folder to edit it from (you can also just do a 'save as' after editing, but if you forget and just click save, you'll over write the original).

Step 2 - Open your copied image in Paint.  This image will be far too large to see all at once, so it will look something like this (my Paint after opening an original sized image):

 

Now if you don't want to crop or rotate first, just click on the 'Resize' button:

 

That will bring up a pop-up menu as seen here:

 

Click on the little radio button for "Pixels", enter the pixel value you want in the Horizontal box (leave the Maintain Aspect Ratio check box checked), then click on OK at the bottom of the pop-up.

 

The result should be your image resized to the new size.  If that new size is too big to fit inside the window of Paint, then you still won't be able to see it all at once.

Here I've resized down to 900x horizontal, and as you can see it now all appears inside the window, whereas the original 2816x did not.

 

If you want to see your entire image, even if it's too big to fit in the window, change to the 'View' tab:

 

Once on the View tab, click on the Zoom Out button once or twice until you can see it all.

 

Edit: If none of this helps, or even if it does, let me know when you are done with it and I'll delete this post.

Edited October 16, 2014 by GuntherMT

[RMC]

Brian, thanks very much for all your trouble.

 

I have just done some more playing and this time it may have worked.  In any event please don't delete your post as it is a really valuable resource - and probably a better way of doing than I have found (assuming I can remember what I have done).

 

 

Success. Joy.

Edited October 16, 2014 by RMC

[RMC]

another test

 

Edited October 16, 2014 by RMC