ancre La Mutine and La Topaze by Gregor – 1:64 scale - French Schooners - La Jacinthe Type

[Gregor]

It was in summer 2014 when I had the idea to build the French light Schooner “La Jacinthe” after the plans of Jean Boudriot. Together with five sisters she was launched in 1823, and in the following year five more ships were built, among them “La Mutine” (“The Rebel”).

As my cutter HMC Sherbourne she should be in 1:64 scale, so I scanned the plans and traced bulkheads and false keel in a way so I could build everything with plywood of 3mm. For that I used Adobe Illustrator, so I could laser cut the pieces in the FabLab of the local technical university.

 

  

 

“Printed out” in late summer, you can see here the bulkheads, false keel and deck, a few small parts and a piece for a jig that will help me to build a cutter. When I wanted to start building, alas, I saw that the false keel was totally warped. So I had to go to the university again, and cut everything again, but this time in MDF. And while I was at it, I did everything twice.

 

 

Just for testing purpose I cut keel, stem etc., I will user these parts as templates when working with pear wood. In the upper left corner you can see a jig that will act as a bulkhead former.

But why do everything twice?

I simply couldn’t decide: build the “Jacinthe” or the “Mutine”? The latter is shown in Boudriot’s book, after a refit in 1835. The main differences are closed and elevated bulkheads, new deck layout, iron pumps and anchor chains, a steering wheel, new chains and a new bowsprit, set in a different angle – in general, the “Mutine” appears much more seaworthy than the very lightly built “Jacinthe”.

So the plan is to build both: a fully rigged “Jacinthe” in natural pear wood, and a hull model of a black-painted, coppered “Mutine”. The twin build should not be boring or repetitive. Well, have to build two identical hulls, but all the other details mentioned promise to be sufficiently different from each other to make this a very interesting project.

 

Here a look of the two schooners, “La Jacinthe” (1823) ans “La Mutine” (1835):

 

  

 

  

 

The foundation is already laid: the two sisters can hardly be told apart yet.

 

  

 

This will be a slow build, and quite an adventure; my only experience in building wooden models is the Sherbourne kit, which I modified to my liking and where I learned the pleasure of working from scratch.

 

 

And as I have to do the heavy sanding outside, progress is dependent of the weather (yes, the with stuff is snow, for those having the privilege of living in a moderate climate).

Cheers,

Gregor

 

 

 

[Michel]

Good job Grégor !!

 

Do you build rigging and sails ?

[Omega1234]

Hi Gregor

 

Great to start to two beautiful models.  I will definitely be following along.

 

All the best!

 

Cheers

 

Patrick

[egkb]

Hey There Gregor.. Am looking forward to following your new build along.. Thanks for putting the Link into your Sherbourne Log.

 

All The Best With It.

 

Eamonn

[tkay11]

Wonderful to watch another build by you, Gregor. I am intrigued by the laser cutting process, but especially by the deck. It looks as though you have used the service to inscribe all the planking and other deck details. Is this correct? If so, are there special instructions for the cutters to burn only  a fraction of a millimetre into the deck for those details?

 

Excuse my ignorance about laser cutting, but looks so useful that I thought it would be nice to find out.

 

Tony

[Kurt Johnson]

Gregor, Knowing the Sherbourne was your first build, I can't wait too see what you accomplish with these two! I really like your style of modelling.

 

Kurt

[ofencer29350]

if it could help u you can see my post of la recouvrance one of the new sister ship build in 1990 with the plan of la jacinthe

[Gregor]

Thank you for all the welcomes. It will be a slow project, so spectators will need something with more nutrition value than popcorn…

@Michel: It's way too early to make definitive plans about the rigging and sails, but I'm sure "La Jacinthe" will get a complete set of mast and spars, standing rigging and most of the running rigging (as I did with the Sherbourne cutter).

@Tony: Laser cutting is basically a form of printing (ever since we left the old matrix printers behind). You hit print in your vector graphics editor (Adobe Illustrator in my case), choose the laser cutter instead of a printer in the usual dialog window, and set the parameters, like you would do with printer options. In my case, the laser cutter had to cut red paths (RGB 255/0/0) and engrave green paths (RGB 0/255/0), set in 0.001pt. In another options dialog, you have to choose the parameters for energy, frequency and speed, depending on the material you are trying to cut (I was very glad to see that there were pre-sets for MDF and plywood).

 

 

In this manual (https://www.epiloglaser.com/downloads/pdf/fusion-web-10.30.13.pdf) for a laser cutter of the type I used you will find more information than you ever wanted to know…

 

Cheers,

Gregor

[tkay11]

That's wonderfully helpful, Gregor. Thanks very much.

 

I note you have treenails only on one side of the deck. Is there a reason for that?

 

Tony

[Gregor]

You're welcome, Tony.

Boudriot has a clever way in his drawings; in a split image of the deck he can show its basic construction (very important: the position of the rail stanchions) on the port side, and the position of the deck furniture on the larboard side, including the nails etc. You can see that in the picture in my first post 

Gregor

[tkay11]

Aah! I had thought you were using the etched surface as the final surface.

 

Tony

[Gregor]

Shipbuilding time is rare at the moment, and I had to wait for a few dry days for much sanding outside. The space between the bulkheads were closed either with solid fillers (layers of plywood) or with little pieces. Here is the result:

 

 

 

The two sisters are still looking identical - I call them "The Blue" and "The Red" hull. Now I can plan the next steps: The planking and the construction of the two versions of the bulwarks and transoms.

 

Cheers

Gregor

[Gregor]

Finally, an update: While thinking about constriction details of both hulls (and their differences) and trying to get a better plan or copy for La Mutine I made most parts of the four carronades. A young man in training to become an airplane mechanic turned the brass barrels. They are 19 mm long, to give you a scale. The parts you see here are only loosely fitted, they will be blackened.

The carriages are made from spare walnut and will be remade in pear (once I have the wood), only the ones for la Mutine will be painted black.

Here the pictures, with greetings,

Gregor

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

[Gregor]

Too many things at the same time - here’s one of the culprits: Since I bought a second hand copy of Petrejus’ book I had to build an Irene (originally another Langton kit, a cruizer class brig).

 

 

But that’s not the subject here. While waiting for the pear wood I had ordered I made a mold for a cutter )much the size of my Irene), then the wood arrived, and here is my first scratch built hull (I got much help from Tony’s log again). It’s 10 cm long and astonishingly light. Sadly, it would not swim. The hull will be painted black, though, so there is some room for cheating. The most important lesson I learned: Never force the wood and never trust the glue. I will bend the wood properly next time before glueing!

 

 

Some small progress with the schooners was finally made. Two new false decks and other parts were drawn an cut, and now, after I finish the cutter, I can finally begin the planking.

 

 

Cheers,

Gregor

[tkay11]

Beautiful job, Gregor!

 

Tony

[mtaylor]

Looking very good, Gregor.   And that miniature Irene looks great also.   You should open a build log just for her.

[Omega1234]

Hi Gregor

 

That's a real juggling act that you've got on there with all the different hulls going at the same time. Great job on all of them.

 

I'm looking forward to following along.

 

Cheers

 

Patrick

[Gregor]

Thank you all! The juggling of hulls comes to an end: The cutter has been completed, and I will concentrate my efforts on La Mutine (I will not touch any hull smaller than 30 cm for some time!). The Irene is safely stowed away for the foreseeable future (but I will open a log for her when I return to her).

 

Here some pics of the cutter:

 

 

 

 

Cheers,

Gregor

[Gregor]

Research made me to adjust my project: I will build two schooners of the Jacinthe type: La Mutine and La Topaze (http://denis-59.forumpro.fr/t792-la-topaze-goelette-de-1823). As I described before, both are based on the same basic draft which was distributed to the different dockyards (each of them to build two ships) in 1823/24.

 

 

The original plan of the Jacinthe type schooner shows a mostly open bulwark. While helping the sailing qualities of the ship, this arrangement does nothing to protect men and equipment from the elements. The dockyards addressed this problem in different ways. La Mutine had a completely closed bulwark; La Topaze got a less watertight bulwark to make the construction as light as possible: The lowest of the three planks is 50% thicker than the planks above.

 

 

Also the hulls of La Mutine (built in Lorient) and La Topaze (Cherbourg) show interesting differences: Only La Mutine has wales. Instead of sanding them down at the bow and stem, I cheated with the planking a bit to make the wales stand out amidships.

 

 

La Topaze has no visible wales. They are not shown in the original draft of 1823, and are missing in a contemporary model of the Topaze (also the original draft of La Mutine, sent to Lorient in 1823 does not show any wales, but they appear in the plan published in 1835).

 

 

The last difference to show here is the position of the gun ports.

 

 

I hope to finish the hulls till the end of the year. As now both models will be painted and coppered, I made a few shortcuts while planking below the waterline.

 

Cheers,

Gregor

[aviaamator]

Feel free to ask - how was carried out lifting work on this ship? As I lifted the anchor? In the drawings no capstan or windlass. But in this drawing is!

[Gregor]

Hi aviaamator – thanks for the interesting question.

I’ve wondered about that myself, but sadly I haven’t found an answer yet. None of the Jacinthe type models (contemporary or modern) I know of have something like the capstan on the schooner from the Atlas du Génie Maritime you included in your posting, or a windlass.

Two contemporary models of French schooners (one from the 1^st empire, the other of the following Restauration period) on exhibit in the Musée de la Marine in Paris also show nothing of the sort, as does a drawing of a schooner from 1832 in the Atlas.

For now, it remains a mystery to me…

 

But here the schooners from the Paris museum:

 

    

 

    

[tkay11]

Could the mast tackles have been used?

 

Tony

[aviaamator]

Tony! Have you heard of overkill?

[Gregor]

(Greetings, Tony!)

Well, there must have been some tackles involved in the process of stowing the anchors on or below deck.

Here an example (a fantastic model of the Topaze by Bruno Orsel, http://denis-59.forumpro.fr/t792-la-topaze-goelette-de-1823):anchors secured just in front of the tiller.

 

Or here the open main hatch of the Mutine (from the Atlas du Génie Maritime), with an anchor stowed below (no 42 shows the holes where the anchor chains come from).

 

Beeing a landsman, I wouldn't even speculate as to what you can and cannot do with tackles, but I always thought they were used to lift things...

 

Gregor

 

 

 

 

[aviaamator]

What is the weight of the anchor? According to my calculations, about 500kg. And along with the chain? And as the chain is pulled, by hand?

[Gregor]

According to Boudriot's research, the big bower anchor weights 390 kg, the smaller kedge anchor 95 kg, without chain (La Mutine) or cable (La Topaze). As said before, I have no idea how the men handled their anchors, yet. All I know so far is that no mechanical help is shown on models or plans. More research is needed, but that is part of the fun.

Cheers,

Gregor

[aviaamator]

Gregor, Your will, go wrong(possible)way or find your way. But I think that on a military ship must be installed capstan.

Edited December 13, 2015 by aviaamator

[ofencer29350]

gregor ,of course the topase by bruno orsel is the better i have ever seen and now he is building the louise:

 

 

http://modelisme-naval-bois.lebonforum.com/t848-louise

 

but you are in the good way!

[ofencer29350]

in your picture of la topase ,it 's the replacement anchors!

 

the real are on the side and got an capstan and they are riged  on board,it's always like that today on the "recouvrance"!

[Gregor]

Hi ofencer29350 - thanks for your reference to the French schooner La Recouvrance. I'm very glad; I didn't know this replica project before. The Iris type schooners were conceived only a few years before the schooners of the Jacinthe type, there's a wealth of pictures there on the web (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/La_Recouvrance_(schooner)).

And it's true, la Recouvrance has a windlass of a type which is shown on many plans of contemporary French cutters; you can see this detail here perfectly: http://www.portde.info/index.php?post/2008/04/07/72-la-recouvrance-copie-d-un-aviso-du-type-iris-partie-2

I really don't think the sailors hauled in the chains or anchors by hand alone. But I'm still curious why this detail, be it capstan or windlass, is missing on most the plans and models (there might be a windlass in the forecastle of the older schooner in my posting above, in the dark).

I often refer here to the Atlas du Génie maritime - there is now a restored website where you can access all the plans for yourself, if interested. Just type "goélette" if you want to search for schooners: https://web.archive.org/web/20120113075641/http://www.servicehistorique.sga.defense.gouv.fr/02fonds-collections/banquedocuments/planbato/atlas/rec.php

Thanks again,

Gregor