HMS Victory1:96 Sratchbuild Project

Part 1 - Introduction

The above picture of the finished Victory model has a backdrop reminiscent of the Portsmouth sky as I remember it on my first visit back in 1970 – gray, cold and bleak.

Hello everyone. I am new to the forum and so far have been impressed by its content and the work of so many modelers. In this build log I want to make some contribution in support of the goal of MSB to help preserve the art of Model Ship Building. This hobby has given me many happy hours and I hope others may benefit from some of what I have learned along the way.

In this series I intend to retrace the progress of constructing Victory at a scale of 1:96 from scratch, a project that began in 1976 and reached completion at the end of 2009. The very long time to complete this project had many periods of inactivity, some measured in years. Family and career priorities came first. About half the work on the model was completed after my retirement in 2002, but even that stretch had breaks. This was my first “real” ship modeling project and I knew when I started that I was biting off a lot. The learning curve was steep. For me the learning process and the need to solve the many problems that arise in a project like this are primary factors in maintaining my interest and I am glad I started with something this challenging.

Victory from astern, flying the huge white ensign.

This will not be a step by step “how to build Victory” practicum. I will try to walk the reader through the steps in the process that I followed, glossing over a lot of very well traveled ground. I will try to cover in detail processes that I developed and/or used to do specific challenging tasks, for example, building the 1:96 plank on frame ships boats, constructing the tiny ships wheel assembly to scale, making gun port door hinges, etc. I hope this approach will attract the interest of a range from novice to expert. I consider myself to be somewhere well in between these two extremes.

This picture shows the beauty of Victory’s lines, the complexity of her forward rigging, her graceful bow structure and her formidable armament.

Victory was commissioned by Parliament in 1758. Her keel was laid at Chatham in 1759 and she was launched after some delay in her construction, in 1765. She was designed by Sir Thomas Slade, Surveyor of the Navy from 1755 to 1771 and is considered the masterpiece of his many designs. She was the fourth English ship of the line to bear this name. Her 100 guns on three decks designates her a “First Rate” ship of the line. She had a length of 186 feet on the lower gun deck, a breadth of 51 feet and had a displacement of 2142 tons. As a “ship of the line” her purpose was to bring maximum gunnery to bear against enemy ships in fleet action. The guns at the time were measured by the weight of projectile – usually iron round shot. Victory’s guns ranged from 12 to 32 pounds, plus two 68 pound, short range carronades, mounted on the forecastle. Her normal crew of over 800 men was needed to serve these guns – and of course, to sail the ship.

The complexity of Victory’s rigging even without staysail and studdingsail rigging is amazing.

Several years ago, friends and relatives began to express interest in the Victory project and I began to circulate regular progress reports to them. These included pictures, descriptions of the work and often background information that would be appropriate to a group on interested non-modelers. I will use some of this material in this series, but the readers of this forum will, I hope, be interested in a lot more depth. I will do my best to meet these needs. In this first post I have interspersed pictures of the finished model with text covering introductory material and background. I will start in on the actual work in subsequent posts. Questions and comments are of course encouraged. If more detail on something is required let me know and I will try to respond.

Under the foretop during the build.

HMS Victory is perhaps the most famous warship in British History. She was the flagship of Lord Horatio Nelson at the battle off Cape Trafalgar in 1805, which was the decisive battle of the Napoleonic Wars. Following the French Revolution, these wars raged across Europe as the hereditary monarchies (Britain, Russia, Austria, Prussia) fought the French to restore the Bourbon throne. They also feared the spread of liberalism ushered in by the French Revolution and the ambitions of its heir, Napoleon Bonaparte. Although Trafalgar ended the threat to Britain of a French invasion by confining Napoleon to the continent and putting a stranglehold his trade, ten more years would pass before he would be finally defeated at Waterloo in 1815. Throughout 20 years of war, the Royal Navy maintained a constant blockade of Napoleon’s Continental Ports, a demanding task for men and ships. Victory was one of these ships.

Fleet actions were rare, so most of the life of seamen consisted of make-work drudgery and boredom, except for those who actually sailed the ship. Blockade service demanded that men be constantly aloft or on deck in all weather to adjust sails and maneuver the ship against the Atlantic or Mediterranean tides and winds. The least inattention could lose the ship against the coastline. Victory engaged in a few major fleet actions during her career including the action off Ushant in 1778, the Siege of Toulon in 1793, the action off Hyeres in 1795, the Battle of Cape St Vincent in 1797 and Trafalgar in 1805. The most famous of all British seamen, Lord Nelson, was struck down on her quarterdeck during Trafalgar and died below decks with the knowledge that he had defeated the French. Nelson lies in St Paul’s Cathedral in London. Victory stands in drydock today at the Portsmouth Navy Yard on the south coast of England.

The head structure showing the figurehead, main rails and the port boomkin, which carried the fore course tack.

Background to the Model Project

As a young child of 8 or 9, my interest in ship models was ignited by a model of the whaling bark Wanderer, which was built by my uncle, Emidio Tosti. This was one of several ships he had built by that time and throughout his long life he built many, all with consummate skill and meticulous attention to detail. He loved building these ships and was devoted to this work for more than 75 years. He finished his 1:48 scale model of the Victory at the age of 96 and completed another before retirement from the hobby at 98. He passed away in 2008 approaching the age of 102.

Although I had built some small crude models as a child, my interest lay mostly dormant. In the late 60’s I started a model of USS Constitution, but lacking skills, tools, time, and good historical data, abandoned the project. On a cold day in 1970, while living in England, my wife Dottie and I visited the Victory at Portsmouth, the first of a number of such visits I would make in later years. Then, in 1975, I came across a book entitled Anatomy of Nelson’s Ships by Dr C. Nepean Longridge. Dr. Longridge had been a physician in the British merchant marine until his retirement around 1929, at which time he began construction of his now famous model of HMS Victory. He worked diligently on this 1:48 scale model until 1940, when the beginning of World War II caused him to return to sea. In 1945 he resumed work on the model and completed it in the early 1950’s. His book, written at that time, describes the construction of actual ships of this period and the detailed process of building his beautiful model. This model is on permanent exhibit at the Science Museum in London. I have been fortunate enough to visit this model many times over the years – with my little notebook.

Dottie at Portsmouth 1970

The work of Dr. Longridge was beyond anything I had seen before in ship modeling. The attention to detail and the authenticity of every aspect of the model was impressive and inspiring. I immediately began planning my own model. I decided to work at a smaller scale, 1/8 inch to 1 foot or 1:96. This would yield a model of manageable size with overall dimensions of about 40 inches long by 16 inches wide by 32 inches high. Based on the information in the book and some other limited sources I began to prepare drawings for the model in early 1976 and began work on the hull later that year. The structure of the hull and below waterline planking was finished by the late 1970’s. During the 1980’s work progressed only intermittently on the topside planking and the stern of the ship. Starting in 1995, I began to work intensively on the model during Christmas Vacation breaks. It became an annual ritual. By the time of my retirement in 2002, the model was about 50% complete. In late 2005, work to finish the model began in earnest - an effort averaging about 10 to15 hours per week.

The waist, boats, belfry, spare anchors, etc.

My goals for the model were historical accuracy, precision in details and clear representation of the ships beautiful lines. I am not a perfectionist by nature, but I tied, not always successfully, to follow the rule: Good enough, isn’t.

The model is constructed from scratch of various hardwoods, brass and copper sheet and wire and thread of Irish linen and cotton polyester. Aside from two or three small brass screws and a number of brass belaying pins, there are no purchased parts, fastenings or commercially cut wood in the model.

The area around the main mast

The framing material of the model consists of mahogany, maple and cherry, fastened by hundreds of small wooden pegs or “tree nails” and Titebond Wood Glue. Exterior planking below the waterline is cherry, fastened with glue and nails made from copper wire. The underwater hull is sheathed with 3700 embossed copper plates fastened with contact cement. Upper planking is of cherry and European Boxwood, fastened with glue and small diameter boxwood pegs. Lower decks are of maple planks and visible decks are of European Boxwood. Masts are of boxwood and Yards are of Gabon Ebony. Rigging lines down to about 4 inches actual circumference were spun into the correct size using Linen thread on a specially made rope machine. Smaller lines are mostly mercerized cotton polyester thread in various sizes. Wooden rigging parts like blocks and deadeyes are made from boxwood. Deadeyes and standing rigging lines are blackened using acrylic ink. In the interest of showing off the sheer lines and graceful woodwork, there is (almost) no paint on the model.

The foot of the mizzen mast on the poop deck with flemished lines.

Tools and Resources

Machinery and tools are required to build a model of this type. Normal woodworking tools (table saw, bandsaw, jigsaw, planes, etc.) are needed to reduce large sized wood slabs to small-scale shipyard timber. A small table saw (2”diameter) was used to cut parts and planks to size. Small-scale machine tools included an old Unimat SL Lathe/Milling Machine and a Sherline Vertical Milling Machine. Specially built machines include the rope machine and a machine to “serve”, that is, to wrap lines with fine thread. Many small hand tools are needed – too numerous to mention.

Another view of the foretop.

Good modeling information for Victory was scarce in 1976 but since then a lot more reference material has become available, which I used to supplement Longridge book. A book by John McKay called The 100 Gun Ship Victory features many excellent detailed drawings of all parts of the ship and it’s rigging. In addition, I have acquired and used a number of contemporary books, which became available in reprint, which give actual Admiralty Specifications of the time. These include The Shipbuilders Repository, 1788, Steel’s Mastmaking, Sailmaking and Rigging, 1794, and The Young Sea Officers Sheet Anchor, 1819. Other key references include James Lee’s Masting and Rigging of English Ships of War, Peter Goodwin’s Construction and Fitting of English Ships of War 1650-1850, and Brian Lavery’s Arming and Fitting of English Ships of War 1600-1815.

Below the main channel.

In the next post I will describe the drafting of plans from the Longridge book drawings and focus in detail on a few drafting techniques that may be of interest Please stay tuned.

Ed Tosti

Gene,A verygood question and an issue I struggled with for awhile. I intend to cover this interesting problem in part 3 or 4, but here's a preview. The plates on Victory are 1' X 4' with the top edge slightly overlapping the bottom edge of the next row above which means they are put on starting at the top (unlike house shingles). Apparently they concurrently started the lower half at the same time because in the middle there is a row that overlaps both its neighboring rows. Longridge used copper nails to fasten his plates I'm guessing on about 4" centers, but his plates were 1/4" X 1" which put his nails on about .06" centers. This was an amazing modeling feat, and no way could I do 100,000 nails on .03" centers on 1/8" X 1/2" plates. The first picture shows some of my plates just below the main wale.

I cut my plates, 1/4" X 1/2" from .003" copper shim stock with a razor blade on glass. At this size I would have a half plate overlap. I decided to emboss my plates on their top half with a simple stamping device made from a piece of maple and some small nails. Here is a picture of the device.

Here is a picture of the device with a just stamped plate and below that is a picture of the device with a plate ready to tapped with a hammer to emboss it.

The next picture is a closeup of the stamp face and the next a picture of the back of the stamp. The stamp is made using a piece of maple with a thickness just under the lentgh of the steel nails, about 1/4". Holes were centered using the xy feeds on the Unimat set up as a drill press moved across then down on about .03" centers. Drill size was just under the nail size. Nails were tapped into the holes from the bottom protruding just above the top of the wood face. Strips were put on to position the plate and a test plate stamped using a piece of hard boxwood. If the plate is penetrated just file down the nails slightly. I made an extra grid of holes just in case, but it was never needed. Close to 4000 plates were embossed including the one I did today in the picture. Its not too bad but the first 3700 were better. The plates were fastened with contact cement. If I were doing this again, and I don't intend to, I would sand the back of the copper before cutting with maybe 220 grit paper in the hope that adhesion with the contact cement would be better. I will discuss this in more detail in the build log but you get the idea.

HMS Victory1:96 Sratchbuild Project

Part 2

The bow scanned from the final Sheer Plan

The first part of this series was introductory. The remaining parts will be much more hands on. As I said in the first part, this will not be a complete “how to scratch build Victory” practicum. Instead, it is my goal to provide a general overview of the stages of the work, but also to focus in-depth on specific work processes or solutions that may be interesting, solve a particular sticky problem, or in general, be helpful to modelers of different levels of expertise. These will be examples of how I solved various problems; there may be better ways. These solutions worked for me. Some I developed; some I simply used or adapted. This Part of the series is long and complicated, but I have included it because it addresses some key model drafting techniques. I have tried to make it clear and concise, but it is lengthy.

Drafting Plans and Patterns

This part of the series will focus on preparing for construction, specifically the drafting of model plans. For those already familiar with the techniques described here, I apologize. They are merely the application of basic drafting concepts to this Victory model. I hope others, new to making ship drawings, will find this helpful.

As I said in Part 1, in 1976 there were limited resources for building a model of this type. I could only locate one set of plans and they were quite expensive, above what I wanted to pay at that time. Also, I had an itch to do the plans myself. It was the beginning of an idea I had that ship modeling would be most rewarding if it encompassed and followed as much of the whole historical process as possible – not just model construction. For me, this approach has been very rewarding. Having said that, you do not need to make your own drawings to scratchbuild, and therefore this part may not be of interest to some modelers.

My primary source of information at the beginning of the project was the Longridge book, Anatomy of Nelson’s Ships, which I described in part one. The book includes many diagrams and a set of foldout drawings as well as a complete body plan. The Sailing Navy List, a reference book listing all sailing ships of the Royal Navy and the availability of archived plans for each, actually recommends the drawings in the book for modelers over actual available drafts. There are some drafts, archived in the National Maritime Museum in London, but they may be later restoration drafts, I m not sure and have not seen them.

None of the drawings in the book were to the scale I wanted to build, 1:96 or 1/8” to the foot. In the pre-PC/CAD era I redrafted these plans manually, adding detail and patterns, as necessary. This involved several weeks of effort before modeling could begin and additional work after that. Making of dimensioned sketches for various parts and details continued until almost the end of the project.

My well worn copy of Longridge, my source for drawings, instruction and inspiration.

The Sheer Plan

Historically, the first drawing to be made was the Sheer Plan. In architectural drafting terms this would be called a side elevation. The term Sheer Plan probably comes from the historical term “sheer plane” which means the view of the plane that shows the sheer line of the ship. This plan, which is independent of the shape of the hull, can be and was done first, because this plan is where the basic requirements of the vessel are described. This plan is a good place for to start because it is a fairly straightforward task, a good place to develop some drafting skills, and a means to get very familiar with the subject ship. Some level of drafting skills are needed when scratch building, even if using purchased model plans. There are always some details to be sketched or some complicated view to decipher. The best way to develop some of these skills is to make drawings.

An example of a sheer plan is shown below, a miniature version of my CAD sheer plan for the model I am currently building, 1:60 HMS Naiad, 1797. Sorry, but my scanner can’t handle the 30X40 sheets of my Victory drawings. A small part of that drawing is at the top of the page.

The sheer plan contains a lot of vital information for modeling that needs to be included on this plan or others that may be done to supplement this - as follows:

1. The basic reference lines upon which the drawing is made – the top of the keel, the fore and aft perpendiculars, the dead flat and the lines locating the frames. Laying these out is the first task in

making the drawing. Another horizontal line is also very import. That is the bottom of the keel, actually the bottom of the false keel, because this corresponds to the base on which the model will be built, so many dimensions will be measured from this line.

2. The shape of the centerline structure of the ship – of the keel the sternpost assembly (and rudder), the stern counters, the stem, the knee of the head and the beakhead.

3. The curved sheer lines and the external components that follow those lines, the wales, the various rails, the channels and most of the topside of the ship.

4. The curved lines of the decks (which are flatter than the sheer lines), the lines of the ports and the line of the top of the quarterdeck rail (which is often straight.)

5. The location and size of gunports, deadeyes and chains, forecastle timberheads, quarter gallery details, head rails and decoration, catheads, chesstrees, fenders, steps, etc.

6. The centerlines of the masts and bowsprit.

A scan from one of the deck plans – beams under the forecastle were later revised to replicate the original.

In addition to the sheer paln drawing I also drafted deck plans for those decks I intended to model, the lower, middle and upper gun decks, the quarterdeck, forecastle and poop deck. I also drafted plan and elevation views showing location and thickness of all the model frames. This was important to assure that the gun ports are in their correct locations, which in the real ship were between main frames. Making these drawings was a fairly straightforward duplication task and except for a couple of points, I will not go into detail. (I have been working on a document, now in draft form, which describes in detail, how to prepare a sheer plan for ships of this type, based on an Admiralty draft, a much more thorough process than I used for Victory. The process is based on a contemporary source published to assist aspiring 18th century naval architects. I may post this in a build log for my current project, HMS Naiad, 1797. However, if there are questions on drafting a sheer plan, I will try to answer them.)

I have not mentioned drawings of masts and rigging. All the masts, yards and other spars were made from information and diagrams in books, specifically the McKay book in the Anatomy of Ships series and Steel’s Elements of Mastmaking, Sailmaking and Rigging. Rigging was done using these two books and Longridge’s very thorough step by step descriptions. So, no drawings were done for masting and rigging.

One issue I will comment on is that of scaling the drawing from the original. Making these drawings involves taking measurements on the reference drawing and converting them to the appropriate scale. If you are working from, say, an Admiralty Draft, which is at a scale of ¼” to the foot, you could use an architects ¼” scale to measure feet and inches from the reference drawing then replicate them on your drawing using your scale. The source of error in this approach is limited to the reprographic error when prints were made and your measurement error. Both should be small. If you are using drawings in a book more care is needed. For whatever reason, I have found that these drawings are not always accurate to the stated scale. Check at least one known dimension on each book drawing, say for example, maximum hull breadth, to assure yourself the drawing has been printed accurately in the book. Below I will describe a graphical technique for the body plan, which will enable you to bypass this problem. This question of error is of concern to me because precision is one of my modeling goals. Life is easier if you do not worry too much about this – but only to a point.

In my case no scale was given in the book, so my process was to pick off a dimension from the book with dividers, set it out on the scale at the bottom of the book plans, write down the full size dimension, then measure it off on my 1:96 drawing using the 1/8” scale on the architects rule. Recording these dimensions helps eliminate errors and facilitates later checking. Checking is an important part of the drafting process and should always be done before construction. By checking I mean a thorough, organized review of your drawings for errors, inconsistencies and/or mistakes. It is better to find problems before construction than during or after. Do not shortcut this step.

I will also comment on one other issue - the drawing of curves. To draw a curve, say the sheer line, you would measure off vertical heights of the line on the reference drawing at a number of the frame lines, transfer those points to your drawing, then connect them with a smooth curve. I believe that the long sweeping curves of the sheer plan, if drawn manually, are best done using a spline or (what Dean calls) a bow. The spline is simply a thin hardwood batten, longer than your drawing, which you deflect to match the points of the curve you are drawing. The curve of the spline is held in place with weights, perhaps food cans filled with nails. If the curve is not of constant radius, this is the device to use. If the curve is of constant radius, that is, circular, the bow is the best solution. This is a batten with a cord fastened at the ends, which can be tightened to produce a constant radius curve in the batten, from which a line can be traced. Both these devices can be easily made. Be sure you use straight- grained wood, preferably hardwood, free of knots. One-eighth inch thickness or less will work for the spline. The bow could be thicker. If you are doing very detailed drawings of planking rails, etc. you might consider drawing the sheer line on a long flat piece of hardwood and then shaping the edge to that line to make a template. Mark the dead flat, the AP and the FP on the template then align those points on your drawing and trace lines as needed. This is a very good way to draw short segments that are parallel to the sheer line. These approaches are better than trying to use small French curves.

The Body Plan

The Body Plan is the drawing that shows the shape of the hull at each frame line and is therefore a critical modeling drawing. It is important to know that the body plan profiles show moulded breadth, that is, the breadth of the outside of the frames, not the outside of the planking. I will cover the body plan more thoroughly; describing the graphical solution I used to do this work, plus a couple other alternatives.

First some alternatives: Lets say you have a book with a body plan you want to reproduce to your modeling scale. First, the easiest way, today at least is to put the book in the copier, dial up the scale conversion to resize it, print the copy and your done – maybe. Or put the book in your scanner, scan it, resize it in your graphics software and print it There are some issues with this approach. First, as mentioned above, printed book scales are sometimes inaccurate. Scanner distortion is very common, though this may be correctable by manipulating the image geometry with software. Verticality can also be a problem in scanning, but can sometimes be adjusted by rotating the scanned image. The drawing to your scale may be bigger than the page. Your graphics software may be able to handle this by printing on multiple sheets. Sometimes, particularly with small or older drawings the lines of the profile may not reproduce sharply. Pluses and minuses for

these approaches could be discussed. Much is also dependent on your individual modeling goals. In 1976 none of these options were available, so I will stick to what I actually did.

Rather than draw a typical body plan, where all the frames are shown – aft on one side forward on the other, I made a single view of both sides of each frame, which could be directly converted into patterns for bulkhead/frame assemblies. Below is an image scanned from one of my original drawings, resurrected from my basement archives, to illustrate the graphical method used to draft the frame profiles from the Longridge book body plan. The blue letters have been added to help with the explanation.

This is the profile for frame 3. I did all my drawings on large sheets then had large Diazo prints made from which patterns were cut out. Today I would do this on letter size if possible. I would also use CAD, and then make prints on my inkjet printer.

This drawing shows the horizontal top of keel line, the TOK (A), the model keel section (B), the vertical centerline (C, sorry mislabeled A), the three rounded up decks (D), the location of the three wales at this frame (E), the planksheer section at topside (F) and the profile of the frame (G). There are also a lot of construction lines, which I will explain.

First there are horizontal lines (H) numbered .5, 1 to 18, 22, 23. These are placed at these numbers of feet above the TOK (A). When I did the drawing I used a lined underlay for these instead of drawing them for each frame. On the body plan in the Longridge book I taped a sheet of tracing over the body plan and drew in these same lines at the scale of the book. Notice the angled lines (I) going down to the left at the bottom of the drawing and up to the left at the top. These are the key to this graphical solution.

The breadth of the profile in the book is measured with dividers at each horizontal line and set off (J) on the slanted line from the intersection of the centerline (C) and the TOK (A), those below maximum breadth on the lower angled line and those above it on the upper, to avoid mistakes. Then perpendiculars (K) are drawn from the angled line for each point up to the TOK. Then vertical lines (L) are taken upward from each of these intersections to the appropriate horizontal line where a point is placed. This is done for the upper points as well. The points thus created describe the profile of the body at this frame. French curves are then used to join these points with a fair, that is, a smooth line. When manually fitting curves I find that a lot of points promotes accuracy, because minor discrepancies in placing points will be averaged out in drawing the curve, which may not touch every point, exactly. With CAD software, this may not always be the case and some strange curves sometimes result. That is for another discussion. For the opposite side profile, the breadths at each height on the left are set off on the right side and a curve drawn to complete the whole frame profile.

Let me say at this point, that this method approximates the shape of timbers to an acceptable accuracy, especially for smaller scales. In historical practice, these profiles were a combination of circular arcs, called sweeps, not the variable radius of a French curve. At large scales, say ¼” per foot, the desired approach would be to draft the profiles using sweeps centered on rising lines and rising half breadths, with reconciling sweeps between them. This is a much more complicated process, requiring specific data, which I will save for some future discussion.

The only question remaining in our solution is the most important one. How is the angle of the slanted lines (I) determined? There are two solutions, one involving a touch of trigonometry, the other graphical. First, the trig method. Measure the molded breadth in real inches in the book, then at your scale. The book scale measurement divided by the measurement at your scale is the cosine of the angle the line needs to be – in this case 42.6 degrees. This is the angle for all the conversions for all the frames. The measurements to determine it were actually done on the dead flat frame, not this one, not that that matters.

If you don’t like cosines it can be done graphically. Set your compass to the half breadth width in the book. Using the intersection of the TOK (A) and centerline (C) as the center draw an arc in the left lower quadrant. Set a point on (A) at a distance equal to the maximum breadth at your scale. Place a straight edge on this point and move it until it is also at a tangent with the arc. Draw a line. Then use your triangles to find a perpendicular to this line that passes thru the intersection of the TOK (A) and Centerline (C). This line will be the correct angle. Once you have determined this angle it can be measured and replicated where needed using a protractor. The accuracy of this solution is almost wholly dependent on the care you take in drafting it. It is independent of stated book scale error and is not subject to the errors in the usual process of measurement, conversion and re-measurement or in the use of proportional dividers.

The above drawing shows part of a print from the above work. On the print I have drawn and shaded blue the frame with integral knees to be added to each side of a solid bulkhead formed by the underwater profile and the top of the lower deck beam. It also shows the beams for each deck. Longridge cut his frames including deck beams from one piece of high quality plywood. Then eventually slipped his decks in, in two halves, from the open stern. He modeled closed ports on the lower and middle decks. I wanted to model open ports with guns run out, so I adopted construction that would give open access to those decks. Each bulkhead was assembled with frames and beams to match this drawing before installing on the keel. The beams were pinned only, so they could be removed to allow working on the lower decks, then later they would be glued and pegged into place. The beams are cherry and were rounded up by steaming and bending, then sanded fair later after final installation before deck planking. One thing to remember if you try this approach is to label the beams!

Finally, to the left in this drawing is a frame gauge, also made from this profile and cemented to 1/8” plywood. The bottom of this gauge is the bottom of keel line. Its purpose is to align and check frames when they are erected on the keel, setting off heights of wales, checking final faired hull, etc.

Developing True View

There were many cases in this project where it was necessary to have a true view of something in order to make a pattern or even to get a true measurement. I will use two examples from this project to illustrate how this problem was handled through drafting. The first example is a good one to illustrate the technique, but not an example of the best way to handle this particular case. So, there is an opportunity to discuss two things. First the technique:

The problem is to develop a true view of the curvature of the two head rails (A) at the bow. These are in one plane vertically, from the cathead (not shown) to the beakhead, but are curved horizontally. The following scanned segment from a drawing illustrates the development of the true shape.

The lower part of the drawing is a view from directly forward of the head rail structure. Because the rail is angled forward in this view it is distorted horizontally. In the upper part of the drawing is a horizontal view of the head rail structure in which the head rails (A) are shown in true view, but from the top. These two views contain enough information to develop the true side view (T, which is needed to make a pattern. The true, or pattern, view is shown slanting down from the right of the upper plan view. The process is as follows: In the top plan view, a line is drawn (P) parallel to the head rail (actually to the outside face of the head rail), which will be a true view plane, and a series of spaced lines (B) are drawn perpendicular to it and down to the right for some distance. Where these points touch the face of the head rail, vertical lines (C) are dropped down to the head rail in the lower view. Then a horizontal line (H) is drawn in the bottom view at the height of the top of the rail. Lengths, for example (X) are picked off with dividers down to the top of the rail, then are used to place points along the slanted lines to the right below the first line drawn. These points describe the true curve of the top of the rail. Repeat this for the lower side of the rail and you have the true view of the rail. I will discuss in a later episode how this extreme curve was bent in European Boxwood.

What is wrong with this approach? It actually worked very well in construction, but the lower view was derived from the sheer plan view of the head, so using this view was not optimum because 1) two derivations increase the error and 2) in this case the sheer plan view is larger horizontally and therefore less prone to error when used in this way. Not a big deal in this case.

Below is a more complicated development of a true view, this time involving the stern galleries. The view below is a scanned pieced together view of part of one drawing, so please excuse any misalignment.

At the right side of this drawing is the view, V1, of the stern galleries from directly aft, a complicated array of curved rails, slanted balusters and canted windows. This is not a true view and therefore cannot be used to make patterns or to take accurate measurement for fabrication of parts. There are two reasons for this. The stern slants aft, shrinking vertical dimensions, and the stern is horizontally rounded aft, shrinking the horizontal dimensions, both of which will be too short if measured on the V1 view.

The true vertical view, V3, is constructed first as follows: To the left of V2, draw a line (C2), parallel to the slant of the stern timbers, allowing enough room for this to be the centerline of the new view, V3. Each point on this new view can then be described by drawing a horizontal line from that point in V1, for examples line (X1), the top of the center window, across to the stern timber, then down to view 2 by means of a line (X2) perpendicular to that timber. The horizontal location of each point can be picked off V1 with dividers, and directly transferred to the V2, since horizontal dimensions will be the same in both views. The new view, V2, in this case a combination of structure and decoration, is drawn point by point by this method.

The left view, labeled the “Developed View,” V4, is a slight horizontal expansion to correct the curvature distortion. Draw a line (P) parallel to the centerline in V3 at the outside edge of the lower gallery rail. Extend the centerline (C2) in V2 upward, then construct a centerline for view 3 (C3) perpendicular to the V2 centerline(C2). Now, from a plan view of the stern (not shown), measure the true length of the lower gallery rail around its curve using small divider increments, say 1 foot. It will be slightly larger than the V3 breadth. Set the true half breadth (D) off at the correct height on V4 and draw a line (E) from that point, parallel to C3 to intersect with the similar line from V2. The slanted transfer line (T) is then drawn between this intersection and the intersection of the centerlines. Horizontal measurements can then be taken from V3 to V3 using perpendiculars to the two centerlines. Vertical dimensions will be the same, i.e. true dimensions in both these views.

This is a nice academic construct and illustrates an important technique. In the end, in the model construction, V3 was necessary but V4 was too useful because of the way I ultimately constructed the stern galleries and also because the round aft of this structure on Victory is slight.

I hope Part 2 in this series has been helpful to some and not too exhausting. These are solutions

that worked for me. There are alternatives. This is one way to do it. In the next part I will describe how the building board, or model shipway was built and the construction of the model framing.

Cheers,Ed Tosti

HMS Victory1:96 Scratchbuild

Part 3

In Part 2 we discussed some useful drafting techniques in some detail. I hope this long complex discussion has not been too tiresome. Starting with this part we will focus on a more popular topic, the actual building of the model, but first I want to spend a short paragraph on the construction of what turned out to be a very key tool throughout the process – the building board, or, as I prefer, the model shipway. Below is an undimensioned outline drawing of the shipway I built for the Victory model.

A large, 20” x 44” piece of ¾”Douglas fir exterior plywood, sanded one side, was used for the base platform. The length and width were made sufficient to clear the entire model including the bowsprit, driver boom and main yard (with studding sail booms). Dry, clear pieces of white pine, ¾” X about 2 ½”, were planed true on one edge and screwed securely to each other and to the plywood top, as shown in the sketch. When this was done a long straightedge was placed on the top across different sections to check for flatness. Where a slight distortion in the top was found, some of the screws were loosed and thin shims inserted to bring the top perfectly flat. After thirty-four years of abuse, standing on its end sometimes for years in my basement, the board was as flat on the day I cut it up for fireplace kindling as it was when it was built. During use the board was securely clamped on my workbench.

On the top surface I placed three straight grained ¾” X ¾” oak rails, the first in the center on the line of the keel and the other two outside the maximum half breadth of the hull. The centerline of the keel and all the frame lines were scribed into these rails. To aid in frame alignment, checking of locations, especially within the hull, a carefully squared “gantry” device was built to slide on the outside rails. This could be aligned with the scribed lines on the rails or any point in between and was secured with bolts on either side (not shown) that would squeeze the triangular gussets tight to the rails to hold it in position. This device was carefully squared both longitudinally and athwartships and was marked with a scribed centerline in the top horizontal rail. A datum line to match the top of the gantry rail was put on the drawings as a basis for vertical measurements. This device was indispensable for marking out and checking dimensions inside the hull. A combination square could be run along this top rail to set heights and breadths easily. The picture below, taken in 1996, is one of the few I have that shows the board well. Please excuse the bench clutter.

In this picture there are two squared up end strong end posts which could be used to stretch a piano wire along the centerline as another way to check the scribed centerline on the “gantry” and to initially center frames on the keel. These were removed when no longer needed. Also shown are felt lined cradles that were added after the lower hull was finished. Before then the hull was squared up by means of doubled copper wire from two lower gun ports on each side attached at their ends by small screwed eyebolts, one end into the board the other into a small piece of hardwood inserted into the gun ports. The wire was then twisted tight on each side until the ship

was in proper alignment. The model was held in longitudinal alignment by a block on the middle rail at the back of the sternpost.

Finally, when rigging started, a temporary case, made from pine and foam board was fitted to the base to completely enclose the model to keep it free of dust. The sides of this or the whole could be removed easily to gain construction access. The top was made from clear acrylic sheet, so overhead ceiling lights could keep the work well lit. The case was fastened to the outside edges of the board. This worked well in what was often a very dusty woodworking shop.

Keel Assembly

The first item to be made was the keel/sternpost/stem/head assembly. All were made from maple. If I were doing this again they would be cherry to match the other visible wood. The keel section is not like the original. It is deeper to take the bulkhead/frame assemblies. The rabbet on the keel was cut using a small shaped scaper as shown in the following sketch.

I used a lot of these little scrapers for various tasks. Mine were made from 1/16” stainless steel only because I had that and it files easily. Old hacksaw blades will work as well. If they are hardened, heat them until red, then allow to cool. File the shape, then (optionally) heat to red again and quench to harden. For the keel rabbet the scraper was simply drawn along the keel with the side marked “bottom of keel” held to the bottom until the full depth was reached. At the ends and along the sternpost and stem this device could not be used so the rabbet was cut with a small chisel. The assembled keel, sternpost, stem, head assembly was then set up on the board and fixed into a vertical position on the centerline.

Frames

Unlike Longridge (see part 2), I made my frames to allow access to the lower decks by assembling them with removable deck beams. Each frame assembly consisted of a single solid bulkhead, filling the space between the bottom profile and the top of the lower deck beam. A drawing of this is shown in part 2. Topside frames with knees to support the beams were cut out in one piece and fitted to each side on the pattern sheet along with the beams. Side frames were glued and pegged, beams were pinned only, from the outside. Bulkheads and frames were cut out of 3/16” lauan, a medium soft wood that would accept pins and copper nails easily. Beams were cherry, rounded up

to the correct level at their centers. This was done taking a wide, say 2”, piece of cherry ripped to 3/16” thickness, cutting it to the length of the midship frame deck beam, marking the centerline, then steaming it and clamping it over a form cut to the shape of the round up from a 2X4. Actually the round up was exaggerated slightly on the form to allow for some spring back when the beam stock dried. This can be judged by trial and error. When dry, the beams were ripped to their correct width, cut to length maintaining the correct centerline, fit into their frames and pinned through locating holes drilled through the frame. Each frame was then set up on the keel and held in place by gluing to blocks cut from a board ripped to the thickness of the space between frames. The picture below, taken later, shows these frames. Also visible in this picture is the piano wire running along the centerline, which was used to square up the frames when gluing them to the blocks between the lower bulkheads. This work all went quite rapidly.

This picture was taken after some additional work was done. Cant frames were added to round out the bow framing. These were patterned by rotating forward sectional profiles to the true view angle by the technique described in Part 2, then cut out and glued to the stem/keel and also to an internal horizontal rounded support which is not visible. None of this framing is at all historically accurate except for the outer profiles.

Also visible in the above picture are white pine filler pieces glued between all of the frames. These were installed for three reasons. First I needed thickness to be able to securely fasten external hull fittings and to simulate the planked interior, which though not visible, was desirable. Second, since I wanted the external planking to be cut to realistic lengths, especially the anchor stock planking of the wales, I needed something between frames on which to fasten that planking. And finally, I needed filler between frames to accurately locate gun ports. The pine provided this. Later the ports were lined with thin cherry before planking.

In the picture the hull has also been faired to final shape and two battens have been pinned on in the shape of the sheer line at the bottom of the main wale and the top of the upper wale. These would provide guides for the planking.

Lower Body Planking

The picture below shows the lower body planking in progress. No filler pieces were needed here because planking, which would later be covered with copper, was put on in long lengths. All the lower body planking was cherry, just less than 1/16” thick and 1/8” inch wide. Planking was fastened using Titebond wood glue and small copper nails on each frame.

Titebond, an aliphatic resin, water based wood glue, was used for all wood-to-wood joints throughout the project. It produces a bond at least as strong as the wood itself, has sufficient work time to allow parts to be precisely positioned, holds parts together in an hour or so and completely sets in several hours. Excess can be wiped or washed away with water, or scraped off later. Clamping or pinning is needed at least until the preliminary set.

Copper nails were made by cutting a long piece, say 24”, of 20 gauge wire, clamping one end in a vice and pulling the other end until the wire broke, thus stress hardening the wire so it could be used for nails. The wire was then cut at ¼” intervals with one end snipped off square and the other at an angle. Pilot holes through the plank were drilled for these nails at each frame. The size of the hole was made slightly smaller the drawn copper. After applying glue and positioning, the copper nails were simply hammered into the soft framing, so no clamping was needed.

The lower body planking began at the keel and worked upwards to the lower line of the main wale in such a way that the last planks leading up to this line were parallel to it along their whole length. Of course, all the planking had to be applied in fair lines, that is, smoothly curved lines. This raises one issue, which deserves some discussion. If you measure the width of the planked surface at the stern, in midships, and forward, you will see that the width to be planked is smaller at the ends, meaning fewer planks are needed at the fore and aft ends of the lower hull. Once you get up to the main wale the remaining planking is mostly parallel, so this is an issue for the lower body. In historical practice, on this type of ship, a process called stealing was used to handle this. It is best shown with a diagram:

To facilitate this method I made a paper strip with the planking widths marked out and numbered along the strip. Then using this strip I measured down from the bottom of the main wale, at several points, to determine the number of planks needed to fill the space at each of those points. From this I could determine the number of stealers needed both fore and aft. There are several at each end. The question is, where to put them. Planking is started from the bottom. Using the paper strip, I measured down at midships and marked off the plank joints on the midship frame. Then I moved the strip forward, always perpendicular to the wale until I reached a point where exactly one less whole plank was needed. This would be the position of the stealer joint. This was repeated aft and the first plank was tapered to half its widths at these points. The next plank was notched out to match the taper in the first plank. This was done for each strake of planking until eventually the same number of planks were needed at each point up to the lower side of the main wale. If inserting a stealer rigidly to this scheme disturbed the fairness of the lines of planking, I would simply not put it in and look at it again on the next plank up. This may seem like a lot of trouble for a bottom that would be coppered but I wanted to do it right and I am not sure this process is any more difficult than tapering planks. Also, this would be good practice for the time when I had to plank the ships boats.

I did not use sandpaper on the bottom planking or on any of the planking for that matter. Planking was leveled with small flat files. With sandpaper there is greater risk of rounding off edges that want to be sharp. Fine cut files also leave a cleaner surface on very hard woods, like boxwood, which was used for topside planking. They also do a better job leveling off the copper nails and tree nails which would be used topside. I had a couple files on which the handles were bent to allow them to lie flat on the wood surface. This was done by heating the handle with a torch, then bending and quenching.

Coppering the Lower Hull

From the beginning of the project I was concerned about the copper plating on the hull, especially about how to represent the copper nails used to hold the plates in place. I wanted these to be proportionally correct. This was a goal I had for all the detailed items on the ship. I knew I could not duplicate the Longridge process of using actual copper nails, because to look credible they would have to be too small. I finally settled on an embossing process, which is described in detail in a reply I posted to this log earlier. The following photo is not great but is one of few I have that shows coppering up close. The coppering is about 20 years old in this picture. I believe the objective of producing proportionately sized nails was met. This turned out to be an easy efficient process once a tool was made. The use of individual plates also allowed the lines of planking to duplicate the original.

The one issue I had (and still have) with the coppering process was the attachment of the plates. It was done with contact cement, which seemed to be the accepted approach at the time, and maybe still is. I found it less than satisfactory, even after spending a lot of time getting the parameters of the process right, like drying time before applying the plates, thickness of application, cleaning off excess, etc. All of these caused difficulty with the ¼” X 1/2’ X .003” plates, especially the cleanup of excess, which had to be done with solvent that often loosed the bond. Over the years, probably less than 5% of the plates have come loose of the original 3700, but that is over 100 plates. Replacement plates contrast with the weathering of the older plates. Perhaps they will blend in time. So, I am not pleased with this outcome and wish a better solution were available.

The last photo, taken much later in the project, shows the run of planking and coppering up to the stern transom. Some of the effects of excess adhesive can still be seen on the back of the rudder. By the way, I confess that the chain was a purchased part.

In part four I will cover the construction of the stern galleries and the planking of the topsides. Please stay tuned.

Cheers,

Ed Tosti

HMS Victory1:96 Scratchbuild Project

Part 4 - The Stern Galleries and Lower Decks

The progress of the model during the 1980’s is a memory test for me. Although a fair amount of work was done between 1980 and 1986, no pictures were taken. For the next few years, the model was in storage while we were out of the country. However, a lot of work was done in the early 80’s including the construction of the stern, the planking and fitting out of the lower and middle decks, making the guns for those decks and a lot of the topside planking and rails.

The Stern

Although some planking was done before the stern, the stern with its detailing was done very early because it was almost completely prefabricated on the bench before being installed and neither planking nor the lower decks could be completed without it being in place, so I will start with that part of the work.

This picture was taken in 1997, long after the stern was installed.

The above picture shows the detail of the stern galleries and the counters, the 27 slanted windows with 9 panes each, the two rows of 69 slanted carved balusters, the carvings, the fluted moldings, etc. The carved boxwood letters of the name were a little extravagance not based on the prototype, but I liked the idea, especially since I wasn’t going to paint. Its one of the few departures I allowed myself. All this detail was done very early so it could be done on the bench on a flat surface with good light. I thought this worked out extremely well and so I will describe the process in some detail.

First, of course, the wing transom had to be in position. This was not described previously, but was put on in when the basic framing was done. This timber is curved on its aft face and on its top. The aft curve is quite slight which gives the stern an almost flat appearance. Being higher in the middle, the wing transom sets the pattern for the curve of the counters and the horizontal gallery lines, which parallel the round up of the decks. At the same time the eight “vertical” stern timbers, with their curved feet, slant both inward and markedly aft. All this required some careful patternmaking and measurement during installation.

Patterns for the individual stern timbers were developed using techniques described in part 2. They were then cut out in maple and pinned in position across the wing transom. The outer two were actually screwed down temporarily with tiny wood screws. Angles aft and inward plus the aft curvature were measured very carefully using templates that could also hold the timbers temporarily in place. I am sorry I have no pictures of this. Once the timbers were in their correct position, the curved interior deck transoms and the main exterior counter rails were attached permanently to the stern timbers. Then, filling pieces of flat maple were glued between the timbers except for the window openings. This gave the whole assembly rigidity and provided bedding for the exterior planking. The assembly was then removed from the ship and taken to the bench for completion of the detailing. The following picture taken years after permanent installation shows the maple inserts between stern timbers and window openings. It also shows the internal horizontal deck transoms and the external rails which had not yet been trimmed.

This picture was taken in 1995 several years after the stern as installed and after completion most of the topside planking.

The hexagonal table covering the rudder head and the wide seat of the middle deck ward room are also visible..

Once moved to the convenience of the bench, the first step was to finalize the shape of the gallery structure and add the missing panels at the sides. Frequent fittings on the ship were made to assure all this was correctly sized and shaped. When this was done the other horizontal rails and the window lintels were put on in boxwood. Then the remaining exterior planking was put on over the whole gallery surface and below on the two counters. This was done in 3” (1/32”) cherry which was attached with glue and boxwood tree nails. I will describe the making of these tree nails later. Thousands were used on the model. In the above picture the holes for the tree nails can be seen on the inside of the stern timbers. The following picture is a close up illustrating the results of some of the next steps.

I did not want to paint the model, but I did want to contrast the woodwork in a way similar to the painted original (except for the lines of the gun ports which I will discuss later). This was done throughout the model using the pale yellow European boxwood on the darker reddish cherry. This contrast shows well in the above picture.

After the planking was installed the columns between the windows were made and installed. This was done as follows. Two thin sheets of boxwood were glued on opposite sides of a cherry core, a strip maybe ½” wide, with the total lamination thickness equaling the width of the columns between the windows. The column facades were then sliced off of this on the circular saw, cut to length and glued to the aft side of the stern timbers, matching their widths.

The next step was the dreaded balusters, two rows of 69 each slanting progressively inward, carved square (not turned). The following picture shows how ornate these are on the real Victory.

The balusters on my model are about 1/32” square and about ¼” long. I could not hope to duplicate the above patterns at this size, so I decided to retain the square shape but simplify the pattern. The result is proportionately correct, but of course lacks complete detail. To assure uniformity and alignment the balusters were carved after being glued to the façade. Once the were secure, a very sharp knife was used to scribe the lines of the pediments and heads of the columns (top and bottom). Then the aft part of the curved shape was cut with a small chisel across the whole row. This approach assured alignment top and bottom square sections. When the aft faces of the balusters were done, the side shapes were cut with a small chisel and surgical scalpel.

Next the 1/64” by 1/32”window frames were installed, a pretty straightforward task. They are inset just below the surface of the column facades and are actually glued to the stern timbers. The window mullions themselves are the same depth and thickness as the frames. To make them, a wide (1”) sheet of boxwood, 1/32” thick, was scored, twice only, with a .015” circular saw blade, 1/64’ deep at the pane width spacing. The mullions were then ripped off in 1/64” slices and assembled by locking the notches together. There was just enough movement in these to slant them to the desired degree. Then they were then trimmed to size, touched with a bit of glue and push fit into the frames. No glass was installed. They have been secure and I have not managed to stick a tool or a finger through a single one of them.

The only remaining work to be done was the fluted rails and the carved figures and stacked arms above the top windows. The figures and arms were cutout from a thin sheet of boxwood with a fine toothed jeweler’s saw, glued in place, then relief carved with very small chisels. The ropelike rails were done with a needle file on the edge of a wider piece then ripped off on the saw. The fluted rail may have been done in a similar way using a rotary tool. I cannot remember. The stern galleries were then permanently attached to the wing transom and secured structurally with additional members and knees, completing this major piece of work.

The Lower, Middle and Upper Gun Decks

The Lower and Middle gun decks would only be visible in the finished model by peering into the gun ports or through hatchways, so I did not want to overdo the detail. The beams for the Lower, Middle and the Upper decks do not attempt to replicate the original. However, the simplified beam structure provided by the frame assemblies needed to be modified and supplemented at every level to accommodate hatches, mast partners, etc. The following picture shows some of the simplified beam structure of the Upper deck and also some of the detailing of the decks below.

This picture taken in 1995 shows the middle deck planking and gun carriages plus the simplified planking of the Upper deck.

The planking of the lower and middle decks was done in maple, 1/8” wide, with no attempt to replicate plank length or stagger pattern. The dark caulking between planks was simulated by gluing black construction paper to the sheets of 1/8” thick maple before ripping off the planks. This left no paper sticking above the planks and could be scraped down smooth without difficulty. I will say at this point that all decks were scraped smooth, using a ½” square ended chip carving knife that had been squared off, honed and had a scraper curl added with a burnishing tool. This eliminated the need for sanding. The lower and middle deck gun carriages were also simply made in maple. After positioning, with their barrels in place, they were then pinned and glued to the deck. Barrels would be installed through the ports many years later. Waterways, hatch coamings, gratings, stairs, partitions and other miscellaneous basic items were installed on these lower decks without too much attention to their perfection.

The hawsers for the anchors had to be installed at this time. This forced an early entry into the art of rope making, including worming, both of which I will go into later. The anchor cables are huge, 27” circumference, hawser laid ropes that are wormed over their length. They pass upwards from the cable tiers on the orlop deck (not modeled) through guides and the corner of a lower deck hatch, along the deck forward, out the hawse holes in the bow and are secured to a bower anchor lashed on each side of the forward hull. These ropes, at this time, were attached below the lower deck, coiled on the deck so they could easily be pulled out later, with their ends just protruding through the unfinished hawse holes. These protruding ropes would get in the way of work for years to come.

The protruding anchor cables, with safety lines, still protruding in 1995 – and still in the way.

In Part 5 I will discuss making the gun barrels and get into the topside planking.

Stay tuned,

Ed Tosti

HMS Victory1:96 Scratchbuild Project

Part 5 – Gun Barrels and Topside Planking

In this part I will focus on the modeling of the gun barrels. These needed to be made for the lower and middle decks so the carriages could be correctly positioned before installing the beams and planking for the decks above, after which, they would be inaccessible. I will also start in on the topside exterior planking in this part.

The Gun Barrels

One of the extra middle deck 24 pounder barrels, blackened after machining.

All of the 102 gun barrels were individually turned in brass on a miniature machine lathe, a Unimat SL, which I was fortunate to purchase used, in mint condition, at a very good price in the late 70’s. I spent as much again on accessory parts, including the circular saw attachment and the indexing head among others. It has been durable, easy to use and capable of a number of precision operations – turning, drilling, milling, circular sawing, precision grinding, etc. The Unimat went out of production some years ago, so I was glad to have bought the accessories when they were available. Later they would become indispensable for a number of operations, which I will describe in their proper place. Unimat tools and accessories are still traded on eBay. Later, I purchased the Preac circular saw and a Sherline milling machine. These would make the aging Unimat less essential. Both are excellent tools. I still use the Unimat regularly, however, for all manner of tasks.

I wanted the guns to have a recognizable metallic sheen for aesthetic purposes. The clean metallic finish highlights the detail on the guns very well as opposed to paint. This effect was obtained with a blackening agent, which was used for this purpose and for virtually all the brass “ironwork” on the ship, from the anchors to the small hooks attaching the futtock shrouds to their deadeye chains.

The drawing below was done on a piece of file folder, knowing it would have to put up with a lot of wear and tear on the bench. On this, a dimensioned drawing of each type of gun was made at scale size. Also noted are the drill sizes for the different bores. It was very convenient having all the necessary information on one card and all machining was done from this drawing.

The guns were turned from brass rod. Although machined individually, uniformity and efficiency were achieved by doing one operation at a time on all the barrels of a given size. To do this efficiently, work pieces had to be in and out of the machine constantly. To facilitate this, the pieces were held on the muzzle end only in a Jacobs chuck, making change out fast and easy. This meant barrels would be drilled last without the benefit of centering in the lathe, but that disadvantage was accepted. Below are a pair of rejects of the process from my scrap bin that show the way these were chucked – on the stubs at the left.

First the outer diameter of the ring at the breech was turned. Then the pommel and breech end were cut in one operation with a special cutter (see below). Then the headstock of the lathe was rotated slightly to allow the taper of the barrel to be turned between the breech ring and the ring behind the muzzle. The raised rings were then located and the correct barrel diameter between them was turned. . The setup for this tapered turning is shown in the picture below. Keep in mind that each of these steps was done on all the similar barrels before moving on to the next step.

The Unimat is (was?) a very versatile machine. Mine is permanently mounted on a plywood base. Under the base a piece of foam carpet mat can be seen. This holds small machines like this in position while permitting easy movement out of the way when not in use or to different orientations on the bench. The white bench top is laminate coated particle board, bright, durable and easy to keep clean.

After all the tapered machining was done, the headstock was returned to normal for the finishing of the muzzle end. Special cutters were ground to facilitate and standardize the machining of the muzzle flare and the pommel at the breech end. The picture below shows these cutters.

The ¼” square Unimat bits were ground to the shapes of the muzzle and breech.]

When all of this machining was done, the barrels were polished in the machine with crocus cloth and fine steel wool. Then the barrels were parted off the stubs and the muzzle ends filed smooth. Drilling the bores was then done very carefully to assure centering. They were drilled to their correct size held vertically in the Unimat vise with the machine set up as a drill press. Only a few barrels had any visible bore misalignment. The worst of these were rejected. Fortunately several extras were made for each type.

The last step before blackening was the drilling for the trunnions. The fact that these are below the bore centerline adds a slight complication. A jig was made to hold the barrel under the drill press so that the trunnion bore would be offset below the centerline. The bore location was given a center punch mark to help avoid the drill slipping off the curved barrel. After drilling, the trunnions were slipped in and held in place by a slight hammer tap on the bottom of the barrel. This avoided soldering with its potential blackening issues.

Finally, the blackening. It is best to blacken right after machining. Getting good results from blackening solutions may be a science, but it feels more like an art form. The problems experienced included: spotty blackening, blackening that rubs off, sooty like buildup, and flaking off, etc. The ways I battled these problems included, assuring very clean polished brass before dipping, degreasing with acetone, thinning the solution with water to slow the process, swabbing parts with Q-tips while immersed, allowing to dry before buffing, frequent changes of solution, multiple partial dips, plus others I am sure. I wish I could say that any one of these was consistently successful. Blackening silver soldered joints or overheated small parts was often troublesome and in some cases parts had to be re-dipped because of wear, after which some would not blacken at all and a

few (very few) had to be painted, or touched up. This was not required on any of the guns and after blackening they were buffed up with a soft rag and put away for future installation.

The three tiers of guns below the waist.on the port side.

Topside Planking Overview

The workmanship on the topside planking makes or breaks an unpainted hull model. I wanted crisp lines, sharp edges, tight joints and cleanly cut moldings and rails. Most of all I wanted to highlight the beautiful sweeping curve of the ship’s sheer line. Note I do not mean the line of the gun ports, which follows the line of the decks, which is a much flatter curve than the line of the sheer. The “Nelson Stripes” painted between the gun ports may have suited his fancy, but, unlike the painting of earlier years, it did nothing for the beauty of the ship. This treatment gave these ships an awkward flatiron look, which I did not want. What I did want was to accentuate the gracefully curves lines of the sheer. To do this I decided to plank the three wales in the darker cherry and the rest of the planking and the rails in the pale yellow European Boxwood. Both are hard, flexible woods, capable of taking a fine polish without finish. In the end, I gave them a rub of very dilute Tung oil wiped dry, then a thin solution beeswax dissolved in turpentine, buffed. This was done mainly to prevent staining during the later stages of the work. This even allowed CA drips to be flaked off when they occurred. Of course, no further gluing to the surface was possible after this treatment.

Tree Nails

Before describing the planking process itself, I need to discuss treenails (or trennals, or trunnels, etc). These were used extensively throughout the model, both for appearance and for added strength. Glue alone was only used where treenails or others types of fastener was not practical, usually because of scale. For example, the wriggles above the gun ports in the above picture are

glued only.

Because of the 1:96 scale, proportionately sized fastenings are not practical, so there was a compromise of fewer and larger tree nails vs. the original. These were made from Boxwood, although some were made from Bamboo. The round diameter of the treenail was made with a drawplate, a thin metal plate with an array of holes of decreasing size down to the desired nail diameter. In practice, getting a diameter below .030” (2 ¾” at 1:96) was hit or miss, so .030 became the standard minimum size. Larger diameters were used in structural applications, for example on beams. Below is a picture of some tree nails and the simple drawplate I made from hard brass sheet, which was used to make all the nails used on the ship.

The almost worn out brass drawplate with some .030” tree nails. The usable holes in this plate,the first 7 from the left, range in size from .039” down to .031”, that is number 61 to 68 drill size.

The process of making these nails was as follows: Strips of boxwood maybe 12” long were sized down to 1/32” square (.03125”) or slightly larger. One end the strip was tapered so when pushed into the largest hole, enough emerged to grab with a pair of pliers. The strip was then pulled through each successively smaller hole with even pressure. Final diameters of 030” were consistently achievable. The strips were then cut with a sharp chisel to length, first on a slant then square, then on a slant again, etc. to yield small nails with a square top and a pointed bottom. Thousands of these were made.

Above is a picture of three drawplates. The top plate is a purchased item (Cost on sale $25). Holes range from 1/16” down to .037” (No. 63 drill). This is made of steel, which may be hardened, and the holes are countersunk on the “pull out” side. You want only a small amount of metal to pull through. The cutting should be done on the back face of the hole. You do not want to squeeze the wood into the hole, but rather scrape off its surface on the way in. The middle one is my brass plate (Cost about $0) with holes from .039” down to the usable .030” and several sizes below, at which strips begin to break. The bottom plate is one I have recently made from 1/8” thick steel, which I intend to use on my new project. The middle plate will get a well-deserved retirement. The new plate begins where the upper plate leaves off and then goes down to a final .030” hole size. I will briefly describe how to make this plate since it seems to work very well, is easy to make, could easily be made to handle the full range up to 1/16”, and, very importantly, is inexpensive.

First I bought a 1/8” by 1 ¼” by 36” (the only length they had) strip of galvanized steel for $5. Galvanizing isn’t necessary. The plate should be wide enough to leave some room below the holes when clamped in your vice. After cutting the plate to length, countersink holes were drilled using a 1/8” drill, to just above the bottom of the plate, that is, almost but not quite all the way through. I would guess maybe 1/64” of metal was left. Then using small drills, smaller holes were drilled in the center of the larger holes, from the same side. Burrs were filed off both sides to complete the drawplate. I do not intend to harden the plate based on the longevity I got from the much softer brass plate, but if you want your great grand children to use it, you might wish to harden it. I also learned that Brynes Tools sells what appears to be a very nice drawplate with holes down to .016” for $25.

In the next episode, I will discuss how matching “anchor stock” and “top and butt” planks for the wales were made, how different rail moldings were made, and how planks were bent, clamped and fastened to the hull.

Cheers,

HMS Victory1:96 Scratchbuild Project

Part 6 – The Topside Planking

In Part 5, we started working up to the task of topside planking by discussing the objectives I had for the final appearance. I like to set these objectives up front for each major stage to use as a quality yardstick when deciding how far to go with each aspect of the work or when to scrap some unsatisfactory work. In this Part, I will cover some aspects of the planking that may be of interest. I will also discuss the making of treenails, a vital ingredient in the planking task, and also making the rails and the “wriggles” over the ports.

Planking from the lower wale up to the waist rail.

The Lower Wale, or Main Wale

The main wale is a band of thick structurally important planking that runs from just above the waterline at midships up to the bottom sill of most of the ports of the lower gun deck. Because the line of the lower wale, and almost all of the topside planking for that matter, parallels the sheer line, and because that line has more curvature than the line of the decks, several of the after gun ports on the lower deck actually cut into the lower wale, the aftermost one being almost entirely within the wale. So, before doing any planking of the lower wale, the gun port framing had to be dealt with.

Because the gun port sides, tops and bottoms were formed by the ships structure, a collection of Lauan frames and pine filler pieces, the ports needed to be re framed to improve their appearance. This was done by enlarging the port openings and framing their insides with strips of 1/32” cherry.

This also provided an opportunity to check the final location of the ports and make any necessary adjustments. Once all the lower deck ports were lined, the planking could begin.

Because the lower wale was expected to contribute longitudinal stiffness to the hull structure, its lower four strakes had planks in the shape of anchor stocks, that is, of increasing width from the ends to a point in the center of the plank. The lowest row had the peaks on the top and the second on the bottom and then a repeat for the next two strakes. This provided an interlocking structure which would help resist bending stresses on the hull, specifically “hogging,” the tendency for the ends of the ships to bend downwards as a wave lifted the center of the ship. The picture below describes this along with the slightly different configuration for the middle wale, known as “top and butt”. The picture above shows how this looked on the model.

These special shaped planks had to be made accurately or they would not fit together seamlessly, which was quite important to the final appearance. Special devices were made to cut these and the slightly different shapes for the middle wale, in which the highpoint is off center. The tools shown below were used to cut these planks all to the same size.

These two slightly different cutting guides, were made by filing steel plates to the correct profile of the pyramidal edge of the planks, making sure their top edges were smooth and accurate. Then they were fitted into wood forms, which set their height correctly and also the length of the plank. Spacing was set to just over the plank thickness for easy removal. The guide at the top right was for main wale planks and the one at the lower left for the middle wale top and butt planks. For use these were secured in a vise. Planks of the final thickness were cut to the correct length and just over correct width, allowing the guides to set the final width. These blanks were each placed between the steel rails and pared down with a sharp chisel flush with the top of the guides. This produced uniform planks with sharp square edges, which fit together well when installed.

Planking Procedure

All the planking was cut from 8/4 (2”) by roughly 6” wide stock. European Boxwood of this size was hard to come by even in the 1970’s, but I was fortunate to be able to acquire two pieces in this size about 3 ft long. Cherry was not a problem, but it needed to be selected for straight grain from pieces I had. The wide stock was then cut to about 12” lengths, ripped down to the plank width, using a very thin kerf 10” circular saw blade, and then if necessary, cleaned up with a cabinet scraper to assure a very smooth edge on the planks. Planks were then ripped to thickness on the Unimat circular saw, using a relieved fine tooth metal working blade that produced a glasslike finish on the surface of the planks. As I mentioned in Part 5, wales were done in cherry and the rest in European Boxwood.

Anchor stock and top and butt were worked in paired rows to make sure pieces fit each other as the rows progressed. To assure tight joints the back corners of each plank was very slightly chamfered with a file to assure that the front faces would touch. Titebond glue was applied to the back and bottom edges – also to the appropriate end if the plank was butting another installed plank. Since the framing and filler on which the planks bedded was solid, clamping was done using short pieces

of soft pine about 1/8” thick through which stiff pins were hammered into the frame. Friction between the pin and the pine held the plank down and in until the glue had a chance to set. Below is a diagram illustrating this clamping technique.

Excess glue was then brushed off using a wet artists brush kept nearby in a jar of water. This eliminated the need for later sanding or scraping to get the glue off. After 30 years, none of these glue joints has failed and all the planking is still tight. Finally, holes were drilled to receive the treenails. This was done later, when enough planking was complete to draw in pencil the lines of the nails. Holes were then pricked with a center punch to assure that lines of nails would be straight. A drill size just below the diameter of the treenail was used to assure a tight nailed fit. The sharp end of the nail was dipped in the glue, held in the hole using tweezers or small pliers, and tapped in with a small hammer. Excess glue was brushed off and when dry, the surface of the plank was leveled off with a small file. Using a file here assures that the nail head will be flush. Sanding may leave a bump with the hard end grain of the nail. It also tends to ruin nearby sharp edges.

Toward the ends of the hull, planks needed to be curved to fit. This was done by cutting the plank to size, steaming it in an old teapot until pliable, then fitting and clamping it in place – without glue. As the plank dries, it will shrink, and if glued, will leave gaps. When the plank was completely dried it was glued in place. Boiling water sometimes discolored the surface of the planks, but I found this could be removed with the file. There are other good ways to bend wood, but this was the method I used.

The areas between and above the wales was done in straight boxwood planks using the same procedure as above. This planking was thinner than the wales, so care had to be taken to avoid sanding or filing off the raised edges of the wales. These were given a very slight rounding during the final polishing of the hull exterior.

As each strake of planking was completed, a dimensional check was made, by measuring up to the

sheer line to make sure the height was correct along the hull. Discrepancies when found were very small and could be corrected easily with a file or small scraper. Doing this at each strake avoided a potentially nasty surprise when the planking ultimately reached the sheer line. Finally, before beginning the next strake, a triangular file or scraper was used to remove any fillet of glue left between the top of the planks and the frame to assure next strake would seat neatly.

Where planks ended at a gun port, they were left slightly long, then filed flush with the frame later. Where a gun port sill or lintel cut into the edge of a plank this was also filed out later. This assured a nice sharp corner to the port openings.

Rails

The picture below shows the three rails the run the length of the hull above the upper wale. The lowest is the waist rail, which in this picture is cut by the line of the upper deck 12 pounders. Above that is the sheer rail, which is cut by the fore, main and mizzen channels, and above that is the planksheer rail, which runs under the planksheer at the waist. There are additional “drift” rails aft and forward.

]

These rails add interest and accentuate the lines of the hull. The upper two have a similar profile. The waist rail is different. These rails were shaped in Boxwood, using a profile scraper which was drawn along the edge of a strip of wood with thickness equal to the width of the wale, but much wider so it could be secured in a vice while being shaped. After shaping the rail was sliced off on the circular saw. These rails were bedded on the framing, not on top of planking, so they replaced a row of planks. Actual practice may have differed, but this seemed a logical approach on the model. A picture of the profile scraper used for some of these different shapes is shown below.

These profile cutters are easy to make and do a nice job making moldings. The above cutter was used for the sheer rail, the steps up the side and the cap rails on the channels. Cutters like this were also used for things like the fenders shown in the picture below and for making rigging blocks, which I will discuss later.

Teh picture, above, shows some of the other detail that was added after completion of the topside planking – the molded steps up the side, the elaborate middle deck entranceway, the two vertical fenders to protect the hull when loading barrels, the “wriggles” over ports to divert water and the sheave set into side which would later take the mainsail sheet into the waist. The scrolls at the ends of the drift rails were made by turning grooves on the end of a boxwood dowel. This was a compromise I have regretted. They needed to be carved as a scroll with decreasing radius to the center, but I gave up on this too quickly and took the easy way out. I have never been happy with this decision.

The wriggles over the ports presented an interesting problem. There are two types. On the lower deck ports they are straight across the top and on the middle deck they curve up into a point at the middle. The undersides are concave curves. The challenge was to make them proportionately correct and to have them uniform. Both were made starting with a strip of boxwood the thickness of the horizontal thickness of the wriggles and maybe 3/8” wide. The inside concave shape was cut along the face of the boxwood strip near its edge with a small ball end mill to make a rounded slot of the correct length and depth for the interior curve. The depth of this milling cut left about 1/64” of wood at the bottom. Several slots were cut along this line on the strip. The circular saw was then used to slice off enough so that only the top half of the slots remained on the edge of the strip. Then the inside lower 1/64” edge was trimmed back to its profile with a knife. Then the strip of “wriggles” was sliced off above the slot leaving a strip with quarter concave slots on one edge. The wriggles were cut off to length and the outside curve at the ends shaped with a chisel. The middle ports wriggles were done the same way, except before slicing off the strip the upward interior concave pointy shape was cut with a small gouge. The strip was parted off, the pieces were cut to length and the top curvature carved manually. The picture below, of some leftover work-in-progress pieces I found, should help clarify this explanation. In this picture, initial milling of the some middle deck wriggles has been done and the bottom half of the slot sliced off. The next step would be to shape the interior curves with a small gouge, then trim the lower edge inside the curve to match that shape. Next, the strip would be sliced off and the pieces cut to length. Then the top edge would be shaped to match the curvature of the inside.

In Part 7, I will address what I felt was some of the most difficult woodworking in the ship, the complex curved rails and supports at the head and also the detailing of the head back to the

forecastle bulkhead, which was easier and more fun.

Cheers,

Ed Tosti

HMS Victory1:96 Scratchbuild Project Part 7 – The Bow Structure

The bow structure is one of the most interesting assemblies of woodwork in the ship, and perhaps one of the most challenging to model. In the picture below, taken later in construction, the various parts of the bow structure can be seen. The topmost of the curved horizontal rails is the “main rail”, which provides a bulwark for the fore face of the cathead, but more importantly is a critical triangular brace for the beakhead. The main rail is supported along it length by four Y-shaped “head timbers” which rest on the gammoning knee (barely visible), which acts as a brace between the stem and the beakhead. The head timbers are faced with a decorative beaded facing. The bottom feet of the head timbers also rest on the “upper cheek”, which fays to the lower plank of the middle wale, then curves inward, forward and upward to fay against the aft side of the beakhead right behind the figurehead. The “lower cheek” is of a similar pattern running from the top plank of the main wale up along the beakhead, ending just at the base of the figurehead. Both these timbers act as horizontal knees for the beakhead. Between the cheeks are heavy planking overlays, surrounding both the hawse holes and the gammoning slots. There is also a curved knee supporting the underside of the cathead and then curving forward along the hull to end just behind one of two

lighter weight rails which are supported in notches cut into the head timbers. Finally, we have the figurehead and some leafy scrollwork that trails aft between the cheeks.

In addition to the timber structure and figurehead, there is other interesting detail visible in the above picture, including the forecastle timberheads, the decorative arches along the face of the forecastle bulkhead, the “marines walk” with its two vertical supports curved around the bowsprit, the knightheads, pierced for the lower end of the mainstay collar, and, of course, the huge wormed anchor cables, patiently waiting many years for their anchors.

The following picture shows a top view of bow structure.

This picture, taken much later in the process, shows a different view of some of the details mentioned above. It provides a better picture of the decoration on the forecastle bulkhead and also clearly shows the toilet accommodation for men and the rounded enclosed stalls for the junior officers, all of which derive their name from their location at the “head” of the ship. The top of the marines walk is also interesting with its rectangular openings to takes the collars of the mainstay and preventer. As I said above, I found this whole array of detail to be one of the most interesting parts of the ship.

Before any modeling of the bow structure could be done, a lot of work was needed to complete the framing of the fore end of the forecastle. My drawings were sadly lacking in details of this and a lot of time was spent looking for better sources of information and translating that into some sketches to base this on. The small, decked area in the above picture is actually at a level above the upper deck in the forecastle and the heavy cat beam across the top of the forecastle bulkhead actually is higher than the forecastle deck. This seemed quite unusual and confusing. The picture below, taken later shows some of this internal structural work.

Once this work was done and the basic dimensional information established, the first task was to fashion and install the Y-shaped head timbers mounted on the gammoning knee. These were fairly straightforward except that the notches for the light rails and the points of connection with the main rails had to be carefully laid out. Once that was done the making of the main rails had to be faced.

In part 2 I described how to loft the true shape of these rails. Now with the correct pattern in hand the rails needed bending to that shape in European Boxwood. First attempts to get this degree of curvature on this large timber failed – several times. I did not want to cut the rails against a weak cross grain because I wanted the full strength and also did not want to show weak cross grain in the final model. This problem would also have to be faced in forming the two cheeks, which although having a gentler curve had the additional complication of a wide horizontal triangular shape. The picture below shows these three rails on the port side shortly after their installation.

This problem was solved by using laminations of very thin boxwood. First a six inch piece of 2X4 lumber was cut into two pieces along a line conforming to the curve of the rail with a small blade on a band saw. This would act as the form which would press the wood to the shape the rail. Then boxwood was ripped into very thin strips between 1/32” and 1/64”. In the case of the triangular cheeks these strips were 1½” wide sheets. Then the thin strips were steamed until very pliable. One side of the 2X4 “mold” was clamped in the vise. Strips of wood were then removed from the steaming and immediately given a liberal coating of Titebond glue and layered onto the mold in the vise. The mating part of the mold was then fitted on top and with large clamps the two parts of the mold were pulled together forcing the strips into the shape of the rail. After drying for 2 days, they were released. Below is a picture of a leftover lamination for an upper cheek showing how the cheek was then cut from it. With laminates there is no spring back, so the mold shape will be retained exactly.

For some reason this piece was not used, but the lamination is very good, with little evidence of it being a laminate. Once these pieces were scored down with a beaded molding cutter, joints would really be imperceptible. This picture also illustrates the amount of expensive boxwood waste suffered in this process. This cheek, because of its triangular knee shape, required a wide laminate. Below is a picture of a failed delaminated main rail attempt, the result of not enough glue.

Once these curved rails were conquered, the work on the bow became easier and I will only describe it briefly since it was pretty straightforward modeling work.

The figurehead was carved out of a solid block of boxwood, using a rotary tool with small burrs for roughing out, supplemented with some small gouges and chisels to finish the shape. A picture of the finished carving is shown below. The stance of the two figures took some time and a few failures to work out. Final polishing was done with fine steel wool. If I were to do this again, I would make a mockup first using something like epoxy putty to help fully understand the shapes before diving into the boxwood.

The picture below shows the gratings over the bow timbers and in the marines walk. I will describe how these gratings, and many more to follow, were made, I will also discuss the issue of correctly locating the openings in the Marines walk grating for the main stay collars. This picture also shows the areas of straight beam grating, which for some reason was used in part of the surface. This picture also shows the safety netting and some hammock netting, which I will discuss in a later chapter.

Gratings were made using the setup shown in the picture below. First, an auxiliary saw table was made from a sheet of 1/8” clear Plexiglas to fit over the Unimat saw table. Then a groove was dadoed into the top surface with a .030” saw blade. A strip of boxwood of the same thickness was force fit into this groove, then trimmed down so that the top of the strip was 1/64th” above the top of the Plexiglas. A slot to take the .030” Unimat blade was cut through the Plexiglas and the table was clamped to the saw table in such a way that the blade projected just 1/64” above the Plexiglas. The table was then adjusted horizontally to give a spacing of exactly .030” between the blade and the strip of wood.

A 1” wide blank of 1/32” boxwood was then dadoed with 1/64” deep cuts across its width. First the blank was held against the strip of wood to make the first cut. Then, succeeding cuts were made by placing the previous cut over the strip and making another cut. This was repeated across the length of the strip. A small sample with a few cuts is pictured above. Then, 1/32’ strips were ripped from this piece. To avoid tear out a very high speed and very slow feed should be used with a sharp fine toothed blade. The strips were then interlocked together to form grating. On the real ship grating was not interlocked but merely had cross pieces set in grooves in the support members. Interlocking simplified accurate spacing and also allowed me to avoid using glue. The unglued grating looks crisp and clean and none has ever come apart. A setup like this could be done on any small circular saw, or the grooves could be cut on a milling machine, a process I used later for the flag lockers. I used an angle cut with different spacing to make ladder sides and a similar setup to cut notches in window mullions.

The last point I will address in this part was the location of the three rectangular holes in the grating of the marines walk. These openings take the collars of the main stay and the main preventer stay. They must be located very accurately so that when tension is put on these stays no stress is placed on the grating, which would then break under the strain from these very large lines. These openings can be seen in the earlier pictures. The grating in this area is in the shape of a trapezoid and is 3” thick. To locate these holes a dummy mainmast was setup and temporary stays run from the correct height do to their connections under the bow. Using 1/32” stock, a pattern was developed showing spaces needed for the stay collars These hole locations were set out on an enlarged piece of grating to assure that the openings would clear the stays and also that openings would be bounded by grating bars on all sides. The grating shape was then cut and fit into the opening. The goal here was to avoid having to cut the grating in a haphazard way later. The last picture shows how this worked out on the final model. The stay collars, with their hearts and lashings, actually bend down over the forecastle fife rail. This could not have been foreseen without a mockup.

In the next part I will begin to discuss planking and detailing of the upper decks. I have not tried to cover everything in this log but only items I felt would be interesting to a range of modelers. Most of all I would like to reach those less experienced in scratch building, who may well be facing the same dilemmas I faced with Victory. To some, more experienced builders, there may be few revelations here, but if I have glossed over something too lightly, where there may be interest in a better explanation, please let me know and I will try to address it in a future chapter or separately.

Cheers,

HMS Victory1:96 Scratchbuild ProjectPart 8 – Deck Details 1

In the next three parts I will describe, in general, the construction of the upper decks and their detailing, taking the narrative up to the completion of the hull. I have selected a few parts of this work to describe in some detail, but will not cover every point. As always, I welcome any questions. If there is some aspect where more detail is desired, let me know and I will be glad to describe it.

The picture below shows the status of the model by the end of 1996. The exterior and most of the interior of the hull and the upper gun deck has been planked. The partition, which bars the way to the Admiral’s cabins is in place and framing of the quarter deck is about to begin.

The extent of detailing on the upper deck was limited to what would be visible, so no more of the interior aft partitions or decoration was done beyond what is shown in this picture. Details visible through the hatches were modeled, for example the capstans, one of which is visible below the main hatch.

The planking of the upper deck, the quarterdeck the poop deck and forecastle was done in European Boxwood using a four butt shift pattern as per the original ship. All the planks were glued and pegged with boxwood treenails. These were described in an earlier chapter. The 12” wide planks were ripped from 1/8” thick by about 1 ½” wide Boxwood strips using the Unimat circular saw. The black caulking between planks was simulated using black construction paper, which was glued to the strips before ripping them into planks. This saved a lot of messy gluing of individual strips between planks. It also eliminated the need for scraping off excess glue and paper. Only the ends of the planks had to be fitted with paper strips. After gluing and tree nailing, the tops of the nails were cut off, the ends filed down flush and the decks scaped to a smooth finish with a 1/2” scraper. The picture below shows some of the finished decking, as well as some of the final deck detailing.

However, quite a bit of work had to be done before getting to this stage. Back at the stage of the first picture, the next task, to be done before framing the quarterdeck, was the installation of the thirty long 12 pounder upper deck guns. On the finished model, some of these would be totally visible in the waist, and to some degree under the forecastle and quarterdeck, so these had to be well detailed. The gun carriages of the lower and middle decks were roughed out in maple and not rigged. The visible guns of the upper decks, all long or short 12 pounders, were modeled more completely and precisely, with full rigging. The carriages of these guns were made in boxwood, based on large-scale drawings. The barrels were described earlier. The picture below shows a collection of leftover or reject parts, which will help describe the carriage construction.

The items in the above picture are laid out in a circular progression of the various steps. Starting at about ten o’clock is a piece of boxwood, which has been milled to the dimensions of the carriage sides, actually two sides facing away from each other. The sides were then ripped off of this on the circular saw and trimmed to size. The axles were made from rectangular pieces, which were drilled to accept the round parts which were inserted in each end. The wheels were turned to size, bored, scored around their circumference and parted off in the lathe. The larger assembly of wood at 3 o’clock is an assembly jig, into which the pieces were inserted for gluing, yielding the assembly at 4 oclock. Finally, an iron bar was inserted between the sides to hold the elevating wedge platform. Eyebolts were then added, the guns were pinned to the deck and rigged. Below is a picture of a finished quarterdeck short 12 pounder.

The rigging of each gun includes the heavy breeching, which was lashed to large ringbolts in the side, and two training tackles, eachconsisting each of a double and single block attached by hooks to eyebolts on the carriage and in the side. These were coiled up for storage. Ringbolts were also installed in the deck behind each gun.

All the eyebolts and rings were made from brass wire. Rings were made by tightly wrapping brass wire around a rod of the correct diameter. The coil of rings was then sawed through along the axis of the rod, producing many open rings. The ends of each of these was then silver soldered to form a strong ring. All the brass parts were blackened chemically.

I elected not to model the breeching rings on the pommels or the brackets over the trunnions. The scoring around the middle of the wheels was to simulate the two pieces of wood bolted together crosswise to make the wheels.

The above picture also shows what I believe are the only purchased parts in the model – the belaying pins and the cannon balls. The pins were too short and a constant headache during rigging. The balls were perfectly sized and held in place with cyanoacrylate.

With the upper deck guns in place, the quarterdeck framing could proceed. Some of this is shown below. It is semi authentic and certainly not completely represented. The upper deck guns are visible in this picture. Notice only those forward of the partition (and visible) are rigged. The first plank, the king plank, in the center of the deck has been laid.

In the following picture the quarterdeck and forecastle planking has been installed from the center out to the inside line of the gangways. The waist beams have been temporarily setup to fit the notched gangway facings, which line the waist opening, and also to fit the turned posts, which support these beams. The beams themselves are 50 feet long and so are scarfed together with a long vertical scarf, which can just barely be made out in this picture. When all these parts fit correctly they were glued and treenailed into pace. All the remaining planking at this level was then installed.

The next picture shows the model with all the decking and most of the deck detail finished. This picture shows the extent of the hammock netting. I will describe how these nettings were made in part 9.

The remainder of this part consists of some pictures of other deck detail, which I will describe only briefly, but will be glad to discuss further if someone is interested in more detail.

The above picture shows the belfry, the vent stack from the stove and low profile, rounded up coamings and gratings of the forecastle. On either side of the belfry is a row of timberheads with knees. These will carry buntlines, leechlines and braces for some of the forward sails. On the waist beams are the shaped supports for the ships boats. I will cover the modeling of these tiny, planked boats in a later chapter. All of this woodwork is cherry. The two boxwood posts at the rail on each side are kevels. There are several more about the deck. These two will take the fore topsail tyes through their sheaves and belay them around the timberhead top of the kevel.

The starboard 68 pounder carronade is shown here before its breeching was installed. Four of its large diameter balls are in the shot garland along the catbeam. The timberheads along the forward fife rail have simulated sheaves and timberheads and will eventually be almost completely covered with the many lines that belay here. The topsail sheet bits, shown partly in the upper left corner have brass sheaves, which will take topsail sheets later.

The above picture shows ringbolts in the deck for the guns, some of the shorter hammock netting, the large wooden staghorn for the port main sheet, and more of those purchased belaying pins. The penny was not part of the real ship.

This last picture shows the flag lockers, which held the dozens of different signal flags. These were made, “egg crate style” by a method like that used for gratings which was discussed earlier. The

stern lanterns are prominent in this view. I will discuss how these were made in part 9.

CheersHMS Victory1:96 Scratchbuild ProjectPart 8 – Deck Details 1

In the next three parts I will describe, in general, the construction of the upper decks and their detailing, taking the narrative up to the completion of the hull. I have selected a few parts of this work to describe in some detail, but will not cover every point. As always, I welcome any questions. If there is some aspect where more detail is desired, let me know and I will be glad to describe it.

The picture below shows the status of the model by the end of 1996. The exterior and most of the interior of the hull and the upper gun deck has been planked. The partition, which bars the way to the Admiral’s cabins is in place and framing of the quarter deck is about to begin.

The extent of detailing on the upper deck was limited to what would be visible, so no more of the interior aft partitions or decoration was done beyond what is shown in this picture. Details visible through the hatches were modeled, for example the capstans, one of which is visible below the main hatch.

The planking of the upper deck, the quarterdeck the poop deck and forecastle was done in European Boxwood using a four butt shift pattern as per the original ship. All the planks were glued and pegged with boxwood treenails. These were described in an earlier chapter. The 12” wide planks were ripped from 1/8” thick by about 1 ½” wide Boxwood strips using the Unimat circular saw. The black caulking between planks was simulated using black construction paper, which was glued to the strips before ripping them into planks. This saved a lot of messy gluing of individual strips between planks. It also eliminated the need for scraping off excess glue and paper. Only the ends of the planks had to be fitted with paper strips. After gluing and tree nailing, the tops of the nails were cut off, the ends filed down flush and the decks scaped to a smooth finish with a 1/2” scraper. The picture below shows some of the finished decking, as well as some of the final deck detailing.

However, quite a bit of work had to be done before getting to this stage. Back at the stage of the first picture, the next task, to be done before framing the quarterdeck, was the installation of the thirty long 12 pounder upper deck guns. On the finished model, some of these would be totally visible in the waist, and to some degree under the forecastle and quarterdeck, so these had to be well detailed. The gun carriages of the lower and middle decks were roughed out in maple and not rigged. The visible guns of the upper decks, all long or short 12 pounders, were modeled more completely and precisely, with full rigging. The carriages of these guns were made in boxwood, based on large-scale drawings. The barrels were described earlier. The picture below shows a collection of leftover or reject parts, which will help describe the carriage construction.

The items in the above picture are laid out in a circular progression of the various steps. Starting at about ten o’clock is a piece of boxwood, which has been milled to the dimensions of the carriage sides, actually two sides facing away from each other. The sides were then ripped off of this on the circular saw and trimmed to size. The axles were made from rectangular pieces, which were drilled to accept the round parts which were inserted in each end. The wheels were turned to size, bored, scored around their circumference and parted off in the lathe. The larger assembly of wood at 3 o’clock is an assembly jig, into which the pieces were inserted for gluing, yielding the assembly at 4 oclock. Finally, an iron bar was inserted between the sides to hold the elevating wedge platform. Eyebolts were then added, the guns were pinned to the deck and rigged. Below is a picture of a finished quarterdeck short 12 pounder.

The rigging of each gun includes the heavy breeching, which was lashed to large ringbolts in the side, and two training tackles, eachconsisting each of a double and single block attached by hooks to eyebolts on the carriage and in the side. These were coiled up for storage. Ringbolts were also installed in the deck behind each gun.

All the eyebolts and rings were made from brass wire. Rings were made by tightly wrapping brass wire around a rod of the correct diameter. The coil of rings was then sawed through along the axis of the rod, producing many open rings. The ends of each of these was then silver soldered to form a strong ring. All the brass parts were blackened chemically.

I elected not to model the breeching rings on the pommels or the brackets over the trunnions. The scoring around the middle of the wheels was to simulate the two pieces of wood bolted together crosswise to make the wheels.

The above picture also shows what I believe are the only purchased parts in the model – the belaying pins and the cannon balls. The pins were too short and a constant headache during rigging. The balls were perfectly sized and held in place with cyanoacrylate.

With the upper deck guns in place, the quarterdeck framing could proceed. Some of this is shown below. It is semi authentic and certainly not completely represented. The upper deck guns are visible in this picture. Notice only those forward of the partition (and visible) are rigged. The first plank, the king plank, in the center of the deck has been laid.

In the following picture the quarterdeck and forecastle planking has been installed from the center out to the inside line of the gangways. The waist beams have been temporarily setup to fit the notched gangway facings, which line the waist opening, and also to fit the turned posts, which support these beams. The beams themselves are 50 feet long and so are scarfed together with a long vertical scarf, which can just barely be made out in this picture. When all these parts fit correctly they were glued and treenailed into pace. All the remaining planking at this level was then installed.

The next picture shows the model with all the decking and most of the deck detail finished. This picture shows the extent of the hammock netting. I will describe how these nettings were made in part 9.

The remainder of this part consists of some pictures of other deck detail, which I will describe only briefly, but will be glad to discuss further if someone is interested in more detail.

The above picture shows the belfry, the vent stack from the stove and low profile, rounded up coamings and gratings of the forecastle. On either side of the belfry is a row of timberheads with knees. These will carry buntlines, leechlines and braces for some of the forward sails. On the waist beams are the shaped supports for the ships boats. I will cover the modeling of these tiny, planked boats in a later chapter. All of this woodwork is cherry. The two boxwood posts at the rail on each side are kevels. There are several more about the deck. These two will take the fore topsail tyes through their sheaves and belay them around the timberhead top of the kevel.

The starboard 68 pounder carronade is shown here before its breeching was installed. Four of its large diameter balls are in the shot garland along the catbeam. The timberheads along the forward fife rail have simulated sheaves and timberheads and will eventually be almost completely covered with the many lines that belay here. The topsail sheet bits, shown partly in the upper left corner have brass sheaves, which will take topsail sheets later.

The above picture shows ringbolts in the deck for the guns, some of the shorter hammock netting, the large wooden staghorn for the port main sheet, and more of those purchased belaying pins. The penny was not part of the real ship.

This last picture shows the flag lockers, which held the dozens of different signal flags. These were made, “egg crate style” by a method like that used for gratings which was discussed earlier. The

stern lanterns are prominent in this view. I will discuss how these were made in part 9.

CheersHMS Victory1:96 Scratchbuild Project Part 10 – Deck Details 3

Ships Boats

The ships boats are prominently displayed on supports on the skid beams in the waist, and for whatever reason, the eye seems to be drawn directly to them when looking at the finished model. For years I was aware that they had to be modeled very well, but was stumped for a good process. I spent a lot of time over the years thinking about the inevitable task of building these. Finally a couple years ago, it could be put off no longer. I had a process in mind and in the end I was quite satisfied with the results. Before wading through the details I will show a picture of the finished product.

These are only two of the traditionally modeled five. I actually made three, the thirty-four foot launch, the thirty-two foot barge, and the twenty-eight foot pinnace. Only the latter two were installed, mainly because I did not want to completely obscure the view into the waist. The boats are made with scale thickness boxwood planking, cherry frames, stem and keel, and boxwood internals (seats, flooring, oars, etc.). The boats are carvel built, meaning the planks are butted together, not overlapped.

The following image is of the 34 foot launch from John McKay’s Anatomy of the Ship Series on the Victory. Many sources of drawings for these boats are available in various books. This one shows the hull profile with frame lines, a body plan and other necessary details. I scanned the image, resized it to my scale and made some modifications which are shown in the next diagram.

In the diagram below the image has been split, flipped and re assembled so that all the aft and forward frames are on their own single view. Below the aft frames are on top. In addition, a rectangular box was put around each of these plans. The height of these boxes is the same distance above the top of keel in both images. These boxes define the size of the rectangle of wood from which each frame will be cut.

First, multiple copies of these were made, enough so that a frame could be cut from each. They were then pasted on to cherry squares the thickness of the boats frames, about 3” (1/32”). The external shape only of each frame was cut out, leaving the top and sides of the rectangle intact above the gunwale on each. The top of the wood was held precisely to the top line. This would

become a datum line on which the framing would be setup for assembly and planking. The next two pictures, taken during the planking process for this boat, show how these frames were setup, upside down, on a block of wood for assembly and planking.

First the frame bulkheads are glued upside down onto a block of wood. They are kept aligned with two strips along the sides. Their spacing was matched to the profile drawing. The boxwood transom was then cutout (from the last aft pattern) and glued in place, along with the keel and stem assembly.

Boxwood planks, 1/64 ‘ thick and 1/32” wide were then cut and fit into place. A lot of clamping was needed to hold these tight against their neighbors so no gaps would appear. The gunwales were put on early in this process so the planks would end up parallel to it at the top. Stealers were used to bring these planks up fair. This process was described earlier in the section on the planking of the main hull.

Unfortunately I have no pictures of the final steps, but once all the planking is done up to the gunwale, the boat is sawed off the frame bulkheads just above (ie below) the gunwale and detached from the wood block. The bulkheads were trimmed down the correct height at the gunwale and were then hollowed out to their final moulded breadth inside the hull. This was done with small chisels. A rotary tool could be used if handled very carefully. It is very easy to split the fragile frames, or worse, gouge through the hull. If done carefully with a very sharp tool, the frames can be reduced to a scale moulded breadth. The following picture shows the finished hull planking on the launch and the last picture is a closeup of the interior of the 28 foot pinnace taken during the rigging process.

The oars were made from boxwood drawn down to about .020” in the treenail drawplate. They were then steamed until soft. The blades were then formed by rolling the ends flat and wider, being

careful not to oversquash them. When dry the flat ends were impregnated with CA.

In the next part I will begin discussing the last major phase of the work - masting and rigging. Then, after the rigging I will cover the very last item, which was the making of the gunport doors, their

hinges and their rigging. These were left until last so they would not be ripped off by the tangles of rope during rigging.

Cheers, HMS Victory1:96 Scratchbuild Project

Part 12* – Masts, Spars and Rigging 1

Rigging Overview

Before beginning the rigging, a number of questions had to be answered about the extent of rigging to be modeled. First was the question of sails. I knew I did not want to model sails, even though they provide an opportunity to model a lot of very interesting rigging features. Having decided against them, some rigging could simply not be modeled effectively, for example, staysail halliards and sheets. Beyond this type of rigging on staysails, jibs and studdingsails, I decided to model everything else on the rigging list. This list can be found in Steele’s Elements of Mastmaking,

Sailmaking and Rigging and is duplicated for Victory in John McKay’s book in the Anatomy of the Ship series.

As shown partly in the picture above, Victory’s rigging consists of hundreds of lines of many different sizes. Some are right hand three strand hawser laid, some are four-strand left hand cable laid, with several varieties in between. Each line has a variety of blocks, deadeyes, hooks, etc. associated with it. And each line has a length and some are deceiving, introducing the possibility of coming up short after putting a lot of work into a line. All this information is included in Steele’s for each class of ship and in McKay for Victory. To make the use of this information easier, I made an Excel spreadsheet, specific to Victory to make all this information usable, to total up numbers of parts, rope lengths, types and treatment and to provide a checklist where fabrication and erection of each item could be checked off. This was an invaluable aid and a constant fixture on the workbench for years. A sample page from this 20 page document is shown below.

Longridge was the other indispensable. His book covers every single item of rigging in a simple how to do it style. Other important references I used were the McKay book and James Lees, Masting and Rigging of English Ships of War 1625-1860.

The order of rigging is often discussed. I followed three simple rules in the following order. First, fore to aft. Second, bottom to top. Third, standing then running. I applied this approach to masts and spars along with the rigging, because so much rigging is attached to these before erection. So, for example, the main topgallant lifts were made and installed installed before the lower mizzen mast. Mixing the work between spars, rigging and other items like the tops and cross trees also helped relieve potential tedium. This approach worked well with only a few awkward situations. These were overcome with some good long tweezers, surgical retractors, long curved needles and a dose of patience.

Materials need to be decided. I elected to make all the masts, tops, cross trees, caps, parrals, blocks, deadeyes, and most other accessories from boxwood. Yards, except for the lower studdingsail booms were made from Gabon Ebony. In larger sizes, about 3” circumference and above, rope was twisted up on a ropemaking machine from fine linen thread, three or four strand, right or left hand as required, if doable at the scale. There is actually a lot of two strand made rope on the model, because it looks better than plain thread. Plain thread, mostly mercerized cotton polyester was used for the smaller sizes. The smallest cotton thread I could find was used for serving. Later, I will describe two machines that were made to: 1) make rope, and 2) serve rope.

Shaping Masts and Spars

Almost all of the masts and spars have some variation of diameter over their length, for example yards are tapered from the center out. Most have either an octagonal or square section somewhere along their length or a combination of the two, for example, topmasts have a square of octagonal shape at the bottom, a flared octagonal shape under the cross trees and a tapered square section

at the top. For these reasons all these pieces were made by hand. The process is simple and widely used, but I will describe it for those who may not have had a chance to try it yet.

First, a straight, straight-grained piece of wood, in my case this was box or ebony, is cut square on the circular saw to slightly over the final maximum dimensions. This is then planed down square to the maximum diameter of over its full length. The ends are then center-marked with a cross at the center of the breadth and width (not corner to corner). This is important to assure that the finished spar is straight. This square is then marked at points of decreasing thickness, or at points where it transitions in shape, along its length. The square is then shaped on all four sides down to these dimensions at these points, always making sure the center mark at the ends remains in the center. The spar is then placed in a jig, which is simply a long enough piece of wood with a 45 degree v-shaped groove in its top and a nail at the end to act as a stop. Three of these are shown below. The first corner is pared down to the correct shape and the work rotated 45 degrees and the process is repeated for all four corners. This yields an octagonal shape, hopefully with the correct diameter and taper. All this work can be done with small planes, files, or scraper blades. These tools are shown below with the three sizes of jig.

In the next steps the eight new corners of the round sections are taken down to yield sixteen faces and this continues until the final round shape is reached. The transitions are then worked with a file, the spar cut to length, other details added, and finally polished ready for rigging out and installing.

Lower Mast Cheeks

Making the lower mast cheeks presents an interesting problem. I will describe how I did this, basically following the process that Longridge proposes. The lower main mast with its cheeks installed, and also the framing for the top, is shown below.

The cheeks on either side of the mast and the rectangular section at the top were made from a single piece of boxwood slightly longer than the length of the cheeks, squared to a dimension slightly larger the top rectangular section. A long hole is bored down the center of this piece lengthwise to the diameter of the mast in this area. For my model this was 3/8” for the fore and main, and 24” for the mizzen. This was a convenient coincidence that allowed me to drill these with long brad point drills of those sizes. The resulting piece was then put over a mandrel of the same dimension as the hole (a medium tight fit is desired). The mandrel was then set up between centers in the lathe, as shown below, and the piece turned down to the shape of the cheeks.

The cheeks get very thin towards their bottoms, so very light cuts must be taken in the lathe, or the problem shown below is likely to result. This process wastes a lot of costly boxwood even when successful, so breaking the parts adds insult to injury.

When the pieces are finished turning, they are planed down on the fore and aft faces, so they fit properly on the mast, as shown in the picture below.

The cheeks are fit temporarily in the above picture. Before final attachment, metal rings needed to be formed, soldered, blackened and fixed on to the mast under the cheeks. Others are then fit over it. See the top picture. In my case these rings were thin enough to fit under the cheeks without causing a gap to show. The joints in the rings were hidden under the rubbing paunch, a timber that fits on the front of the lower mast. The finished lower foremast is shown below.

I will not discuss the making of spars any further, but if there are questions, please ask them and I will be glad to discuss those issues further. I will add a few more pictures to show some of this work.

This picture shows stiffeners being added to the top decking of the main top. These structures were very lightweight, basically just crossed members of thin planking. The seams in the planking are black paper. The side rails are slotted to take the topmast deadeye chains.

Above is the parral holding the spritsail yard to the bowsprit. The wheels for these very small working parts were turned from box and drilled in the lathe before parting off. The trucks were shaped and drilled in a thicker piece, then sliced off on the circular saw to assure a similar shape to all the pieces. They are then held together and bound around the mast by rope. Note the center section of the spritsail yard is octagonal in shape. This was true of all yards. The multi sided polygonal shape can still be seen on the round part of the bowsprit above the parral. The iron ring just above the parral is a part of the traveler for the jib.

Above is the finished fore top. The holes for through the aft rail and the lower horizontal piece were drilled through one piece, which was then slit into the two parts. This assured perfect alignment of the holes so the rail stanchions would be vertical and parallel. The toggles on the decking between stiffeners support rigging blocks suspended below the top. These were all put on before installation of the top itself. The vertical battens around the square top section of the lower mast fit over the square iron straps and were these to absorb the rubbing of the lower shrouds. The two pair of burton pendants have been lashed together and put over the mast. The cap on top of the mast has a bolster on top with round grooves for slings, which will be put on later.

Above is the finished fore crosstrees. Note the sheave in the octagonal section of the fore topgallant mast. This was provided for raising and lowering the mast into position – a frequent

activity at sea. The hole in the cap was just large enough to allow the mast to be dropped through it when a supporting fid just visible at the bottom of the lower square section was removed.

In the next section I will discuss machinery made and used for rope-making and serving.

Cheers, HMS Victory1:96 Scratchbuild Project Part 11 – Gunport Doors

This part is out of sequence. I was going to cover it last because installing the gun doors was the very last task in completing the model. This was left till last to avoid the mass of rigging lines getting fouled with the doors, having to be untangled, or worse, breaking a door. However, some interest was expressed in this, so I have moved it up in the sequence. Below is a picture showing a few of the middle and lower deck port doors after installation.

Although in this picture there is a bit of overexposure on the tops of the doors, they were planked on their outer face with the same boxwood and cherry as their surrounding planking. In fact, when closed the doors would match their surroundings, thicker if cutting a wale or the black strake just above the main wale, as seen in this picture, and of the same wood.

The Doors

Making the doors is pretty straightforward. They consist of two layers of plank set at opposed angles. On the model the inside layer was cut from a single piece of cherry, 1/32” in thickness. The sides of the ports are vertical, since they are flanked by the frame timbers. The sills and lintels parallel the respective gun decks, so some of the ports have a slight trapezoidal shape, more at the fore and aft ends. Note that they do not parallel the sheer. This means that the outside planks of the door will sometimes be at an angle to the sills, where the sheer is more pronounced compared to the deck line. To get this correct the cherry inside blank was fitted to the port and marked at the planking seams on each side. Planks of the appropriate thickness and wood were then glued on so their seams would match the marks. Excess at the sides was then trimmed off. The door in the picture below, which somehow got mislaid during construction, shows this slant in the planking and the difference in thickness and wood.

This picture also shows the closed viewport opening, which was a feature of the lower port doors, and the somewhat crudely made horseshoe hinge for this. The hinge was made by elongating a ring of the type cut for ringbolts and flattening it with a hammer. It was then glued on with CA. The other items in this picture are the very small eyebolts which were fitted at the bottom edge of the doors both top and bottom. These were formed from brass wire with a pair of small needle nose pliers which had been ground down at the ends to a small point. I will show these pliers later in the rigging discussion. Four of these were inserted in holes after the hinges were installed and glued with CA. I discussed making an applicator for very small drops of CA in a previous section.

Finally there are the hinges. One is shown at the lower right in the above picture. Two are shown on the doors after bending their profile to fit the wood thickness. There are attached by two small brass nails each, and further secured at the ends with the top eyebolts.

The Hinges

Proportionality in the hinge detail was the principle factor in making these. This out weighed any thought of making working hinges at this scale, so a dummy hinge that would look like the original was adopted. The hinges were made by taking a strip of brass plate, the thickness of the hinge and about 1” wide by a couple inches long. A piece of straight brass wire was then silver soldered down the length of this strip at its center. The strip was then clamped firmly on top of a block of wood and the hinges were sawed off to the correct width. The resulting hinge blanks are shown below.

The hinges could be sawed manually, but I used a thin saw blade set up in the milling machine to slice these off. This assured the exact same width and minimized cleanup of the sawn edges. The three holes were then drilled in each hinge. A small drilling jig was made so these holes would all be spaced uniformily. The blanks above have had their first hole drilled and the finished hinge at the bottom has its final three holes and has been blackened. This hinge has also been filed down in size on the portion that will fit into a hole in the side of the ship. These holes were made small so they would not be visible when the doors were pushed in. The holes were spotted for drilling on the side using the final assembled door for that port as a marking guide. The picture below shows some more doors and the underside eyebolts. Note that the ports in the waist do not have doors.

Gun Door Lift Tackle

Making and installing the rope lifts to raise the doors presented the interesting problem of how to fasten the ropes inside the hull. The two lower deck aft chase ports under the wing transom were done simply by pushing line into holes and grasping the line inside with tweezers, then tying the two inside ends together, pulling the line out and tying it to the top door eyebolts. This would not work for the side ports for a number of reasons so another solution was needed.

The sleeves on the real ship protrude a bit from the side. They were probably lead liners through holes into the gundecks, where the tackles would be suspended from the beams. All I needed to do was simulate the sleeves and secure the lines inside. This was done by making small boxwood sleeves. These are about the size of the sleeves on the real ship and have a hole drilled through them just large enough to take the 1 ½” lift line. Below is a picture of some leftover sleeves and a piece of blank from which they were cut.

The sleeves were made by drawing strips of boxwood down to the outer diameter of the sleeve to form a long thin dowel. A drilling guide was then made with a hole through it the size of the sleeve. This guide was then secured in the cross feed of the Unimat. Actually, the guide was secured first, so the hole would be exactly centered in the lathe. The drawn boxwood dowel was then placed in the three jaw centering chuck in the lathe. The tool rest was moved toward the headstock to bring the dowel to the front of the guide.

In this operation, the hole through the guide, which just fits the boxwood dowel, keeps the spinning dowel centered for drilling. The small drill bit in the headstock was allowed to protrude only enough to drill one sleeve. This reduces drill wandering in the hole. To drill a hole, the tool rest was backed toward the headstock until the dowel is even with the face of the guide. The tailstock was then advanced to drill the hole and then pulled back. The picture below shows the next step.

In this picture I am showing how a sleeve was parted off after drilling using a razor blade in a slot set back from the face of the guide by the length of the sleeve. Very gentle pressure is used with the lathe turning. It is very easy to crush these small blanks. When the sleeve was cut through the tool rest was moved toward the headstock and the finished sleeve pushed out. The next sleeve was then ready for drilling.

To install the sleeves and the line, holes were drilled in the side of the ship above the hinge holes. These holes, of course, matched the diameter of the sleeve. The line was then pulled through the sleeve and knotted on the inside end so it would not pull out. The sleeve was then dipped in Titebond glue and inserted into the hole. Later when the glue was set, the lines were tied to the door eyebolts and pulled out to straighten them out at a uniform length.

The picture below shows some more doors, including the vertical opening doors of the infirmary on the middle deck.

Ed TostiHMS Victory1:96 Scratchbuild Project Part 13 – Ropemaking

There is a lot of rope needed to rig Victory, even without the rigging for the staysails, jibs, and studding sails, which as mentioned earlier were not modeled because without sails this is not practical. The rope ranges in size from the 27” circumference (9” diameter) anchor hawsers, down to 1” for flag halyards. All rope size is designated by circumference and I will refer to sizes on the model this way, using full scale measure. The picture below illustrates some of this diversity of sizes and types.

The largest line in the picture is the forestay, which is in a loop around the dense stack of shrouds above the foretop. This rope is 18 ½” in circumference. It has a bump in it called a “mouse”, which stops an eye splice. The stay is “served,” that is, wrapped with yarn, in this case very fine thread, from below the mouse around the masthead down to and including the eye splice. The smallest lines are the ratlines which are 1 ½” in circumference and tied around each of the shrouds with a clove hitch. The shrouds are 11” left handed, four strand cables, in pairs looped over the masthead. They are served from the masthead down below the height of the main yard. The first shroud on each lower mast is served over its full length. The sheets, which took the stress from the lower corners of the sails were among the largest lines in the running rigging. The end of the fore topsail sheets were 8” hemp. In this picture they rise up from blocks at the end of the yard where, in the absence of sails they are connected by a seized overhand knot through a loop of rope to the twin eyes of the clue line blocks, waiting for some miniature foretopman to untie them and make them fast to the corner of the foretopsail. . The standing rigging is black and the running rigging is hemp colored. The variety and complexity of all this adds a lot of interest to the model – and the modelmaking.

The Ropemaking Machine

Ropes down to 4 1/2” were made on a ropemaking machine, or model ropewalk, from small size linen thread. Sizes below 4 ½” were of mercerized cotton polyester thread. I will say more about this sizing and thread selection later, but first I will focus on the ropemaking machine itself. Longridge does a good job describing the ropemaking process and the machine needed and I have seen several good articles on this as well. I will describe what I did. Below is a picture of the heart of this machine.

You can see from this that I was robbing my kids’ toy chest in making this. First, the bed of the machine is a 2X4 about 10 feet long into which two slots were routed lengthwise to take two 1/8’ wide rails. At each end of this there is a sturdy pylon with adjustable eyebolts that stretch a strong steel wire taut about a foot above the bed. The rails carry the Lego cart, which holds one end of the rope strands in a spinning hook. This cart moves forward toward the headpiece as the rope is being twisted up. The “high wire” supports a rolling device that holds a slotted mandrel to keep the strands separate and feed them into the forming rope. The string trailing behind the cart drops over the other end of the 2X4 and has small weights attached. These weights put tension on the strands to keep the strands from tangling together. They also resist forward movement of the cart to give proper tension in the rope as it is made.

The headpiece component, shown closer below, consists of a central large gear with four planetary gears each with an extended shaft fitted with a stiff steel wire hook.

The central shaft has a hand crank and is fitted with a timing belt sheave for connection to a motor drive. This drive (not shown) is made from an old sewing machine motor with an adjustable speed foot pedal. It can be attached differently to yield right or left hand rope by reversing the direction of rotation. Either three or four strands can be tied to the planetary gear shafts to make three or four strand rope.

To make this machine, two aluminum plates were marked out and drilled accurately in a drill press to take the five shaft bearings at the right centers for the five gears. The gears are delrin on brass shafts and the bearings are brass sleeve thrust bearings. The two plates are spaced with shimmed wood blocks and bolted securely. The center gear is larger, I think 3:1, so, one turn of the crank gives three turns to the driven shafts. This assembly is securely bolted to the end of the 2X4. The last key component, and in some ways the most critical to getting good results is shown below.

On the cart are two hooks, one for large and one for small rope. These need to be as free turning as possible. This helps get the twisting up started and keeps it going at a uniform rate. For very small work friction can be a problem. The small hook, made from a round-headed pin, is used for most of the rope. To the right is the mandrel, a smooth piece of wood shaped to a bullet point with four evenly spaced grooves around its circumference. These grooves come to a point allowing the strands to converge freely together when being twisted. I used the four-slotted mandrel to make all rope. An interchangeable three slotted version was made and is better for three stranded rope, but I seldom took the time to change them out.

Making Rope

Even with all this apparatus, I found that making small ropes is still an art form as opposed to a scientific repeatable process, especially in the small sizes. I will outline the steps and highlight the critical factors involved in getting successful results, but this is very much a trial and error, learn as you go process.

First, a strand of linen thread is tied to the hook on one of the four shafts on the headpiece. I will discuss thread selection and size later. The cart is moved about seven or eight feet back and the other end of the thread is tied to the hook on the cart. The cart is then pulled back to put enough tension on the strand to make it straight and held in place with spring clamps placed in front of the front wheels. If four strand rope were being made I would loop the strand through the hook and take it back and tie it off to another on of the four shafts. Then a second strand is tied to one of the four shafts and taken through the hook and back to the headpiece where it is tied to another hook, trying to make the tension in all the strands as even as possible. Equal strand tension is the critical factor in this step.

Next the three (or four) strands are distributed into the grooves of the mandrel, which is brought up to within an inch or so of the hook on the cart. It is important in this step that the height of the mandrel is the same as the hook.

The crank is then turned by hand, or more normally, by the motor to start twisting the strands. Depending on the direction of turning, the linen strands may at first unwind before starting to twist up. Note that the clamps are still holding the cart. As the strands begin to twist and tension builds, the rear wheels of the cart will begin to lift. At this point the motor is stopped and the clamps removed. The tension on the weighted string at the back of the cart now becomes the critical factor. If weighted correctly, when the motor restarts the strands will continue to twist and the cart will soon begin moving toward the headpiece. Rope will begin forming between the cart hook and the mandrel, which will move toward the headpiece at a faster rate than the cart.

When the mandrel reaches the headpiece, it is swung aside. The rope will now be about four to five feet long. feet long – 65 to 80 fathoms in real length. The rope end is held between two fingers and the strands are clipped off the hooks. A knot is then made in the rope end and the rope is tied to one of the four hooks. The hook on the cart is then stopped from rotating with a clamp and the motor is run again. This process tightens up the rope.

The motor is then stopped and the rope is grasped at the cart end and pulled taut to help lock the rope fibers. It is then disengaged from the cart and pulled harder to tighten it further. It will stretch, but if it breaks you’ve pulled too hard. The rope is now made and stretched and can be removed from the machine. It will not unwind. It is now ready for the final step, coloring.

Standing rigging was black and running rigging hemp colored. Right after the rope was made, it was dyed in one of these colors, stretched to wring it out, and hung up to dry. When dry it was stretched again, re-dyed and dried again if needed, and wound onto a labeled bobbin. Rope was dyed black with a diluted acrylic liquid artists color. Hemp coloring was mixed from acrylic designers guache then diluted. Acrylic artists colors are made from finely ground pigments, so unlike dye, they will not fade. With the diluted mixtures there is no noticeable stiffness in the rope from the acrylic polymer. Both colors were diluted enough so that the rope would show some contrast, with the crevices being darker. Black is not black black. Same with the hemp. Where thread alone was used, colors were selected to be close to the linen dyed hemp. The black is black black.

Rope Sizes

I used primarily two sizes of linen to make all the rope. Other materials could be used and I made some nice rope with other materials – cotton, polyester, etc. I was concerned about stretching, but after a couple years there has been none on the made rope or even on the plain thread that was used for smaller sizes. Based on this I would consider using other materials if doing this again, mainly because linen thread, even the higher quality type I used, has imperfections – bumps – which sometimes show up in rope. Below is a picture of some of the leftover linen rope.

In this picture, on the end of one of the bobbins, you can see information about the rope on that spool – number of strands of which thread, right or left hand, and size. Here is a close up of some of the hemp rope.

With only two sizes of thread, there were limits to the sizes of rope that could be made. The variables were, number of strands, size of thread, number of threads in a strand. The smallest made rope was 4 1/2” and was made from only two strands of the finest thread (1684). To set the sizes, rope was made by all the different combinations available, then each was measured with a micrometer and each size needed was assigned the nearest combination. The card below shows the assignments for the smaller sizes.

This card was used throughout the rigging process to select the best size match for each rigging line. Below 4 ½” there are merely thread types, with their diameters. The larger sizes show the number of strands of which linen thread. The above sizes make up the bulk of the rope needed. Sizes above 9” were were listed on another sheet and made to size with more or bigger thread.

HMS Victory1:96 Scratchbuild Project Part 14 – Serving Rope

Some of the very first lines to be rigged required serving. Creating served lines on the model is simplified from what was done in real practice. Standing rigging that was subject to wear from rubbing or required additional protection was wormed, parceled and served. Worming refers to wrapping a rope of smaller size into the grooves between the main strands of the rope. The only lines on the Victory model that were wormed were the anchor hawsers and the mainstay. Others were too small for this. The next step, parceling, involved wrapping the wormed rope with tarred flannel – like tape. None of this was done on the model. Finally, the wormed and parceled rope was

served. This involved wrapping it tightly around its circumference with small sized yarn. Many lines on the victory model were served – stays, lower and topmast shrouds, stay collars and all but the smallest that were specified for the treatment in the rigging schedule. None but the largest block beckets were served.

The Serving Machine

Some sort of device is needed to facilitate the serving process. Below is a picture of the machine I made for this. The basic principle of this machine is that a rope stretched and clamped between the two lower shafts, would be rotated in the same direction and at the same rate from both ends to avoid twisting the rope. Fine thread could then be closely and uniformly wrapped around the rope from a spool as the rope was turned.

This is a closer view of the internals of the head end of the machine. A crank turns the shaft with the larger gear. This shaft is connected by a thick wire jackshaft to a large gear of the same diameter at the other end. These two gears rotating at the same speed drive smaller gears at each end on shafts to which rope is clamped. One turn of the crank gives, I think, three turns to the rope. Rope is held at the end of the shaft by jaws formed at the end. The jaws are made tight on the rope by a threaded collar with a screw, which is slid forward. The screw is then tightened to hold the rope on the shaft centerline. At the other end, after clamping, the rope is pulled tight by sliding the shaft at that end backwards. With the right tightness on the gear set screw this can be done without having to tighten the set screw every time. Only enough tension is needed to keep the rope reasonably taut.

The serving yarn used was very fine cotton thread. The spool is given its own shaft so it can unwind as needed.

The Process

First, the portion of a line to be served is marked out with a white chalk pencil. Often this is done by putting the line in place on the ship to get this right. Small sewing needles are passed through the rope between the strands at each end of the area to be served. The rope is then clamped into the machine. This is shown below in the following demonstration.

The end of the thread from the spool is then passed through the needle at the right hand end. It is then pulled through the rope and the needle is set aside.

After being passed through the rope the thread is passed through the eye of the second needle and that needle is pulled through to a point where the thread is close, but not yet into the rope. The purpose of this is to keep the thread alongside the rope for the first part of the serving process. This is shown below.

The next picture shows serving in process. The crank is turned so the thread gets laid over the top of the rope where it can be seen better. This helps assure that the turns are tight up against each other.

After about 10 or fifteen turns, the crank is stopped and the thread that runs along the rope to the other end is clipped off with small scissors as shown below. That end of the thread is now securely fixed under the first turns, leaving a nice neat beginning to the served portion.

The serving then continues right up to the second needle at which time the thread is cut off as shown below, while maintaining a hold on the thread. The loose end is then passed through the eye of this needle and pulled through. It is then clipped off.

The fully served line is shown below before being remved from the machine. I usually wait for the line to be installed before clipping this right up close. At that point the line is taut and in position, so it’s safe to put a tiny drop of CA on this end before that final clipping off.

Eye splices were served by marking out just the loop of the eye itself. The needles were set at these points as above and the area between them was served exactly as above. Then the line was removed from the machine and the eye splice made. I will describe how this was done later. A needle was placed at the end of the area to be served below the eye. The eye itself was then clamped in the machine and the thread was tied to the bottom of the eye loop. The line was served up to the needle and finished off the same way.

Where needed on stays, a mouse was formed in the serving machine in a much simpler way than the original. Thread was fastened at the mouse location and a bump was built up in the shape of a mouse by winding the thread over itself and touching it with a small drop of CA a couple times

HMS Victory 1:96 Scratchbuild Project

Part 15 – Deadeyes and Blocks

Deadeyes

Deadeyes were used to restrain and to put tension on various standing rigging lines. The larger deadeyes in the above picture, on the fore channel, are anchoring lower shrouds and the smaller ones are securing topmast backstays. With three holes each, a pair of deadeyes takes the strain on the shroud over six lengths of lanyard. Discounting friction, this means that pulling on the lanyard with a force of 100 pounds, puts 600 pounds of tension in the shroud. Lower shrouds were tensioned by a block and tackle attached to the burton pendants, suspended from the masthead. The tension on the shrouds thus got the benefit of the additional leverage from that tackle as well.

Deadeyes are simple devices, round blocks of wood grooved around their circumference. This groove was sized to take, for example a shroud on the top deadeye, and an iron ring – a deadeye chain link – on the bottom one. Each deadeye also has three lanyard holes. These three were slightly off vertical center and the holes had their edges relieved to reduce friction and wear on the lanyard by providing a rounded surface. On the model, these last two features were omitted.

Model deadeyes were made from boxwood. First, dowels were turned to the deadeye diameter in the lathe. After cutting grooves with a rounded tool, they were parted off using a shaped parting tool that would give them their rounded edges. They were then set up in a three jaw chuck mounted on an indexing head so that holes could be drilled precisely 120 degrees apart in the deadeye face. A picture of this process is shown below.

In this step the deadeye is setup off center of the drill by the radius of the hole location. The first hole is drilled. Then the indexing head is rotated by a number of clicks equaling 120 degrees and the next hole drilled. This is repeated and the deadeye removed from the chuck. The indexing head makes this process easy because it can be used for all deadeye sizes. Deadeyes down to 7 inch diameter, a bit more than 1/16 inch, were drilled this way – albeit with some failures at this small size. This approach resulted in very uniform deadeye holes, which is an advantage because on the ship they are all lined up next to each other for comparison.

Obviously a rotary index head could also be used. In the absence of either of these rather expensive tools, a jig could be made for each size with alignment holes for the drilling. Longridge describes such a device.

Once drilled, the deadeyes were touched up with sandpaper then dropped into a jar containing black acrylic ink. After removal from the jar they were allowed to dry thoroughly, then immersed in diluted tung oil for 24 hours. When removed they were rubbed dry, their holes cleared of any oil, and allowed to dry for a couple days. They were then treated with beeswax diluted in turpentine to make the lanyards slide more easily.

Dead eye chains were made from elongated loops of brass wire, silver soldered together, shaped to fit their deadeyes and then assembled into chains of the right length. These assemblies were then attached to chain plates nailed through predrilled holes the middle wale with blackened brass nails to represent bolts. Chains vary in length, getting longer toward the aft end of the channel due to the increasing rake of the shrouds. If the middle links in these three link chains are made by wrapping wire around a strip of wood, then cutting off and soldering as described in an earlier part, tapering the wood strip will yield loops of uniformly increasing size. From the resulting collection of loops, correct lengths can be selected.

Deadeyes in the tops were done the same way, but their chain loops were fastened to the futtock shrouds by small hooks formed from brass wire.

Blocks

Victory’s collection of blocks varies from 26” triple jeer blocks down to single 5” blocks for ensign halyards, with almost every size in between. The rigging schedule discussed earlier was valuable in making sure the correct blocks were selected for each line and for totaling up the numbers required. The following table was helpful in making these blocks proportionally and dimensionally correct. Its just a spreadsheet with a lot of measurement conversions based on information from Lee’s, The Masting and Rigging of English Ships of War 1625-1860, in which he lists proportions of common blocks based on rope circumference.

This table just multiplies out all those proportions and reduces them to scale dimensions, which can be used to size the model block. So, if for example the rigging schedule calls for a fifteen inch, double block, the entry with the nearest shell length (in red) is 14.87 inches. At the bottom this gives block dimensions of .155 inch length, .109inch breadth, .097 inch width, a sheave hole diameter of .019 inch and a hole spacing of .035 inch. Blocks of this size would then be made to roughly these dimensions. Although it may seem so, this table is not about precise sizes, only about reasonably correct proportions.

There are of course, some “uncommon” blocks. Clue line blocks have broad upper shoulders to protect against chafing by the sails; topsail sheet blocks have a shoulder at the bottom to prevent fouling of the lift against the yard; lower single blocks on topsail yard tyes are long but of narrow width; to name a few.

To make the blocks, strips of boxwood were ripped to the width and breadth dimensions. Grooves for the sheave holes and for the groove on the sides to hold the strap were scored down the strip with formed scraper cutters. A picture of one of these cutters with some blocks and a finished strip is shone below.

The picture below shows some leftover unused strips at different stages.

In this picture the top strip has been scored on all four sides. The next one down has had spacing holes drilled along the side face. These are spaced using the calibrated wheel on the milling machine cross feed. The purpose of these holes is to accurately define the length of the block and to provide a small groove at the top and bottom to help seat the strap. The strip is then rotated in the machine and the top and bottom rope holes are drilled in the grooves at the correct spacing, again using the cross feed wheel calibrations. The fourth strip shows some of these holes on a strip that has also had some additional work. The last strip shows some of the first shaping. This is done with files as shown below.

First, small v-grooves are cut around the circumference of the strip with a triangular file at the location of the side holes to define the top and bottom of the block. The rounded shape is then filed on each block, which is then parted off with a fine saw and given some final sanding to remove burrs and polish the block. No further finish was applied to these. After this, the blocks were strung up on wire and placed in labeled cardstock holders as shown below.

Here are a few pictures showing some of the different blocks on the model.

This picture shows blocks at the end of a lower yard. The large topsail sheet block has the shoulder described earlier. It is in a strap with a loop at the bottom to go over the yard end and has a smaller block for the yard lift seized in the same strap. The brace block has not yet been rigged. It is connected through two loops so it rotate freely. Most of the blocks were attached before the yards were installed.

Several pairs of blocks are strapped over the bolster at the top of the lower masts. The yard lifts are connected to an eye in the strap of a block, run out the yardarm then come back up through the block and run down to the deck. Another similar pair guides rigging from above through “lubbers hole” in the maintop down to the deck. A lot of smaller rigging for the upper yards is rigged through blocks in the top. The larger unrigged block strapped to the masthead will soon take the main topmast stay.

The largest blocks on the ship are the jeer blocks for raising and lowering the fore and main lower yards. They are 26” long, a double and a triple. The upper jeer blocks are suspended by double straps, which are secured to the masthead by several turns of lashing. The lower ones have double straps looped around the yard inside the sling cleats. All these large straps are served. At the bottom of the yard, just outside the sling cleats is a clue line block with shouldered sides described earlier. A dozen small blocks are suspended under the top to guide buntlines, leechlines and spritsail braces from forward to the aft side of the mast and down to the bitts forward of the waist.

The next part will continue the discussion of rigging.

HMS Victory 1:96 Scratchbuild Project

Part 15a – Making Shape Scrapers

Since putting up the Victory log I’ve had a few requests for more information about the scrapers used to make moldings and block profiles, specifically about how to make them, so in response I

am inserting this post into the series. If this does not answer all questions, let me know.

Using Shape Scrapers

Generally, I have made these as needed, without too much forethought, getting the shapes perfected by trial and error. They are easy to make and produce surprisingly good results.

There are a few different ways to use these, depending on what is being shaped. The pictures below illustrate some examples. In all cases multiple light cuts should be used.

In this picture a wide strip is being shaped for a molding. When the shaping is complete, the molding will be ripped off on the circular saw. This method assures that the molding will be of uniform thickness if more material is removed at one end or the other. Also, some moldings will not be thick enough to work with the cutter. Its best to keep the stock at almost right angles to the cutter vertically and at a right angle horizontally. More tilt over the cutting edge can be helpful at the start, but by the end of the cutting the wood should be at right angles to get the true shape from the cutter.

For shapes where the strip needs to be cut to size first, for example on blocks where all four sides need shaping, the cutter would be used this way – but hopefully more at a vertical right angle to the work. For this application the pattern should not be cut too deep in the plate, but it’s always a good idea to have enough depth to provide entry of the stock before the pattern is reached. The sides should also confine the wood so it cannot get off the track of the pattern. For blocks, the rounded vertical shape of the block can be cut into the scraper, which can be cut deep enough to reach the center of the block body. Uniformly rounded blocks can be made easily this way.

Here’s another picture where the right angle rule could use a little more application. If the pieces are short and can be accommodated in a vise, this approach works well. Here the sheave groove for a single block is being cut. Note the rounded sides on the cutter.

Simple grooves of very small size can be cut with scrapers where saw blades or files are too big. Using the clamping device in this picture as a fence allows one cutter to be used for several different groove locations by varying the distance from the cutter. The clamp is made from two pieces of 1/8” carbon steel, rounded off on their edges which a file, then drilled and tapped to take a tightening screw.

This is pretty much the collection used on Victory.

After scraping, avoid using sandpaper on the shapes. It will obscure the detail. A buffing with very fine steel wool or fine grade non-metallic 3M abrasive pads, will polish up the shape nicely.

Making the Cutters

My cutters are made from scrap pieces of 16 gauge stainless steel, only because I happened to have some. Most cutters have limited use, so they could be made from plain carbon steel or even

hard brass plate.

If you are going to use hardened steel plate, say, for example a carbon steel saw blade, then that will need to be stress relieved to make it soft enough to cut with a saw or file. To stress relieve

hardened steel, heat the piece with a torch until it is “cherry” red, then allow it to air cool. It can then be worked with files and saws. Hardened steel can be worked as is with abrasive wheels in a motor tool, but this might limit the profiles that can be made. I would recommend avoiding this by

finding a piece of roughly, 16 gauge (1/16” or 2mm) plain carbon steel scrap.

For moldings, where the final shape can be sliced off after shaping, I would start by cutting a square slot the width of the molding, then lightly rounding the side edges of this, so the wood will slide within the sides without scraping. The pattern can then be cut on the bottom face of the slot.

The pattern should have crisp edges where it will be scraping away the wood. When cutting the pattern, cut at a right angle to the plate. An angled knife edge is not needed, just a sharp

unrounded corner.The pictures below show a cutter being shaped using just a jeweler’s saw. Very fine patterns can be cut with this tool tilting the blade to one side or the other. For fine detail this is the tool of choice.

Use the jeweler’s saw to cut on the pull stroke. Blades in many sizes down to the very finest are inexpensive and easily replaced when they break. Get them from a jeweler’s supplier – or even

Amazon.com. A jeweler’s saw frame can be had for $20, or so, and is a good investment – for this and many other modeling tasks.

Where the shape requires smooth curves the pattern can be dressed up with very small files. Just be careful not to round off the cutting edges. Small files in various shapes are available from

suppliers of modeler’s tools. Sharp edged files for sharpening Japanese style saws are very good for narrow slots. I usually try to avoid using files on both metal and wood because they can leave

metallic smudge on the wood. Separating these uses is not always easy. I still prefer the jeweler’s saw for most of the work.

The best way to know if you’ve got the right shape is by trial and error. Careful marking out with a scriber is a good way to start, but I have found that sooner or later testing the width or the pattern

with a piece of the wood stock will need to be done.

HMS Victory1:96 Scratchbuild Project

Part 16 – Shrouds and Ratlines

Shrouds

The shrouds for the Victory model were made from multiple strands of linen, twisted up on the ropemaking machine as described earlier, except for the topgallant mast shrouds, which were too small. A heavy black mercerized cotton polyester thread was used for these. All the shrouds are laid up left handed and are four strand if the size could be obtained that way. If not, three strand rope, though not historic, was used.

The lower and topmast shrouds are all served over some of their length. The first shroud in each set was served over its whole length, because of the rubbing it took from the yard and other rigging. All these shrouds were served where they wrapped around the masthead. The following picture shows the served portion of shrouds just below the foretop.

The next picture shows the served shrouds where they are wrapped around the masthead above the top.

Once served, the shrouds go over the masthead in a specific sequence. Shrouds are generally paired in twos and after draping around the masthead are lashed together with a seizing. Some of these lashings can be seen in the above picture. For appearance sake, care has been taken to place these pairs neatly on top of one another and have them oriented so they do not twist over each other as they descend to there proper deadeye.

Once all the shrouds were lashed into their positions at the top, the next task was to secure deadeyes to their bottom ends. These needed to be secured at the right length or the deadeyes would not be aligned when the shrouds were pulled tight by their lanyards. The following sketch, shows how this was accomplished on the model.

This picture is a composite showing a number of separate steps to attach the shrouds to their deadeyes. First a thin piece of rectangular hardwood about 1/32” thick was cut to be used as a jig for lashing up the shrouds. This was placed on the channel just behind the bottom row of deadeyes, which were installed earlier. Spots were marked at the bottom of this on either side of a few of the deadeyes. The wood was removed and small holes, to take thin copper wire were drilled on these marks. The wood was then returned to the channel and the wire twisted around some of the bottom deadeye chains as shown. A horizontal line was then drawn on the wood at the desired line for the top row of deadeyes. Each shroud was then pulled down to its bottom deadeye and a line drawn at the location where it passed over the horizontal line. The wood was again removed and two holes were drilled at roughly the spacing of deadeye holes on the horizontal line either side of each shroud line. Thin wire was then used to secure each top deadeye to the wood as shown above. The wood was then returned to the channel and secured as before.

Having done this, each shroud could be connected to its proper deadeye, assured that it would take its final place along a neat horizontal row with its mates.

To secure each shroud it was pulled with moderate tension around the deadeye and clamped back on itself higher up. The short leg of the seized shroud should always be to the right when viewed from the outside. Once tensioned and clamped each shroud was seized with three lashings as shown and the excess clipped off. The shrouds remained attached to the wood after it was removed from the channel to avoid mixing up the shrouds. Starting at the front they were then removed one at a time, first one side then the other, for installation of the lanyards and initial tensioning. All lower and topmast shrouds were installed in this way.

The above picture shows the finished fore channel. The various stays that were installed between the lower shrouds were rigged up individually, not part of the above process.

Rigging of the lanyards was straightforward. A knot was put in one end of a lanyard rope, to which some beeswax thinned in turpentine had been applied and rubbed off. The other end was wetted with CA and clipped at an angle with scissors to give it a sharp end. This was then threaded from the back through the top left deadeye hole, down through the left front hole on the lower, then from the back through the middle hole in the upper, and so on until all the holes were filled and the lanyard had emerged from the lower right hole at the back. This loose end was then pulled up to put some initial tension on the shroud. This process was then repeated, side to side, front to back, until all the lanyards were installed.

Final tension was applied when the forward stays for the mast were installed and tensioned. Each shroud was then tensioned in turn and the end of the lanyard secured in what was a somewhat sloppy, if historical way – as follows. The loose end of lanyard was brought through the small opening between the top deadeye and the first seizing on the shroud. It was then wrapped several times around the shroud and secured to the shroud above these turns with its own seizing. It was very hard to get all these loose ends to look relatively uniform.

Here is another picture.

Once the lower shrouds were installed, futtock staves made from blackened stiff wire were lashed to each shroud some distance below the top. A number of horizontal catharpins were then lashed to a shroud on either side at this stave. It was important to get uniform initial tension on these catharpins because they are part of the system of lines, which secures the topmast shrouds. If they are too tight the lower shrouds will be pulled inward. If they are too loose tension on the topmast shrouds transferred through the futtock shrouds will pull the lower shrouds outward. The following picture shows how these lines interact with each other.

Here, the lower, futtock and topmast shrouds are all installed, including their ratlines. The horizontal futtock stave across the shrouds on one side and the catharpins lashed across between them can be seen. It can also be seen that the topmast shrouds transfer their tension through their lower deadeye chains (which are not secured to the top platform), down through the futtock shrouds to the catharpins. Also, the forward lower mast stay is putting forward tension on the lower shrouds. All this required a bit of care in tensioning.

Ratlines

The ratlines are relatively easy to install but it is a repetitive and somewhat tiresome task, especially higher up where arm fatigue can set in. The ratlines are much smaller rope than the shrouds. They are set 13 inches apart. On the prototype they were lashed through eye splices at both ends to the outer shrouds and tied with a clove hitch to each shroud in between. On the model all the shroud connections were done with clove hitches. The process is shown below.

First, a card with lines 13 inches apart was mounted directly behind the shrouds as a guide. Then thread was tied to the leftmost shroud with a clove hitch and touched with a small drop of CA. The thread was passed over the front of the next shroud, the end pushed behind the shroud, pulled out from the left of the shroud under itself, pushed behind above itself and then pulled out through its loop with tweezers. I’m sorry if this is complete gibberish, but after a few knots this process became quite mechanical, and so many knots were done that I can recall the exact process easily after three years.

Once the knot was loosely formed, the end was pulled to straighten out the ratline between the last shrouds, then gripped at this point tightly with the tweezers and the knot pulled tight. This last step is shown below.

After tying off to the last shroud, tension was examined and, if necessary, adjusted by loosening and resetting each knot, before applying a final drop of CA to the last knot. With practice few adjustments were needed.

One last task to be done on the fore lower shrouds was to install the tiny boxwood shroud cleats, which were used to belay a number of lines. Space for belaying points was scarce in the on the forecastle and there were many lines to be belayed in this area, hence the use of shroud cleats. These were carved individually and lashed to the shrouds with fine thread. They are shown below.

The rigging experience will continue in the next part.

HMS Victory1:96 Scratchbuild Project

Part 17 – Stays

The stays were principle structural elements of rigging that pulled forward on masts, and the bowsprit to prevent their falling backwards. Offsetting the pull of the stays was the counteracting stress from the shrouds and backstays, and all of these lines kept the masts erect. The picture below shows the fore stay and its smaller backup, the fore preventer stay after installation on the lower foremast. They are tied together with bridging so that either one is not completely lost if it is severed.

Both these stays are secured around the bowsprit, which itself is being pulled down by its own stays anchored in the knee of the head, and also by the double banks of gammoning just visible under the marines walk platform.

Stays were put over the masthead after the shrouds and were looped over them at the back as shown in the next picture. These loops were formed with a large eye splice that was stopped below the masthead by a large bump in the stay called a mouse. I described how these were made on the model in the section on serving. All these upper parts of the stay were served.

At the lower end of the stays are collars, also served, lashed together to from loops into which are seized very large hearts, some open ended, some closed. Between these hearts, one on the stay and one on the collar, a lanyard is wrapped in several turns. This was used to put tension on the stay much in the way deadeyes were used to tension shrouds.

A close up of these details is shown below, of both the fore and fore preventer stays, as well as the bowsprit bobstays. Cleats can be seen on the bowsprit to keep the stay collars from sliding backwards.

The order of installing all this rigging on the model was, first the bowsprit gammoning – two banks of 11 turns each. This was followed by the bowsprit stays, the lower foremast shrouds, and finally, the lower fore stay and its preventer. This same order was observed in the final tensioning of these lines. After all the tensioning, the bridging was installed.

The next picture shows a closeup of the collar of the mainstay.

This collar has an eye splice in one end and is served all over. The other end is passed through the grating of the marines walk, through a hole in the port knighthead, underneath the bowsprit, back up through the starboard knighthead and a second hole in the grating, and finally through the eye splice. It is then secured back on itself with lashing. A large heart is then lashed into the collar to take the lanyards connecting it to the mainstay. In the above picture a temporary line is used to as a main stay stand-in to help set this up properly.

The following picture shows the final configuration for the mainstay and its preventer.

The mainstay is the largest line in the ship, except for the anchor hawsers. In addition to being served at its upper end, it was also wormed over its full length, before serving. This worming can be seen in the upper left corner of the above picture. By the time this stay had been fully tensioned up on the model, there was not much room left between the hearts. Before the model crew puts more tension on the stay, they’re going to have to re-seize the lower end of the stay to its heart, a bit further back. I like this picture because it contrasts some of the largest lines in the ship with some of the very smallest.

This next picture shows the main topmast stays, which are looped around the topmast shrouds in much the same way as the lower stays. These are of course, smaller.

These topmast stays, as well as the lower mizzen mast stays, run through blocks on the next forward lower masts, or in the case of the fore topmast, through blocks on the bowsprit. The picture below shows this general arrangement. In this case, how the lower mizzen mast stays are routed through large locks strapped to the lower main mast, then down to the deck.

It can also be seen here that the main and preventer topmast and lower mizzen mast stays are not parallel or bridged. After passing through their respective blocks, they are lashed to eyebolts in the deck, just behind, in this case, the main mast. The connections for the main topmast stays are shown below, between the bitts and the main mast.

I mentioned earlier that my overall order of rigging was first forward to aft, then bottom to top, then standing before running. This meant that all running rigging in this picture was installed before the topmast stays were lashed down. Lashing these stays was the only work that was made significantly more difficult because of the rigging order used. Each lashing took about an hour of work with tweezers, long needles, surgical clamps and a lot of patience. In return for this inconvenience I got unobstructed access behind each mast for all its other rigging, which I believe saved a lot more time overall.

In the next part, I will discuss two of the most common rope configurations on the model –eye splices and block strops – and how they were made.

HMS Victory1:96 Scratchbuild Project

Part 18 – Eye Splices and Strops

Cyanoacrylate Glue

CA glue is one of my least favorite substances to work with. Its difficult to remove from skin, it runs where it is not wanted, its difficult to apply in measured doses, excess can be impossible to remove, it sometimes adheres where desired, but always adheres where not desired. However, I do not believe Victory’s complex rigging, at this scale, could have been modeled very well without it.

I once spilled quite a bit of a bottle of this stuff on my workbench. Believe me; that will never happen again. Below is a picture of the simple holder that I always use when using this glue.

I do not use the applicator tip on the bottle because dosage can’t be controlled with it and it immediately plugs anyway. I use a homemade brass wire applicator like the one next to the bottle above. A close up picture of the end of this is shown below.

To make this, a piece of .030 inch brass rod is slit down one end with a fine blade on a jeweler’s saw, the end is then de-burred and shaped as shown above. The idea is to get it to work like an old style drafting pen, holding a limited amount of liquid. A bit of trial and error is necessary to get the amount it holds right, but it is capable of delivering a very small amount of CA, which is what is needed for rigging at this scale. The applicator is just dipped into the open CA bottle. Two or three of these are needed because they quickly get gummed up. When that happens, I drop them into a tall closed jar of acetone and take out a clean one ready for use. Keeping the jar tightly closed is important. Acetone is hazardous to health and flammable, and the vapors in the closed jar help dissolve the glue above the liquid level.

I used the thin grade of CA on all the rigging work. All you really want to do with this is get the rope fibers to stick to one another in a knot or a simplified mimic of a splice. CA was never depended upon by itself.

Eye Splices

There are relatively very few actual knots in Victory’s rigging. Almost everything is fastened together with spices of some sort, usually eye splices. These were then fastened with seizings or lashings. So, there were very many eye splices to be made.

For the very largest lines like the main and forestays, actual splices were made for the model, but that was impractical for anything smaller. So the following process, or some variant of it was used for virtually all the splices.

In the first picture below, the rope is untwisted enough to insert a needle, with an eye large enough to take the rope, through the strands. For small, unmade rope, the needle is merely pushed through the center of the thread fibers.

The short end of the rope is then threaded on to the needle (which can be pulled mostly through to save rope), and the rope is pulled through itself as shown below.

In the next picture the loop has been placed over a piece of stiff wire the size of the desired opening in the eye splice. The short end has then been pulled up tight and the long end has been twisted to tighten up the rope.

The short end is then lapped over the long leg and the splice touched with a small drop of CA as shown below.

Before the CA has had a chance to completely cure, remove the splice from the wire and clamp it in pliers to give the splice some shape as shown below.

The next picture shows the final result after the short leg has been clipped off with scissors. I use small sharp embroidery scissors for this clipping. They, too, need to be cleaned in acetone from time to time to remove CA.

Eye splices from large sizes down to the smallest, 1½ inch (.007 diam.) rope were made this way and have withstood rigging tension without any failures.

Stropping Blocks

There are very many different types of block strops on the model – too many to cover here. Many required some innovative application of the techniques discussed below. Some of the larger blocks, like the jeer blocks, were done completely differently and much more authentically.

The following process, or some near variation was used for the great majority of blocks.

First an eye splice is made in the rope as described above. For very small lines I just tied double overhand knots to make the loop around the wire post and wet that with CA. In the picture below, an eye has been put in the rope by the method above. Because the stropping process requires at least three hands, the surgical clamp shown below is an essential tool.

With the block held between the fingers by the surfaces with the sheave holes, the rope is pulled tight so the splice is down on the top of the block. The rope is then pinched together just below the block with the fingers. The strop is then clamped to the sides of the block with the surgical clamp as shown below.

In the next picture the clamp is laid down so the bottom of the block is up. An overhand knot, simulating a splice can then be tied across the bottom. This is then pulled tight and touched with CA.

In the picture below the finished block has had the excess rope clipped off and is shown attached to another line with a seized overhand knot, one of the many different ways used, depending on the line.

Another method, used on larger blocks is shown below.

Instead of the simulated splice, a seizing is put around the rope to form the eye. The eye is then put over the wire as before and the overhand knot in the thread shown above is pulled tight and pushed right up to the wire.

A second overhand knot is then added. Perhaps we should call it “an underhand knot,” because it is tied from below to avoid a knot-like appearance. This can be followed by another overhand knot on the top, and so on, depending on the size of the block and how large a seizing is appropriate. A small drop of CA is then applied to the seizing. If the drop of CA is too large in this step, the rope won’t bend around the top of the block. The bottom splice is then applied with an overhand knot on the bottom as shown below.

I think we’re getting close to the end, but not quite yet. The next part should wrap it up.

HMS Victory1:96 Scratchbuild Project

Part 19 – Wrapping Up

At this point just about everything I had on my list has been covered. In this last part I will cover a couple incidentals involved in wrapping the project up.

Excess Rope

If one looks at the lengths of rope specified in Steele’s, or even just thinks about how much rope would be left over when a line was completely hauled in, it becomes evident that there must have been an amazing amount of rope lying about the deck, especially when no sails were set and buntlines, leechlines, slab lines, bowlines, clue lines, and others were with drawn back to some stowage point ready to be let out when sails were set. I decided very early on, that I could in no way model all this clutter without obscuring a lot of the model, but I did want to model some. The following pictures illustrate how some of this was done.

Among the first excess lines to be dealt with were the fore yard jeer falls. With the yard hauled up to its normal position, from which, I believe, it was hardly ever moved, a long length of large rope remains. Seldom used, it is unlikely it would be kept too readily available. I decided to coil it up and stash it behind the mast out of the way. The main yard jeer falls are belayed on the upper gun deck out of site, so were not an issue.

Many lines belay on the forecastle rail where they are tied off to the timberheads there. Only some of these excess rope coils were modeled.

Coils were made by wrapping line around a tapered dowel, tying it off, removing it from the dowel and soaking it with flat acrylic emulsion. This left a flat finish and stiffened the rope so it stayed in place when draped over a timberhead. Coils secured around their middles were wrapped around bent wires inserted into the point grooves in a pair of screw adjustable dividers. Then when the right length was wrapped up, several turns were taken around the middle, finished off with a clove hitch and this, too, got soaked with emulsion. The dividers were then closed enough to remove the coil. These then got draped on timberheads, kevels or even tied up on a shroud if the rope was belayed there. If these coils are draped while the emulsion is still wet, they can be shaped realistically. This shape will be retained when they dry.

Here are some more of these on the timberheads at the fore end of the waist.

The next two pictures show lines that have been “flemished,” that is, wound into a neat circular pattern on the flat of the deck. I reserved this treatment for large lines that I expect were frequently used and therefore needed to be readily available. In the first picture below those astride the mizzenmast are the falls of the davit lifts, and those further aft are the mizzen topsail sheets.

The flemished lines in the next picture are the fore top sail sheets.

These arrangements were made as follows: First a small piece of paper was laid on a piece of soft Homosote board. Homosote is a compressed pulp sheet product that takes and holds pins well. A pin was then pushed through the rope near its end and pushed through the paper into the board. Titebond glue was thinly spread on the paper around the pin and a couple turns of rope taken around and pressed down on the tacky glue. At this stage the paper itself could be rotated on the pin with more rope being fed and pressed down until the desired diameter was reached. The rope was then brushed lightly with some water to bring the glue up into the rope, the pin carefully removed, a piece of waxed paper put on top, and the whole affair weighted until dry. When dry, the paper was trimmed back under the outer coil of rope with scissors. The paper was then glued down to the deck and the end of the rope tucked up to appear to emerge from its belaying point.

Flags

The very last item to be dealt with, aside from the case, was the question of flags. The decision on which flags to fly could result in a number anywhere from zero to probably 25 or 30, if signal flags were flown. I had diagrams for all the historic, “England expects … “ signal flags, and I had gathered data on which pennants, ensigns and other flags were likely flown at Trafalgar. In the end I settled on only the large white ensign. I find at times even this can be a distraction from what is meant to be shown on the model, but it can be easily removed, so there it is. Its quite large, 20 by 40 feet, as can be seen below.

The ensign was made from some very old fine weave drafting linen, from which the resinous wax was removed by boiling. A larger piece than required was then pressed with a steam iron and taped down flat on a board. The ensign pattern was laid out with a sharp pencil and the white, blue and red colors painted on both sides with acrylic designers guache. This was thinned only very slightly to avoid running and painted on in two coats on each side. The ensign was then trimmed to size, pressed again and draped to appear standing in still air.

So, this story began with a picture of Victory approaching and it ends with a view from astern.

I have enjoyed describing my experiences with the construction of this model, which spanned a period of over thirty years. Many were surprised to see it finished – and I was one of them. Looking back while writing all this has made me appreciate the time spent even more. I hope this series has been helpful in some way to those who have followed it and especially those who have stayed with it to this point.

As I said at the start, I did not plan to cover every step in the construction of this model. However, if there is some point of interest that was not covered please let me know and I will try to cover it.

Thank you for spending time with this and especially for all your comments, suggestions and

generous compliments.

I expect soon to be posting a new series on my current modeling project, a fully framed 1:60 model of HMS Naiad, 38, 1797 on the Navy Board Models site.

If I remember correctly, I believe I used a Dremel tool with a cutoff disk and maybe some diamond burrs. If I wanted to make a tool with very fine detail I would probably start with mild steel and do the shaping with small files and a fine blade jeweler's saw, then heat treat the tool to harden it. I described using the jewelers saw for this in part 15a. After doing the shaping, to heat treat for hardening, heat the tool until its cherry red then quench in oil. If you haven't done this before, I would do some homework on the process. Its pretty simple but there are some potential pitfalls and hazards.

I hope your project is going well. Make sure you post some pictures.