The Ship Model Forum

From the plans I am using, it appears that the vertical timbers that run between each window are not straight up and down, but, rather, slant inward from bottom to top following the tumblehome of the ships sides, thus, middle deck windows seem to lay slightly over the top of the lower gundeck windows. The windows themselves are more of a parallelogram than a perfect rectangle. Does this make sense, or am I not describing it properly?

Sorry, I mean the middle gun deck and the spar deck, not the lower gun deck and middle deck., The lower gun deck port beams are perfectly vertical so they do not line up with the windows above. As for raking the ship from the stern, it has the added affect of allowing the cannon balls or grape shot to travel the entire length of the ship, inflicting far more damage and casualties than a simple side on shot.

Sorry it has been so long since my last post, been busy, but now have a lot of stuff done. The Pima county fair was April 16 to 26th and i entered my ship in the fine arts non professional category. You can see the ribbons i won, including best of show. I demonstrated model ship building all 10 days for 6 hours each day, got a LOT done! As you can see, all the gun port doors, the hinges on the lower gun port doors, and the middle deck gun port doors which are split and have a hole for the barrel. I made a dozen or so of the hinges, a lot more to file and cut from 1/64 x 1/16th stock. I am getting the windows framed up and the mullions in them, curtains are installed. Also. working on bow scroll work and framing.

Love it! This is one big model!

I should have mentioned that the ship I entered into the fair was my first scratch build, the USS Pennsylvania 1837, not this build.

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since son moved out a few months ago, i have his room to work in when it is hot in the garage. redoing the windows strern and quarter galleries, was not happy with first attempt. put main gun deck guns in, made bow sprit and a lashed it down. made bow decorations and hawse holes. Made carronade carriages. I am now making blocks for carronades. And installing second gun deck.

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yes, block making can be wearisome, but, I make them sitting on the couch watching tv, slowly forming each one with a 2 inch round and half round file and a small needle nose pliers to hold the block. i will need to order more boxwood from my supplier thou, running low. I seems eweird that it is coming along so fast, I will be making the masts before the end of September at this rate.

I called warner woods west about blocks, he is sending me a list of sizes and prices with a photo of the finished blocks, if it is not too expensive, i very well may go that route he lives in utah, not that far from here really.

Sir,

It is a pleasure to watch your work. Truly classic model ship building. It does let one feel as though they are actually seeing a ship being built.

Thank you for continuing to post.

Regards,

Mac

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I have run into something of a conundrum. I Am getting to the point where I will be installing the cannonades on the spar deck. However, the Chapelle plans for the Columbus show a gun port height of 3 feet, whereas all the plans I have seen of 32 pounder cannonade show a height if about 3'8" from the bottom of the casters to the top of the max diameter of the barrel. Chapelle's book also shows a cut away view of the gundecks of the Delaware that give a much higher gun port dimension for it's spar deck cannonades. I have made all of my cannonades as you can see from previous photos, but, Once I cap the spar deck gun whale, the cannonades I made will not fit. I suspect that the plans of the Columbus spar deck gun ports is incorrect, and, I believe I will deepen the gun ports to fit the cannonades I made,

What do You guys think?

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Lots of carronades.

Mother puss buckets this ship is impressive.

MB

been a long time, made a major mistake on port side, lower and middle gun decks were almost 3/16 inch to far apart, had to redo entire side, I was just so depressed, I just set it aside, and then about 2 months ago I started re planking it and relaying deck. It is back to where it was. making spar deck furniture now, will post photos this week end.

Good to see you back on this build. It is terrific.

threebs wrote:been a long time, made a major mistake on port side, lower and middle gun decks were almost 3/16 inch to far apart, had to redo entire side, I was just so depressed, I just set it aside, and then about 2 months ago I started re planking it and relaying deck. It is back to where it was. making spar deck furniture now, will post photos this week end.

Aaaah, that sucks man! Glad to see you've gotten back on the horse, so to speak...

Here are a few photos. The capstan is a work in progress, paint needs touch up here and there, the back windows have been redone.