Thanks Doug for your explanation.

Indeed, thank you for your double explanation, also in Italian.
Much appreciated.

I hope my mistake does not cause inconvenience to other users of the forum or to the forum itself because I am unable to move the entire topic.
The 1/60 Rc gunboat should go in the build blogs because it is still being completed.

Older/complete models belong in your Boat Harbour Alessandro.
Build Blogs are for the construction sequence of current builds.
Saluti, Doug😎

I modelli più vecchi/completi appartengono al tuo Boat Harbour Alessandro.
I blog di compilazione sono per la sequenza di costruzione delle build correnti.
Hope that's right🤞
😉

Thanks Doug.

You are right.
I only realized how this forum is structured after creating the topic.

I have another (older) model to show.
I'll put it in a construction section in the future, even if it doesn't deserve much attention.

Thanks so much Luckyduck.

Nice work Alessandro,👍
But why on earth didn't you put all this in a Build Blog?
With a Blog; when all is done and maidened you can print out a permanent record of the whole story.
Cheers, Doug😎

beautifully accurate looking

Hi Hermank.

Thank you so much, but you are too good.

Then I'll make you a bank transfer, ahahahahahahah, I'm joking!

Alessandro
There ‘s only one word…………….
You are a expert magician. I do not know another word

Good evening to all sailing, motor and mixed naval modellers.

Here is the first photo of the traumatic cut: the thread used to tighten (tension) the "bigotte" (deadeyes).
Luckily (and I honestly didn't expect it) I managed to reuse almost all the cut parts, all except the shrouds and rat lines.
It was very difficult to cut the channels flush with the hull. I managed to be precise with the cutter and therefore I recovered the channels, which I glued further aft.
I removed all the "chains plates", which I repainted and reused.
I had to plug the holes left in the chain plate and make others further behind, also repainting the hull.
All the deadeyes (which had been painted for waterproofing) were recovered.
It was difficult to detach the shrouds at the masthead without causing damage.
The shrouds are tied in pairs on the tree and it is not easy to give the right tension to both the left and right pairs and at the same time get all the deadeyes to align.
Logically all the shrouds were thrown away as they were not repairable.
I made them again and tied the griselle (rat line) using a guide design on the card.

In this same post I show you the mast foot.
Amati, Corel, Mantua Model and Mamoli sell them ready-made, but there were none that were right for me and they were all metallic.
The last photos show how it looked before painting it so that it looked real. I used the usual way of overlapping plastic.
The foot of the tree is very important not only for historical and aesthetic coherence but also to prevent water from entering that point.

Hi Doogle.

Thanks for your comment.

I'm very pleased that you had the patience to read such a long post.

Very informative Alessandro 🙂

Good evening everyone.

As I had already stated in the previous post, the position of the shrouds was determined by the position of the boom at its maximum excursion, i.e. around ninety degrees (or a little less) between the boom itself and the longitudinal axis of the ship.
In other words, in the project I had placed the shrouds in the most rearward position possible, but such as not to prevent the boom from moving and forming almost a right angle with the longitudinal line of the hull (seen from above).

As you could see from the photos in the last descriptive post, in this way the shrouds are placed a little forward and a little behind the masts, not all behind.

Well, as time went by I realized that I had made a mistake even though I had followed a fairly logical argument.

The more I observed ships of that era and of that type, to glean other construction details to reproduce in scale on my model, the more I realized that I had done something wrong.

Unmistakably the shrouds had to be placed much further back.
I immediately noticed that, by moving the shrouds backwards, the boom would not be able to form a right angle.
The angle would have been much narrower, and not by a little.

This seemed strange to me, so I thought it was just a feature of my model. So I checked by doing some simulations on other existing ships with at least one gaff sail (a mainsail).
I had to take note that the shrouds were all aft of the mast, even though this limited the boom's travel.
There isn't a ship from that era that even has some in the bow.
Not being a naval designer of that era, not being a sailor of that era or a sailor who sails on gaff rigged ships I only made conjectures.

I should have been lucky enough to meet and talk to someone from the Italian training ship "Palinuro", less well known than the "Amerigo Vespucci" but beautiful and rigged as a schooner, which is what I needed.

The conjectures consisted in asking me why the shrouds of the ships of the time (in reality also on the vessels of previous times) were in that position?
Why give up opening the mainsail completely for downwind running?

Here is my explanation:
The main shrouds have two main functions.
The first function is to keep the tree stable transversely. To do this (it's quite intuitive) they work in contrast (the right side against the left side) to keep the tree in a firm position.
The second function is to also guarantee longitudinal stability (be careful, I remind you that we are talking about schooners, therefore gaff rigs). For this reason they are pulled back and pull the mast backwards, working in contrast to the stays which pull forward.
This second function was probably considered more important than the need to open the boom completely, reaching 90 degrees or almost.
Furthermore, it is probable that the running downwind pace was not a priority as it is well known that it is the most inconvenient and rarely used by sailing ships, not even by pleasure boats.
Surely you know why, so I won't dwell on it.
For downwind sailing, reaching sailing is certainly more convenient, so the opening of the boom allowed by the rear shrouds is sufficient.

Anyone can say whatever they want, in fact I'm very curious to hear other opinions, especially from those who have studied and practiced this subject.

In light of these discoveries I had to make the most difficult decision since I started the project.

In the end I got courageous, because I couldn't see such a clear mistake and I destroyed everything.

In the next post I will illustrate the phases of breakage, recovery of the pieces and total reconstruction of the shrouds.

Thanks River Rat.

This is a great idea and great news!

I'm sure that, with your skills, you will make a masterpiece.

Do you want to make a static model or a dynamic RC model?

In any case I will follow you with the utmost interest.

I was going to share my project with some friends, but I can't until I fix some mistakes on the Rhinoceros drawing.
I fixed these small errors during construction, but when I have finished the model I will also correct my initial project.

You could do the CSS Alabama or the USS Kearsarge.
A great challenge if you want to RC them.
However, if you also want to handle the sails beyond the rudder and engine, I think that gaff sails are easier to handle than square ones.

I can't wait to see your new model in action and the recently finished one in the water.

Fantastic work, It makes me want to build a similar vessel, Thank you for posting! RR

Hi Jumpugly and JockScott, thank you both.

Yes JockScott, I noticed this problem too, it's normal.
I managed to overcome it with manual skills.
Furthermore, the strings are impregnated with varnish to avoid water damage (to the extent possible).
This helped me fix them the way I wanted.

In reality, on almost all real ships, the shrouds and all standing rigging were tarred, therefore black (at least up to a certain height).

Bigots!?!? Yes, it's incredible, the etymology of Italian naval words is unknown even to us. The meaning of the words used in the navy is misleading and similar to words that have a completely different meaning.

Very well now I know they are called "deadeyes".

Nice work Alessandro. When tightening the rope, did you have the problem of deadeyes (bigots?!!) twisting against each other?

Bravo Alessandro!!!!

Hello to all naval RC modelers.

I'm almost at the current work in progress.

This phase that I am about to show you is a phase that I could have skipped, but I don't skip it because some very attentive forum users (keen observers) could notice a notable difference between the project and the final realization.
I am referring to the major shrouds that (in real ships) support the masts.

Before starting the exposition, I indicate some elements that I tried to translate with an Italian-English maritime glossary but which, for better understanding, I highlight with differently colored arrows in the attached photos.

The red arrow indicates the "shrouds"
The blue arrow indicates the "griselle" (rat line?)
The yellow arrow indicates the "landre" (chain plate?)
The black arrow points to the "shroud". (channel ?)
The green arrow points to the "bigoted". (???????)

As you can see in the first images of the software screens, I had foreseen an opening of the boom up to 90 degrees or almost, compared to the longitudinal line of the ship (viewed from above).
I wanted such a wide boom travel for downwind running (see running diagram in the attached image).

Consequently, to get the boom to that maximum opening position, I would have had to position the major shrouds (six on each side) necessarily in the position you see in the attached screens (drawn with Rhinoceros).


The images following the screens show the construction phases from chain plates, channels to shrouds and rat lines.

The channels were not simply glued to the "bulwark", but directly to the plywood sheet that constitutes the upper deck.
To do this it was necessary to make a "surgical" cut on the hull in correspondence with the internal spaces already prepared.
In this way the channels could fit together and glue onto a straight surface.
The result was an exceptional robustness of the channels. The entire fully loaded ship could be taken by the channels without them being able to detach.

I'm emphasizing the effort and time spent on this job because all of this was useless, I had to remove all the shrouds, rat lines, chain plates, and cut the channels, having to do it all over again.

In the last photos there is a study of the sails carried out with white cardboard.

Thanks JockScott.
Then I'll reply to you on the other topic for the other discussion.

Alessandro decoded!
Ho sbagliato topic = Ho spoliator topic (😉) = I got the wrong topic!
😎

I deleted this message because I had pasted here, by mistake, the translation intended for the topic: "sea commander".
Anna anteeksi.

Thanks LuckyDuck.
Good question. For all I know, I can answer you the same way I answered Jumpugly in the last post.

Very clever Alessandro - has anyone thought or even tried using a line of lead replication Alessandro's solution to lowering the ballast in any type of sailing boat/yacht, other than the usual bulb at the base of a keel? I am thinking particularly of a Thames barge avoiding having to use a fasle keel to make them sailable.

A beautiful model with attention to detail and precise craftsmanship. Great inspiration.

Thanks Jumpugly, I hope I have been useful and have provided a good idea to many naval modelers who want to put their historical scale models in the water and make them sail, without the aid of those huge bulbous fins, protruding under the keel and not foreseen by the original design.

I believe that, so far, only Robbe has succeeded with the Valdivia model.
Logically I'm talking about sailing ships, with motor-only models there is no problem.
I read their trick/system to overcome the problem after I had already started the work, in fact if I'm not mistaken this ship is later than mine. They used a different trick to lower the center of gravity and it's very difficult to notice.

Wonderful work Alessandro! The brass keel has given me some great ideas!

Hi Commodore H, this model will have to get dirty and work a lot in water, ahahahahahah.
The brass is totally covered by the mahogany.

Going great! Brass is shiny and pretty also. This boat will be too nice to get wet.😜

Hello to all naval RC modelers.

What I will show in the following photos is the method I used to lower the model's center of gravity as much as possible.

The water tests I carried out as the construction progressed made it clear to me that I no longer had much margin.
The ballast I could have added wasn't much. Definitely no more than 450 grams.

In general, 5 kg of displacement is very little for a model more than one meter long that must control six sails with two winches.
A centimeter above or below the waterline for models weighing 7 kg and above does not matter much.
It matters almost nothing if they don't have to sail.
One centimeter less on the free edge of my model is a tragedy.
The only trick up the sleeve was replacing the batteries.
If I had done something wrong and therefore the total weight would have been greater than the self-imposed one, I would have replaced the two AGM lead batteries with other lighter technologies, recovering up to 700-800 grams.

Luckily I had arranged the position of the batteries, motor and all the other essential parts very well.
Without ballast the model reacted with a slight righting push to the forces that unbalanced it to the side.
Although the push wasn't strong it was still straightening and therefore I started from a good base.
I should have added ballast in order to increase the righting thrust in anticipation of very strong heelings in Beam Reach sailings in strong winds. (see attached photo of sailing speeds)

The trick was to replace the wooden keel with a brass prism.

The reduction, necessary to be able to veneer it better with mahogany, involved two of the four sides of the prism.
Originally the 658 mm long brass bar was 9x9 mm with the reduction it became 8x9 mm.
The original one had a weight of 440 g. and the straightening force (not calculated) was the one visible in the film dedicated to stability, the link to which has already been inserted in this post.

The current one weighs less, we are at 400 grams.
There are no ballasts other than this brass bar.

At that point of the work, the whole model weighed 3162 grams, to which must be added 1400 grams of the two batteries and 90 grams of elements ready to be added for a non-definitive total of 4652 grams.

The brass bar is screwed to the hull and further blocked with a very fine layer of silicone.
The brass bar is not visible either from the side or below, because it is completely covered with mahogany strips.
In addition to an aesthetic issue, the painted mahogany waterproofs the brass bar.

Why did I choose brass?

Brass is an alloy that weighs more than iron but less than lead.
Compared to iron/steel it is better from every point of view except cost.
In fact it does not rust like iron, it weighs more and is easily workable. Very straight brass profiles are found on the market.
Compared to lead it is less heavy but much more workable, furthermore you cannot find such long and straight square lead profiles (at least in Italy).

Best of all, heavier than brass, steel and lead, would have been gold but 400 grams of gold would have cost me too much! ahahahahahaha.

Hi Doogle, your words are beautiful and much appreciated.

Alessandro, all credit to you, that's a beautiful ship you're building. Your photos and the craftsmanship of your work is impressive 👏

Wonderful!

Hi Alessandro, please keep up the good work, and here are a few photos of Marian Bell'e. Regards, Gary.

Thank you so much River Rat.

I am very happy that you like the work.

To tell the truth, I would like to be as good as you at using resins and paints.

WOW!!! Such beautiful work you are doing... Impressive!!! Your attention to detail is very high, I'm looking forward to your progress 👍👍👍 RR

Thank you Gary for your comment and your beautiful words of appreciation.

They make me very happy.

Well done Alessandro, absolute perfection bordering on quite incredible and first-class. A wonderful bit of woodworking at its best. please keep up the good work and excellent photographs. Regards, Gary.

Thanks so much Colin.

I care a lot about your opinion. I am very very happy that you like the work I have done.

It's a great satisfaction because, not having a reference project, I spent a lot of time researching historical images, to create something truthful.

Very nice work Alessandro, translation isn't really necessary with good pictures like yours. The quality of your modelling is excellent.
Cheers Colin.

... ...continues from previous post ...

3. The large bow cleat. Where there are also rolling pins to which some jib maneuvers are tied.

I designed the large bow cleat by observing other scale models and real ships.

...continues from previous post...

the stern two-column bollards (for mooring).

Hello everyone.

In the following photos you can see the production phases of some pieces that I don't know how to translate.

1. It is the "gru di capone" in Italian. That would be the anchor crane.
2. Two-column bollards for mooring.
3. The large bow cleat. Where there are also rolling pins to which some jib maneuvers are tied.

The first sequence of images concerns the "gru di capone".
The anchors are purchased from the Amati catalogue, I chose the right size to respect the scale.

I agree with you.

Evening Alessandro, thanks for the comments. Personally I don't even begin to consider myself to be as experienced as so many of my fellow members on this site. There's a continuous learning curve from everyone on here and I believe in positive encouragement and recognition. Keep up the good work 🤞🤞

Thank you Doogle for the compliment, your opinion on my work matters a lot.
When your opinion is favorable it makes me very happy.

I'm impressed with your build so far Alessandro, great written details 👍

Hi JockScott.

Could you send me a file of the second photo.
As soon as I go to where I have my PC (now I'm writing to you on my cell phone) I'll send you a list of the files that can be exported from Rhinoceros.
If it is impossible for you to have those files, at least try to send me a pdf file (just scan the sheet).

In the meantime, while I wait for your file, I will try to do something with the photo you sent me.
If I can import it into the program (this I think is the most difficult thing) I should be able to draw over the lines.
I will certainly give it a try.

Important: you must tell me what the water line is.

Then you have to help me decipher all the column numbers. I remind you that I didn't use a pre-made project, I wrote everything myself.

Finally, let's open a separate topic.

In the meantime, don't you want to try to obtain the area of ​​a single section with a drawing square and pencil?
There are sections that are just under a rectangle.

Many thanks River Rat.

Hello Alessandro
enclosed the frame drawing (adjust vessel beam [254mm] and keel to waterline [97mm] to fit 1:150 scale) and frame distances.
Good luck and curious what displacement you arrive at.

She is looking sea worthy mate, Top notch! Ahhh... Prim'ordine! Very nice work. Look forward to your progress RR