Hey folks, I know the general topic has been discussed before, but I'd like to talk about Age of Sail combat. Specifically, I'd like to talk about armaments. One of the biggest issues facing any skipper interested in the Age of Sail is armaments. The cheapest cannons I have ever seen cost a little over $25 per barrel. That sounds pretty reasonable, until you start looking at a 32-gun frigate. That's over a thousand dollars, and I don't even want to think about ships of the line. So how do we get around this? What armament can accurately duplicate the feel of a full broadside, without breaking the bank?
Aside from cannons, where do you start with the ship? Work from an existing kit and modify it or try to scratch build it. The scratch build sounds very difficult. I like the idea of age of sail battling.
This is a coincidence, I was talking to Ralph Coles at the show on the weekend and lookey lookey what he showed to me... This is one of Ralph's newest projects and as you can see, they are quite large. I am not sure of the scale but will ask him. He showed another picture of the stern and there is a hole directly forward of the rudder. Ralph thought about using a pump and putting the output out that hole in case the wind is absent, kinda jet propulsion. He had an idea about guns, he has been thinking about a type of manifold setup that will fire a gun or two, cycle to the next gun or two (either manually or automatically), fire them and so on. I wouldn't think using the correct number of guns is realistic, but it would be fun!!! This is something that Ralph is interrested in, so there will be hulls if there is a demand for them, and for anyone who doesn't know, Ralph's hulls are excellent!! J
Scratch-building is only *really* difficult if you haven't a clue what you're doing. I've been scratch-building for years now, so I think I can do well enough there. The big issue for me is cost of armament. The cost of cannons is enough to make me look at early galleons with 8-12 cannons, instead of the napoleonic-era ships. I remember seeing a picture of Ralph's Santissima Trinidad hull a while ago. Good to know others are interested, too
One of the biggest worries of Age of Sail combat is that the ships heel A LOT! Every gun would have to be gimbiled so as to keep the guns facing other ships rather than captains and spectators!
I e-mailled Ralph, the Santissima Trinidad is 1/72 scale and the generic galleon is 1/24. It looks to be about 3 1/2 to 4 feet long. J
Well, you don't have to arm all the guns on the ship anyways. Use a system like in small gun, where a 32 gun frigate is say 4 units, a 36 would be 4.5 units 38 would be 5.0 etc. I don't think you're ever going to really "duplicate" the look and feel of a real sailing man-o'-war. Heck, our WW1 and WW2 ships battle nothing like the real thing, so why would age of sail combat be any different? There's really only so much you can do with RC to "replicate" the real thing. Sometimes, I believe you just have to accept that limitation rather then beat your head against the wall. I think the thing to do is figure out how to make the rules work, then once you have a working prototype as far as functional rules, look at improving it.
That makes good sense. Combat or not, it would be kinda cool to build a working, sailing RC 3 masted galleon. My wife's more interrested in building a galleon then she is in battling, she informed me yesterday. Have to wait and see what happens. J
I'd figure a good way of approaching it would be that a given class/displacement ship is alotted a maximum weight of ammunition (perhaps in specified units) and cannon count and positioning would be fair game within the physical limits and actual count that were present on the prototype and/or generic class after which the ship is modeled. In that way, somebody could decide if they wanted to attempt to focus the technique on massed broadsides or attempt to engage at range. On the other hand, the safety issue of heeling and the resulting possible cannon elevation might ultimatley make some sort of on-shore polycarbonate shields around the pond a must.
I was planning on making a pressure cutoff switch that disables firing a broadside if that side is pointing above horizontal. I was thinking a simple weighted pendulum disabling gas to the firing poppets would do the trick. I would also use ultra-high-torque servos to control the sails, so I could force the sails to not heel the ship so much if I needed to, and I would even consider allowing drop keels if it proved necessary. Obviously, some experience with sailing would be necessary before final determination on those. I am quite fascinated by the Geek Breech guns being discussed on another thread. Having four to six o-ring cannons per side could be a major pain to prep for battle, but those Geek Breech guns look nice. They're also lighter and more compact than Big Gun cannons, so you could mount them all on a swivel to help compensate for the rolling of the ship. As for how many guns a ship should have... My first thought, long ago, was to say "For each broadside, you get one barrel per vertical mast per main gun deck." For example, a two-masted brig with one gun-deck would get two guns per broadside, while a three-masted two-decked battleship would get six guns per broadside. Then I thought about how expensive and hard it would be to arm the mighty first-rate ships-of-the-line, and shuddered at the thought. Right now, I'm thinking more along the lines of "six guns per broadside for a first-rate, five for a second-rate, four for a third-rate, three for a fourth-rate, two for a fifth-rate, and one for a sixth rate". For armor, I could go for either 1/32" or 1/16" balsa. I may like the complexity of Big Gun, but building and sailing a frigate or galleon will be complex enough without the added overhead.
Underwater stabilizers can help you with the heal, a standard servo with a drum winch on it instead of a arm works (Modify to continuous rotation) well, most ships can be winched by one servo on a gear controlling 2 drums (sort of like ruder servo controlling 2 rudders with gears) all mast sheets from o0ne side go to one drum, and other side to other drum, keeps sail tight and easy to turn, learning to sail is a must, and keeping weight low and in the bottom is key, but these boats sail well (you might want to consider a axillary motor for after the battle when there is no wind though) Stay with BB-cannons as they are MUCH easier to get permission for from parks and ponds and guns are arguably cheaper to buy or make than big gun guns. Just my 2 cents PS yes broadsides could be as per guns, 20 gun ship - 2 units, 100 gun ship 10 unit, 36 gun - 3.5 unit No forward/rearward guns unless she typically had these mounted (large guns not just chasers) don't make the boats too big to move easily in today's smaller cars (Masts can unplug and lines unclip from main sheets)
Hey Guys! I'm actually working on this very thing out here in AZ! I tried to start up a Big Gun club a number of years ago, but I wasnt able to generate enough interest. The Age of Sail on the other hand, now THAT we do have interest for. We use the 1/48 scale out here. We also scratch-build generic ships (or permit actual blueprints), but since most blueprints of that period did not survive we allow scratch building. I have all manner of excel calculators built to calculate the size of the model, the tonnage, and the speed. On this scale the 32 pounders would be approximately the same size as a .177 bb pellet. The Absolute largest Ships of the line will have 1/2" balsa, and the more common ships of the line will have 3/8" balsa. Most of the rest of the ships will have 1/4" or less. I've been playing with a firing system for cannons for these ships. Basically I've got 5 cannons daisy-chained together that work off of a standard pellet gun C02 cartridge. It seems to work okay and it has a slight "ripple" effect as the pressure travels down the tube. The problem is that those small canisters dont provide a lot of shots. Also, the way that I have the ammo feed set up currently the guns only carry about 12-15 rounds of ammo before they're out. I'm trying to figure out how to bolster the pressure in the system without rupturing the lines and make a single-hopper system that loads all (or at least more than one) gun simultaneously. Anyone who's good with pressure systems who would like to help, please contact me at: Johnathan.clayborn@gmail.com. Thanks!
Ahoy there JClayborn, that sounds very cool! Do you have any photos of your ship? I'd love to see what you've got so far. I can also help with your armament troubles, as I am an experienced Big Gun cannon builder. I think your first problem (the limited CO2) can be solved with a larger CO2 source. Co2 cartridges are very small, and hold very little CO2. That's great for high-efficiency air rifles that just sip a little CO2 at a time. But when you're firing banks of smoothbore cannons, you need something a bit more substantial. Paintball CO2 bottles are the standard air source in our hobby, as they are easily obtained and easily adapted to our air systems. For your next issue of ammo, I can't help much until I see what you're working with. Are these Big Gun style cannons? Fast Gun style? A completely different homebrew solution? Photos would help a LOT with this one. I have a small collection of age-of-sail warship plans, from galleys to brigs, frigates, and ships-of-the-line. If you are interested, I can share them with you. Lastly, I would be very interested to know how you solved the balsa flexibility issue. Balsa becomes hard to bend as it gets thicker. I have a hard enough time bending 1/8" balsa around simple hull curves. How did you manage to bend 1/4" and even 1/2" balsa around the curvaceous, tumbled-home hulls of 1:48 scale sailing ships?
Before you get any further, how safe are your weapons systems? What pressure do they use? Will they penetrate 2" of foam (the Big Gun safety test)? What happens if they hit a person? Are you willing to put your hand in front of your gun and shoot yourself? I am very excited about what you're doing, and I have plenty of ideas to solve the issues you've asked about. I just don't want be too excited and see someone get hurt.
Hey everyone! I do have some photos. I need to write three essays for my college classes right now, but I'll post them soon. The boat itself isn't super large. She's representative of a 250 ton burthen ship. Her model dimensions are 22.5" long by 5" wide with a 4" draft. So far I havent had any issues with the cannon pressure being too high. I'm working very hard to regulate it and I have been using the Big Gun safety requirements as my base as well. I have shot myself with the cannons. It stings and it leaves a welt, but that's about it. The balsa was a pain in the @#$, truly. I may consider revising that aspect. I tried two different techniques. One ship I built with 1/8" balsa and just put two two layers. The other ship I built with a small aluminum frame and soaked the bejesus out of the balsa, and went very slowly and used clamps. It was quite troublesome. Everything I'm doing is still in a test phase. Some of this stuff may change soon depending on sea trials and combat tests. Kotori, I would love any plans that you may have that you are willing to share. I have a handful, but not many. This one was scratch-built and I tried to keep the hull curves simple. I'll post some pictures as soon as I'm able.
If I knew how to work with wood as well as some of the others, THIS would be my side project. I love this idea and would love to do it someday. I plan to finish my three Axis ships and by then might be able to attempt making one of these wooden ships. I think a ship that is 2ft is too small to hold enough air to do a cool cannon setup for these ships. I also believe that giving them 3 or 4 units will take the fun out of it as well. The whole point of age of sail, IMHO, is to see a full broadside or as close as you can. I think at least 4 cannons per side and have a common reload time of 8 secs or something like in big gun. For simplicity you could standardize on the .177 as even that would be larger than most ammunition if I am not mistaken. As far as shooting high and healing (does that mean pitching side to side?), a depression system would be nice. However we could just add a winching system that would lower the sails during actual combat which would allow some reduction in the healing right? Or a longer keel could be allowed as its under the water. Could we take 1/4 balsa and make planks then lay them into the ship. I know a fast gun could shoot through it. It also might be easier to replace a few planks rather then sheet the hole side. Would steaming the planks ro thicker balsa assist in forming it to the hull more than just wetting it? I will put my ideas on the manifold in the other thread and then let the engineers work it out. Johnny
Planks instead of sheets is a really bad idea. When planks of balsa fail, the whole plank between two ribs goes. It's a fast way to send yourself for a swim. It's probably easiest (and safest) to reduce thickness of balsa AND lower the cannon safety limits.
Hmm penetrability... perhaps similar to the way it is now 1 inch below waterline and between the gun portals for points. Without a ship in hand or drawing its hard to say. Sheeting the ship with balsa sheets should be easy its just a thought. How about a balsa main mast to shoot out for extra points or will the base of the mast be too high as to require the guns to elevate too high?
Don't think breakable masts is a good idea. It's hard enough keeping masts and rigging straight and untangled when they're not easily destroyed. I spent 6 months playing with wooden dowel masts and elastic rigging on my VU, and they got shredded almost every battle day. If they were balsa, you'd have a TON of work on your hands.
