Battle went well, no Axis sinks, and 3 allied sinks, despite the Bayern being in the hands of a complete rookie 11 year-old boy who has a bad habit of getting between two allies and sitting. No, not firing, sitting. My ball-bearing interrupter geek breech guns did well; I got hit in the belly from 20 feet oin a skipped shot, and it drew blood. Through my shirt. I have pictures, although I haven't uploaded them yet. Anyone who says geek breech guns can't make power wants too much power. Note: this was an early prototype cannon with old tubing, not a super-refined one, with new tubing... As far as boarding actions go, I'm not sure I want to give up the ship over rock-paper-scissors...
Wow. Methinks Big Gun gun-testing standards might be a good idea. Or a lower pressure limit. I don't want holes in my belly despite my patented fruit-of-the-loom body armor. For boarding actions, I also considered pool-noodle duels. Then I remembered that some skippers are significantly older than I, and do not stand up very well to foam-object impacts. Also, pool noodles are simply too silly. Or we could just decide not to do boarding actions. We do have to make compromises for scale, and boarding is one of the more difficult aspects to represent.
I was honestly shocked at the little red spot on my tummy. It seeped blood for a bit, although this is more likely due to my being on Plavix than anything else. But it did (if only just) break the skin). The cannon being tested was being fed from a 1/8" ID gas line, I plan to test it with a 1/16" ID gas line next weekend. When the technology is in place to have little Jack Tar robots swarm the other ship, I'm all for doing boarding actions!
The ribs are cut out of the paper, and glued to the plywood. The keel is laid out. And, courtesy of a particularly nasty sinus infection combined with a black mold crisis at work that has the clinic shut down for the rest of the week, I have the week off to cut wood and epoxy. As long as the antibiotics and anti-cough crap keep working, I should have Minerva's ribs, deck, and masts attached to a keel before the weekend! Side note, I read Carl's V0.1 rules, I look forward to testing them! I am building largely to the construction specifications in those rules; When you say '60 degrees down', do you mean 60 degrees from vertical or horizontal? I have ordered the Tamiya torpedo drive to ffix to my rudder, should get here sometime next week. As I mentioned earlier, the tan ripstop nylon for the sails has already arrived; I'm actually a little nervous about cutting it to make the sails, it's so pretty...
Perhaps it would help if I shamelessly rip off the diagram from the WWCC rulebook: I have a feeling there will be many more diagrams that I will need to shamelessly rip off before the Age of Sail rulebook is complete
Ahh... I'm safe, then, I laid out the ribs to a 45-degree standard, which is a bit lower towards the keel. No problem! I can always add hard area later if I want. Thanks for the shamelessly ripped drawing
Hmm... 45 degrees might not be too bad. 60 degrees gets rough when you're trying to bend 1/8" balsa, but we're using 1/32" and that's a whole lot nicer.
Yeah, with 1/32" it's not too bad, IRCWCC and MWCI both use 45 degrees. I went with it because I knew we'd be heeling, and if it turned out that we went with 60 degrees, I'd still be legal
Wow! That bandsaw sure does cut a lot of wood! I've got the ribs cut and fitted to the keel. To paraphrase Han Solo... sometimes I even amaze myself! It's an awesome looking thing; just looking at the ribs on the keel, I can see masts and sails hovering there as a ghost image Young master Carl will NOT be the only sailing captain on the forums for long! I go now with the camera to capture photographic evidence of my deeds, to be posted forthwith!
Be careful which deeds you capture von Tugboat. Nuremberg awaits you Axis types! . I really should stop following this thread, the call of a French Frigate is growing too strong.
Great to hear you're liking your new bandsaw, and even better to hear you've cut wood for the Minerva. I hope to sail on the open pond again soon. Just arrived in the mail today are three brand-new programming cables for my Hobby King 6-channel radios. I will be reprogramming one with a couple of experimental mixes that should make controlling the sails easier. My sail controls are all on the right stick. Right now, left/right controls the foremast, and up/down controls the main and mizzen masts. This can get confusing, since you have to move both sticks towards one corner or another in order to control both sets of sails. My idea is to replace the two on/off mix switches with a single three-position switch, A/off/B, with two different mixes depending on what I'm trying to do. In mix A, both sets of sails will be parallel when you move the stick left/right. No need for up/down to control the foremast, which is perfect for long-distance straightaways. In mix B, the main and mizzen masts will be reversed from the foremast, which should make tacking easier to remember and quicker to do. With no mix enabled, it will be full manual control like I've done before, which should help when I need to augment my rudder-turning with sail-turning. It will also help with wearing ship/gybing. I'll let you know how it works out. Don't expect pictures, though; my poor camera has yet to be replaced.
Here are the early photos of HMS Minerva in drydock, or at least sitting on the new bandsaw... I've got the backlight frame clamped to the stern temporarily to figure out where I want it. Once I have that figured out, I'll cut out the center of it. I will likely put in a 1/8" wide vertical member in the center of the backlight to reinforce the balsa. Look at the size of that skeg! Ye GODS, man, it's huge! and from the bow... I'm still playing with this part, I'll probably move the forwardmost 3 frames down a smidge, as it looks far too much like a north sea bow, and not as flat as the plans do. It's easy to fix at this point. and a side view for you... I threw in a random book for scale purposes Seriously, though the Y-shaped black thing is a 4" diameter y-connector. Or, the book is 5" wide and 7" tall. and: Tomorrow, I will get the caprail and internal braces installed, and the masts, and epoxy the whole shebang together. Tonite, I have the ripstop nylon inside with a few dowels to assess my sail plan. Rigging will be 50# Spyderwire (braided fishing line).
Do you mind if I post this on my thread on the RC Groups square-riggers forum? I just finished programming the mixes on the HK-6 radio. They're working great. I hope to try it this weekend.
Post it I'm really enjoying the new challenges with building a sail powered warship! I might have to make an account over there to say hi, I've read your thread and a couple of others in passing.
Rar. It's almost 6PM, and among my other duties today, I got the caprail mostly done. The center isn't cut out, yet, but it will be soon. I wanted to take a pic of Minerva while she still looks like she's got a deck, and I wanted to double-check my mast locations before I cut the caprail (it will be one large caprail, with athwartships reinforcement around where the masts will fit). The masts are going to be removable for ease of transport in a Toyota Avalon's back seat. The Avalon is my main commuting car, and since my commute to my new job will take me within 10 minutes of the battle/sailing pond, it would be nice to be able to take the ship to work so I can steal an hour here and there on the way home for sailing practice... I have a funny feeling that a lot of whether one hits the target in this game will be determined by sailing skill, so an hour a week would be a good thing. Might even be fun in its own right, ja?
I didn't get anything else done, as my wife had to work late and I had to go in because I don't like her there alone at 8 at night. Call me old-fashioned. Anyhow, when we got home, the camera was charged and I got some pics of Minerva with the unfinished caprail fitted. At this point, it's all joinery holding it together, she's remarkably solid for no glue involved Sternlight windows aren't in because there's no glue involved yet quarter-ish view: The bow will get prettied up as I progress... I like to leave that open so the form of the bow can find itself And... side view. Frame 9 is hiding in the shop somewheres... Tomorrow I will install frame 9, and cut the subdeck and deck. Masts will be test-fitted; stout oak dowels have been procured in 3 diameters for making the masts. I plan to epoxy a quarter under the mainmast before it is stepped. (Epoxy so the quarter will stay there when the masts are unstepped for travel). Time permitting, I bought some 1/32 bass to plank the solid parts. So that can be put on, and prepped for a layer of epoxy and 'glass!
Professor Tug ... you need(can you) to do a 101 class on this I made a E.Q and it hit the water look good ... had offer for trade (so i did it was french made the ship for $60) for a Baden hull i like the Baden sweet ship we have some more Captains in So Cal making the EQ. So a 101 class will get me and um shur 1 other to build 1 (we have like 18 Captains) we battle every mouth
Looks good, Tugboat. I hope you find the missing rib. Are you planning multi-piece masts, or single-piece masts? And have you given any thought to the joint between yards and masts? I wasn't entirely satisfied with the screw eye method. Certainly not until I find a better way to easily mount and dismount sails.
I was just thinking about firing large banks of cannons again. What do you think of using quick exhaust valves? The jumbo QEV's have eight times the airflow of a standard MAV-2 poppet, so we could probably fire three or four cannons from a single one of those. Another possibility is to use individual miniature QEV's, one for each cannon. miniature QEV's also have a very high airflow, the only question is how big of an accumulator would we need in order to fire a single cannon. Or would that end up more complex than daisy-chaining MAV-2's together like usual?
