For some reason I feel awkward with posting this build in this section. Sure this area is for ship builds, yet all the ships built are WW1 ~ WW2 era. How in the world does a sailing ship fit with all of these metal monsters? Not to mention I'm trying out different ways of construction which may not turn out well at all (aka embarassment). Oh well. This is a ship for model warship combat after all. May as well. I studiously avoided reading the Age of Sail (AoS) thread for the longest time ... last thing I needed was another aspect of the RC hobby to participate in! But someone (*cough* Clark) talked about it in an email, which intrigued me enough to go read the AoS thread, which kinda drew me into looking into ships, which then led to hours of online searching for a "pretty" ship, in turn leading to buying and downloading some plans ... and once the plans are in hand, building the thing is the next logical step! The "pretty" ship turned out to be a cebec (xebec) class ship made by the French in 1753 named "Le Requin". The original ship weighed (not displaced) 260 tons and mounted 24 8-pounder cannons. The cebek class ships featured shallow keels with very wide beams to carry massive amounts of sail for thier size. The pretty part of the ship is a long stern overhang and the gorgeous triangular-shaped lateen sails. Static model of a cebek sailing ship
The plans themselves turned out to be the definitive plan set for the Le Requin. World Class models of the Requin were built using these plans. www.bestscalemodels.com/LeRequin_shipmodel.html. Fortunately, I have no intention of trying to build to that perfection. After all, this is a model warship combat model! Two of many pages of world class ship plans for the Le Requin The ship was never designed with a semi-scale modeler in mind. The main deck not only curves like a banana from bow to stern, but is also humped up turtle-like along it's entire length. The only good way to replicate that is formers and lots of strips of wood. Umm ... no thanks! So a couple nights were spent flattening the deck across the beam while adjusting the width to fit the hull form. Thank goodness for those mechanical drafting classes in high school! Templates were made the usual way out of tracing paper, transferred to wood, and pieces cut and sanded to shape. Rib sections, subdeck, and keel pieces cut and sanded to shape.
Departing from the usual building method of double keep center section, the Requin got a single keel from 1/8" aircraft ply. The ribs were cut from 1/8" ply. Even the subdeck was cut from 1/8". The idea was to keep the ship light ... it is a smallish ship even in 1:48th scale and with no idea of the final weight the goal was to try to keep everything as light as possible. The original plan was to build the ship upsidedown like the Verite, Omaha, and Erin builds. But the choice of 1/8" wood ribs and keel, along with the long rib legs, weakened the stability of the frame to the point that it was impossible to weight the frame down to keep it from bowing when the subdeck is installed. Instead, I ended up literally nailing the ship keel to the building board and building upwards. Basic frame. Laminating second layer of 1/8" wood on the subdeck. Bow and stern sections are seperate at this point The 1/8 subdeck was then installed/glued in. Knowing that without reinforcement the keel will bend like a hunchback, a second 1/8" layer was added to the subdeck. At this point, I figured the frame would be strong enough to handle. Heck, the Erin and Omaha was picked off the board at this point without warping or bowing. Unfortuantely, that wasn't the case with the Requin. As soon as the nails were pulled, the keel concaved 3/16" under the stress from the subdeck on the ribs. IMO, two factors not used in the other builds contributed to the problem with the Requin; the use of 1/8" keel versus the 3/16" - 1/4" keels I normally build with, and the use of a single keel versus the usual double keel used to make water channels in my wooden ships. There is a fix, but it will be tricky. More to come on that. In the meantime, a picture of its potential ...
Looking good so far, I do like the brig/sloop style of ships, but that might just be the yachting blood in my veins, Heheh... I'm especially looking forward to seeing how you arm her.
Welp, started on the bottom of the hull last night and continued tonight. Viewers familier with how I build will recognize this step. 1/4" sheet balsa is glued in between each set of ribs. While putting the in balsa, I physically pressed down on the bow and stern of the ship while the middle is braced by a block of wood. By the time the bottom of the ship was filled in, the concaved keel was straight again. The hull bottom roughly filled in with 1/4" balsa Roughing out the sheeting was easy with a multifunction tool. Let me tell ya, that powered tool was worth every cent spent on it. It carves like a powered turkey knife and gets into places that a handsaw cannot get into. Hull bottom rough shaped with the versitile multifunction tool. Since the hull framework is now stiff enough to prevent warping and while the multufunction tool was out, I went ahead and trimmed off the rib building legs. Now the ship is starting to look like a ship! That is it for tonight. I'm off work tomorrow through Tuesday, so hope to get a lot done on the Requin. Oh, the pictures are from our new camera. Still trying to figure out all the many settings on the 720HD camera.
Hope everyone had a Merry Christmas! The holiday time off let me get some work done. A lot has happened since the last few pics! The Requin now has a mostly finished hull bottom. There is two spots that need touching up before it can be glassed. For the moment, I'm holding off glassing to try to stiffen the hull up some more (it is still fairly flexible, especially twisting). The flexibility comes from wood selection (too thin keel), using a single keel vs the usual double keel, and the rather generous deck openings in the sub deck. The 1/8" basswood railings were also installed. IMO, it really brought out the lines of the sleek sailing ship. The forward railings went on fine. But the stern rails were a different story altogether! Mostly framed up with railings. Remember that I had to redraw the subdeck so the ship's deck was flat across the beam. That necessitated moving the edges of the subdeck up 3/8" from the plan's location. While it worked well for most of the subdeck, the stern ended up much too wide. I should have fixed it as soon as I realized it but instead I pressed on and installed the last six ribs by forcing them apart over the subdeck. That led to a messed up alignment on the stern sides that would have left the railing looking like a bloated snake. The fix was to cut deeper slots into the sub deck and move the ribs closer together across the ship's beam. It took half a day to do it and lots of unhappiness. But the result is a smooth line from the stern step back to the stern plate. Requin bottom side stern has some graceful lines. It is also the most frustrating part of the entire ship! These stern on these ships present a rather complex building challenge. For instance, where should the bottom of the penetrable window be? If going by the 45 degree rule, then the last 7 ribs should be impenetrable high up on the side of the hull at the bend of the rib. That is well above the waterline! I'm going to go with a 1/2" solid area on the bottom of the ship at the keel area to give sheeting something to glue to. This is something that AoS will have to discuss sometime. Another issue is the 1" hard area following the contour of the stern. If using conventional building practice used on WW1/WW2 ship builds, then the entire stern plate will be hard area. For the moment, I haven't decided what to do with that part of the build and will need some ideas from the AoS folks. The last issue is hard area above the weather deck. We originally said about making everything penetrable upto 3" above the waterline. For the small low-slung Requin (or any sloop for that matter), that is most of the hull all the way up to and past the stern quarterdeck. Although it could be done, not having some hard area could significantly weekend the stern where the mizzen mast is mounted. We may have to think on something better. So that is it for now. Stay tuned!
The stern question is easily answered by the presence of a stern gallery; made penetrable by simply being open framing, or 'sealed' with light balsa, wax paper, or perhaps even put thin lexan on tiny little hinges so that when it's 'shot out' it doesn't get blown away, unless the hinge breaks. That's probably more trouble than it's worth, however. Or, just some silkspan. Looking at this little beauty, however, I don't think you'll need to worry about a stern gallery, and thus the MWC rule of everything an inch forward of the absolute end of the stern being impenetrable by permission would apply, and apply nicely. Folks building ships that -do- have stern galleries will have to put their heads together on that one and hammer out a for-real rule: personally, I think leaving sterns impenetrable is a good idea, but if there absolutely -must- be some sort of penetrability because of the wide space of sterns on most frigates and ships of the line, I think the penetrable stern gallery notion is the best way to go. That will likely call for serious discussion and experiments with ships on the water putting forth both ideas. So, basically we need someone else here to start building HMS Surprise or USS Constitution rigged for battle. I would, but the next while is pretty busy for me, and I still have an Iowa to finish, heh.
Under the AoS rules, the big flat piece there can only be solid within a half-inch of the edge (if it's within 3" of the waterline). We are still cleaning up the rules, but a good chunk of the back of ships will be penetrable (crossing the T and all that). The solid area within 1" of the stern is intended to be near the keel and on the sides of the sternlights to give somewhere to glue the balsa to. The rules need rewording to reflect that, but that's the intent at this point. Mike, you are absolutely right! The rails really bring out the sportscar look of Requin She's a beauty! I'll feel bad shooting at it! For fighting the twisty flexing, have you considered putting in crossbeams at the bow and stern, and maybe near the masts? EDIT: @Miller7D - I have my build in the AoS section, building HMS Minerva, a 50-gun Magicienne-class frigate of the Royal Navy. Mike's xebec is much prettier though, but that should not surprise anyone My frigate is for proof-of-concept and to learn to build and sail a square-rigger.
Thanks Tug, that gives me an idea of how to handle the stern hard area. Have we given any thought to making the hull area above the quaterdeck solid? In the stern picture above, there is a wide flat peice of 1/8" wood where the quarterdeck will be on the Requin.
Actually, going back and reading the rules, there is a conflict that we need to work out: on one hand, we get 1" solid from the stern, apart from the stern galleries which get 1/2" solid around the edges... and on the other hand, all vertical surfaces of the stern galleries must be penetrable (apart form the 1/2" solid around the edges). I think the interpretation I gave above is correct within the spirit of the rules, but I will open a thread to hash it out. Shouldn't take long
how many cannons will this warship have? and were will they be located...for and aft or can they be side mounts. also, is this ship all sail power or will there be a engine?
Under the AoS rules, it CAN have a small motor (a Tamiya torpedo motor). Whether Mike will go that route is another question... He can mount 3 guns, which he can mount 1 in each broadside and one chaser, or one chaser aft and two forward, or vice versa.
The Requin will be pure sail power ... no electric motors. As a 6th rate ship, it could have 8 cannons total. But since it does not have a square rigged sail it only gets half of that ... 4 cannons. The plan at the moment is twin cannons off each side positioned forward in the ship.
Ah, you shoulda built Le Chameleon... roman rigged french 6th rate, with the rectangular sail on the mainmast, so you'd get all 8 guns! Ah, well. I was tempted to mount the motor... but after sailing Carl's Connie, I think it'd be less satisfying to have the motor. Really, a tiny motor turning a 1/2" prop won't move a large ship very fast at all, more like an emergency get-back-to-shore thing. I think I'd rather throw together a tugboat and have it handy on shore if the lake goes windless for a long period of time when I want to go home
What I would love to make is the oft referenced but yet unseen 32 gun cerbek with square rigged sails on the main mast and lateen on the fore and mizzen masts. That would have pushed it into the 5th rate catagory for 10 guns total. heh. A tugboat would be good to have indeed. I have no doub that sometime, somewhen, some rigging will get shot off and leave a ship out of control.
Armed with a new found understanding of how to do the hard area in the stern, I hit the shop for a good 5 hours of work the past couple nights to "get 'er done". As incentive, I promised myself not to mount the masts until after the bottom is glassed ... and there is a host of things that need to be done before the bottom can be glassed. Across the top of the stern hard area was added above the 3" mark from the waterline. The ship is so low profile that it did not need much. Next, 1/4" balsa was pressed into service again to fill in the 1" hard area following the stern's contour. Yes, balsa is not "hard" but it will get about three layers of half ounce cloth for protection. I also took the opportunity to add the last 1/8" ply layer to the subdeck to bring it up to 3/8" total thickness. 1' hard area added to the stern contour and hard area added to the very top of the stern above the 3" over the waterline mark. Notice the quarterdeck stringer and the stern post both got "scalloped" to remove hard area from the inside of the sheeting. It wasn't legal having it in there. The scallops are deep enough to a BB to easily pass all the way through the sheeting and fall down into the hull. Since things were moving along I went ahead and cut a bunch of stacked ply pieces for the bow hard area. Stacked 3/16" ply (that happened to be on hand) cut and glued in for the bow hard area. The other side of the hull still needs the stern hard area and subdeck thickened yet. Also, some hard area above the ply pieces between the subdeck and the rail needs to be installed. All coming up this weekend.
wow mike, you'll probably be the first person of us all to get an AOS ship on the water. I'm gonna have to work extra hard now to catch up.
Today was spent putting in the stern 1" hard area and thickening the sub deck to 3/8" on the opposite side of yesterday. I also sanded down the bow hard area and added some solid wood above the bow block between the deck and railing. Bow blocks sanded down into a pleasing shape. Other than filling in some imperfections and smoothing various pieces of wood, the hull is ready for a coat of fiberglass. If tomorrow is as warm as today was then the ship will get glassed and put to the side for the rest of the weekend. I think I will start drawing sails out on the sail material for something to do while the resin dries on the hull.
