As promised, today was glassing day. Using .5 ounce cloth and West Systems two part resin, the entire hull got a layer of cloth with an extra layer on the stern and bow areas. Once it all sets up, the excess cloth will be trimmed off and edges feathered to be sealed with another trim layer of resin. Glassed hull sitting in the warm house. Luckily it doesn't smell as bad as usual. Heh. It will take a day or two for the resin to set up before the hull can be handled. Once the hull is ready for handling I will start adding stuff to it, like the keelboard box, masts, some additional bracing, and of course sheeting. The fun stuff is coming up in the build!
Actually, yeah. While waiting for the basic frame to set up early in the build, I started work on the keel pieces. In the junk box was a cracked carbon fiber helicopter blade that looked like it would make a perfect aerofoil shaped keel board. Sacrificing a saw balde to cut the carbon fiber blade, I ended up with about an 8" piece. Knew there would be a use for that old broken helicopter blade! Keeping with the scrap theme I dug up some 3/16" ply from the scrap wood box and built a hollow box. The blade slides into the box which has internal pieces of wood to keep the blade straight. The box will be installed and glassed into the hull with one end opened through the bottom of the hull. I have not decided if to put the box in front of or behind the main mast yet.
I would suggest you plan in some adjustability, at least until you've been sailing a few times. If you get the keel in the wrong spot, the ship will tend to turn either upwind or downwind, requiring the rudder to correct. The first time I went sailing, I had my keel in the wrong spot, and the rudder wasn't enough to correct it, leaving poor 1:96 Constitution helpless before the wind. You might want to find out where you want your keel before you permanently attach it.
Time to put in the keel box. Measuring the cutout for the keel box. I was very uncertain about cutting out the bottom of the ship. The length of the box meant cutting two ribs and the keel. Given the problems earlier in the build with the keel bending under hull stress, I was half expecting the same problem after cutting into three major structure pieces. Luckily, the rest of the hull held up fine without any additional problems. Phew! The hull did not collapse after cutting this out of it! The multifunction power tool made this step easy but no less scary. After friction fitting the keel box in, the keel board was dropped in to get everything aligned straight. Some sanding was needed to flush fit the box to the hull bottom. Keel board fitted for alignment. After tacking the box into place, the board is removed and some reinforment inside the hull is put in place. If the weather warms up enough again soon the bottom of the box and surrounding hull will get filleted with "snot", a mix of chopped carbon fibers and resin for extra strength. Additionally, the top of the box will get capped to seal it and help prevent any water leaks from below. The keel box fits snugly in between the two ribs, keel, and cross brace. I'm pretty sure it is not going to come loose. And finally, two of the masts were cut and mocked up into the hull. Both need anchors installed to hold them in place. At this point I am not sure if the masts should be removable or not. They are short and stubby and do not take up a lot of height. Le Requin gets two of three masts temporarily installed. Oh, one last thing for today: This morning I made a quick ship cradle to help hold the ship while working on it (see above picture).
Center of effort calculations would be a challenge for a ship rigged boat but for this little Xebec, not so difficult. Here's a decent article on this subject. www.duckworksmagazine.com/05/articl...g/free.cfm Mike, since you've placed your keel already you may want to leave some adjustability in your rig design to make it easier to achieve a balanced sailboat. I've noticed that Mike has so far left off the full length exposed keel timber that is shown in the plans and is something all these AoS ships had. This will give this model a quicker turn rate and less drag in the water. I'm not sure if the group wants to address keel issues or not. Keels have the biggest impact on a crafts performance and depending on how these add-on keels are designed will determine the ultimate performance of the model. For example, removing the exposed keel timber increases turn rate, increases lateral drift, and the model will not be able to point as high into the wind. A deep fin keel has the highest turn rate, will beat to the wind ok, will be more sensitive to rig placement, and will have the deepest draft. A fuller length keel will have more drag but will beat to wind better, will tack slower, the model will sail on rails so to speak, be less sensitive to rig design, and have a shallower draft. Basically, with the current latitude in add-on keel design, a builder can take a 1700's slug and turn it into a modern high speed, highly maneuverable racing yacht.
I do plan on installing the1/4" scaled keel timber at the same time the bowsprit is added. The time isn't right yet to put it on. Yes, I took a chance with the keel board position ahead of the mast figuring that it should be pretty close to the center of effort based on the approximate sail area fore and aft of the main mast. In other words, it is a wild guess. Heh. The keel board is relatively narrow so hopefully the oversized rudder and having each mast independently trimmable will make up for any small tracking problems. It may be possible to adjust the keel weight bulb fore and aft for some adjustability too. Ultimately, it would be nice to have a ship that tracks slightly windward with a neutral rudder. The sail winch servos from HK are on the way. They could show up as soon as the end of this week but most likely will be next week ... just in time to set up the rigging.
It would have been pretty easy to make an adjustable keel really if I wasn't so hung up on a removable slide in keel. Instead of a box, a length of 1/8" thick aluminum could have been layed alongside the keel and sticking out the bottom of the hull about a 1/2". That would leave enough material to bolt a keel onto and adjust later on by simply drilling new bolt holes. In fact, I may do that in the next ship I build.
Not much time on the ship tonight, but still got a couple things done ... Something that did not look right was the straight dowel masts. The plans showed nice tapering masts that got thinner towards the top. Hmm ... ok. To replicate that each mast was chucked into a drill and sandpaper used to sand down the mast into a nice taper. It came out well I think. The mizzen (stern) mast was glued into place. There is not option to make it removable because there isn't a lot of space in the stern to put in a mast socket. It is a short mast so I don't expect any problems. Lastly, the first deck hold downs were drilled and installed. Each deck will get another pair to help get a very tight deck seal.
Welp, I had the afternoon off today and put the time to good use working on the Le Requin by making the spars and hanging them on the masts. Wanting to keep the look of the ship, the spars were made of two dowel rods lashed together like the full size ship's spars. Dowel rod sizes were selected to match the plans as close as possible. Each dowel was flattened on each side to help keep them from twisting under stress. I did cheat a little and used glue on the bottom 2" of the two pieces to hold them in place while thread was wrapped securely. The overall effect came out close to the originals at least in appearance. Rigging the spars onto the mast was a challenge and took three different methods before finding a satisfactory way of doing it. I ended up using brass screw eyelets to make the main connection between spar and mast. The mast eyelet was twisted open to provide a hook opening so the spar and sail assembly can be removed for transportation. Zebco 50 lb test braided fishing line was pressed into service for the upper and lower rigging lines (thanks for the tip Clark!). That Zebco stuff is seriously strong ... after trying to cut it with three different pairs of scissors I ended up going with a serrated edged hunting knife. Heh. Requin's double dowel thread lashed spar mounted and rigged on the main mast. The offset eyelets at top and the space between spar and mast provided by the eyelet connection there lets the spars rotate as much as 85 degrees both directions. That should be enough to run with the wind as needed. Now that the spars are rigged and on the ship for visual reference, I can work out the spar control rigging. Originally I wanted to go with two lines per spar like the original ship for a pull-pull positive control cable. Unfortunately that doesn't look like a good option for many reasons, especially on the front mast. So for now the plan is to use a single spar control cable and rely on the wind to keep the spar angled to the side I want it at. Overall, the ship looks nice with all of its spars hung in place. Requin with spars hung with care upon masts. Can hardly wait to get sails on it! There is two directions to go now on the build; 1) build up the keel timber and bowsprit or 2) craft and install the quarter deck. The bowsprit portion is needed before control rigging can be worked on. The quarterdeck will be needed before the rest of the stern portions can be started. Either way, it is going to be fun. By the way, the Requin now has 50 hours of work put into it. If I had to guess there is probably another 20 - 30 more hours needed before it can be launched without cannons.
Wow, that looks good! Mike, you should post some of these pictures on the Scale Sailboats forum: http://www.rcgroups.com/scale-sailboats-653/ most of those guys sail square-riggers and other great ships. I bet they'd love to see your build.
Thank you for the link. Some interesting stuff in that RC Groups area. Not sure if I would want to post anything there though. My build is very very simple compared to some of the gorgeous ones on RCGroups.
After taking a few hours off for things like dinner, family, and some World of Tanks, I hopped back on the Requin build ... I decided to tackle the keel and bowsprit first since it will be needed when the sail winch servos arrive sometime late this week or early next week. The bowsprit template was already made so all it needed was tacked on some 1/4" ply and cut out. Only a little bit of sanding was needed to get a tight fit on the hull. I am not going to fillet the keel into the hull. The plans show the hull bottom curving in over the keel timber. So this is unintentionally scale. Heh. 1/4" square keel timber and bowsprit glued on. Gap between keel timber and hull is actually scale according to the plans. Heh. The twin side timbers and top crossing timbers were made from 3/16" x 1/8" basewood. From the top and side it looks pretty darn scale according to the plans. Looking at teh underside shows a few extra pieces of wood added for reinforcement to hopefully keep thigns in place if (when!) they are hit by BBs. Topside of bowsprit looks good. Still missing one piece though ... The bottom of the front spar is positioned perfectly by the plans. The spar control cable will have to be run to the end of this piece of the bowsprit and attached to the bottom of the front spar. The pictures show a temporary piece of string to position the spar for pictures. Sheeting around the side pieces will be tricky. Ah well. Heh. Love this angle! Some finish sanding yet to do. The bowsprit is almost finished, only lacking a small dowel rod that extends past the end another 6" inches. I'll pick that up tomorrow from Walmart. Frankly, this part of the build went together surprisingly fast. Less than a couple hours work was needed to make the bowsprit. Next up is the start of stern work ... tomorrow. Not tonight ... tomorrow ... sleep is good ...
Turning attention to the stern, the first thing that needs done is the quarterdeck. It is the basis for everything that comes after such as rudder linkage, stern flyinh deck, etc. I wanted to keep the graceful deck curve on the quarterdeck. To do that, a set three ribs with arched tops was glued on the bottom of some 1/8" plywood. To help the deck curve, a series of scribed lines was cut into the deck. The lines will also be used for deck board detail. Stern quarterdeck partially completed and test fitted. For the moment I am leaning to making the quarterdeck removable to get at the rudder servo and anything that might end up at the stern of the ship.
I was just on the Delftship website and saw that someone made a 3d model of a xebec: http://www.delftship.net/delftship/index.php?option=com_kunena&func=view&catid=2&id=2051&limit=6&limitstart=6&Itemid=57 scroll down to the bottom of the page to see his ship.
Not much work done this past weekend due to a cold/flu. But the Requin did finally get its stern deck platform and mizzen mast boom. Stern is almost done! Still some small details left, but all the major bits are there to install the mizzen sail control cable. Again, not quite scale. Yet again, the goal was a working ship and not necessarily a precision scale ship. The sail winch servos arrived today. So I guess the next thing to do is to work on the sail controls.
Welp, things slowed down considerably the past week due to being sick. That has cleared up and some work has gotten done. I also got distracted by trying to decide what to work on next. There is still so much to do to the Requin. To help break that logjam, I did a "To Do" list of things that needed to be done and started at the top. That helped a lot! First, I had to finish the masts before permanantly mounting them in place. Liking the dark colored masts on the picture at the beginning of this build thread, I stained the Requin's masts with a mahagony stain. Perhaps not scale authentic, but it looks nice. A host of other small projects where finished up such as capping the keel box, reinforcing the keel box and mast mounts with carbon fiber impregnated resin, and lots of rigging work. Masts stained dark, most of the rigging done, even the deck got a not so scale deck boards etched into it. By the way, I'm trying compressed images in this post. The previous pictures were megabytes sized. Made it hard for people that didn't enjoy a high speed internet connection to see the photos. These images are around around 250 - 300k sized. Feedback is welcome. Taking Meatbomber's advice, each yard got a vang on the bottom. The vang immeasurably inproved how solid and what angle the yard hung on the mast and will help with sail control later on. It was great advice and shows how valuable people that have sailed these ships are to those that haven't yet. Thanks! The stays were added this week also. I wasn't trying for scale positions with the stays (though the foremast and mizzen stays ended up positioned nearly scale). Instead, the stays were used to set the maximum swing angles on the yards. The max angles ended up less than unrestricted yards, but should keep the sail at the best angle in relation to the yard itself. I really like how the stays turned out. The foremast and mainmast stays where mounted on the deck near the railings. I did not feel that the rails were strong enough to support the stay anchors without breaking. The mizzen mast stay anchors where mounted on the rails which are supported by the solid area in the stern. I'll work on compressing previous images in this build thread to make it easier on slower internet connections. In the meantime, there is still a lot to be done on the ship! Like sails.
