For various reasons I've done almost nothing on ships for over two months. So there hasn't been any progress on the Constitution. The good news is that I got 5 straight days off last week and that went a long way to getting me back in the saddle. I whipped out two pre-dreadnoughts on Saturday and Sunday and I'm ready to get back to work on the Constitution. Don't look for it before Christmas though, there is still some fairly complicated design to complete. I don't need any money now. I have a pretty good arrangement with the laser cutters, they don't charge the prototype and setup fees until I take delivery of the first run of kits.
Thats kewl, just needed a update... I dont do anticipation well.... If you ever do need anything, just let me know..
Where can I order some line for the rigging? I would like to do some tests with different deadeye sizes to see how small I can make them.
I have a rope walk walk... just let me know what sizes of rope you want... I can make as mush as we need... all I ask in return is a little for the cost of the thread used to make the rope. It's not much.. for like 10 to 15 bucks I can make enough miniture rope to rig up the constitution completely... I can make other shades of brown and black as well....
I will make deadeyes and buckles for us as well... I will pull out my Cony plans and get the sizes needed and mill out a few deadeyes.. I was thinking of just making a few wood ones, then make a mold and mass produse them in resin... wood looks better, but I can color the resin brown and black... If we make them out of resin it will be easier...
Just about any strong braided fishing line will work for functional rigging, both the standing (support) rigging and the running (sail control) rigging. For the decorative rigging, my plan was to use elastic. That way I can make all the ratlines on the sides without limiting travel on the yardarms. Decorative deadeyes and such would be great if laser-cut, although I hope they stand up under fire. The last thing I want to do is repair rigging. Perhaps a resin-cast or even rubber deadeye would be better, especially for the ones right near the deck, in the line of fire. For functional running rigging, a model-sized wooden block has too much friction. A resin-cast one with very smooth surfaces would work better. A 3D-printed one with working pulleys would of course work best On the other hand, these are combat models. We'll want to make the rigging as bulletproof as possible, to minimize the amount of "extra" repairs we have to do.
I'm planning on faking deadeyes, etc with O-rings. They're cheap, easy to come by and will take hits well. If they look horrible at 15-20 feet, I'll print some out of ABS.
I might try getting some ABS rod, slicing to the right thickness, and drilling the holes. Put a hole throught the width, and then run a wire through it. Could be used to attach it to the chain plate. ABS should take the bb hits ok. I will post a mock up today.
I've also seen a lot of RC square-riggers use buttons as bowsies for adjusting tension on lines. Want an excuse not to wear that annoyingly fancy button-up shirt? Strip the buttons off and use them in your rigging
I have not made any progress recently. I've been working on PDNs mostly, since I can turn one of them out in a couple of evenings of work. I will complete this project, it's just been lower on the priority/enthusiasm list.
If you can get the hull done on the computer, I can send her off to be cut ect.. How close is the drawings for the cut sheet? I hope to have one at NATS this year for demo
First, an apology. Never did I think that the Constitution would take this long to design and kit. Looking back, I should have realized that the complexity of the ship, the differences in the ship from my current kits, and all the extras I wanted to put in, was just too much. I should have expected that I would lose interest in the project before it was done. So to all those that have lost patience with me, I'm sorry. For those still interested, I think you will forgive me when you see the final result. I was very excited when I picked up the prototype kit today. I turned in the drawings over 5 weeks ago but the laser has been down and the wait has been killing me. In total there are 9 sheets of 1/4" ply and 3 sheets of 1/8" ply, making a kit that weighs almost 18 pounds! With the 500 watt laser it took 40 minutes to cut all the parts. Just to give you an idea how this differs from one of my normal kits, one of my cruisers has about 1500 linear inches of lines, composed of about 2500 individual segments. The Constitution has 6400 linear inches of lines (2200" of those just in the deck lines), composed of about 5400 individual segments! It took me an hour and a half just to punch out and sort the parts; normally I would be done assembling the kit in that amount of time. Here's all the parts:
