An experiment with coppering a hull

Placing Copper on the rudder may be incorrect, most ships did not put copper on the rudder as it made them a bit too heavy to handle.  Nor all ships were like this, but a lot were not coppered. The Constitution is one.

Jake

That's most interesting Jake, has Marquardt got it wrong in his book The 44-gun frigate USS Constitution which shows the rudder coppered in the illustrations and drawings?

Most British and American warships back in the early 19th century were coppered and their rudders were coppered.

With merchant ships it probably varied quite a bit depending on the ship's trade routes and how much budget the owners had for copper sheathing. Chances are, though, if they coppered the hull, they also coppered the rudder.

Constitution's rudder was certainly coppered as it is now. Copper sheathing was just as important to protect that wooden rudder as it was to protect the rest of the wood below the waterline.

Russ

I agree.  All of my references point to ships having coppered hulls also having coppered rudders.  However, the argument made above about merchant ships seems interesting and bears further look.

Bill Morrison

The following is off a bit on a tangent, but....One goof a surprising number of modelers make is to put copper sheathing on the rudder and paint the pintles, gudgeons, and braces (i.e., the hinges on which the rudder is hung) black, as though they were made out of iron.  That won't work.  When a piece of iron and a piece of copper are placed next to each other and flooded with saltwater, galvanic corrosion takes place and the copper dissolves.  (One of the first things the shipwrights discovered when they were experimenting with copper sheathing was that it couldn't be put on with iron nails.  The nails have to be copper; if they're iron, the copper surrounding them gets eaten away, the nail holes get enlarged, and the sheathing falls off the ship.) 

Pintles, gudgeons, and braces on a copper-sheathed ship have to be made out of copper or bronze.  To be accurate, they ought to be painted or otherwise treated to look just about like the copper sheathing surrounding them.

cheers for the replies chaps, very interesting stuff. I have a photograph in a book of a small  (300 ton) ship with no copper on the rudder, but plenty of ones that at least suggest coppering was put on. The Academy kit had a wood-grained rudder which is why I left it off. May have another think

jtilley thanks for the info re the pintels and gudgeons. It never occurred to me!

Will

It might be too late to mention this but you could also use a copper polish.

Hawkeye Hobbies sells the metal powders in little bottles.

You just buff it in with a cloth either directly on to the plastic or on to a primer undercoat.

Mike

I've used copper tape with great success on past projects. It offers several options; (1) cutting individual plates to shape and scale, or (2) laying down lines of tape in a correct pattern and scribing individual plate lines.  But, don't forget a nice extra touch . . . use a sewing pattern maker on the back side of the tape to form nail heads.

Bill Morrison