Revell Yacht America

If you want mast rings , do this .

    You can make them out of wood ( I think they were ). How ? Get a dowel the O.D. of the rings on the mast .Then chuck it in the bench vice ( Gently ) . Now find a very sharp wood drill bit .The size of the mast . Okay steady now . Drill out about three inches of the dowel.

    Then cut carefully into the rings you need .carefully soak the wood in resin or C.A to strengthen them and ther you are .Another way is find a person who does jewelry for a hobby and have them show you how to make " Jump " rings . This way you can make a bunch for you And ,  your friend that wants to build a model like yours !

      The crutch is actually quite easily made . Study the plastic part and duplicate in wood ( basswood preferably ) for strength . I like that deck G !

I am replacing the masts with wood ones. The plastic ones are too small, have those rings, and also that ghastly Revell detail of a pair of molded rings into which the boom jaws can snap so the whole thing can swing. Sanding off the seam in between each ring would be enough to reach for the Scotch.

There seems to be some debate internal to the BJ drawings about whether the mainsail boom had jaws or a gooseneck. I'll worry about that when I get there.

As for the rings, I think your idea is a good one. I'm increasingly getting used to the idea of paper for some of the details. It's just thin wood, right? BJ says to make them 25% larger than the diameter of the masts, which are equal in size. They suggest finding wood shaving and cutting them much as you describe. I like that idea, if I pass a door and window shop I'll try it out. Where the real things were riveted together glue will probably do. I think a stack of rings sitting on the main boom jaws, or the spider around the fore mast, is a beautiful thing.

Crutches. Another good idea. I think I've actually seen that on this boat, maybe on the replica, braced against the sides of the cockpit.

Right now I'm building companionways and skylights. It sort of seems up to the modeler to pick a color scheme. I'm leaning towards all varnished wood, except for the main box being white. That's what BJ says to do- then they put a photo of a finished model on the cover of the booklet that looks to have them in solid varnished mahogany.

To catch up and answer Professor T,

No links, what I have are recollections of too many tool catalogs from too long ago.  But, I have rather a firm memory that, about the time of the Unimat 3, a table saw was coming out.  Either by Unimat, or branded thereby (as some of the tools coming out of the then Warsaw Pact was being marketed in the west).

Using cultured marble for a base is handy for those who do not have a stout bench to bolt tools upon.  The stone not only adds mass, but it  also offers a planar surface to associate the table to.  the man-made surface can be worked (if slowly) with woodworking tools in case a body wanted rig up in-feed and out-feed devices and jugs.

GM, I occasionally must love the 'adult' part of my life, which rudely interferes with my ability to gab on fora.

Question:  How did you handle the molded-on mast hoops on the two masts?

The rings, unless bent  to a sail wind up in an untidy heap at the foot of the foremast.  (When the rings are bent to a traveler--to keep them toughly even with the eye/hanks in the sail, you get an untidy collection of rings, and traveler line, unless the traveler is bent to the gaff jaws.)  The main rings pile upon the boom jaws.

Probably the best method for making rings is to get a dowel the I.D. of the rings.  Then coat some paper with glue or spray adhesive.  Then  wrap the paper around the dowel and upon itself until the scale thickness is achieved.  Use a new blade rolled perpendicular to the axis of the dowl to part off rings in parallel cuts.  Why paper?  Because you can snip the paper ring to split it around the assembled and rigged mast and the round shape will not deform as much as wire might.  the cut ends can be mended with a dab of CA.  (Or, a clove hitch of fine thread to represent where the ring lashes to the sail.

Since you need some more fiddly work to do, note that a racing rig like this would have crutches for the booms (and probably the fore gaff),  Smart sailors will rig those as to be a good height to rig sun awnings over.  The boom especially gets a crutch, its weight never sits entirely on the topping lift alone.

The crutches will be in an inverted T or a inverted V shape, likely braced between deck eyebolts.

So I was looking at yacht models online in an effort to make some decisions about deck fittings, and came across a build log from a number of years ago of that same America that was in the magazine recently. It went on and on for pages, no one mentioned the base mounting goof. Sharp eyes, Dr. T.

I am thinking about setting mine in V notched blocks rather than permanently on pedestals. It's really nice to pick up and kind of look at.

It depends. The table saw is best for making long, straight cuts, like deck planks. The bandsaw can make curved cuts.

If you put a precisely adjustable fence on your band saw you may, depending on the width of the blade and the precision of the guides, be able to make acceptably straight planks. But a table saw will be easier and more accurate.

The band saw will let you make curved cuts, which a table saw just can't handle.

Could a band saw make a decent substitute for a circular saw?

That is some fine work there.

Done!

No sails!

Only one less than I figured to have to make.

So the sheets which have a fairlead block on either side for each sail- and on the mainsail a running and trimming sheet and block each- lay on the deck and are going to be ready for sailing on my model. Morning before the race.

CapnMac is shagged out on the foresail bag down in the bilges as he was on trim duty last light. There was the little incident with the whale oil lamp, but lets let that go.

No, that figure of 14 miles doesn't include the gun rigging. I only put the breachings and side train tackles on the guns that are visible on the finished model - but they do add up.

GM, it's none of my business, but I hope you'll think some more about the sail configuration. The one you've described - mainsail furled and all the others missing - wouldn't be likely in real life (though not impossible, I guess).

One style that lots of modelers use for ships like this: no sails, but the gaffs raised and light lines rigged to form the outlines of the sails.on the other hand, this is a large-scale model of a ship with simple rigging, and only eight or nine sails. If you have any interest in furled sails, this would be a great model for a first attempt.

This model will be main sail down but stowed on the main boom. Fore main sail and all other cotton stowed away. The sets of sheets all seem to have served loops at their joins, those probably lay on the deck.

In an effort to find what the cleats on the decks looked like, all eight of them, I spent the afternoon looking at sites that sell "vintage" sailboat hardware. Cover myself in shame. I've settled on big teak ones. In any case it doesn't much matter and they'll be wrapped in rope anyways.

Next plan of attack is to get the deck hardware esp. all of the padeyes in, then flip her over and finish leafing and painting the transom, set the rudder and generally spruce up the hull. I thought I would set the chainplates and deadeyes, but I won't until I get WAY down the road and set the shrouds, therefore getting the angles right.

Right Capn. In fact I was looking at some museum models of same yacht, and the tails on those sheets are probably more like 100 feet, bundled in ten foot long coils and trussed like sausages.

Dr. Tilley, did you include the gun tackle in your calculation? Easily another 32 feet (on the model).

I jest, but it brings up a thought I always have when a modeler poses the question;

"What do I need to buy to rig my Revell Constitution?"

A lot of time, a considerable amount of money, and an approach in steps.

Oh, and never discount the number of uses for marline and similar "small stuff."  Flake a sheet out near it's cleat and pass a yarn or two around  the bights, and then to the rail stanchions or the like, and the line is miinded in a way that will break free when needed.

Would be interesting to see how the guys on the replica handle it.

Ut's a reason racing boats use clubbed sails and boomed forestay sails and jibs..  Once the  jib is set to where the tack ought to be, the boom keeps there.  The remaining sheet can be coiled off and triced up.  On the opposite tack, the boom brings the sail across, and the lee sheet can also be triced up as well.  All is good until the wind shifts or the mark is rounded.

Which was good enough in the days before racers were built to classes, and it was the best trimmed rig over the most amount of course won.

Very true. And for a square-rigged, three-masted ship, the problem is about ten times worse.

Out of curiosity (and to while away an hour or so waiting for my clothes at the laundramat) I once took a calculator and added up the lengths given in Steel's Elements of Masting, Rigging, and Seamanship for the standing and running rigging of a 32-gun frigate. The figure I got was about fourteen miles. For my 1/128 Hancock, that would have translated into about 580 feet. No, I didn't do it.

Photographs of sailing ships confirm that tremendous amounts of rope were lying around all over the place - in coils and bundles that a sailor could grab quickly with no tangles. I remember seeing one photo of - I think - the Constitution in her latter days. All over the spar deck were just the sort of "cages" GM described.

I don't think I've ever seen a model that looked like the amount of rope on it was authentic. This is just one of several features of sailing ships that modelers over the centuries have just agreed to ignore. Another one: tautness of rigging. In a real ship, only a few of the running rigging lines, and even fewer of the standing rigging, are ever really tight. Donald McNarry, Phillip Reed, and a few other small-scale virtuosi have gotten brilliant results by using fine wire for the rigging. But thread just doesn't sag like full-size rope. Personally, I get too much pleasure out of running thread through blocks and deadeyes to forsake it in favor of wire.

Could be. I've got some books, never looked that closely. Hull was white, hull was gray, hull was black.

She had a pair of boats on davits too.

I've managed to solve the bowsprit problem through a series of mods and some small compromises. It looks pretty good now.

I've got a question for the sailors, or anyone. The various sheets are secured to cleats scattered around the cockpit. Being a big boat with a lot of sail and no pepper grinders, these are pretty long lines. They get doubled up through blocks too.

Say the boat is close hauled on a tack and the sheet is hauled in tight. There might be twenty or thirty feet of rope laying around until the next tack. What do they do with it? When the sails are down and the booms are centered, it sounds like it would get bundled up and tossed in open cages.

Hi , Guys ;

Hey Proff .I have a copy of an old oil of the " America " and in it she does have the club-footed fore - staysail ! The drawing , oops , the print is marked 1955 ! and it looks like an old Currier and Ives job  the detail is so tight .Yet you can see brush -strokes in the picture !

    Sorry , I am not going to handle it to take a picture .It's too heavy . I got it and three steamboat pictures from an older lady in Tennessee years ago . The boats are the J.M. White , The Montenyard and the Island Supplier .Not fancy names , But the J.M.Whites ( there were eight ) were the true palaces of the Mississippi !

    The Island Supplier looks like a converted " Snag " Boat , The Montenyard like a floating , well , you know . That kind of place !

  This is a family site . T.B.

Well ;

Good for you , G .  Years ago Schreibner made a table saw . Took 6" blades .Weighed about forty pounds and had no vibration or chatter . Sold mine because I couldn't find blades for it that fit the shaft core .

    Now I use an old Dremel  and hope for the best  . Nah ! ! LOL.LOL.I do have a zero clearance foot plate on my big Craftsman table saw and use extra fine Cabinet blades .Works great . Just had to be inventive with jigs and fences .

Well, Supreme Command has endorsed the purchase.

I am interested in the use of it to also cut plastic and metal.

One big thing will be the ability to produce strip wood in any species that I can find stock of.

I have a Unimat SL lathe/drill press that I bought in 1975. At one time it had an accessory that turned it into a table saw; that attachment had a mediocre reputation among modelers. The SL was followed a few years later (in the late seventies, I think) by the more solid Unimat 3. I don't recall ever seeing a Unimat product that was specifically built as a table saw. When I Googled "Unimat table saw," all I got were some references to the old lathe accessories.

My recollection is that Unimat's parent company, Emcolux, quit making serious machine tools about twenty years ago. For awhile a much cheaper (mostly plastic) tool called a Unimat was on the market, but it was marketed mainly as a semi-toy for kids. I haven't seen one for at least ten years.

Cap'n Mac, if you have some more up-to-date information on Unimats, I'm sure we'd all be glad to hear about it. Can you post a link?

I'm aware of only four other small table saws that have competed seriously with the $379 Micromark one. The aforementioned Byrnes Table Saw looks like a beauty; it's a little more expensive than the MM one, but if you happened to find one on sale somewhere it looks like it would be a tossup between the two. Dremel made a table saw a long time ago, but it's been off the market for years. The Preac table saw used to be popular among ship modelers, but the owner of the company died, and the company shut down, some years ago. (When I googled "preac tools" I found a post from Model Expo saying that company was negotiating to start production of the saw again. Unfortunately that post was dated 2012.) Proxxon makes a miniature table saw, but it's quite obviously the same thing as the Micromark one.

So far as I can tell, the new version of the larger Micromark version is the only one with digital readout. Believe me, that feature is worth the extra cost. I'm thinking (probably unrealistically) of buying one myself.

Does anybody on the Forum know of any others?

I have to admit I don't quite follow the idea of mounting a saw on a marble slab. I screwed mine down to my bench - with thick rubber washers to deaden the sound and vibration. It works fine. Cap'n Mac, could you explain a little further? Is the idea to make the saw more portable, maybe?

GM, that $400 saw is more than the equal of the next nearest competitor, the Unimat  table saw..

Check around your town for a cultured marble (or similar synthetic counter tops) place and ask about  their scraps/cast offs.  A nice 18" x 24" chunk of reject counter top makes a great base for the saw.

I am putting it on my wish list for later. Right I can survive until then no problem, But I am not going to spend money on anything less, I'd rather wait a while.

I bought the cheaper Micromark saw (which at the time cost less than $100) while I was still an apartment-dweller. The better one came out of summer school money.

$379 is a big chunk of change, but a good small circular sa opens up a whole new level in the hobby. You an certainly do without it for the MS Elsie, though.

Yes, Ms. Morrison was recently discussing the need for a set of smooth jawed needle nose pliers for her jewelry making. May need to add to that order for free shipping...

Thank you for the advice. It will be put on the financial plan.

Yeah - the first one.  If you can afford it.

Nice work and a really interesting project ! 

So which of these two:

www.micromark.com/microlux-digital-table-saw,11530.html

or

www.micromark.com/microlux-miniature-table-saw,6936.html

I'm guessing the former.

I've owned or had access to some really lousy tablesaws. The kind that bounce around on the floor.

Back in the day when public high schools actually had a vocational program and taught "shop", yes and "home economics" for the girls, which would have been much more relevant for me in hindsight- we couldn't use the table saw. Welders, lathe, bandsaw, sure. I've always heard the most dangerous tool in the shop is the radial arm saw.

My first table saw was an 8" bench top model - the cheapest one Sears made, and about the only such tool an assistant professor's salary could handle. I quickly discovered that it could produce surprisingly good results if equipped with a good blade. Sears made a "satin finish plywood veneer blade" that could make cuts that didn't need sanding. I set up my cheap little saw with a crude homemade adjustable fence (wood, carriage bolts, and wing nuts for adjustment) and a zero-clearance insert with a splitter plate. With that modification, that saw could make boxwood strips 1/32" square.

The drawbacks of that tool were that it was tricky to adjust (repeating dimensions was almost impossible) and it turned most of the stock into sawdust. And it made a lot of noise (not good in a low-rent apartment). And I always felt like it was lurking in the corner waiting for the chance to slice off my fingers. (I've known a couple of guys who've run their hands through table saws. It's no fun.

That Micromark saw has a good, precisely adjustable fence (now with digital readout, and is reasonably quiet. And the blades are really skinny. And I THINK it would jam before it cut through a bone. I treat it with respect, though.)

I'll take the Mcromark version any time. One other tip, though: if you buy it, pick up a few different blades, a package of zero-clearance inserts, and a miter sled. [Later edit: and the set of featherboards, too.]

GM, I can't recommend that $126 Micromark saw very strongly unless it's the only one you can afford - in which case it may well be the best option in that price range. But, as I mentioned earlier, it just doesn't have the flexibility and precision that the $375 one has. On the cheaper one, you can't even adjust the height of the blade.

The next big challenge on the GLT is going to be all those little scupper slots in the bulwarks. Making a small, rectangular hole that begins at precise locations is tricky - and it has to be done 40+ times. I've got some ingenious ideas, but my ingenious ideas frequently don't work.

I see two on the MM site. One for $ 190 on sale for $ 126, and a "digital" one for $ 375. But I gather the $ 190 one is suggested (?).

As for joggling and nibbing, I'll save that for the Heller Victory.

OK, that was a joke.

I see in the Elsie plans that the after part of the deck (quarter deck?) is drawn with the planking parallel to the deckhouse as you said. Therefore their suggesting to cant the scribed sheets and bookmatch them. But I couldn't agree more, laying the planking was really satisfying, and getting the plank end pattern to work gave me an education in why the ends are where they are (deck beams of course), why the deck beams are where they are (ribs and hence the exposed timber heads around the bulwarks. I know this stuff but it's fun to be able to actually recreate it.

One day I'll probably be faced with planking a model deck "yacht style" i.e. parallel (if that's an accurate term) to the waterways. That would be pretty.

Following this with interest.  

GMorrison

Summary conclusions.

#1 I really need a good little table saw. Any suggestions gladly accepted. I like my fingers, so I need a good sharp accurate easy to use one.

Bosch? DeWalt? Dremel? As I say I will gladly spend $ 500 if it keeps my moneymakers attached to my arms.

#2 I am never ever going to convert a plastic model again. This was a good one, but even then to do it right I should have gone over it with the BJ drawings in detail. But really why? From plans from now on.

#3 It seems sometimes that there's never time to do it right, but I always manage to find time to do it over.... Lesson learned.

Amen to all of the above. A common thought for me is "Man, I really should have ----"

I own two contractors table saws, both of which are over 40 years old and have been used and used in my business for all those years. I also have all my digits, all of which are over 73 years old. The primary thing with these full sized saws is - safety - safety - safety. Always be aware of what you are doing and never place yourself in a position of being distracted. I am able to cut woods as small as 3/32" square by using various fixtures made for the purpose of controlling the work piece and keeping my hand away from the blade. The small modelers saws are nicer to store and waste less wood because the kerf is thinner, but though smaller, can cause serious injuries. You don't have to cut very deep to sever tendons or bone. Fingers don't have much meat (although mine rather look like fat sausages, complicating rigging procedures). Injuries occur mostly when it seems to be expedient to make a cut without first taking the time to fixture the job correctly. Most of the wood sizes I use seem to be pretty standard, so I only have to build a particular fixture once, then mark it and save it for next time. There is always the option to jig up for a specially sized piece that is unavailable commercially. Another fixture is one for my drill press, making it a very efficient thickness sander. Works great for making that oversized standard size down to the custom size I want, or, to just make planking nice and smooth and of consistent thickness with no saw marks. All this gives me the ability to make my own lumber, when I want it, as I need it, the way I want it, from chunks of wood that are in my wood stash or readily available - black walnut, mahogany, cherry, pine, basswood, poplar, chunks of exotic hardwoods from flooring etc.

Thanks for posting your build.

EJ