I played around with making gratings until I finally got something worth using and built up Constellation’s main hatch and glued gratings on it so it now looks “finished.” The galley hatch, and ammo hatches fore and aft got gratings too.
I wanted to get Constellation sailing for the Chesapeake Bay Maritime Museum’s Model Boat Expo the first weekend in October. One problem was her size. She was too deep for the pool they set up, so I determine she had to sail in the creek (Miles River). I had two major problems with this;
First, I didn’t trust my batteries. Both are over 5 years old and while a new SLA for the boat was under $20, the battery for the transmitter was over $35. On the model’s first sail the on-board battery failed, and I supposed once bitten, twice shy.
My second issue was moving the model to the creek. She weights nearly 100 pounds, ready to sail. I could move her in pieces; ballast, model, internal ballast; separately; but still, by myself, carrying the model around from the car to the creek, leaving items at one end while going for other items at the other, it was just too much. I needed a cart.
In the end I didn’t go to CBMM, as I couldn’t solve these issues in time, but I did determine to sail the model before Winter came along.
I had been considering a hand-truck type of cart for the model, thinking it would allow me to launch at docks and bulkheads, but while sketching this out it occurred to me that really wasn’t true. The first problem with the hand-truck is the hand-truck itself. Putting a big square-rigger model on it you have to contend with the rig hitting the hand-truck’s upright portion. To move it, you have to lean it back and now you’ve put YOU in the model’s rig to tangle and break things. At the water, if there’s any sort of chop, the model with bounce around and bang into the hand-truck, again, endangering the rig. What’s worst, modeler’s that have used hand-trucks complained that the inflated wheels and big wood cradle made the cart want to float. This meant you couldn’t let go of the cart or it would fall over, and when retrieving the model you had to force it down while trying to maneuver this porcupine of a model onto it without it banging into the cart and breaking things. The hand-truck appears to offer an ability to launch at low bulkheads or floating docks, but that’s a false promise. Dealing with all of the above added to perching it over the edge of a wall using your body to counter weight the thing trying to catapult you into the drink while smashing all your hard work…well, let’s just say the hand-truck idea was out.
The alternate was something more akin to a boat trailer. People have been transporting and launching boats from trailers for centuries - why reinvent the wheel?
So I sketched up some ideas. Constellation (and Macedonian) have log, relatively flat keels, with a PVC pipe full of lead bolted onto them for ballast. I decided the cart, like a dry-dock, should support the model mainly by it’s keel/ballast. A U shaped channel would hold it from trying to yaw or twist on the cart. Then it needed some sort of side support to hold the model upright. I didn’t want it to float, so I wasn’t going to use inflated wheels, or make the cart of wood. But the model’s heavy, and I figured PVC pipe or metal tubing that I was capable of working with wouldn’t be up to the task without becoming some over-built monstrosity. Then I remembered I had an old bed frame made of L shaped steel. Eventually I refined my design to the simplest form possible; a channel made of two L girders of the bed frame. An L girder cross-piece to support the axle set in the middle of the cart’s length. Some short bits to hold the channel together, and a block to mount a long handle that would clear the model’s bowsprit. The steel of the bed frame was a bear to cut with my Saw, it ate three blades! I only cut the three main parts from it, and used wooden blocks for the end pieces, instead of metal. I tried using a wooden block to hold the handle, but didn’t care for how it worked out. I remembered I had a flag-pole bracket I took off a post on my porch, and fit the handle to it. That worked pretty well. I pondered how to hold the model up-right on the cart for a while. I thought of pads, rollers, adjustable arms, rails; but in the end I just screwed on two bits of wood with pipe-insulation padding on the ends. The channel carries the model’s weight and keeps it from turning - the up-rights just hold it up. The model actually only leans on one or the other at a time. In the end, the only thing I went out and bought for this were the two 9-1/2" grocery cart wheels for $13 and a steel rod for the axle; everything else I had on hand.
With a way to move and launch the model that I was happy with out of the way, I started jury-rigging the model to sail. Last time she carried t’gallants, this time I would add the royals.
I had a list of goals and tests for this expedition, but I didn’t want to be sailing in a scale hurricane. It had been rainy, then windy, all week, then on October 26th the weather forecast was Northerly winds at 5 mph, mostly sunny, with a high around 70° - perfect! The wind was gusty up to maybe 10 mph, but that was ok. I took the boat over to my friend Mark’s neighborhood boat-ramp on Rock Creek where he met me with his RC sloop Son of Erin.
[ul]
[li]Test fit in car; she hasn’t been in my Matrix yet. When you break off the sticky-uppy bits, she slides right in![/li]
[li]Test transporting, handling, launching, retrieving, the new cart, etc - Can I do it by myself?[/li]
[li]With the royals set, she’ll be sailing with the most sail so far. I have to admit, my heart stopped every time she heeled. The royals and t’gallants will be easily removable; the courses can be bunted up; so her sail can be easily reduced to suit the wind.[/li]
[li]Test fore tops’l yard brace routing. The braces worked great, even with the "reduced " control. Next time the fore mast will be separately controlled from the main & mizzen masts. The heads’l sheeter worked great too, this time I had installed a “servo stretcher” to get a full 180° from the servo that sheets the head’sls and driver, and it was a big improvement; though the heads’l sheets did need some finer adjustment.[/li]
[li]See how self-tending bowlines rigged on the main tops’l work out. They functioned as they were supposed to and without snags, jams, or problems.[/li]
[li]Actually sail the model in open water instead of bumping the bottom in a shallow pool. This was her 5th time sailing, the 2nd time in open water, and the 1st time she really sailed, under control, tacked, wore, hauled transom, heeled to the wind - it was great![/li]
[li]Get some pictures and video of the model sailing. My camera’s batteries died after I videoed the launching, but Mark came trough with his phone, and actually got some good video. Most of the stills though are screen caps from the video.[/li]
[/ul]
Did I mention a video?
//youtu.be/80b2au24rFQ
The winch drums I made in the last installment didn’t work out. There were tiny gaps between the drums and the flanges that would snag the brace as it was being unwound. So I scrapped this third set of winch drums. The second set (made back in post #83) is still missing and I figure will turn-up on Antiques Roadshow in a few years mis-IDed as an old turn-of-the-century computer storage device. At any rate, I made this forth set from aircraft plywood, and hopefully, this is the last set I’ll have to make for this model. (There’s still Macedonian to do.)
~ Parts cut out and prepped.
~ Glued up and given a couple of coats of spray lacquer.
~ Complete and installed in the model.
The goal for Winter is to get some proper rigging on her, which means making a bazillion chain plates, and walking out a few miles of rope. I’d also like to get the rest of the details and hardware on the spars, like jackstays, and bolt-rope all the rest of the sails.
