The Great Republic 1:48

[Roger Pellett]

Nails attaching copper or muntz metal sheathing were actually tacks with large flat heads. They would be invisible at most model scale viewing distances. In your case looking at the model from a distance of 1ft would be equivalent to looking at the real ship from a distance of 48Ft.

The heavily embossed copper plates furnished with model kits are grossly out-of-scale marketing gimmicks.

Roger

 

[Norgale]

Hi Roger and thanks for the comment. I got a bag of coppers for the Cutty Sark that came with the model but there's no way I'm gonna try and put each one of those little copper plates on that model. I may use a few on the GR keel and the CS keel but that's it. Man, I sure am having fun now. Pete

 

[GrantTyler]

Good morning. I went back to the start of your log again. Apologies for all the likes. A very cool log to read and so much information in it. Well done on building an amazing clipper so far. Cheers Grant

 

[JerryTodd]

Not that it's much help to you now, but faced with a large models copper bottom, and not wanting it to look riveted on; I got 1/2" 2mil "outdoor peel&stick" unvarnished copper tape from and electrical supply because finding the width I wanted was difficult from modeling suppliers, and it cost almost half as much as the model shops charged.
I put the nail pattern in a piece of aluminum sheet to match a hole-punching pattern I saw in a museum for pre-punching the real thing.
I pressed the bumps into the face of the copper tape, making indents. When the tape is applied, the indents are pushed back out giving a good impression of the flat headed nails used.
Putting some 2000 1-1/2" x 1/2" copper sheets on the hull was a tedious job; I did half the hull and worked on making the mast tops until my fingers healed, then did the other half.




For my next coppered model, instead of copper, I'll use aluminum duct tape and paint it with copper spray paint. A roll large enough to do 4 or more Constellation sized models cost $20 (in 2010) where it was almost $40 for 3 rolls of the copper tape I used.

 

[Norgale]

Hi Grant and thanks for your comment too. Almost two years ago I discovered the SOS post from Richard Dunn and the large scale models he builds for testing etc. When I saw his models and one of the Cutty Sark I decided that if I was ever to build this large model of the Great Republic, I'd better do it now at 81 if i was to actually finish it while I was a tenant on this earth. I still don't know if it will get finished but I am sure that I should have built it ten years ago when I first discovered the plans. I keep going with it because I find myself doing things on the model that I never even imagined I could do. So it's a learning curve that never stops and I'm really enjoying it a lot. Thanks again for you nice words. Pete

 

[Norgale]

Wow, Jerry. That's huge and now I can see what it's like to attach all those tiny copper plates. I didn't think I could do such a tedious thing so I didn't. However your ship looks so realistic I would rethink the process on another model. Your's looks fantastic. and the copper looks thicker than mine too. The foil is not easy to deal with for this application. Nice work Jerry and keep posting. I would like to see how you do with the rigging too. Pete

 

[JerryTodd]

Wow, Jerry. That's huge and now I can see what it's like to attach all those tiny copper plates. I didn't think I could do such a tedious thing so I didn't. However your ship looks so realistic I would rethink the process on another model. Your's looks fantastic. and the copper looks thicker than mine too. The foil is not easy to deal with for this application. Nice work Jerry and keep posting. I would like to see how you do with the rigging too. Pete

My hull's just 5 foot (154cm), 8 foot with bowsprit and boom, so you've got a couple of feet on me.
I hunted down Dunn's project that you mentioned inspired you into this, and it's pretty awe inspiring, though it's a shame it's not RC.

 

[Norgale]

So here we are , almost two years since the start of the Great Republic back in January, 2024. The hull is finally finished except for some details to add before the rigging is started. It took several weeks back in October to finally decide what to do about the copper sheathing on the hull bottom but after trying several techniques and different types of copper and brass, I finally settled on the copper foil , half an inch wide and went with that. The copper foil I used in the end was self sticking after you pulled the paper backing off it and although there was a short learning curve to learn about this foil it went on very well and stuck well after burnishing. The foil is tricky because it is so thin but if you are very careful with it ,it works better than thicker copper plates and goes on fast. I did not try to put vertical seams on the copper to show individual plates but just left it smooth. Although the individual plates look far better on the models I've seen here I just didn't think that making all those lines would ever get done if I started them. The spar deck is now covered completely with water ways still to be added. I'll take some more time to study the "book" and decide what to do next after the spar deck is finished. I must say that pictures of this ship do not do the model justice. Every time I come into this room I'm amazed that I could have created such a large model ship. I just love it.Here are some more pictures bringing this thread up to date.

 

[Magic Mike]

So here we are , almost two years since the start of the Great Republic back in January, 2024. The hull is finally finished except for some details to add before the rigging is started. It took several weeks back in October to finally decide what to do about the copper sheathing on the hull bottom but after trying several techniques and different types of copper and brass, I finally settled on the copper foil , half an inch wide and went with that. The copper foil I used in the end was self sticking after you pulled the paper backing off it and although there was a short learning curve to learn about this foil it went on very well and stuck well after burnishing. The foil is tricky because it is so thin but if you are very careful with it ,it works better than thicker copper plates and goes on fast. I did not try to put vertical seams on the copper to show individual plates but just left it smooth. Although the individual plates look far better on the models I've seen here I just didn't think that making all those lines would ever get done if I started them. The spar deck is now covered completely with water ways still to be added. I'll take some more time to study the "book" and decide what to do next after the spar deck is finished. I must say that pictures of this ship do not do the model justice. Every time I come into this room I'm amazed that I could have created such a large model ship. I just love it.Here are some more pictures bringing this thread up to date.

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You reached a milestone Pete! What a beautiful clipper ship. Congrats, Magic Mike

 

[Norgale]

Looks to me like the logical next step will have to be the four masts. These will start off at 44" and progress downward depending on the mast etc. On page 16, topic #302 there is a chart of the mast sizes and the spar sizes. The right side shows a list of "masthead" sizes and in the case of the foremast the masthead size is 86 feet. What is the masthead? Anybody know? Would it be the distance from the deck to the top of the mast?

Ok, I figured it out. The top of the lower masts are squared off and not rounded. The "masthead" figure is the length of the squared off portion where the bottom of the top mast overlaps the top of the bottom mast to provide strength for holding the top mast and above. The top of the bottom mast is squared off but the bottom of the top mast is round. I had to say all that very slowly at first, about fifteen times ,to figure out what it was saying.

 

[BradNSW]

Love the perspective of that last picture. It really gives an idea of how high the bow was, with 4 masts pushing her, it needed to cut through the seas!

Reminds me of the British Carrier "Invincible" with here 12-degree ramp at the bow.

 

[Norgale]

You reached a milestone Pete! What a beautiful clipper ship. Congrats, Magic Mike

Thanks for that Mike. There were a couple of times I didn't think I'd ever get this far with the project but now I'm glad I stuck with it.That main rail piece isn't finished yet. It gets another layer on top of first one and then the stanchions and then the top "monkey rail". I'm hoping that the main rail will be straightened out more by sanding after the second piece goes on.

 

[Peter Voogt]

Hi Peter. I want to wish you a Happy Birthday. Enjoy (the test of) your day.
Regards, Peter

 

[shota70]

Happy Birthday , Peter

 

[Norgale]

Love the perspective of that last picture. It really gives an idea of how high the bow was, with 4 masts pushing her, it needed to cut through the seas!
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Reminds me of the British Carrier "Invincible" with here 12-degree ramp at the bow.
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I've always wondered if that ramp gave an aircraft that much extra lift on take off? Somehow it just doesn't look right to me.

 

[Norgale]

It's a month and a half later now and I am now 84 years old. I think I'll speed things up if I can since ya never know when the Big Guy will call me home. I started working on the masts and never, in my wildest dreams, did I think that would be so complicated. It turns out that back in the day if you knew a few certain sizes of the ship you could finish it without one single dimension. Every thing is built in proportion to the hull no matter what size the ship is. That's most likely why there are few, if any plans, available for different ships. There were none to begin with. The masts are located along the deck according to a formula that fits all ships with sails. The size of the masts is a proportion of the size of the ship. The height of the mast is also a proportion and every piece of wood that went into the build was also in proportion. For instance the size of the platform at the top of the bottom mast ( The TOP) is half the ships beam wide side to side and half of that is the width of the platform stem to stern, AT the location of a specific mast. Other masts in other locations have their own proportions depending on their location. So the ship is narrower at the Foremast than at the main mast so it's platform is smaller. So is the mizzen platform and the Spanker platform if it has one. Even the timbers that make up the platform construction are built to a proportion of the mast, so it will look nice. That's the only reason, so it will look nice. If you know the basic size of the ship you can figure out every piece of wood that goes into her by the use of proportion. This really amazed me that all this work can be done without plans. Since I was not able to buy dowels the exact size it as supposed to be for a specific part I used the closest size I could get larger than the real part. This will give my model more strength in the long run in case somebody bumps into it. That's always been a problem for me in the past.

Since the masts were so tall I had to move the hull onto the floor of my shop in order to get the masts into the holes for them in the deck. I now have about 18 inches above the masts but the hull is on the floor and that way too low for me to work. Haven't figured out what the do about this so I'll be comfortable doing the rigging. I asked my supervisor what to do about this and she rolled over and went bak to sleep. That didn't help at all. In case you are interested you can but the book "The Masting of American Merchant Sail in the 1850's" for all the info on this proportional business, by William L Crothers. He has provided a chapter on proportion with tables used by the old guys to build ships like the Great Republic. Very informative and worth every penny of $58. I could not have come close to replicating the GR masts from scratch without this book.

Here are a few more pictures of the progress on the masts. None of them are glued in yet as there is still much to be done but you can get a better idea of what this thing will finally look like. It's way larger than I ever envisioned when I started this build. I really don't know now what to do with it. Pete