Plans from Chapelle's American Small Sailing Craft

[OldManRick]

I'm new on the site, just returning to wooden ship building now that I'm retired. Marriage, raising kids and work interrupted what I started in the 1970's.

Back then. when I first tried wooden ship building, I had three of the drawings from Howard I. Chapelle's American Small Sailing Craft blown up from the single page size in the book to 20" x 24" plans so I could try scratch building some interesting (to me) small sailing craft. The craft that I chose were:

1. an eastern working cat.


2. a San Francisco fishing boat politely called a "felluca" (Photo from the book)



3. a Texas scow sloop fitted as a camp boat (the lazy jacks intrigued me and my grandmother was from Texas)



I'm offering to make copies of these plans and mail them at cost to any scratch builders who are interested. I figure the repro at around $12 each, the mailing tube at $6, and shipping at $12 (but I may be off and will confirm prices later). Or I'm also willing to download full sized scans if there is an archive here for that sort of stuff (but would like help with the cost). If interested, contact me at rf_vogel@earthlink.net.

 

[AndyA]

Cap'n Rick:
I share your infatuation with Chapelle's book. My copy is quite worn. Did you complete models of the three boats? If so, please post pictures. I built a very small (approx. 1:200) half hull of the catboat you pictured. Also made a half hull of the New York Sloop (it started out as a pond yacht then got sawed in half). Most recently, I built a RC model of the Boston Sailing Dory. Fair winds!

 

[OldManRick]

I have the hull for the Texas scow sloop shaped and ready for planking. I didn't get to the other two. I had started the "Sergal Sharke" kit but had screwed up the beveling of the hull spacers so reached an impasse, I had started the USS Constitution cross section model hull and was to ready to add the masts and rigging and was working the scow sloop in parallel when I got married and started spending my leisure time on other things.

I built a doll house that I gave to my nieces, then, when we had kids, another one for my daughters. A couple of years back, I build a third dollhouse for my buddy's twin girls. While visiting Cambria, CA, I bought a Model Shipway Bounty launch (at a going out of business sale) and decided to start over with some basic kits to build up my skill. I'm on my fourth kit - the Lobster Smack and it looks like this my be the first one I get right. The long term goal is an Occre Endurance which may be the only one the wife let's me keep in the house (she's big on Antartic exploration history).

 

[Bob Cleek]

Chapelle's books are a great source of plans for building boats and models. This is especially so with those of his books, as American Small Sailing Craft, which provide the tables of offsets for the featured vessels. The offset tables permit the lofting of the vessel, or model, in order to create an accurate scale replication of the drawn plans illustrated in the book(s.) The plans alone from the books, increased optically by a copying device ARE NOT sufficient for accurate building of a full-size vessel, nor, in most instances, even a scale model. This is because the magnification of the drawn lines increases their width by so much that it is difficult, if not impossible, to accurately determine the lines accurately to the larger scale, and/or fair them on the drawing board or loft floor. Additionally, most all optical reproduction technologies produce a certain amount of spherical aberration resulting from the curvature of the lenses employed in the reproduction machines. (Indeed, many printers and copy machines are designed to incorporate a degree of spherical aberration for the purpose of preventing their use in producing counterfeit currency.)

Moreover, the lines published in Chapelle's books are printed in very small size and many of his books have gone through many printings. Consequently, successive editions exhibit a progress degradation of the original printing quality's detail from that of the earlier printings. Fortunately, however, most all of the original drawings published in Chapelle's books are extant, generally in 1:48 scale or larger and 1:1 copies of these drawings are readily available from the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, D.C. Considerable additional drawings and tables of offsets made by Chapelle and others, often under Chapelle's direction during the 1930's Works Progress Administration's Historic American Merchant Marine Survey ("HAMMS,") but not published in his books, are similarly available from the Smithsonian. The HAMMS material also includes in many instances contemporary photographic documentation of the vessels as well. It would be far better to obtain 1:1 copies of the original drawings and offset tables, and, where available, photographs, for purposes of modeling a vessel featured in any of Chapelle's books, than to try to use the small copies published in his books.

To obtain 1:1 copies of Chapelle's drawings, see: https://www.americanhistory.si.edu/about/departments/work-and-industry/ship-plans.

 

[OldManRick]

Chapelle's books are a great source of plans for building boats and models. This is especially so with those of his books, as American Small Sailing Craft, which provide the tables of offsets for the featured vessels. The offset tables permit the lofting of the vessel, or model, in order to create an accurate scale replication of the drawn plans illustrated in the book(s.) The plans alone from the books, increased optically by a copying device ARE NOT sufficient for accurate building of a full-size vessel, nor, in most instances, even a scale model. This is because the magnification of the drawn lines increases their width by so much that it is difficult, if not impossible, to accurately determine the lines accurately to the larger scale, and/or fair them on the drawing board or loft floor. Additionally, most all optical reproduction technologies produce a certain amount of spherical aberration resulting from the curvature of the lenses employed in the reproduction machines. (Indeed, many printers and copy machines are designed to incorporate a degree of spherical aberration for the purpose of preventing their use in producing counterfeit currency.)

Moreover, the lines published in Chapelle's books are printed in very small size and many of his books have gone through many printings. Consequently, successive editions exhibit a progress degradation of the original printing quality's detail from that of the earlier printings. Fortunately, however, most all of the original drawings published in Chapelle's books are extant, generally in 1:48 scale or larger and 1:1 copies of these drawings are readily available from the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, D.C. Considerable additional drawings and tables of offsets made by Chapelle and others, often under Chapelle's direction during the 1930's Works Progress Administration's Historic American Merchant Marine Survey ("HAMMS,") but not published in his books, are similarly available from the Smithsonian. The HAMMS material also includes in many instances contemporary photographic documentation of the vessels as well. It would be far better to obtain 1:1 copies of the original drawings and offset tables, and, where available, photographs, for purposes of modeling a vessel featured in any of Chapelle's books, than to try to use the small copies published in his books.

To obtain 1:1 copies of Chapelle's drawings, see: https://www.americanhistory.si.edu/about/departments/work-and-industry/ship-plans.

My copy of Chapelle was dated from 1951 with no indication that it was a reprint. Although the blow ups are fuzzy (like me taking off my glasses), they are readable. The appendix which has the offsets for several of the ship is crisp and clear and a normal scan would capture the detail (which I can try). I didn't know about the https://www.americanhistory.si.edu/ data when I made the offer so I thought they might be unavailable to the community here.

It's just an offer and no one seems interested so I'll just let it drop rather than add more scans.

 

[Roger Pellett]

Chapelle’s work is also copyrighted.

Roger

 

[Bob Cleek]

My copy of Chapelle was dated from 1951 with no indication that it was a reprint. Although the blow ups are fuzzy (like me taking off my glasses), they are readable. The appendix which has the offsets for several of the ship is crisp and clear and a normal scan would capture the detail (which I can try). I didn't know about the https://www.americanhistory.si.edu/ data when I made the offer so I thought they might be unavailable to the community here.

It's just an offer and no one seems interested so I'll just let it drop rather than add more scans.

It wasn't my intention to be critical, but only to provide additional information. The biggest issue with copied plans is that if the plans are enlarged, the thickness of the drawn lines is increased proportionately, as well. (Except for TIFF files.) If a lines copy from a book is enlarged to, say, 18" x 22," the drawing lines become too wide to get useable measurements from the drawing.