The Great Republic 1:48

The GR is back in the doldrums with now wind in her sails.I ordered ten bundles of 15 each planks for the interior planking alog with a file belt sander and so far all I got was the extra belts and half of the wood. It got sort of tedious looking for things to do on the GR so I put it aside and started the American Enterprise. I will make a new build topic for that. The shipyard is still open but with a reduced crew so that's all there is to report today. Cheers!

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Norgale said:
The GR is back in the doldrums with now wind in her sails.I ordered ten bundles of 15 each planks for the interior planking alog with a file belt sander and so far all I got was the extra belts and half of the wood. It got sort of tedious looking for things to do on the GR so I put it aside and started the American Enterprise. I will make a new build topic for that. The shipyard is still open but with a reduced crew so that's all there is to report today. Cheers!

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The Cutty Sark in the window, the GR sitting where the Bonita Grand Central power plant will be and the AE on the ways.
 
Two more weeks gone and no lumber yet but the sander did show up. It should work well for sanding the frames down to make the covering planks fit right and run smooth. I wanted to sand down the inside of the frames too but some of them would have lost a lot of meat by trying to smooth out the plank runs leaving very little material on the frames to smooth out the outside. So I ran the planks inside first and ended them wherever the height of the frame was too high to go over it.
It doesn't look too bad though and I can do some walls or something to hide the spots that are too noticeable. The work is going slow because I always have to be waiting for the glue to set up so a plank won't come undone. Takes a lot of time for that in some places. Meantime I'm looking for places to order more lumber as I've used up all of what I had and need some more.
I've worked on this thing every day for the last two weeks and there seems to be little to show for that. Planking this model sure takes a long time and I still have the whole outside to do. Looks like this model is going to take a long time to finish.
For those who may be interested this boat weighs 7.3 lbs at this point.

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I'm kinda stuck on what size dowel to get for the GR masts. The book says that the main mast, the fore mast and the bowsprit are 44" in diameter. I'm getting a figure of 2 & 7/8ths" and that scales way too big I think. Can someone show me where I'm wrong? At 1/4" = 1'0" the plans show the masts at 36". I think I should go by the specs rather than the plan because the ship was rebuilt after it burned and several dimensions were reduced. I want to build the GR to it's original size scale.
 
Sometimes scaling doesn't work all that well.
If your scale is 1/4"=1' , that means the mast would be far too large as you have indicated, since they were 44" in diameter. Her masts should be just over 3/4" in diameter. We know she had a beam of 53' that means your scaled beam should be roughly 13.25".

By cross checking....it appears 3/4" is probably close....actually probably closer to 7/8"to account for the actual size of 3.6'.

I'm no expert and most likely have things off a bit....but I have a great eye and visual comparison works well for me....so that is why I cross check many dimensions to get the best results I can. Working around scaling issues.

Hope you can pin it down till you are satisfied.

Rob
 
I agree with you Rob and I made the mistake of using the circumference instead of the diameter for the size of the dowels. There's no doubt that the masts were very large given the amount of sail she carried, over 5000 square yards I believe. The lower masts were made up as you know because there weren't any trees big enough available. There are even special step assemblies designed for these masts and I'd like to copy that If I can. I need to start cutting out knees too.. Lots of them in the hold. Still waiting for lumber. Wonder why it takes so long for stuff to get delivered? Thanks for the reply Rob.
 
Norgale said:
The lower masts were made up as you know because there weren't any trees big enough available. There are even special step assemblies designed for these masts and I'd like to copy that If I can.
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It's true trees big enough to be used as single sticks for mast these large were only available on the West coast by this time.....However, Built masts had greater sheer strength then single stick masts and so Donald McKay opted to use them on nearly all his builds. Great Republic also utilized the addition of chafing plates on the fore of each mast. I opted to actually build and turn to scale the masts on my Great Republic...other than using single stock dowel.
I'm interested in what direction you will take.

Rob
 
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