New to this group and finishing Lindberg’s plastic “Jolly Roger” AKA La Flore… and wishing to avoid the vacuum-formed sails.
In posts here, Professor Tilley has advocated convincingly for furled sails, and I’ll be taking that approach to bending canvas to my craft.
In a number of old paintings, old photos, and modern photos of replica ships, there’s a partially-furled type that really appeals to me. The painting below (from Wikimedia commons) shows the one I’d like to imitate.
Is there a term for this type? I see it in old photos as well as this modern painting, and it seems to be a temporary partial furling. It appears in images of ships at anchor or in harbor… as though there is a temporary lay-over and the ship is being held in readiness for a quick weighing of anchor.
As a guess, what you are talking about is “clewing up.” The clew line run from the tacks of the sail to the hounds of the yard to which it is bent. Slacking the sheets and taking in the clews brings the sail up into something of a triangular shape. The halliard is typically slacked as well, this pretty much prevents the sail from filling. This is handy when you want to dry the sails after a rain or storm. Larger sails, particularly courses have the bunt lines drawn in as well. This adds another fold in the sail, across what had been the hypotenuse. It’s not so much a matter of getting under sail quickly as a way to dry the sails, usually. Took a bit more minding, to insure the loose canvas did not develop windage, some helped by cross-bracing the yards
Jeez how do you know this stuff? Bet you oiled your Queue.
I agree in total with what you said.
As far as a way to display sails on a model, I couldn’t think of anything more labor intensive, because it’s nanny drying her knickers. Like being under way, all of the running rigging will be present, which is a lot of work in itself, Then there’s the business of the gaskets and robands and etc. And to boot, a lot of loose sail that needs to drape realistically.
Consider that when the sails are really furled, most of the running rigging is struck. When they are spread, it’s there but taught and kind of spread apart.
Wow, Capn - good thing I’ve been decoding The Young Officer’s Sheet Anchor for days on end. And that I owned a sailing dinghy (Finn class) for a few years. Thanks for your post, both hugely useful and nautically thorough. Some paintings & photos seem to show the buntlines hauled as well.
So far, I’ve had no luck reproducing the form in light, 400-count polyester, tissue paper, or 100% cotton paper. I’m considering a trip to a local fabric store to see what they have in extremely lightweight silk.
GMorrison, I’ve tried to noodle out all the ways of displaying La Flore, even including the vacuum-formed sails that came with the kit - bare yards, tightly-furled, full sailed, and this clew-up form.
Steve, I’m having the usual forum-newbie fun with graphics. Right now, I think you can click on the broken image in my post and another window in Wikimedia opens up. In any case, the look I’m after is perfectly displayed in Rdiaz’s post (for which, many thanks).
Anyway, many thanks for the replies - very useful.
The only other material to other than that “silkspan” (and RC plane product, to help you search). would be silkscreen material, which you pretty much need to mail order from printer’s supply places (but, it’s cheaper than trying to get similar material from the fabric store). Fabric stores seem helpful, but you need to bring your micrometer or a dial caliper, or the endless number of fabric weights will befuddle you (getting home to realize you’ve made a great deal on material that’s 4" thick to scale can create mixed emotions). The tissue paper is good stuff. Also good (can be) very fine “resume” paper–you want 100% rag linen paper, cold pressed if you can find it. 100# if you can find it. Best par of the resume paper is that you can print the seams, edges, robands and the like on the paper. Which you can burnish or scribe along to give more texture.
And, I’m old enough to remember when Tankerbuilder did his 3rd class mate tour with the Cathaginian Navy, too.
That, and one of my uncles had an old study guide for the old Master’s Certificate class, where you had to be able to name all the sails of a ship; and know how to wear, tack, and back a ship.
I’ve also sailed spritsails, gaffs, gunter’s, anf lugs (both fixed and dipping). I know sail in much the same way Gino or Redleg know artillery–as sights, and sounds, and smells, and tastes.
I like the look of half-furled sails too. There are, however, some problems associated with making them at such a small scale. I really don’t know how I’d do it. My usual technique for furled sails (silkspan tissue, coated with a mixture of acrylic paint and white glue - here’s an example: http://cs.finescale.com/fsm/modeling_subjects/f/7/p/155391/1678665.aspx#1678665 ) wouldn’t look right. If a complete sail is going to be visible, it really takes some detailing - which is extremely challenging on small scales.
The other problem is that if you’re going to show the sails clewed up, you really commit yourself to including all the rigging that’s used for the evolution. That means buntlines, clewlines, bowlines, reef tackles, and others. That will just about double the amount of running rigging compared to what looks perfectly adequate if the model doesn’t have sails.
The sails are vac-formed, and they don’t look too bad. A good modeler probably could, with a little weathering, make them look quite nice and believable. From the front. But if you look at the model from behind, the sails look utterly ridiculous.
The only small-scale ship models that, to my eye, have really pulled this off are those of the late Donald McNarry, regarded by many modelers (including me) as the best modeler of the twentieth century. Here’s an example of what he could do - at 1/192 scale: http://www.donaldmcnarryshipmodels.com/graphics/11-photo-large.jpg .
I make it a point never to look at a picture of a McNarry model when I’ve been at my workbench. He makes me want to give up.
If you do want to tackle such a project, I can recommend a good source: Seamanship in the Age of Sail, by John Harland. It contains verbal descriptions of just about everything involved in sailing ship handling, along with hundreds of illustrations - some of them contemporary, some drawn for the purpose by the fine marine artist Mark Meyers. The book was out of print for a long time, and used copies were outrageously expensive, but a new, reasonably priced edition is available now: http://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/seamanship-in-the-age-of-sail-john-harland/1121842091?ean=9780870219559 . Highly recommended to anybody even faintly interested in sailing ship history.
You’ll see a picture on the left which has underneath it a link to download their catalog. Once you’ve downloaded it, look on pg. PL 20 (The price list page 20). It lists some sail material. I thought they’d discontinued that stuff but I suppose I’m wrong - which, unfortunately, I am a lot these days [:(].
The paper that comes in shoe boxes, soaked in a mixture of water, acrylic paint and white glue, works pretty good. I recently bought a set of plans for the San Juan Nepomuceno from the Navy museum in Madrid and it came with a rather large sheet of that material. That’s two in one! [H]
I agree that silkspan is the preferred material for model ship sails. I looks more in scale than the usual cloth that is found on full rigged models. Silkspan is easy to color with a diluted solution of acrylic paint and trim with scissors My completed scratch built model of the British revenue cutter DILIGENCE is an example.
All of this is wonderful stuff - can’t thank you all enough. JTilley, thanks for the heads-up on Revell’s Constitution’s sails. I’ve been think of making forms (half-molds) from polymer clay and may try mimicking Revell’s half-furled forms.
Capn, I’ve tried the resume paper I have on hand, 80# Southworth 100% cotton, totally soaked before forming. After forming (by me), the result looks like the front half of an extremely bad origami crab. Maybe I’ll get my fingers to work better.
I’m an artist and I have found one strong possibility among the art things I have on hand: “rice” paper for Japanese/Chinese calligraphy and brush painting. There are dozens of types and weights - see Henry Li’s available list at https://www.blueheronarts.com/paper-products-c-2_53.html
The most common types are made from fiber from Qintan or Than trees (Pteroceltis Tatarinowii Maxim) or from the paper mulberry.
The special qualities of these two make them promising (in “single-weight,” a very thin version)… and it might actually be the real source of silkspan. It has remarkable strength when wet and it doesn’t cockle or wrinkle when soaked. It can be re-wetted multiple times.
Henry has a video of the making of the Red Star single weight in a YouTube video, “A Tour to the Shuen (Xuan) Paper Making Mills.” You’ll see the actual paper making - watch how strong it is after forming but still soaking wet, as it’s taken off a pressed block of sheets and brushed onto a long hot-water-heated drying plate (starting around 10:03).
If I can master the forming process, I’ll start a new thread about it. Inkjet printing is showing great promise for surface decoration (seams, cringles, linings, etc.)
Silkspan is (or was) a trade name for a particular type of Japanese rice paper. A year or so ago, for some reason or other, it ceased to be manufactured. The flying wood airplane model folks just about committed hari kiri.
Shortly thereafter, some manufacturer introduced “Modelspan.” Bluejacket ( www.bluejacketinc.com ) is selling Modelspan as a replacement for silkspan. The Bluejacket folks were kind enough to send me a sample; I haven’t had a chance to try it yet, but it looks very promising.
I’m no expert, but most of the rice paper I’ve seen in art supply stores is rougher than silkspan. It seems to have tiny veins in it - like the surface of a leaf. Silkspan doesn’t look or feel quite like that.
On my little Hancock, if I remember right, all the sails except the fore and main courses are made of lens tissue from a camera store. I don’t know whether the lens tissue manufacturers have switched to something else by now, but the stuff I bought looked and felt like silkspan. But it was a lot thinner than even the thinnest weight silkspan - almost transparent. That’s part of the reason for the paint-and-glue treatment: it makes the material virtually opaque.
A real sail, of course, isn’t opaque. When you look at a sail with the sun behind it, the thicker components of it look darker than the rest. So do the seams, where the individual strips of sailcloth overlap. And, for some reason that it would take a physicist (like Don Stauffer) to explain, objects between the sun and the sail show up as shadows. With furled sails, that problem doesn’t come up.
Winter of 42, I’ll be most interested to learn how your experiments work out. Good luck.
Thanks! The paper I’m thinking that may be best (only a small sample is in my hands) is translucent…
Right now, I have only a machine-made Chinese calligraphy paper from Loew-Cornell in a decent quantity. The package doesn’t tell me the country of origin. It has a rough-ish surface.
The one I’m more interested in is a hand-made xuan (“schwu-en”) that has a laid paper design on one face. (From my sample piece).
The other side is fairly feature-less, but not smooth.
(These papers are all a natural white. The digital photos give them a warm cast due to the lighting.)
I have a question out to the purveyor seeking the best single-weight (thin) paper with the best wet strength. I’m about 80% certain it will turn out to be the hand-made one.
Since I’m new to this forum, I’m using the “Insert Image” icon to the best of my ability. You might have to click on each one to fall through to the actual image on PhotoBucket.
EDIT: 1943 Mike sent me his tutorial on images. Hopefully I’ve understood it.
I get settled on the option(s), I have to see if I can work the paper with my fingers and whatever tools I can discover.
Well, the images are there, but most of my post has become a link to PhotoBucket.
I’ll see if I can overmaster that little detail…
Yep, I sussed it out.
After each (bracket)url(bracket) insert created by PhotoBucket and copied over to here, you have to hit Return just before the final (bracket)/url(bracket)… in other words, put it on a line by itself.
