The Madison daily leader. [volume] (Madison, S.D.) 1890-current, 1894-01-05
THE MODEL OF 4 SHIP
BUILT FROM BLOCKS OF WOOD AFTER
DRAWINGS ON PAPER.

structor - England Behthd the Other
Leading Nations Until Recently.
Who would ever have imagined that
q great ship--a modern wonder of the
sea like the Paris or the Camperdown
-is built as woman makes dress or
u tailor cuts ont a suit of clothes? That
is the fact. Ships nowadays are built |
from patterns, and those patterns do not |
greatly differ in appearance or in fact
from those which enable American wo-
men to copy the fashion in dress. To
be sure, tailor's and dresSmaker's pat
terms are made of paper and are laid
upon cloth or dress goods, while a ship
builders patterns are of wood, and steel
and iron are made to follow them. That
is perhaps the greatest difference be-
tween the methods of high grade tailor
ing and high grade shipbuilding, so far
as their first steps go.
The English have only lately begun
20 value the model as the basis Of ship
building. A famous American ship
builder says that the model of the yacht
America was the first model he ever
saw in England. That accounts tor the
absence of beauty in English ships,
which even to this day possess varying
degrees of ugliness, but no beauty. For,
though they make models today, the
mere making of them does not suffice.
The art and appreciation of model max
ing must be instructive.
The French and Spanish from tho
earliest times made beautiful ships and
models, and when one of these ships
fell into the hands of the English they
adopted and used her it possible, or ii
she was too much damaged they took
her apart, piece by piece, and built a
new ship like her by copying the exact
shape of each part of her in new mate
| rial. Curiously enough, we Americans
have always made beautiful ships-well
| proportioned. artistic in every line,
while satisfactory in an equal degree
for all practical purposes.
A model is made in a way that seem'
queer to the average layman, who doubt
less suspected that it was whitfield int
shane out of block of wood, as we boy
used to whlttle our blocks at the ag'
when all of us were shipbuilders. l
is not done SO. After an order has beer
received for certain kind of ship tn
plans of it are drawn upon paper. Mr.
Lewis Nixon, the famous constructo
for the Cramps, tells me that very earl
in the process he ma sa picture OF tn
ship as he wants it to look, but thoug
he does SO others may not consider
essential.
At all events, apart from any draw
lrg, the needed dimensions and lines az
developed upon paper. and then tn
model is made, and the president OF tn
company begins to take very active IL
terest in the work The model Is mad
in the shape of BLOCK, formed of
number OF pieces of wood glued togetf
er. These pieces represent the ditferer
curves of one side of the ship, from tn
keel to the gunwale the different w;
ter lines is now the builders express i
To understand this the reader must In
, agine q ship made of solid wood. In
agine that cut in half lengthwise, an
then imagine, one half laid on its sic
and cut into slices.
| me per- ana INK calculations an
: plans produce the shape OF the ship, al
0 from these it is possible to obtain Il
t outline and dimensions of every slice
plane between the bottom and the to-
Each plane is measured and drawn
outline on board, and the outline
dented or cut in the board with sha
!. tool. All the boards or pieces OF wo'
are then glued together, and a simI
looking block is made-a block tn
= shows nothing of it's true nature exec
: that the top of it bears the craven OF
). line of the top deck or gunwale line
:, a ship. Out of that simple square bio
will come the egg which is to hat
the splendid ship that is to be.
That block, made up of slices, ca
l. with its dented outline of differe
; plane of the ship, is now cut ava
il much as we boys used to cut our bloc
,f but with this difference: Each board
: cut exactly to the dented or gray
!. line upon it's surface. The shape
n block will have when all the supert
g. ous wood is cut away will be the mo
of the ship that was designed by the
gineer on paper to fill the requireme
of the customers order, but will t
u model stand? VIII the master bull
u be satisfied with it's lines?
az Wlii 1t 90 TO De enlarged IN steel ;
=. sent around the world as an example
80 what the Cramps consider the N
III beautiful and artistic and useful sh
u such ship should have? No. Sue
80 first model next to never suits the III
eler, who in this case is Mr.. Charles
Cramp. He hacks into it with fer,
He tapers the bow. He digs away
u stern. He shaves the whole model "
r the nice and dainty touches of a SCI
- tor at work upon q statue on whic
~ to rest his boast that he is true art
The fate OF the wooden block al
- the figures of the engineers plans. /
= haps the alteration is such that ]
drawings and new model foil
Thus, by borrowing and lending,
two soon agree, and upon the two
model and the plans---the ship vii
tt. built. Sometimes a model is on