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Printing a Capstan

1/16/2025: After rebuilding portions of the 3D model, it printed, mostly. The center hole that should go all the way through the bottom capstan, didn't, again, for reasons I don't get, and some of the capstan-bar sockets didn't print right, but otherwise, it printed fine. I'll putty up the holes that shouldn't be there, drill out the one that should, and Macedonian will have a capstan.

1/24: Macedonian's battery of 18 pounders and 32 pounder carronades, are all printed, with a few extras. I also built the ship's wheel based on the model I had for Constellation.
There's some 3D things yet to make: blocks, hearts, bullseyes, fairleads, dead-eyes, crew figures, stuns'l irons, binnacle, pin-rails, cleats, ship's boats & boat-chocks, gunport lids, eyebrows, decorative carvings (I still plan on modeling the entire transom and quarter galleries), and barrels, boxes, plus whatever else I think is needed.
The hull itself needs wood padding around all the gunports and ceiling planking from the gun-deck up so the hull can get painted and at least start to look like a boat. ;)

1/27: I looked for data regarding gunport lids all over the forums, the net, and in my books, with no luck. Everything is Victory and Constitution, I couldn't even find good images of Trincomalee or Unicorn as references for a frigate's gunport lids. I did find a drawing at NMM, basically a memo for gunports dated 1811. Macedonian was launched in 1810, so I don't know how appropriate would be to my model, but I doubt it's too far off. So I cobbled a 3D model of one together, and printed a few just to see. I probably need to make some adjustments before printing a full set, but I think they'll do the job. They don't need German optics kind of tolerances since I plan to have the guns run-out and all the lids open anyway.

The two gunports most forward are "catting-ports" and get split lids because a lifting lid would be in the way of fishing up the anchor, etc. Haven't made those yet...

I stumbled over a lion face door-knocker STL file and thought I could use it for the cat-heads. I tossed some of it's "embellishments," like the knocker, flattened it, a lot, and put a square block behind it. In my scale it's 1cm square, about the size of someone's pinky finger-nail.

The other item I made are dead-eyes. There's 6 different sized ones just for the lower shrouds and stays, and I'll have to guess at the top-mast shroud sizes. I printed a few of the largest size and I'll save the rest till I need them.

3/15/2026: I've been contemplating setting up the sail controls for Macedonian differently than what I did for Constellation for a while. I thought about turning the winch servos and the drums 90 degrees while retaining the extra large flanges, to retain each line on it's own drum, would be more forgiving of any small amount of slack in the braces, and allow control of the course's tacks and sheets, where that's near impossible in Constellation's horizontal winch set-up.

Recently, while working on a web page about sail controls, I came across Georg Reinbold's bark Nernberg on Youtube, and the horizontal winches installed in her.

Inspired by the modularity of Nernberg's winches, I'm designing the system pictured below, and a 3D model to check clearances and such. (these pics are a WIP and will be updated as the design progresses.)

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