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vossiewulf

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Everything posted by vossiewulf

  1. Thanks @el cid, @mtaylor, and @Roger Pellett. The question remains though, what do I do on the port side? Run a hawser to the port anchor and run it around the windlass barrel, assuming they could loosen one or the other as necessary? Or do I leave the hawser off entirely?
  2. Don't hold your breath waiting to be impressed by the sharpness of Flexcut, their steel is just average. I bought one of their knives, it ended up being used to open boxes that arrive at my door.
  3. Thanks to @el cid, @allanyed, @Roger Pellett, and @popeye2sea. Here is my problem: I am trying to rig anchors on my cutter complete with anchor buoys. But as you see, once a hawser is bent to an anchor, there is no way to either engage or disengage it from the windlass- that has to happen before the hawser becomes attached to the anchor. But at the same time, they can't raise an anchor unless it's engaged on the windlass. So I am thinking it simply wasn't possible for a cutter with this type of windlass to drop and recover two anchors, and in terms of rigging I am inclined to leave the hawser entirely off the port bowyer because I can't see any way for both hawsers and anchors to be in action at the same time.
  4. Hope anchor issues go here and not in the rigging section. Anyway, I am confused as to how one operated two anchors from one windlass, was not the normal anchoring process to drop one anchor, drift, drop another and then winch yourself back to midway between the two? Or did small vessels like cutters only use one anchor? I can't see how you could have both hawsers wrapped around the windlass and still be able to operate on one at a time, but if you don't pass the hawser around the windlass before dropping an anchor, I have no idea how you're supposed to drop said anchor safely, much less how you're going to get the hawser around the windlass to be able to raise that anchor post facto.
  5. It looks fine Jolene, that's what it should look like, nice job. Only thing is if you're going to add more balsa blocks, you want to do that all at once because as you see, when you sand down the balsa you're sanding down and beveling the frames also. You really want to do that process all at once to end up with a fully smooth result, as each frame needs to be sanded and beveled into something exactly halfway between the frame in front and the frame in back.
  6. That's the only solution if we don't have dimensions wrong somewhere- they'd have had to shorten the breeching ropes until the carriage couldn't really move at all, and hope the bulwarks could take it. And you'd have to work the guns outboard, probably over top of the rail rather than trying to do it through the small ports.
  7. Yes, I have the advantage of doing an imaginary ship that has some very odd features for a cutter (like the stern) so I can pretty much do whatever I want and get away with it. I changed the way the main boom will be rigged, replaced the windlass and boomsprit mount to something that looks like Trial, pretty much making it up as I go along. I like that in one respect but certainly will be looking to do specific ships in the future. And yes, no matter what you learn there are simply now more questions.
  8. I am confused also about cutter bow ports, every model I've seen has not enough room for the guns one way or another, Lady Nelson is even worse than Chuck's Cheerful. I totally gave up on the idea of placing guns at the bow as they were much too cramped. Even looking at the contemporary models I see the same problems. Trial for example, although not really built for fighting, has absurdly cramped forward ports, I don't think you could even fit in a carriage. The others in the gallery aren't much better, and none are displayed with guns in the forward ports. So it seems like they just really liked having holes in the bow that didn't help them do anything and which probably shipped lots of water.
  9. They used what was called orthochromatic film at the time, and it does odd things with colors. For example, yellow will appear very dark, and there are photos of planes out there that look like they have black noses when we know they were painted bright yellow. So it's basically impossible to get colors from photos. Also, the paints they used (as well as the German printed lozenge fabric) faded quickly when exposed to weather, so planes recently vs. not recently painted could look very different. My suggestion is to research what is the current best guess for various colors, but don't stress about it too much, you'll never get it exactly right unless you had a color photo and then you could match a plane's appearance only on that day.
  10. Approach carefully, generally rasps are very rough on wood, leaving deep scratches. Don't make them deeper than you intend to sand. Not sure why it is necessary, any plane, chisel, gouge, or knife should be able to trim down balsa easily if they are sharp. But a rasp will indeed remove wood quickly.
  11. I use tack cloths from Liberon, no wax or silicone and tacky while leaving no residue. Not that a damp cloth won't work, I just prefer not to get any water on wood once I have started a finish. OTOH we should probably just leave Keith alone to finish his finish before digressing on another discussion of finishing techniques
  12. Jolene, you'll find it easier if you get the balsa to the right thickness to fit between two bulkheads, and then mark each side by tracing the bulkhead in front and in back on each side of the balsa piece. You can then use a scroll saw or any number of other tools to shape it down very close to what is needed while off the model. Then when you glue them in, there's just a bit of sanding to do. Also, if you can, you try to orient the grain of the filler blocks lengthwise to the ship, that makes shaping the them much easier.
  13. What's NOT to like about a candy cane-painted capstan that's actually correct for the period? I think you'll get a universal thumbs up for that one.
  14. Your best option is to go to Syren and get a range of sizes of replacement line, it's much better than that from the kit, whatever that kit is. Museums recommend you do not use beeswax as it is acidic and will eat away the rigging in the long run. If you want to use wax, use paraffin. For what sizes to use, you need to buy books on rigging and fitting out ships.
  15. I think it's hard to sand the frames that way with the parts to be sanded all floating free. If you don't want to use filler blocks, then you can at least take some square stock and cut short pieces and glue them between the outer parts of each bulkhead pair. That will stiffen the structure quite a bit and make sanding much easier.
  16. If you look around I'm sure you could find von Hipple's decals in 1/32, if you like it enough. As I recall the strut started as a field modification but became standard late production. Popeye, you are close. Berthold commanded Jasta 18, and when he was given command of Jagdschwader II he took advantage of a loophole and swapped squadron designations between Jasta 15 and Jasta 18, so Jasta 18 became 15 and vice versa. JG II consisted of Jastas 12, 13, 15, and 19, all sporting overall blue but with each Jasta having different colored noses and tails, you're probably familiar with Berthold's D.VII in overall blue, with the red nose and tail of Jasta 15 and his big white wing symbol on the upper wing. A Ltn. Raben (Raven) took command of Jasta 18 when it switched with Jasta 15, and afterward they started calling themselves Jasta Raben and used the white tail and red forward fuselage with the ravens and other black markings, starting with Albatros D.Vas and Pfalz D.IIIs and then continuing to use that paint scheme when they were equipped with D.VIIs. You have to be careful of those markings on D.VIIs though, because at some point Jasta 18 switched aircraft with Jasta 43 for some unknown reason, and Jasta 43 continued to fly those D.VIIs either with the same markings or slightly modified versions of the Jasta 18 markings, and photos were taken of Jasta 43 with those aircraft. Since you like D.VIIs, below is one of my 3d modeling artworks, it's an early Fokker-built D.VII that Udet flew in 1918, he went on an amazing scoring run in it before a Breguet 17 gunner literally shot it to smithereens, with Udet's life being saved by an early parachute he was wearing. In this engagement he shot down two SPAD XIIIs of SPA. 96. "Du doch nicht!!" literally means "you most certainly not!" but would be better translated today as "no way, dude!". The LO! is a reference to his then girlfriend and later wife, Lola Zink. You see it on most of his aircraft.
  17. Here is a good pic of the leading edge strut. This is von Hipple's aircraft from Jasta 5, same time period.
  18. CDW, the Mercedes D.III engine had three versions, the D.III, the D.IIIa and the D.IIIau, the latter having a higher compression ratio, putting out about 185hp. Now I'm not remember the details but as I recall the D.IIIau had red stripes around at least the first cylinder if not all of them, to indicate to mechanics the different engine as the cylinders and heads were not exchangeable between the D.IIIa and D.IIIau versions. That would be another nice touch for the engine, most late war DVas flew with D.IIIau engines. Also does the kit have the small strut that was added to the front of the wing V struts, leading to the leading edge? One of the biggest problems of the Albatros-built D.Vs was the single spar lower wing that it inherited from the D.III. This gave it little resistance to twisting, and aerodynamic flutter resulting in loss of one or both lower wings occurred frequently. Later in the war, Albatros tried to address this by adding the small leading edge strut. Oddly, the Oeffag-built Austrian Albatrosen were much better aircraft. After licensing it for production, the Oeffag engineers corrected many problems, including redesigning the lower wing to have two spars and their aircraft could dive at much higher speeds than the German versions, and were also considerably faster. Only drawback was the Schwarzlose MGs, they were terrible aircraft guns with a slow ROF. BTW, I have a painting of Fritz Rumey and Josef Mai in D.Vas coming into land at the Jasta 5 field in Cambrai over my fireplace
  19. Thanks Keith. Not sure, but it took me a couple evenings to work out a method that would work, and then a couple more to make all the lines, and gluing one set in place took several hours.
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