Silkjc

For any sort of wood, or even brass you should be using HSS not carbides. Carbides are very hard, meaning they can cut high end steels, but it comes at the cost of being brittle. For woods, standard HSS should easily eat it for breakfast. The main reason carbides are used in industry a lot is they can withstand higher temperatures, thus allowing higher cut rates. For hobby rates and materials we should not be generating any heat. They also retain their edge much better, but this is really only an issue when cutting other materials with hardnesses similar to the cutter. If you are breaking HSS you may want to make sure any bits you get are M35 or above grade. Much of the cheapy crap you'll find for sale may be M2 grade HSS or worse. A good indicator as always is price, if you're buying HSS drill bits for $50 it will be M35. The good stuff will be M42, for this expect to pay several hundred dollars for some drills. If you are breaking cutters a lot it may be the geometry of cutter you have chosen is inappropriate for the material. For example, brass is often cut with a negative or near zero rake angle. This prevents the cutter 'digging in' and locally deforming the work-piece. This digging in or grabbing, coupled with the work piece being securely mounted, usually result in a broken cutter. If you have ever tried to drill into a thin sheet of material and it has 'ridden up' the drill, this is exactly what is occurring. Consider using a file to modify the cutter rake angle. Disclaimer: Carbides will cut wood too, very well infact. But they're on average a bit harder to use without breaking, harder to sharpen and more expensive.

Hello all, I've just started to use my airbrush for most parts I make...and quickly ran into a problem I am sure many of you have faced. When attempting to spray paint small parts, the pressure from the gun simply blows the parts away! My solution is simple, and i'm sure many of you have thought of this before...but elegant enough that I thought it might warrant sharing. Double sided tape the part down using its normal mating surface So what other methods do you all have of arresting small / tiny parts such that they do not decide to go orbital instead of putting on their makeup?

Great to see you're on it again. If you want to reduce the 'toy feel' you could go with duller tones on the blue / red / yellow. Less fluro so it looks a bit more serious.

I posted in another thread the aussie version of that under powered drill dremel thingo. I use it as my dedicated treenailing drill and it is by no means worthless. It saves me 2 minutes changing collets frequently! It does have a fair bit of vibration though so to get crisp holes you need to use a short drill.

Usually when using a bending iron I found it worked best to have the planks saturated. Applying the iron to them vaporises the water and dries the wood out, which allows for good heat transfer to the cell walls of the wood making it 'rubbery'. If it dries out too much I usually apply some more water. If I don't do this it is very easy to get scorch marks on the dry wood from the iron. Everyone has their own methods of doing it, there are some good plank bending guides in the MSW wiki here.

Get a dremel/other rotary tool or forever regret your bad decisions in life. In Aus we have a cheap knockoff brand 'Ozito' which can be had for 30$ which is decent quality and 2 year warranty.

I store mine in a similar way (vase)...however because the vase is short a lot of the taller pieces after a couple of years have a bit a bow in them... Maybe we can use this as a gravity assist pre-plank bender

I drill a hole less than 0.5mm and shove a tooth pick in it, snip off and sand. Very quick. Here are some pics (i'm certainly no master, this was my first build...so it is very easy to do!)

Treenails aside, if you go down the replank route consider looking into adding some features. Look up scarfing, deck plank taper, margin planks, king planks, stepping. It is a lot more work, but if you don't do it you'll regret it once you find out about it It may have been mentioned earlier, but also look up plank stepping. The particular step varies depending on the size and era of ship you're building. It may be a joint every 4, 5th, etc. There are also rules in most these threads (again particular for your build) for the scale maximum plank length.

So I splurged and ordered one. The main reasoning behind this is I do not have the space for the individual machines - yet. Being able to have the capability when required will allow me to transition to full scratch building. This is the one I ordered, the version which is electroplated and higher power: http://www.dhgate.com/product/tz8000mp-big-power-mini-metal-8-in-1-kit/257465868.html#cart_view-${count}-null Once I get it, if anyone has any questions or would like detailed information let me know and i'll post it up here. I will also probably order a 4 jaw chuck. Given the stock wood we get I'll assume this is pretty much essential.

In terms of tools you can get away with the basics (knife, files, glues, drills, sand paper etc). But one thing that will really make things easier, and isn't too expensive is a rotary tool like a Dremel. Ozito make them in Australia for 30$ with all the drills, drums, and other bits you'd ever need. Best value for money for any tool in ship building IMHO.

I bought one of these and it is good: http://www.amazon.com/Loew-Cornell-380-Tabletop-Carousel/dp/B001BC49TY/ref=sr_1_1?s=home-garden&ie=UTF8&qid=1457870607&sr=1-1&keywords=tool+carousel

I've been researching these for awhile. This version is the higher power version which has a 60W motor instead of 20W. There are several videos of it in action here, including cutting aluminium, hard wood and plastic. https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCu2E1kV5TrDf8EvNbciF4SA There is also a *much* more expensive 3-axis or 4-axis CNC version. I am very impressed with the build quality from the video, and will probably end up getting one soon. After that I intend to add the CNC functionality myself. Not a bad kit for a few hundred dollars. This website has a chart showing the different models available, http://www.dhgate.com/product/60w-12000rpm-electroplated-all-metal-heighten/245426392.html?recinfo=8,7,1#cppd-1-5|null:7 Excluding the newer CNC ones which can be found here (videos on youtube channel above): http://www.thefirsttools.com/2-4-4-four-axis-cnc-drilling-and-milling-machine.html Happy machining.

Late to the party here... One thing you need to keep in mind when choosing the 'essential' tools is what tasks you will need to do with the build. If its a scratch build you'll likely want most the tools on the list. The most useful tool by far is a rotary tool like the dremel. It allows you to sand, drill, cut, shape, etc. all on funny angles and hard to reach places. Nothing else is as useful and if I had to get rid of all my tools to keep it (except maybe a knife), I would. For your standard kits the most advanced operation you're likely to need to perform is spiling and tapering planks. If its an extremely sharp bow or keel the kit planks may be impractical or nearly impossible to form into the right shape. It may be necessary to cut new planks from wider strip wood. For this reason I would recommend as the second tool a thickness sander (for tapering), and a hobby scroll saw (like the Dremel Motor Saw, which is cheap) for cutting new planks. I built my thickness sander out of a 20 year old rotary tool. I just made a bed and put in modern rotary tool sanding disks and it works perfectly fine. The small sanding disk radius reduces the torque requirements on the motor. An aside, I bought the Dremel drill press as I have the 'tool collectors bug'. However, after nearly completing an entire 1:48 ship build since I got it - I have barely used it once. Might be just the way I work, but 9 times out of 10 I cannot drill the part before mounting, or I want to add a hole later etc, making the press useless and once again a rotary tool much more useful. Working on the scales we do as well, the difference in a 2mm thick piece of wood drilled at 90 degrees vs. 80 degrees is not noticeable.

Hello Navis, I am also building a bounty. I have scoured the internet for reference material and your build log has been VITAL. The quality of your build is excellent and a pleasure to observe. I sorely miss the pictures from the first half of your build. If you have any could you add more to the first post? I am sure there are many others like me lurking in the background