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KeithAug

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Everything posted by KeithAug

  1. Such a lot of work on the sails and all looking very neat. Impressive.
  2. Richard, Druxey, Zbip, Thank you. I attach below the final sequence of photos and then I will get back to documenting the build. Sorry about the dust in some photos, I must remember to dust before shooting next time.
  3. Fascinating subject for a model - looking forward to the next instalment.
  4. Its always good to have an eye for detail, I just marvelled at the level of detail, I must try harder. The roller track looking very authentic. It seems the arc of fire was limited to forward of abeam - or am i just misreading the drawing?
  5. Ekis, Moab, Noel, Kris - Thank you all for your appreciative comments. Eberhard. I used my better camera with a large zoom and small aperture and plenty of light (outside in the early afternoon with partial cloud). It was just quicker to do it that way but I do intend to try photo stacking. I agree a lot of brass to keep clean - and I am fairly sure it is not gold plated. Moab, Noel, - Thank you Keith - you are right I have not made the wheel yet. It is however near the top of my list. I just have to remember where I put the list. Bob - thank you for such a detailed explanation - very informative and educational. Druxey. Its a bit of both. The crutch isn't glued in and the starboard leg isn't quite all the way home. That said the actual lean is almost imperceptible and most of it is down to camera angle and lens distortion.
  6. Keith, John, Pat, Mark - thank you and as ever thank you to everyone for the likes. A few more pictures:-
  7. Looks like a fascinating build. I think I’ll tag along.
  8. George, Thank you for there compliment. The metal I use is brass - an alloy of copper and zinc, bronze is an alloy of copper and tin. Brass does tarnish over time (even indoors) losing its sheen and becoming quite dull, this takes several years. If you want it to remain bright you can paint it with lacquer. I quite like to see the brass age so I don't bother but I am in the minority in this respect. Roger - thank you.
  9. Eberhard, Chris, Druxey, Richard - thank you all for your comments. Also thanks to everyone for all the likes I made the plinths for the vents and then mounted the vents by inserting spigots into the bores of the stems. I took a lot of photos. I will post these a few at a time over the next few days. I haven't sorted out the rope ears on the life ring yet. The yellow card is a temporary dust shield - I am getting fed up with cleaning out below decks.
  10. Eberhard - the mill was ground with the cutting edge all the way to the centre (almost like a wist drill). I did do one cowl with just the mill and it worked ok, but the pressure seemed a bit on the high side. Using a centre drill to about 3/4 the required depth just seemed to make the cut a little easier. Keith - the insides are all brass but I don't think they get polished. Ships cowls are generally made from steel plate and hence need painting (inside and out) to avoid corrosion. I am not sure why the insides are frequently painted red but maybe it relates to the use of red-lead oxide paint. Thank you both for commenting.
  11. Vents:- I started off by making all the stems - the ones in the next photo just happen to be the 4 largest ones. The next sequence of photos covers the manufacture of the cowl. Starting with the drilling and milling of the holes to take the stem. The end stop is set on the milling vice so that all holes for a specific size of cowl are subsequently drilled the same distance from the end of the bar. In the next photo the stem inserted to test the fit. The stem is removed and the outer profile of the cowl is machined using the profile tool. The tool is advanced very slowly to minimise cutting forces. The tool position is set such the the radius of the profile is at the left hand edge of the hole drilled in the bar. The bar is then removed form the lathe and the stem is reinserted. A small piece of solder is placed in the bore of the stem and the assembly is heated to melt the solder. This produces a neat solder joint with no excess solder to clean from the outside of the cowl. Then its back to the lathe to bore out the cowl mouth. I found that drilling a small pilot hole eased the passage of the ball ended end mill. The small spigot holding the cowl to the bar is then cut off and then finished with a file and emery cloth before polishing. I started with the middle sized cowls. The first one took about an hour. In the next photo you can see the completed cowl with 9 other stems. I had miscounted when making stems and had to go back later and make 2 more. I took a celebratory photo when I got to 4. By this stage manufacture time was about half and hour. By the end of day 1 I had the 12 middle sized ones complete. I then made the 2 smaller ones - not very big at all. I then moved on to the 4 larger cowls. By the end of day 2 I had 18 all made.
  12. Great to see something quite different. Very interesting and enjoyable. Thank you.
  13. found this on you tube - quite a feat of endurance. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z5IT90vZBRo
  14. Pat, Druxey, Mark, Geert, Richard - thank you all for your kind comments. Mark thank you for your feedback. I can see my brackets are worrying you. Before the end of the build I am hoping more Germania photos will come to light and then perhaps we will all find out the purpose. Your guess may well be correct. And so on to the vents. One of the things that attracted me to starting Germania was there plethora of ventilation cowls, seemingly totally over the top and to my eye very teutonic. As usual with me I had imagined them to be much bigger than they turned out to be. Somehow the scaling of photographs proved quite difficult and I had to repeat the exercise several times using about 10 different photos before I was happy. The following photo is the one showing most vents but there are number more. The good news about the vents is they are a fairly simple shape - essentially the mouth is a dome ended cylinder while the stem is another cylinder. My mammoth attempt at scaling convinced me that three different sizes of vent exist. The following sketch reflects these. Sorry but the scale is metric and each square is 1mm x 1mm. The larger size has a 8mm (.32") mouth and a 6mm (.24") stem - 4 of these are required. The middle size has a 6mm (.24") mouth and a 4mm (.16") stem - 12 of these are required. The small size has a 4mm (.16") mouth and a 3mm (.12") stem - 2 of these are required. I plan to fabricate them as follows:- Step 1 - is to take a round bar and machine the outside diameter to size. Then drill a hole just over half way through the bar. Step 2 - is to take an end mill the same diameter as the the stem outside diameter and widen out the hole to a depth equal to the bars radius. Step 3 - is to turn the outside profile of the vent mouth using a profile tool. Step 4 - is to insert the stem and solder it in place, Followed by boring the inside of mouth using a ball ended milling cutter. For each size of vent the wall thickness will be 0.5mm (.02"). I made the 3 profile tools by grinding high speed tool steel by hand, it took time and patience to get them right. The next photo shows the profile tool for the middle sized vent. Here is the profile tool with its corresponding ball ended mill. Tomorrow I commence the production run - hopefully by Sunday evening I will have 18 vents.
  15. Very interesting Eberhard and a very good result. What programme do you use to read the image and create the code needed to drive the laser cutter? You probably covered this earlier but I obviously missed it.
  16. Very neat looking sails, inevitably you suffer from the perennial problem, namely that the wind does not blow them into an elegant curve. Are you planning to give them shape and if so how? On the point of the lockdown being lifted is this a Cambridge thing? Down here in West Sussex the only change seems to have been we can go on longer dog walks - still very few non-essentail shops open and definitely not cloth shops.
  17. Somehow I lost touch with your build Geert. However it was great fun catching up. It is always a pleasure to see how well you manage with basic tools. Excellent result.
  18. Final diversion before vents start first thing tomorrow. The helmsman platform forms a shallow U around the wheel. Using the photographs I was able to get a very good approximation of size. From this I created a sketch. The overall size is 3.2" long by 1.35" wide. The thickness is .080". The gratings are too fragile to be structurally sound so, as with the case of the stern platform, I built the platform on a 1/32" ply backing. The legs positions were drilled through on the ply backing and then this was used as a template for drilling the deck. A plastic disc was turned to fit the large circular holes and then this was used to drill the hole centre positions on the deck. I then started to build the framing on the ply backing. Plastic card was cut to create spacers for accurate positioning of the frames. I had planned ahead when making the grating for the stern platform and had enough to complete this platform. Edge pieces were then installed to mask the edge. The next photo was taken in the rough state prior to sanding. The small size of the grating holes makes the presence of the backing undetectable. Legs were then turned to diameter and length. Diameter .092" and length .250". the legs were drilled through to take .040" wire. This wire located in the holes in the platform and deck. its not obvious from the photo but each row of wires is a different length so they can be progressively inserted in the deck holes. They are glued in place using CA. Once the platform had been sanded and sealed it was glued on the deck (using makeshift clamps). Then a few pictures were taken.
  19. Very passable Gary ( I am practicing understatement) - thanks for the tip about the fishing lead wire
  20. Well Jon perhaps it is possible to make a silk purse out of a sows ear. Coming along nicely.
  21. Thank you for the journey, I really enjoyed following along. A a child I always wanted to build a river boat - maybe I watched too many westerns. Anyway - thank you for allowing me to realise my youthful ambitions by proxy. What next?
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