dafi

*happy* XXXDAn

Ok, no cat got harmed . I think every scale needs its own technic, as the challenges change. For scale 1:48 thin cloth can work out fine, from smaller than 1:150 paper gets a wonderful choice. My scale of 1:100 is somewhere in-between: The cloth is too coarse or too transparent, on the other hand the sails are too big for paper, also I would like to add some details, that would be difficult in paper alone. In real life I did not have to much time to tinker around due to job and privet commitments, but some small experimenting I could afford. I prepared a small extract of a stay sail, using my laminate technic. I reinforced the leeches by 0,3 mm copper wire The material is that thin, one can see the copper shining through. Took a wet cotton stick and resoftened the sail partially to slowly form a soft wave. The anvil were the handles of a scissors and the hammer was the hot iron. And here the fascinating thing, how the appearance changes with the different moods of light ... ... as originally intended :-) OK, one could guess what comes next ?!? Almost. Another reason for testing to see the limits of the material. And what should I say?!? If one uses hard and pointed tools to make smaller crisps into the material and one slips, the material breaks! But also one can see the benevolence of the material ... ... cleaned and a new leech glued on - this time no copper inside - and it looks like new! And to prove that this invention is really mine, I left a good part of genetic material in the superglue to provide enough DNA-Tests for the future :-) Then formed the hanks for the stay ... ... and tried to fix them, still without leech rope, but still it was quite stable. First trials on the right were not so really shipshape, useful was the third hand of table, clamp and clamping tweezers. And slowly ... ... I was happy. Even though the fixture of the hanks is on the really outer edge, it proves to be very stable. So tried the technic on my small sample and heaved it up. Even though it looks soft, it is quite rigid and keeps well the form due to the white glue used to stiffen it up. Then resoftened with a wet cotton stick partially to get the wave stronger (remember - went bad already once ...) But this time it worked out fine :-) So slept over night - or perhaps not that good as one of the 17 beers that night must have been bad ... ... felt a bit crunched and wrinkled and had the feeling, the sail should exactly represent that. ... fits ... ... XXXDAn

Very nicely done the curved planks! Marking the positions of the butts is the best way to do, but be aware, the frames of the kits are usually not in the right positions! You can see on the sketch, that the beams - and therefore the butts - go through the scuttles. Like this the cargo would go not downwards. The position of the beams are always in front and back of the scuttles, or better saying in real life the scuttles follow the beams underneath. [/img] XXXDAn

Not too much time to tinker lately due to my working scheme and other private commitments. In the meantime I was already looking for my cat for quite a while. And how do you know, that you found the new daytime hideout of this feline creature? Next modeller´s meeting there will be a lot of chilly con cat ;-) XXXDAn

Thank you all for the nice comments. @Richard. Looks like you did not manage to go through the whole report yet ;-) Still further down the page there is more about the copper ... #22 ... and down the road you will find more here ... #53 ... and the most important update here: #1113 ... and some more adventures there: #1203 Actually the Copper is laid over the original Heller structure which surprisingly gets the pattern quite well. Only flaw is the exaggerated height of the overlap. Seen the original thickness and compared to the scale, actually no step should be visible. Even pictures from coppered ship´s bottoms do not reveal the step, only real close ups do show. Next life I will sand the plastic imitations down and will tile the copper flat, the overlap just indicated by a hint of nails. Also there are much more shades of color on weathered copper, telling the story what the ship did last and where it has been, see here: #35 Cheers Daniel

The one with the plank on the bottom is the older version as far as I know. I do not know when the switch models was done, neither how long the older one was still in use. Perhaps contact Mr Delacroix. XXXDAn

Be cautious with the drawings of the planking at McKay´s and McGowan´s books! Both of them show just simplified "mock-"planking, not respecting the beams underneath. One can see butts on the level of then middle of coamings or companion ways. That is NOT correct, those ends would hang in mid air. I marked all possible positions for butts with green lines. All butts in between are incorrect. Only on the green lines there are beams underneath to nail onto. Also note the different distances of the beams, leading to different lengths of the planks. And with the correct spacing of the beams underneath the planks become much longer than shown in this picture. XXXDAn

*jumping of joy* Thank you MAurice, it was a great trip to revisit this wonderful build! XXXDAn

What lines? XXXDAn

Much longer than the 6 meter Mondfeld states :-) As the butts need to respect the deck beams underneath - see their position in AOTS - and with a 3 butt-shift system one gets over 12 meter long planks in the middle of the deck! Also as the deck beams do NOT have the same distances, the length of the planks varies quit a bit! See here the lower deck of my Vic. #68 And if you wnt to be brave, do NOT use straight parallel planks as I did, use the curved ones as this is most possibly more contemporary. XXXDAn

Nive build. Love the test-scan for the etch, great for early test-fitting! For the vacuum staircases and other black holes - also gunports - I also use some cotton. Just get a very fluffy quantity into the opening and also dust stays out :-) XXXDAn

Worked, thank you!!! XXXDAn

Thank you, but sorry, still no luck ... ERROR: There is no document with the provided identification number. XXXDAn

Thank you for the documents! Unfortunately it looks like the link is wrong: Source: McHenry, James. 1797. “Uniformity of Dress on Ships of War.” http://wardepartment...nt.php?id=22778 It redirects onto this page ... XXXDAn

But sometimes one get´s a real gem. Here is incredible Willi Meischl on the restoration of a "dustpan"-finding, narrowly escaping it´s fate. It proved to be a historical model of a Austrian trading brig from the 1870ies. See the video of the restoration. Excuse the quality, it is from a VHS from 1988-1989 and we were lucky to still be able to transfer it :-) So better check twice :-) XXXDAn Allow some off topic: Also enjoy Willi´s build of the model of the arctic explorer vessel "Admiral Tegetthoff", displayed in the technical museum in Vienna. https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Admiral_Tegetthoff_(Schiff) There is also a nice film from the ORF (official Austrian TV) that shows him building a 1:1 Model for a film of the expedition. Unfortunately not on Youtube as for Copyrights :-( XXXDAn

To put the rule to the test, or - in other words - here comes the big rag, part 1. To get the overlap right this time I constructed a small light table: 2 logs, some glas and a lamp. Above light from underneath, below light from the top. To get things straight I printed the pattern onto a paper and glued it face down onto the glas with a minimum spray glue. As I also sprayed the back of the paper, the silk is nicely fixed and does not move while working. Do not face the print towards the silk, or the heat will transfer the laser toner onto the tissue - unless it is wanted :-) The silk I used for the gaff was is pongée 8 as this sail was a more heavy cloth. Constructed a small cutting machine for the panels ... ... and started bravely ironing. First side went rather fast, then flipped over, adjusted to the grid and restarted and went immediately tilted ... ... but was no problem to scratch that off :-) Here the result in changing ambient light conditions, just what I wanted to see, every time it looks different :-) The overlap is still to broad, that was a mistake of mine. To make the overlap more visible, I still added a 1 mm stripe atop, see the spaghetti in the back of the picture. It was surprisingly easy to do and exact in the outcome. Then the slightly curved reef bands and the other doublings ... ... and step one was done. The size of the sail can be seen as soon as my little ship yard worker is added. And just for fun: The original out of the box :-) :-) :-) So next steps will be great fun: Adding the bolt ropes and the glue-paint mixture and waiting if everything stays as crisp as it is now! XXXDAn

Hello Andi :-) The last engraving with Victory showing the old fashioned entry port - as depicted in Slade´s drafts - is 1779 Victory, „Sailing by the White Cliffs of Dover“. In 1780 she had a refit also and was coppered for the first time - and since that day the port vanished from all sources until it reappeared in 1828 after another repair. But by then, the port was one more opening further in the back. Since then it was to be seen in all sources until it was moved to todays position in the 1920/30ies. The disappearing side entry port is nothing specific to the Vic, it started to disappear from all first and second rates around 1760, the time of the Seven Years' War and the War of Independence - high times on the seas and plenty of trouble with the french. A coincidence? The ports just started to reappear around 1803/1805. XXXDAn

First the most important question: What ship/era/nationality are we talking about :-) It is he most common during the later times - as druxey and others point out - that the sides are vertical and bottom and top follow the line of the deck. This allows the frames - which were build vertically - not to be weakened by cut outs and also gives the same height level towards the deck and also allows the spriketting to pass uncut underneath the ports. This applies for carvel build with frame first and vertical frames. Now the "it depends": Older ships build hull first - like Vasa or contemporary dutch builds - where the frames were afterwards applied into the hull and were not vertical, pointing towards the ship´s middle on the top, thus resulting in tilted squared ports like #D. XXXDAn

Perhaps Nelson and Hardy wanted to match the copper´s color on the ships side as it is suggested by the latest research *duckandcover* XXXDAn

If one does overlaps with that thin material one will get a step into it. So better to skip the underneath part. XXXDAn

Ok, sorry, the next setback to old-fashioned modeler´s customs after the new colors of the Vic ;-) XXXDAMn

As usual - a dream :-) XXXDAn

That is what I meant earlier: Apparently the copper tells, what the ship did last :-) In our german forum there is a nice collection of pictures all of different shades in colo of the copperr. There is a nice article in German from Peter Prystaz of Swiss minisail that could explain: http://minisail.ch/de/werkkunde/kupfern.pdf "5. Patina: (rough translation) As there are almost no more sea going coppered ships on regular trips, one started to imagining the appearance more than knowing it. Mostly it is displayed blank or green, which is wrong. If a ship is sea going the copper becomes pink. Yes, pink! The pinkish color is coming of the abrasion of the water molecules, the green only comes on the air. New copper is of shiny brownish color. If in drydock like the Cutty, it gets darker. If the ship is in saltwater but not moved it gets green [as seen on the Constitution]. If the ship was in harbour for longer, first the waterline gets pink the bottom last. So the color of the copper can accentuate the story of the model." One more remark: There are some very nice pictures of recent copperings with highly glossy plates. I do think, this does not translate into the old days, as todays copper for sure has some kind of surface treating. Original copper plates that arrived in the shipyard for sure did not have this and also had enough time to "season". [That also applies for the wood: It usually had enough time to season while being build, so there where never those like "fresh" cut wood looking ships ;-) ] That lead to some trials on the color - all 1:100, the nails still a bit strong as those were the first tests. Copper not too old, the bottom brown from lying in port, pink on the waterline and green above ... ... sailing the brown getting less andgetting pinkish ... ... and the brown gone and mostely pink. Here the last two tests to compare. On the bottom there are always some blank copper plates as reference :-) Cheers, Daniel

WOW! Thanks to all that helped in this one!!! Sincerily, Daniel

Thank you very much! But unfortunately, most of the links do not work with me ? Was there a problem with copy-paste in the link or is it me? XXXDAn