Roger Pellett

Welcome to MSW and to the scratch build forum in particular. An ambitious project like this is a major investment of your time. Cost, on the other hand is amortized over a long period of time. It therefore pays to invest in top quality materials that will not cause problems as you proceed. Most experienced modelers do not consider balsa to be suitable for high quality ship models. It is too soft and weak. You might want to see what other woods are available locally. Many British ship modelers prefer Lime wood, not to be confused with the tropical fruit, but similar to our American Basswood. Roger

I am not familiar with the kit but here are some thoughts: Wood; The usual wood supplied in kits is Basswood, a nice wood to carve but low strength and soft. Splits easily. Substitute stronger wood. Maple would be a choice. Riveting; The idea is to deform the point. If you are using wire, what is the material? Copper should be easier to form than brass. I would start by forming the head. This is best done off the model possibly just a hole in a block of hard wood. Tap with a hammer until it forms. The other end of the rivet is called a point. With the rivet pushed through work piece, just enough of the other end should protrude to allow forming a head. Too much and it will just bend over. It is customary to back the point up with a washer called a Rove. The rove allows you to hammer the point into a head without splitting the wood. Roger

Experience from failed fiberglassing attempts over 50 years of full scale boatbuilding projects (I’m a slow learner): 1. West System’s regular (I believe it’s their 105) Epoxy is expensive but very reliable if properly measured and mixed. The ratio is 5 parts Epoxy to one part hardener so you need to figure out a reliable measuring procedure ahead of time. Their calibrated mixing pumps make this easy. 2. Do not try to glue the cloth onto the model’s hull!! This will result in ugly wrinkles and air bubbles. The correct procedure is to drape the cloth over the dry hull and to then apply the resin, working it into the weave with a small plastic squeegee. 3. The resin cloth combination does not adhere well to sharp corners. 4. West System has a HUGE free collection of Information Sheets covering correct application of their materials. Although aimed at builders of full sized boats, they are worth studying. 5. Wear gloves. The cloth is still glass regardless of how fine. Roger

A story about a great local business making a High quality specialized product. Readers invited to draw their own conclusions. Evergreen Winterwear is a small local business located on Main Street in the tiny North Woods town of Ely, MN. Employing local people, they make and sell very high quality outdoor garments for customers ranging from infants to adults. The owner, wife of a noted arctic explorer, eventually grew tired and sold the business to an outside investor who promised “to take the business to the next level.” Within month’s of taking ownership, he had closed the Ely, MN work room, laid off the workers, and outsourced all production. All that was left was “The Brand.” Dedicated customers, my wife included, were not fooled. The new business closed within a year. Fortunately, in this case the original owner had the technical expertise to run the business. She bought unsold equipment back at auction and re-established the business in its original form- making and selling a high quality product on Ely’s Main Street. Roger

Theoretical- if you know the wattage that the machine draws and can measure RPM’ s you can determine torque. Torque= Power (watts) / speed

My Sherline lathe was bought 20+ years ago to replace a very old Sears Dunlop lathe that DID have Babbitt bearings. At the time that I bought it I thought that I was also interested in doing some gunsmithing so I paid the extra $$ to buy the extended bed. The Sherline is a great machine for model making. With the optional milling column and sensitive drilling attachment it also nicely solves drilling problems with small wire sized drill bitts. It spends more time configured as a mill than a lathe. I have since lost interest in gun smithing which is fortunate as I lack the machining skills to hold the necessary tolerances for doing this type of work safely. I also believe that a Sherline is really not intended for this type of machining with high strength tool steels. For this work, the Craftsman type machine that began this thread is more appropriate. In my 20+ years of ownership I have never made use of the extended bed. 99 percent of the work that I do is performed within 2-3in of the headstock. I would not attempt to turn a 17” long mast on this machine. It is much easier to cut a square sectioned blank and plane octagonal, etc. The generous hole through the headstock also allows long slender items to be fed piecemeal to be turned in sections. If I were buying a Sherline knowing what I know now I would buy the shorter bed machine. Roger

Sherline DOES or rather did also make a small tool rest for freehand turning of very small metal parts using tools called “gravers.” Sherline lists this as a watchmakers tool. It is relatively expensive, but a beautifully made tool. It could be used for turning small wooden parts. Check their website. Roger

She was tied up at Mystic Seaport during the 2015 NRG Conference. My recollection is that she had a Black hull. Certainly not Blue. Roger

Unfortunately Naval Architects and Nautical Archeologists seem to be two different breeds “and never the twain shall meet.” All floating objects regardless of when built most obey the same laws of Newtonian Physics. In the end even these ancient vessels can be evaluated using basic Naval Architectural concepts. There is seemingly no reason why ancient seafarers would sacrifice freeboard by intentionally building a vessel with a crenelated hull. Roger

Brian, I’m curious. Without getting too much into the weeds, what sort of software does thing use? I’m assuming that it runs on an ordinary computer to be transferred to the engraver. Is it easy to use? Roger

Evan, Yes, not very sexy, but if you open 5 compartments in a two compartment ship to the sea it eventually sinks! End of story. Although she was state of the art for 1913, she was not sailor (or more accurately owner) proof. My current project, the Great Lakes Steamship Benjamin Noble is another example of where an owner, or in this case his representative’s, misuse of a relatively new well designed ship resulted in a tragedy. She was lost with all hands on Lake Superior overloaded with a heavy cargo that she was not designed to carry. This happened in April 1914, exactly one year from the loss of Titanic. Roger

Start looking at scratch build logs in the 1900 and later category here on the forum. Pay particular attention to the research done to build the models. While no one is building the exact model that you are thinking of it will give you a good feel for the process. Roger

If you are writing from the USA, Nitrocelulose lacquers are readily available in hardware and home improvement stores. Look for the clear Rust Oleum type spray can lacquers. Roger

Keith, The latest American Lake vessel launched 2-3 years ago has hatches that are three generations removed from the wooden covers fitted on the Benjamin Noble: 2nd generation- telescoping steel covers 3rd generation- One piece steel plate covers handled with a traveling hatch crane. (Used on all but 1 vessel in the American Lakes Fleet). 4th generation- one piece hydraulically operated cover (used on one vessel) The tapered plug was just there to fix one end of the wire. The other end was attached to the closest spool shown in the first photo. This allowed me to put tension on the wire to endure round, uniform rings. Roger

Ringbolts- Work over the last two months centered on completing the hatches. There were three stages to the job; the 148 ringbolts, completing the hatch boards, and making the hatch bars that prevented the wooden hatch boards from floating. Each of the 72 main deck hatch boards and the 8 bunker hatch boards were fitted with two ring bolts. While these usually appear on any model with wooden hatches readers might be interested in how they were actually used. This is described in Jay McCormick’s 1942 prize winning book November Storm. The book is a fictional account of a young man’s season aboard a Great Lakes Freighter fitted with wooden hatches. Shortly after joining the vessel he is called upon with another deckhand to remove the hatch covers for unloading. Each hatch board, weighing about 150# was handled by two men each armed with a short wooden “hatch bat”. One end was pushed into a ringbolt and the other held by the deckhand. Working in unison at diagonally opposite ends the 9ft long hatch board could be lifted and walked over to the side of the deck. Since time is money, this had to be done quickly, before the vessel was tied up at the loading or unloading dock. The effort required is hard to imagine! In my case, the problem was figuring how to make them. Each ringbolt ring had an OD of 6” so at 1:96 scale this would be 1/16”; Tiny! A feature of scratch building is the time that must be spent figuring how to make things, particularly if one chooses to build a variety of models and to work at different scales. As a result, several frustrating work sessions can go by until things get figured out. In my case, I first developed a system that I posted in the metalworking section of the forum that involved using a hand drill to twist a loop of wire. I abandoned this as it didn’t produce a round ring. The system that I eventually used is shown in the photos below. It involved drawing .010” diameter wire around mandrel of 1/32” aluminum wire and soldering the loop with a drop of .010” diameter solder on the tip of a very small soldering iron. The result is slightly Under-scale but looks good relative to the hatch board. I began by using specially tinned brass wire but after running out found some .010” steel wire in my stash that was even easer to solder. Roger Note: the brass wire in the second photo is intentionally oversized to demonstrate the concept.

What you really need to start is either a lines drawing or table of offsets from which you can make your own lines drawing. This is not information that you would likely find in the hands of operators; Steamship companies, shipboard crews, etc. Apparently Finland was built by W. Cramp &Sons, an American Yard near Philadelphia. So, who holds Cramp’s Archives? Maybe Philadelphia’ Franklin Institute? Just a guess. Roger

There is usually a lot of old lathe parts on EBay. I know buying things on EBay can be chancy...But ? Some parts such as nuts, bolts, bearings, etc. will be standard industrial stock items Fortunately the lathe is belt driven with speed regulated via stepped pulley so if necessary, the old motor can be easily swapped out for a new one. You can probably use the lathe without replacing some missing parts. These lathes regulate the travel of the cutting tool vs. the rotation of the spindle using a series of changeable gears. This is necessary for cutting threads, but if the gears are missing the lathe can still run. You should also inventory the lathe’s accessories that you have; chucks, tool posts, etc. Rule of thumb is that the cost of these will often exceed the cost of the lathe itself. If you buy a new machine like a Sherline, it will have to be outfitted with new accessories as the old ones will not fit. With the notable exceptions of the Unimat and the various specialized watchmakers lathes the smaller model makers lathes are (by my timeline) a relatively new item. Back in the 70’s and 80’s there were lots of books and articles dedicated to using these and similar full sized machines for model making. I suspect that your lathe has good bones and it’s worth investing some money to restore it. Roger

If you have the Atlas Craftsman lathe, you have a tool that I have llusted over for years but never owned. The top of the line lathe for modelmakers would be a Sherline but outfitted with chucks and other accessories to be useful will probably spend $1500++ and you will lose some capabilities; power feed and a good system for turning tapers. Roger

Our craft (to me it’s not just a hobby) is so broad that the the tools required are largely dependent on the ship that you have decided to model. The most often used tool in my workshop is my drill press. While I seldom use it for the model itself, I often use it to fabricate Theo jigs and fixtures necessary to fabricate the parts for the model.

A shameless plug for the (very) inexpensive thin rip guide sold by MSW’s owner the Nautical Research Guild. Using this, the wood being cut is not squeezed between the fence and the blade. This should produce more even cuts. Since you haven’t used the Saw for a while, have you checked the fence alignment. There are instructions for doing this here on the forum. Adding to Mark’s comment #2 above, a handy Saw accessory is a simple block of wood that can be used to press the piece being cut against the fence. Using this, the right hand pushes with the push stick while the left with the wooden block presses the wood being cut against the fence. The NRG’s guile eliminates the need for this. Roger

Small disc sanders range from the single (high) speed models to the variable speed state of the art models made by Byrnes Model Machines with many in between at all price points. All are highly useful. I assume that the belt sander that you mention is a stationary one, not a hand held model. In my opinion belt sanders are way to aggressive for fine work and have little direct application to model making. I have both disc sanders and a stationary belt sander. I use the disc sanders all the time. The belt sander is only used to grind and sharpen cutting tools for my metal lathe. Roger

Melissa, First, congratulations on the museum display of your Philadelphia model. Can you tell us where it is located? Air Brush. IMHO it depends what you want to do. This ranges from spraying paint to engaging in shading and weathering, etc. I personally am happy if I can just lay down a nice coat of paint and am on my second Badger 350. Advantages; inexpensive, robust, easy to clean, user friendly. Disadvantage, pretty much on/off with nothing in between. As important is your air source. I have a compressor/ air tank combination available at any bid box home improvement store; on sale cost about $100. It’s noisy but provides plenty of air. These units generate air at 125psi but have an integral regulator to dial outlet pressure down to airbrush pressure. This is necessary. Don’t ask me how I know! Roger

Valeriy, By the time that you use up your brass stash, hopefully Ukraine will again be peaceful and one of us can visit you with a “heavy suitcase.”😀😀 Roger

I checked EBay last PM and found dozens of offerings for Pivot Drills; not expensive. Maybe I’ll buy a set. I have a number of old machinist tools and I really enjoying using whenever I can. Roger

Since you may not be familiar with my reference to Harold Hahn allow me to elaborate some. Harold Hahn was a prominent model maker back in the ‘70s and ‘80s. He developed a system for mass producing the two ply blanks for the frames for POF models. His work did much to encourage others, including me, to dabble in building POF models. The resulting models resemble the old Admiralty dockyard models but the framing is not the same, nor does it represent full size construction practice. As a result his work has fallen into some disfavor. His system, would however, be great for making fully planked Plank on Bulkhead models. You should be able to find details here in the forum via the search function. Volume 1 of the NRG’ Shop Notes available from their store also includes a full description of his system. Roger