michael mott

Hi Buck the outer fence piece is held fast to the sliding wedges by some springs Here is an overlay of how it functions. saw fence.pdf I hope this helps, I am sure there are many ways to do this, I made this must be close to 30 years ago. Michael

Doris, Thank you for the information about the gold. michael

Buck: what a beautiful set up, a nicely crafted tool you have there and I like the design. I will have to make myself one of those, thanks for sharing. I also have this little tool that I use sometimes It also uses a 1/4 x 20 thread and as the handle turns it indexes over the fence by a .25 mm I used this to make micro adjustments to the width of sheets of styrene and acrylic when I was doing Architectural Models. It just sits on top of the table and there is a stop to prevent it from moving forward I rough set the main fence then use some carpet tape to hold down a piece if 1/8th white faced MDF bring the blade up for zero tolerance then make the micro adjustments to get the right width. These pics are using my cheap $100 table saw that I use out and about the house for doing rough building work, this was while I was building the house and my Unisaw was in pieces in storage (it was in pieces because it was too heavy to lift up the stairs out of the basement of my old house). Michael

Very nice Bob, I must have a go at the lapstrake method. Michael

I too had not seen this before, what a wonderful whimsical story and so beautifully executed. thanks for sharing it. Michael

Doris I have run out of ways to say incredible, fantastic, etc. I am learning so much from your tutorials on the sculpting. I do have a question regarding your gilding. Is the gilding using gold leaf or a high quality gold paint? or something else? It look like the paper that you are building the scupltures on is the backing paper for the foils am i correct?, if so then the backing paper of something like carpet tape would also work. Michael

Very sharp looking bit of Kit as they say. Michael

Geeze Matt where are all the clove hitches on the ratlines? and I don't see too many dead eyes either Michael

Thank you for the sculpting Videos Doris, I learned a great deal watching how you developed the horse. You certainly are a talented artist, and thank you for taking the time to set up the videos. Michael

Danny, thanks for your information on the various clamps. I shall have to make myself some. Michael

Russ these cross sections seem to be very popular and also a great way to get your feet wet, (they obviously wouldn't float;~) ) but great to see what one is going to encounter when building a full ship. What woods did you use?. Michael

Daniel a very nice build. I enjoyed the photo show. Michael

yesterday I needed to sharpen the hollow ground blade to ensure the my cuts were smooth. I use a simple method First I unplug the saw. Safety first!!! It is so easy to forget to unplug power tools when changing blades and cutters. I sandwich the blade between a sheet next to the fence and a board clamped to the table. then raise the blade so that the file in horizontal. next I offset the file to the position to give the correct angle with the file sitting flat on the handle you can see that the file is off to one side. I then draw a line on the wood to keep the file straight while I sharpen, it is low tech but works fine. Michael

Bob, great I will be following along. Nice looking dory Pete. Michael

Stunning Nico just absolutely stunning Michael

Very nice Mark, those certainly look small, Just how big are they? Michael

Joe, yes I know that is the case, The trade off for me is that I do not use even half the stuff you can do with LT. so the expense of the full version was not in my cards. I am also not willing to put in the time for the 3D functions in the programs that support it . I have used Rhino and Sketch-up, I found them just a bit too frustrating. when I need a 3D I work with a pencil and sketch it out in seconds. Michael

Excellent work Doris, your figures are wonderful. Michael

Sarah I have sent you a PM. Michael

Buck the mini me is not photo shopped I just printed a picture of myself and cut it out with a pair of sharp scissors. The low tech version of having fun, I stuck some raw treenail rod on the back of the photo so I could stick it anywhere on the deck before I filled the holes. Thanks for the compliment on the Bristol Cutter. Your restoration on the little boat is really nice. and I have filed away your neat trick with the cutters, that was very clever thinking. Michael

The first real harvesting of wood for a model was in 1975 when I was at the Ice-fields Campground At the Athabasca Glacier with my parents who were visiting from the UK. The firewood at the campground was about 16 inches long and had been roughly split into quarters It was extremely fine grained spruce, probably from close to treeline or a low moisture location am guessing that the rings were no more than a 1/128th inch apart. anyway I saved some for a model aircraft I was building at the time. I striped it into a small square section to bend for the tailplane. perimeter. Yes getting the wood from nature is a big plus, in my books. Michael

Bob, those look Nice. I have adobe illustrator I needed it for an Exhibition project that I did back in 2002 I never did like it, I prefer Corel for the bitmap stuff. I have been happily drawing all day. I am working on tracing the Colchester Smack There are some good images on the Betty CK 145 Website http://www.betty-ck145.com/docueng/smacks/smack_plans.html I am tracing it at full size in Autocad so that when the drawing is finished I hope to have a full set of plans to build an accurate model from. Once the plans are drawn full size in the cad environment it is simple to print them to any scale. I like working in full size because then there is no mucking about trying to sort out scale sizes. a 4x6 timber is drawn as a 4 x6 timber and so on. I don't have to do any mental gymnastics while drawing. The drawing on the link shows that the drawing of the Colchester smack at a scale of 1/90 my Corel file to PDF then imported to Autocad showed the length as 17point something inches I cannot remember the exact number at the moment. so using the 1/90 as a guide I did the math on the calculator to find the multiplier and scaled the PDF up so that the lines drawing was full size. It worked out to be 34feet 8 inches long. so at 1/24th scale it would be 17 inches or 34 inches at 1/12 scale and so on. I am really happy that you told me about the PDF's because I would not have tried that. and I much prefer to work in Cad I do find that I have to lock the layer that the PDF is on after it is re-sized though. Michael

Rocker, have a look at wooden venetian blinds, IKEA sell them and the wood is flat dry and thin, ideal for resawing on small tools. I am about 4000miles north west of where you are. I was in your neck of the woods in 1969 I watched Apollo 11 lift off. Michael

:D Molasses those wires are mighty fine. .002 that is finer than most human hair!..... Now there's a thought what about rigging something with human hair. it has probably been done. Michael

Elia that looks really great, I had not realized how complex the deck furniture was going to be. Michael