tkay11

I'm delighted you're thinking of starting up again, Daniel -- as, I am sure, will be many other members of this forum. Last night I started up again on by making single blocks and figuring out how best to put the rope straps and hooks on them. It was such a joy to get back to it after such a long time of intensive work. I've noticed that quite a few members have to leave the ship modelling for long periods of time, but that's the joy of the hobby: it's something that you can pick up again whenever the other pressures in life are reduced. That's what a hobby is for, isn't it? When you do come to start your log again, don't be worried by just posting the pictures that you have. Quite a few others have done the same when they re-built their own logs, and some were able to add a few words of explanation. I am sure you have seen Kester's log (Stockholm Tar) of his Sherbourne which is almost entirely in retrospect -- and he says he's thought of a lot more to say as a result! Tony

What a delight to see you back, Daniel! Your build on MSW1.0 was such an inspiration to me that I feel quite proud that you've been able to enjoy anything I've done, and I was really missing your input. I am sure a lot of people would love to see your old log rebuilt on MSW2.0 if you by any chance have it stored on your computer. I remember you and Dirk having lots of very interesting conversations about the build as you were each at about the same stage. If you don't have the old blog stored in any way, it'll be great just to see you start again from where you are now. Building the ship's boat was for me a real delight as it showed me the joys of planning and building it without pre-formed parts of any kind. It has given me the courage and interest to do more of that in future once I have built a few more of the basic skills around other aspects of the model. I too am keen to see my further progress! For the last few months, though, I have been overwhelmed with work. However, the bulk of that work is now finished and I'll be back to tinkering away at the build fairly soon -- as long as I'm not landed with more work, that is! Tony

Ah yes! Obvious answer! Thanks, Wefalk! Tony

Could you name a European supplier of secondhand mills, Wefalck? Tony

Hank: Blue Ensign had the idea of buying the spare part that is the bed (part no PRO000160) and making it as an extension. If you look at the back of the lathe's manual you'll see the part. The link to his post in his Pegasus build is here. Tony

They're plentiful and cheap. You can find them easily on eBay. Have a look at http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/170803404093?ssPageName=STRK:MEWAX:IT&_trksid=p3984.m1423.l2649. That one's from Hong Kong, but you can find them in many countries, I should imagine. Tony

Nice to know you can pop over from Canada, David! I was last in the NMM a couple of years back when there was really only one gallery of models of the period. I'll have another look in August. Thanks for the tips about the mill. I can get the Proxxon from Germany at around £220 including delivery, which gives me a fair amount to buy bits and a dividing head. By the way I asked about the milling with a drill press because that's what I tried doing with my small Proxxon drill press while holding the head firmly in position. It works to a limited extent, but showed me the value of having a calibrated vertical feed. If you come over to the UK again and doing anything ship-wise send me a PM. Tony

Ha! The milling machine has been on my mind a lot. I see you have a drill press which looks fairly massive -- do you use it as a mill as well? I've been oscillating between getting the Proxxon MF70 that is used by so many others on the forum, and a Sieg X1 (which is a proper milling machine). The problem with the Sieg is that it is more expensive, will cost much more with all the extras, and is much bigger and heavier. The advantage is the very long and much more robust table. In favour of the Proxxon is the fact that I would really only be using it for wood and so would tend to use router bits in it as well as the few milling bits I would need. It strikes me as being more than sufficient for wood modelling at small scale. However I've not had time these last couple of months to do anything more than think about it vaguely as I have been up to my eyes in work. Thanks a lot, David, for the kind comments, by the way! I have much admired your woodworking skills on Sultana and Phantom. Tony

Yes, you need to bend it. There are lots of ways of doing this. I did mine by soaking in hot water and then very gently bending it with my hands. Tony

Great to see it, Kester! I hope you post more pictures especially of detail. The sails and the ship's boat look terrific but it's unfair to pull those out for special praise because it all looks so wonderful! Thanks for keeping us up to date. Tony

Excellent source and not too expensive! Thanks, Antony. Tony

That's something I hadn't realised, Mark. Good thought and more food for it. Thanks. Tony

I've noticed nobody is mentioning the weight of these lathes. A Sieg X1 (similar or identical to Grizzly etc), which is referred to as a mini-mill and is often recommended, weighs 40Kg or so. I would find it difficult to get that kind of weight up two flights of stairs comfortably, let alone find space for it and then find a worktop that is sufficiently strong. It was only after realising this that I cut down my aspirations for a mill and thought hard what exactly I would be using it for -- so I'm now considering the smaller and lighter options (including the Proxxon MB200 with KT70 table) as they might well cover everything I'm ever likely to use them for. Certainly lots of people use the Proxxon MF70 very satisfactorily. From the specs I've read the head on the MF70 doesn't seem to be that different from the standard Proxxon mini-drill that I have so it's tempting to try that in the MB200. This is not a particular recommendation or suggestion -- just something people might want to consider when setting up their workshops in light of the work they are likely to undertake. Of course I'd love to have a Sieg X1 which is very cheap for what it does -- the weight and size simply make it impossible for my room. Tony

Maybe not easy, but fun -- and certainly satisfying when you are able finally to pull up that 3D model, isn't it! Tony

There's also a good review at http://shipmodeling.net/vb_forum/thread382-Review---Proxxon-Micro-Lathe.html Tony

Very nice, TK1! Tony (TKAY11)

Agreed. A very nice method. Thanks for the demonstration! I'll certainly try this way at some future date. Tony

Thanks for the link, Gregor. Very interesting. I'm following the plans used for the 4 pounder guns on the Cutter Alert and just presumed 3 pounders would follow the same pattern. This shows a double at the bulwark and a single at the carriage. I have yet to make the single blocks -- well, that's not quite true: I made a whole lot but without replica sheaves so I'm about to make them again using the saw. Glad you reassured me about the helmet. I suppose it would also make shaving difficult. Tony

That's very kind of you, Brian. I've often enjoyed your well-honed comments elsewhere on this site. I've also been intrigued by your membership photo/avatar as it shows a complex mixture of expressions. Does it have a particular significance? Tony

Quite right, B.E. I've edited the posting to suit. And thanks for the kind remarks! Tony

Thanks, Gregor. And I really like the image on your membership photo: that's real protection! For me, I just wear a face mask when using the table saw. Tony

APOLOGIES TO THE EXPERIENCED: Please accept my apologies because, as usual, many of you on this forum will have been through all this and may regard it as somewhat basic. I am recording my experiences mainly for those, like myself, who are new to the game and no doubt have faced many of the same questions as I have when learning to make blocks. The blocks to progress Over the last few weekends, when I was able to get away from the demands of work, I concentrated on making blocks. The primary reason is that the guns have been made and they have been waiting very patiently for the gun tackle while I busied myself making a ship’s boat (and on which I continue to work). The secondary reason is that the skill of block making is going to be very useful for the rigging and for any future model as well. So I thought I might as well spend time to get it right. And time it has been taking. There were three main elements that slowed me down: The first was the simple one of trying to make blocks of a reasonably identical shape and size. The second was trying to make the holes in the double blocks parallel. The third was finding out how to use the circular saw properly. An accurate block? Starting with accuracy of size, I made a CAD drawing in TurboCAD of a double block according to the recommendations in Zu Mondfeld. This was scaled to 1/64 and long lines of them printed. I had been thinking that by doing this it would be easy to drill the holes for the rope in the correct position, accurately and in perfect line using my small drill and drill stand. All it would take then would be to saw them off and sand them. So a line from the printed sheet was then stuck (using Elmer's Rubber Cement) to a strip of hardwood that had been cut to the right dimensions with my circular saw. For the hardwood I was using old oak floorboards that I’d picked up off a street near our home as I reckoned I’d be making many mistakes and didn’t want to waste anything expensive. This proved to be a good call as there were a lot of attempts! After gluing the strip, the job was then to drill the holes and cut the blocks using my favourite small tool (a razor blade holder). You can see the sequence in the following photos. Not quite! Although this gave reasonable results, there were some problems. The main one was that I had cut no grooves to simulate the sheaves so the holes left the blocks looking a bit unrealistic. This partly resulted from my decision to orient the print out so that all the holes would be in line – something that was more to do with the fact that I was drilling the holes using my drill stand. I then found that my method of separating the blocks from the strip led to a problem with sanding the edges. After quite happily using the razor blade holder to separate the blocks from the strip, I found that sanding the blocks wasn't so easy as the wood often simply disintegrated. (I realised much later that this was primarily due to my choice of wood -- the floorboards were made of oak which at small scale is harder to work. You'll see that I returned to the simple slicing of blocks later on in the post -- although with a different orientation of the holes for the sheaves.) In order to avoid this my second attempt involved rounding the edges before separation using a triangular file between the blocks, then cutting with a razor saw. The results were really messy. The rubber cement I was using for the print out was not strong enough to withstand filing or sawing and although I got round this by making a mark with a scalpel, my filing was so inaccurate that I lost sight of where to cut. The fact was that the triangular file was at too great an angle and I hadn’t thought through the fact that there should be almost no angle between blocks when lined up side by side. I had overlooked the fact that all the sources that show how to make blocks from a strip of wood show them lined up end to end and not side by side as I had done. So my attempts thus far had been a failure – but I had learned from the attempts. I had also been wary of the traditional method which uses a table saw because I didn’t trust my accuracy with the table saw to cut the line for the sheaves. However, trying to use dividers to run lines down a strip of wood turned out to be a waste of time as the grooves were not at all distinct and it was very hard to keep the lines parallel. So should I buy the ready-made blocks? It was at this stage that I seriously considered buying ready-made blocks. Chuck’s looked oh so very tempting. But I said to myself that so many thousands of modellers previously had patiently made blocks for themselves, and if I didn’t do it I’d probably be losing an opportunity to learn a new and useful skill. Naw! Coward I am not! So I went back to the traditional method of lining the blocks end to end before cutting, and turned to the saw. As I have said, it had been something that I had been fearful of as I really didn’t believe I was capable of cutting the tiny grooves for the sheaves in those very narrow strips (2.5mm square) of wood. I made lots of attempts to run grooves down a strip with the saw, but they all ended in failure. It wasn’t until there was a discussion about the correct way to use a table saw on this forum (see the discussion that starts at http://modelshipworld.com/index.php?/topic/2470-microlux-tilt-arbor-saw-problems/#entry63704) that I finally learned the simple trick of using a featherboard clamped to the table top to hold the strip from the side. I also learned how important it is to cut strips on the side away from the fence. Once I’d grasped all that it was relatively easy. Nay. It was wonderfully exciting to discover I could do it properly! Re-thinking the block size I also made it easier for myself by thinking carefully about the size of the holes I’d be drilling and the rope I’d be using. The correct size for rope going through the double blocks on the guns is 0.25mm diameter. However, my saw blade size is 0.6mm, so any 'sheaves' I would make would have to be 0.6mm.That meant that I’d have to make a double block 2.7mm wide (two 0.6mm holes, 0.5mm between them, and 0.5mm on either side. Previously I’d been making 2.5mm wide blocks. I reckoned that although my blocks would be slightly oversize at scale, such a discrepancy would hardly stand out against all the other discrepancies from perfection in my build. Far more important for me at this stage is to get the hang of basic skills and allow time to improve them. The featherboard The following shows the simple featherboard clamped to the table and holding the strip against the fence. I made the clamp from a couple of 6mm bolts I found in my spares box and a bit of pine from that continuing wonderful wood source – the streets round my home. You’ll see some holes already drilled in the strip – this was because I’d already cut the grooves on both sides and was starting on the holes before I remembered to photograph the process. This time the wood was boxwood – cut from an old boxwood ruler I bought on eBay (thanks to a tip from ‘Blue Ensign’ when I asked him about his sources of boxwood in the UK). One thing you'll want to note is the use of a strip of wet & dry paper which is glued to the underside of the featherboard clamp. This is not mentioned in the article posted by Mark Taylor in the discussion referred to above, but is important as it really holds the featherboard very firmly. For those wondering how I set the saw to a height of 0.5mm, I simply used the digital vernier caliper -- which I also used to determine the distance of the saw from the fence. …and is the Proxxon FET up to the job? No, stop right there. The question should be: am I up to the job? Just as an aside, there’s been a lot of discussion recently about the merits of the Proxxon FET table saw. I do realise it’s not as wonderful as the Byrnes saw but now I have come to understand how to use it, it really does do the jobs I have asked of it. Maybe a better way of putting this is that my skills are not up to the standard attainable with the Proxxon saw – so I doubt very much whether I’d be able to obtain better results with the Byrnes’ saw! The next stage is drilling the holes. I use a simple jig for the Proxxon Drill as you can see in the photo. It was while doing this that I found out that the grooves provided a natural way to place the drill bit – I could feel the drill bit sliding into the groove, so that told me exactly where to drill. The pencil marks on the top of the strip are there to show where to cut the blocks. You can see the strip with the drilled holes in the following photo: Cutting of the blocks Now for the cutting of the blocks. You'll now see that I reverted to the simple idea of cutting the blocks without trying to file the joins (the method suggested by many books). This is as suggested by Hubert at his site Wooden Ship Modelling for Dummies. Just before cutting, though, the corner edges of the strip were lightly sanded to save sanding them once they were cut. In order to cut the strips accurately, rather than using the hand-held razor blade holder I had used previously, just for fun I used the Proxxon drill with a small saw blade mounted horizontally in the drill stand. It was easy to set it all up so that the cut was vertical and at right angles to the end by using the marks on the cutting board as reference points. Most people will worry that the blocks would go flying off into the far corners of the room. This was easily avoided (i) by moving the saw slowly through the block, and (ii) by having double-sided sticky tape on a block of wood underneath (an idea I derived from something Hubert showed on his site (referred to above). Note in the second photo below that the vice is not square to the saw bit: this was just an error when setting up the photo. Having cut off the blocks, they needed to be sanded. I used Hubert’s method of gluing a strip of 400 grit wet and dry to a stick and sanding by hand. I had thought I’d try to build a drum sander, but instead decided to stick with Hubert’s method for the while. You can see the results in the following photos. You’ll notice that some blocks came out better than others: That's simply because my technique gradually improved between first and last! I still have to think how to finish them (oil, varnish) and also will now have to work out how best to add the strops and hooks. Oh, and I do realise that I made no grooves for the strops. That’s something I’ll reserve for the next set of blocks! It's not perfection, but the basics are now more in place than they were a month ago. That's it for now. Tony

Very interesting discussion about the channels. I hadn't seen it. Thanks for posting the link, Gregor. Have a good break! Tony

Wow!! I have just gone through the process of cutting out featherboards as in the article linked by Mark. I fixed one to the table surface to hold the wood from the side, and clamped one to the fence. The difference this has made is astonishing! I have perfect cuts every time now in pear and apple (the wood, that is, not the fruit), with no detectable difference in the width of the cut between front and back. No burn marks, and the wood comes out as though it's been planed. In addition I'm now quite comfortable with moving the fence less than a millimetre at a time -- though it's taken some time to learn the trick. I now really can see the potential of the Proxxon FET. Now I want to teach myself how to do the gratings as well continuing to figure out block making. Getting there, slowly but surely! Thanks again, Mark -- you've eased my path! Tony

Well done! (and I hope you don't take that as an excessively used meaningless phrase!). Looking forward to the resumption. Tony