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reklein

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Posts posted by reklein

  1. I have quite a bit of experience with AYC as I lived in Sitka Alaska for 30 years. Its quite common there but large clear trees are hard to find. Its also the area Sitka spruce comes from and has supplied the aircraft and music instrument busines probably since WWI.

     AYC is very nice to carve but it is fairly hard. The growth rings don't have that marked hardness that some types of red cedar do. A problem with it is that the dust from sanding can be a real irritant to the skin and mucus membranes. It used to raise little blisters on the sides of my fingers. It takes detail really well. Also because ts a little oily it doesn't stain well and some types of paint don't adhere well.

  2. The plywood mount is a clamping device. See the screw heads exposed in the end view? That birch plywood is very good material for jigs. Its much more dense than construction grade ply and it has no voids. Weighs twice as much or more than the same thickness of const. grade. This seems to be a pretty good idea. I need to make a similar device to hold one of the small slow turning screwdrivers to use for drilling styrene as a Dremel is so fast that it melts the plastic at high speeds and has a lack of torque at slow speeds.

  3. I'm a fan of making masts from straight grained square stock. Its the only way you can get a predictable taper. Mark the center of you spar on the end with a dot. Then taper the spar equally on four sides keeping your center dot in the middle. Then carve your tapered square stock into an octagon, again keeping your dot centered. Once you have an Octagon its easy to sand it round,and did I say keep the dot centered. Its pretty toough to taper bamboo although its true that its strong. Id recommend basswood just be sure of the straight grain. As you care the wood ,you can use a knife or a small spoke shave. There will be some grain direction so if the blade wants to dive into the wood revserse the direction of carving.   Good luck anyway, and replacing weak plastic aint a bad idea but proper rigging can strenghthen it just as on a real ship.   Bill

  4. I like the ships from that era,they all have a nice traditional shipshape look to them. I spent 9 months on the USS Intrepid,Aircraft carrier and mustered out of the Navy after another year on the USS Yosemite AD-19,destroyer tender. Basically a floating machine shop. Something about haze gray.  Bill

  5. I'd recommend  CA  also. You'd just be going round in circles trying to solder and resolder joints However you should be able to find a 12 watt soldering iron online. Used for soldering tiny LEDS. Things would need to be jigged up to hold while soldering which you probably know already.   Bill

  6. Hey Nils, Nice work. My wife , a business secretary calls those "bagfeet" , brads. In her business they are used to fasten the pages of a multi paged document together. Thats a pretty clever use you have made of them for your bowls.  Bowels are our intestines. Sorry to be so picky, I speak about 6 words of German so I can only wish my language skills were as good as yours.   Bill in Idaho

  7. You can knock down the shininess of you decals by giving them a coat of Testors dullcote lacquer. Better try a sample piece first.  Bill

    Stickers eh? Well all bets are off on the dullcote, I have no experience with trying to dull stickers. A guess, maybe a sanding with 400 grit paper.  Bill trying to mind his own business in Idaho

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