reklein

Its a good picture of what a spiled plank should look like.

Tiny portholes are easily made by winding appropriate size wire on a mandrel of the correct size. Then cut off the tiny circles made and flatten them . Apply them to the side of your ship paint the ship,then paint black inside the circles, and put a tiny drop of CA in to simulate glazing. Eyebrows can be made in a similar way.

Tiny portholes are easily made by winding appropriate size wire on a mandrel of the correct size. Then cut off the tiny circles made and flatten them . Apply them to the side of your ship paint the ship,then paint black inside the circles, and put a tiny drop of CA in to simulate glazing. Eyebrows can be made in a similar way.

Its a good picture of what a spiled plank should look like.

Tiny portholes are easily made by winding appropriate size wire on a mandrel of the correct size. Then cut off the tiny circles made and flatten them . Apply them to the side of your ship paint the ship,then paint black inside the circles, and put a tiny drop of CA in to simulate glazing. Eyebrows can be made in a similar way.

Ok...last photos of this guy...I took 15 min to splash a little color on him...

Ok, so I picked up a few prints and after a quick trimmimg of supports and no further clean up....... Here is the test 28mm figure ( 32mm and 35mm coming later this week ) The detail is quite good, rather hard to see here, and perhaps I will try an ink wash to show the recesses a bit better.
 
-Joe

Last year I was approached by Katya, a Teacher in a School in Murmansk. She asked if I could help her with some of my paintings of Russian Convoys, for a project she was doing with her pupils for the School Museum. She contacted me through the Dervish75 events which Greta and I Attended. Anyway, today I received a letter with a Christmas Card from her, along with the end result of the project. A small folder with photos of my paintings. It is to be used to promote the School's Museum.
A small thing but a little sign of friendship by the ordinary people of both Countries. Only the angry sensational stuff reaches the media, while us ordinary folk get on with life.
Jim

Warping Engine
 
The Lib ships had a steam-powered engine on the after deck that was used to drive two capstan heads which were used to take the slack out of mooring lines or even to pull the ship into a pier if no tugs were available (the same thing could be done by the anchor windlass up forward). It was a simple two-step reduction gearing. Interesting feature was that there was no crankshaft - the piston rods were connected to the outer edges of two discs on the outside of the bedplate.

The kit provides a simple drum winch of britannia metal to serve as the warping engine. It is a little under scale for height and I thought I might be able to scratch build something more realistic. Here is the the kit and what I started out with:

 
 
Here’s after the gears (from a bag of old watch parts) , guards and shaft have been added:

And the finished product with the shaft supports. The capstans are after market from the Bluejacket catalog. The kit provided slightly smaller ones which I had planned to use but then I got careless while sanding them and squeezed one out of round too badly to repair, I forgot just how soft britannia can be.

Here it is installed on the model with the canted fairleads in place:

2 seats of ease for a hundred... requiring release from the stresses of their day....seams a bit short sighted.  On the designers part....
 
Your model is looking superb...
 
Rob

Happy is the miller who lives by himself
As the wheel goes round he's gaining in his wealth
one hand in the hopper and the other in the bag
as the wheel goes round he cries out GRAB !
Thats when you tickle the little kid you're singing the song too. Origin unknown. My father in law sang it to his daughter and we sang it to our kids and grandson

Many old printing facilities used grain up blocks for the floors around the presses. They absorbed spills and gave a good "foot" for the pressmen. 
The only problem was if they ever caught fire they were next to impossible to put out.
 
Bob Friedman

I put the gunports on the left, the left is working ..
 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Looks like a mini Shopsmith sorta. Good find.

Looks like a mini Shopsmith sorta. Good find.

Looks like a mini Shopsmith sorta. Good find.

Hi everyone,
 
If you read Nepean Longridge's classic book, The Anatomy of Nelson's Ships, you would have been intrigued by his description on page 49 of his beloved Midget Universal Woodworking Machine. He bemoaned the fact that it had stopped production before the war, and had reached out to the manufacturer. W.C. Roemer, to inquire if it might resume production. Roemer replied that he hoped to, if labor and material became available. But Longridge then noted that currency restrictions in Great Britain after the war would prevent purchasing this American made equipment anyway. I had never read of it anywhere else, so I assume Roemer was never able to start production again.
 
Longridge stated that if ever his machine were destroyed, the very first thing he would do would be to make another one.
 
I was always intrigued by Longridge's detailed description of this machine. I just discovered a photo of it, on a vintage machinery website. So if you were ever similarly intrigued, here it is:
 
http://vintagemachinery.org/photoindex/detail.aspx?id=7623
 
I am very happy with my Byrnes Model Machine tools, which probably work better in many regards than this all-in-one tool. But it is fun to see this earlier effort at tools for model makers.
 
Mark

Beautifully made Kortes

I can help you with the names in Dutch
It is :  Friesch boeierjacht Sperwer

"Friesch" comes from "Friesland", a province in the northern part of the Netherlands
"Boeier" is the type of ship that you make.
"Sperwer" is the name of the ship (a bird, sparrow)
 
 

I like Flexcut chisels. Good for what they are meant for. They do have a good feel in your hand. Be sure to get the Flexcut sharpening compound and strop to go with them for better luck in sharpening.

I like Flexcut chisels. Good for what they are meant for. They do have a good feel in your hand. Be sure to get the Flexcut sharpening compound and strop to go with them for better luck in sharpening.

I like Flexcut chisels. Good for what they are meant for. They do have a good feel in your hand. Be sure to get the Flexcut sharpening compound and strop to go with them for better luck in sharpening.

This ship has been patiently waiting on my desk as many other projects have gone by, I've made mostly aircraft models for awhile, but dusted her off and got to looking at some things bothering me about the model, so set to work on some ideas to improve, some painting and refreshing, but redoing the bulwark stantions was the main thing and with new color too the starboard side done..

PART 1: How to Spot a Bad Deal
 
Hey, there! It's Christmas time, and I am off work for two weeks. Hooray! I'm also out of town, so I don't have lots of time for modeling. What I do have time for is knocking around on the Internet, including doing some window shopping at eBay.
 
Ah, eBay ... once upon a time, not so very long ago, eBay (the Internet auction site) used to actually be a place where people disposed of unwanted stuff. It was like a gigantic yard sale. Back then, a person could find some real deals. But then someone discovered that they could make a lucrative career out of selling stuff on eBay, and now most sellers are either bona fide retailers or folks seemingly hell-bent on extracting retail prices (or higher) on yard sale merchandise. To borrow a line from Obi-Wan Kenobi, eBay has become a "wretched hive of scum and villainy."
 
Which brings me to the topic of this post. There are still a few good deals to be had on eBay, but you have to wade through a bunch of garbage to find them. Sadly, if you're new to this hobby, you may not know how to separate the true deals from the crazy efforts to simply part you from unjustifiable gobs of your money. So, I thought I would take some time and show you some real examples of the good, the bad, and the ugly of Internet auction site ship model kits. Are you game? Then let's get started!
 
1. First Things First: AVOID PIRATES LIKE THE PLAGUE!
 
Regrettably, eBay has become a haven for unscrupulous retailers with no regard for intellectual property rights. MSW considers these folks to be beyond the ship modeling pale (see topic here). The first thing to look for is the words "From China." If you see that phrase, then speedily move on!
 

 
2. Clueless Sellers
 
eBay is just chock-full of clueless sellers, i.e. people who are deeply ignorant of their kit's real value, as opposed to its imagined value. Have a look at the following example:
 

 
This seller is asking for a jaw-dropping US $1098.00 for a Constructo HMS Pandora. I happened to read elsewhere why this seller thinks that this kit is worth so much. They think that this kit demands a premium price because it is rare and out-of-production (OOP).
 
They are wrong.
 
If you're a newbie and interested in buying a kit off of eBay (or any online auction site, for that matter), you really need to do your homework beforehand. This seller didn't do his homework, and that's why he has attached a ridiculous price tag to this model. Here's some things you need to think about before hitting the bid button:
 
Is this a reputable kit manufacturer?
In this case, the answer is yes. BUT ... that doesn't necessarily mean that this is a good kit. Constructo makes kits, this is true, but they've never been considered one of the premier kit makers, and they're certainly not one of the innovators in our hobby, either.
 
WHY is this kit OOP?
If it's such a great kit, why did Constructo stop making it?
 
Consider this analogy: Chevrolet made over 2 million Vegas between 1970 and 1977. The Vega is now both OOP and (thankfully) rare. Chevy Vegas don't command premium prices because they are rare and out of production. Neither do Constructo kits.
 
3. Why Buy Used When You Can Get It New for the Same Price??
 
Some clueless sellers are easy to spot (like in the previous example) because they are asking way, waaaay more than what the kit is worth. Other sellers are clueless because they are asking the unwary buyer to pay as much for a used and possibly OOP or "new old stock" (NOS) kit as that same kit would cost new, like this one:
 

 
The first thing you need to know about this kit is that it is a Mamoli kit. Mamoli is out of business. The Mamoli line of kits, including Blue Shadow, is now being made and sold by Dusek. Word on the street is that the new Dusek versions are better than the old Mamoli versions. Worse still, this seller is asking for a starting bid of $175, which is about what a new Blue Shadow will cost you straight from Dusek (taking into account exchange rates and VAT), so why would anyone want to buy an older, lesser-quality version for the same price? Caveat emptor!
 
4. Yeah, It's "Vintage," But So What?
 
What do sellers really mean when they say that something is "vintage"? Vintage just means that something is old, but the word "vintage" has less of a pejorative connotation. Check out this example:
 

 
There's a reason why you don't see new Scientific wood model kits anymore: they're bad kits, comparatively speaking. Sure, they were okay back in the day, but kit design has progressed far, far beyond carved balsa hulls and printed or die-cut parts. Another reason to avoid "vintage" kits is that wooden kits don't age well like fine wines. Old kit wood gets dry and brittle. Old kits also usually have inferior fittings and instructions. Best to leave the vintage kits to the collectors.
 
5. Too Close for Comfort
 
Lastly, here's a sneaky example.
 

 
This one looks good at first glance. It's a current, well-designed kit from a reputable manufacturer. The "Buy It Now" price is $69 less than what the manufacturer, Model Expo, is asking for the same kit at their website. BUT ... Model Expo offers free shipping on orders over $150, and this seller doesn't. So the real difference in price (ignoring for now any promotions that Model Expo might be running -- they usually always have something going) is only $22.20. For that slight bit extra you'll get the peace of mind of buying direct from the manufacturer PLUS getting their iron-clad replacement guarantee for any missing or damaged parts. Suddenly that $350 price doesn't look quite so attractive.
 
So those are some examples of pitfalls awaiting unwary newbie modelers at eBay -- it's a dangerous e-commerce world out there! But fear not! In Part 2, I will show that there are still a few good deals to be found, even if they are now fewer and farther between.
 
Until then!
 

Filling the fore.

Really nice job you are doing here. Its great you have the luxury of visiting the prototype. I built Bluejackets Victory ship in the military configuration and had a tough time documenting the details. I'm happy with the results but could have done better.   Bill in Idaho