Dr PR

Welcome to the hobby! The problems you are encountering are things we have all been through. What is important is you are learning!

Eberhard, Thanks! But with your watchmaker's tools I think you could have done a much neater job.

Gaffrig, Thanks for producing the name. I have been trying to remember "breasthook" and it just kept eluding me.

I had that problem on my Albatross topsail schooner build. I just ran the gun port lid halliards over the rail and belayed them to cleats in the bulwarks.

The parts on the left are a "kit" to make one of these things (on the right). This is a 1:48 scale shipboard fire hydrant. I made the 3D model for my USS Oklahoma City 3D CAD model. I rescaled it to 1:48 for the Cape model and added a dual 1-1/2" hose attachment to the outlet as shown on the Cape blueprints. Once again this is pretty small stuff! I made all of the parts out of brass rod, tube and sheet. I count 22 individual pieces in all. At the top is a globe valve to shut off the flow of water. Then there is the larger strainer and collection part at lower right. Ships use sea water to fight fires, and barnacles and other marine growth form in the water intakes. This debris can clog the fire fighting nozzles, so a strainer diverts the garbage to the large collection part. The long handle opens a valve at the end of the strainer to flush out all of the debris onto the deck. The most difficult part was the conical strainer body. I thought about different ways to make it and decided to "machine" it out of a piece of 0.188 inch (4.8 mm) brass rod. While I was at it I decided to carve the globe valve discharge outlet and a couple of flanges from the same piece instead of trying to piece together multiple parts. I used my 3/8 inch (9.5 mm) "hand lathe" to make the part. This is an ancient 3/8 inch electric drill I purchased in 1972 after leaving the Navy. The bushings are shot but it is still useful as a poor man's lathe. This would have been a LOT easier with a real lathe!!!!! I used files and a thin curf saw blade to carve out the piece. You might think I was crazy to attempt to make this complex part using a hand drill instead of a real lathe. I would not disagree with that assessment! OK, I am crazy. But hey, it worked!! The rest of the assembly was made of 0.039 inch (1mm) brass rod, 0.0625 inch (1,6 mm), 0.091 inch (2,3 mm), and 0/125 inch (3,2 mm) brass tubing and 0.005 (0,127 mm), 0.010 (0,25 mm) and 0.015 inch (0,38 mm) brass sheet. I used an ordinary soldering iron and a resistance soldering station to assemble the parts. The resistance soldering tool has the advantage of focusing the heat in the places that the pieces fit together, and not heating the entire piece. Nevertheless, each of the 17 solder joints was reheated up to six times to allow the parts to be repositioned. This is the final assembly. It looks so good at arms length, and then I look at the macro photos and it looks like it was dredged up from the Titanic! This is the first finished assembly. Tomorrow I will make the second piece from the kit of pieces shown in the first photo. It took a day and a half to make this assembly, but that included making the parts for the second assembly. The second part should go faster. The entire thing was made by hand using a collection of drills and files to shape the brass.

You definitely need to put the hoops on the mast before adding details in the tops. I assembled the mast on my schooner model with the hoops in place and the tops rigged. The boom and gaffs were laced to the sail off the mast, and then attached to the mast. Then I tied the gaff sails to the hoops. That was tight work! I think it would be better to assemble the gaff sails to the boom and gaff, and tie the hoops to the sail. Then you can slip the hoops over the mast and attach the boom and gaff to the mast.

Years ago I bought out the small brass stock from a hardware store that went out of business. Some of it was K & S, but the really tiny stuff was from Special Shapes company. I guess they went out of business or were bought by another company because the web site no longer exists. They made brass shapes like "L", "H", "T" in dimensions down to 1/32 inch (0.8 mm) plus rods down to 0.010 inch (0.25 mm) diameter. I don't know of anyone making this small brass stock now.

I have used a acrylic sealer prior to painting wood with acrylic paints. I haven't noticed significant fuzz on basswood or boxwood. Of course, the purpose of the sealer is to fill and tiny cracks or grain, and it is always sanded afterwards to ensure a smooth surface for painting. FolkArt all-purpose sealer, satin finish

John, I think I will use thin cardboard for the hoses. It should fold easily and the somewhat fuzzy surface will resemble the hoses. Steve, Most of it will be hidden by the hoses.

I have been making some of the small detail parts. Some of these were fire hose racks. Drawings for these are in the blueprint set, so I didn't have to guess at the dimensions. Still, as I converted the 1:1 dimensions to 1:48 the actual size of these parts didn't sink in. It was only when I started cutting the tiny pieces out of sheet brass that I realized this would be a bit more challenging than I had anticipated. The plans call for 3/8 inch (9.5 mm) metal plate. That comes out to 0.008 inches (0.2 mm) at 1:48 scale. I decided to use 0.005 inch (0.13 mm) brass for the front "D" shaped pieces. But that stuff is pretty flexible, so I made the rectangular back plates from 0.010 inch (0.25 mm) brass. The part the hoses hang over was made from 0.091 inch (2.3 mm) brass tubing. This is a bit over the true scale 0.083 inch, but the 0.091 inch tubing was what I had to work with. Here are the finished hose racks. The 0.91 inch brass tubing was sawn down the middle to create "C" cross section half tubes. Four of them have 0.146 inch (3.7 mm) long pieces of half tubing. One has a shorter 0.094 inch (2.4 mm) hose support. The longer parts are for fire hoses, and the shorter one is for the fresh water connection hose to a shore supply. These things were a test of my patience! Getting one end piece soldered to the tubing was fairly simple, but I had to reheat each of them several times to reposition the tubing in the correct position on the end plate. But when I tried to solder the other end piece to the tubing the whole thing unsoldered and came apart. The wet solder stuck the parts to the tweezers and everything was a mess! But if first you don't succeed ... and as you can see I finally got them done. The key to success was using an ancient aluminum tweezer-type heat sink dating back to the days (1960s) when we soldered individual long lead TO-5 package transistors onto circuit boards. I had the old Radio Shack part in my tool box. When I clamped it to the tubing close to the already soldered end piece it absorbed the heat and prevented that solder joint from melting. Still, I had to work quickly, and had to repeat the process several times to get the second end piece in the correct position. It was slow tedious work. These things are ridiculously small! I have a partially assembled 1:96 scale model of the USS Oklahoma City CLG-5. Someday I want to resume that build. But it has dozens of small parts like these hose racks - but half the size! I think I will have to use 3D printing for that build, and I will need a much better printer that the one I currently have!

George, Good to see you back in the workshop. That is an interesting rig in the photo. I have seen it in books but this is the first model I have seen that has the mainsail with the diagonal spar. Harold Underhill calls it a sprit-sail rig (Sailing Ship Rigs and Rigging, Brown, Son and Ferguson, Ltd., Glasgow, 1969, pages 13 and 72). The diagonal spar is called a sprit. He shows the sail plan of a Thames sailing barge Lady Daphne with this rig. So it wasn't limited to the Mediterranean.

For what it is worth, on mid 20th century US Navy ships with wooden decks the planks were laid over steel decks, with short stub bolts welded to the deck (it was really nasty trying to walk on that deck after the planks were removed for replacement). The planks had small diameter holes half way through to fit over the bolts, with a larger diameter hole above that for the nut. Caulking was hammered around the nut and a wooden plug was hammered into the hole over the nut. The blueprints specified that the wooden plugs be cut from the same type wood as the planks, perpendicular to the lengthwise grain of the planks. This left the "side view" of the wood grain exposed on the ends of the plugs, and not the "end view". When the plugs were installed the grain on the top of the plug was to be aligned with the grain in the planks to make the plugs as invisible as possible. So the intent was to hide the plugs. You could see the plugs if you were standing directly over them, but they were invisible from one or two decks above. I suspect this same technique was used in the 19th century to bolt planks to steel ribbed hulls. However, trenails were cut with the grain, so the end grain is visible and distinct from the grain of the planks. Even so, on freshly cleaned (holystoned) decks the trenails would not have been visible from more than a few tens of feet (several meters).

Wefalck, Thanks! I am learning.

Today I added the "visor" or sun shade over the windows at the front of the O1 deckhouse. The parts were made from thin brass sheet. I used a new Photo Etched Parts Bender AB-4553 from joystarttools.com (China). I saw a smaller version of this tool recommended in another thread on the Forum. I got the larger version because I will need to bend some longer pieces when I get to the equipment on the after deck of the Cape. The tool is 5.52 inches (140 mm) on the long side, and the upper part can be rotated to use the long straight edge to bend parts almost 5.5 inches long. This was my first time using the tool and it worked as advertised. I made bends that were only about 1 mm (0.039 inches) wide. It was easy to use. The small triangular support pieces were made from 0.003 inch (0.09 mm) brass sheet. For the larger surface I wanted something a bit stiffer so I used 0.0065 inch (0.14 mm) brass. This was a bit less than the scale 3/8 inch plywood used on the ship - that would b 0.0078 inch (0.2 mm). The supports were soldered to the bottom side of the visor as shown on the photo right below. The 1 mm (0.039 inch) lip along the front edges of the visor stiffened the piece. On the real ship this was a strip of wood attached to the bottom front edge of the plywood visor. Here are a couple of photos showing the visor in place on the deckhouse. I have been looking forward to making this piece. It was practice using the bending tool. When I get around to making all of the minesweeping gear on the after part of the ship I will be bending a lot more small parts.

Vaddoc, I normally sand between paint coats because I use a brush and that can leave some brush marks. It also helps to make a smoother final finish. However, I used plywood for the deck house sides and tops on the Cape model, and it has some significant visible grain features even after I had sanded it smooth. Each coat of paint fills in a bit more, until the graininess is hidden. I used one or two coats of acrylic sealer, but this wasn't enough. You can see this on the lower deckhouse that hasn't been painted grey. With all the small details that have been added I won't be able to sand it anymore, so the final paint coat will be pretty thin, just to cover the scuff marks from the prior sanding and handling. Then a final coat of satin acrylic varnish will finish the paint job. I have already done this on the hull and main deck. In hindsight I suppose I should have used sheets of basswood for the deckhouses. The basswood I have has a much less grainy surface than the plywood.