Dr PR

I use a quilting iron - made for ironing narrow "tabbing" around the edges of quilting pieces. It works great for taking the wrinkles out of silkspan - they recommend the lowest heat setting for the silkspan. The quilting iron is also excellent for bending wooden planking. https://modelshipworld.com/topic/19611-albatros-by-dr-pr-finished-mantua-scale-148-revenue-cutter-kitbash-about-1815/?do=findComment&comment=1039363 https://modelshipworld.com/topic/37060-uss-cape-msi-2-by-dr-pr-148-inshore-minesweeper/?do=findComment&comment=1075263

I would find it more useful if it went down to 0.5 mm (0.020") and 0.25 mm (0.010").

AKA leading platform. Very nice work!

That is an interesting assembly! Looks like the main body could be one large piece wrapped around at the front, with top and bottom pieces added. Then you would just need to add the "fins" and "C" pieces on the sides. If you are worried about the solder stain around joints you could just flow solder over all of the surfaces. Then everything would be "stained." That would give the model an impressive golden ram. But it would use a lot more expensive solder.

JM, 2D files are usually just lines and maybe planes. These are zero thickness objects and cannot be converted to STL (or any other 3D file). You will have to redraw the objects, creating 3D solids. If you do create 3D solids DWG files (with no 2D objects like lines and planes) they can be converted to STL or OBJ files that can be printed. 2D and 3D drawing have almost nothing in common. 2D drawings are made on a virtual flat surface, like sketching on paper. 3D modeling happens in a virtual 3D universe NOTHING like the 2D plane. You have to build 3D objects like you would create real things out of wood, metal or clay. It is an entirely different working environment!

tmj is right about the solder stain on brass. Solder dissolves into the brass, so no amount of polishing can eliminate the solder color. I was curious how the people who make brass model train engines and cars manage to solder everything together without any visible solder stain. They use resistance soldering mostly for anything that will be visible after the model is finished. Very small (1 mm x 1 mm or smaller) bits of solder foil are sandwiched between the parts and the electrodes are connected/placed on the two parts. A quick zap of current through the pieces melts the solder and it flows into the joint but no where else. Maybe a tiny solder fillet is visible at the junction with a magnifier but otherwise no solder is visible. You can make your own solder foil by hammering ordinary round solder flat. It takes a lot of planning to make the brass parts fit tightly before soldering, but the results are beautiful. I have done something similar with an ordinary soldering iron where one side of the joint will be hidden inside the model. I just lightly tin each side of the joint to be soldered and then put the two pieces together and heat them until the solder melts. Sometimes I just clamp the two pieces together and brush some liquid citric acid based flux into the joint (I prefer this flux because it smells like oranges). Then I place some small diameter solder against the inside or hidden side of the joint and heat it with a soldering iron. The solder flows into the joint where the flux is but no further, with none visible on the outside or visible joint seam. But this can leave some solder stain on the inside where the soldering iron touched the brass.

This is a very pretty model and nicely built. I am enjoying your build and waiting to see how you make the masts and rigging.

I seem to recall reading somewhere that the copper plating fit between the keel and the wormshoe (false keel). The wormshoe was a sacrificial piece to protect the keel and was replaced when necessary. It looks like the bottom of the keel was coppered first, then the wormshoe was stapled to the keel. Then the copper plating was placed on the keel. I can't tell from the photos, but perhaps the angled strip along the joint between the keel and garboard strake is there, but under the plates on the keel and those on the garboard strake?

Mark, The 1/8 x 1/8 inch strips are boxwood. This could be anything since it is hidden inside the deckhouse. The deckhouse sides and decks are SIG 1/16 inch plywood - I don't know what type of wood. The deck planks are 1/16 x 1/16 inch strips. That is to scale, but is pretty small. Nibbing will be pretty tricky. The grout was 1/4 inch (6 mm) on the ship. That comes out to about 0.005 inch at 1:48 scale. I think thin black paper would make a nice clean grout, but that means working with a LOT of thin paper strips! I did this on the schooner build. I have experimented with pencil on the sides of the strips, but it is inconsistent and pretty lame looking. Of course I could use some of the original calking goo we used on the Cape - I saved some in a bottle for use on models, and I even planked a model ship deck with it back in the 1970s! But it is extremely messy. No thanks, once is enough!

I have some progress to report. I have installed the planksheers and nibbing strakes, and framing for the deckhouse. The planksheer forms the outboard edges of the decking. It is wide up forward where the bulwark frames attach to the planksheer. Aft of the bulwark the planksheer is narrower. Inboard of the planksheer is a separate nibbing strake that the deck planking is nibbed into. This strake is the same width fore and aft. The deckhouse framing is 1/8 x 1/8 inch (3.2 x 3.2 mm) basswood strips glued to the plywood subdeck. My plan is to lay the 1/16 inch (1.6 mm) deck planks against the frame. Then the 1/16 inch (1.6 mm) thick deckhouse side bulkheads will be glued to the frame and deck planks. The final touch will be a 1/32 x 3/32 inch (0.8 x 2.4 mm) trim piece around the base of the deck house sides. This arrangement is convenient because I will not have to be too careful in cutting and shaping the ends of the deck planks or the base of the bulkheads. The trim piece will hide any small irregularities. Actually this trim piece should be almost triangular, with the apex at the top against the deckhouse sides. On the real ship the deck house sides rested on a trapezoidal base piece that rested on the deck planks (they extended into the interior of the deck house). If I can figure out a consistent way to reshape the trim pieces so the top is narrower, almost coming to a point, I will try to do this to mimic the original look. I have extra trim strips to experiment with. Murphy has already had a hand in this build (somehow this seems appropriate for the Cape). I made a 2D CAD drawing of the deck and deckhouse, and printed a paper template of the deck house and a frame scale. I used the frame scale to mark the centerline and frame positions on the sub deck and then positioned the deckhouse paper template so I could draw the outlines on the deck. But after I had done this I realized that the deckhouse was almost 1/4 inch (5 mm) too long! I checked all the CAD drawing dimensions against the blueprints, and they were OK. So I printed another template and it was too long! This was getting annoying, so I started looking at everything to find the problem. It was the printer driver! In the past the print scale has been saved with the drawing file - in this case it should be 1:1. But somewhere along the line (I recently installed a new driver for the Brother printer) this got set to "fit to page" in the driver, and the space between print margins on a 8 1/2 x 11 inch sheet is about 1/4 inch wider than the actual length of the deck house. And to complicate things more I had made a mistake in the spacing between two frames on the printed frame scale, and this compounded the error! If you look closely at the photos you can see multiple lines drawn on the subdeck. With the correct frame scale drawn on the deck, and the correct scale deckhouse template everything seems to be working out correctly now. There is an interesting problem where the wide and narrow plankshear pieces are scarfed together midships. The forward planksheer is the same width as the after planksheer and nibbing strake, as shown in this picture. The forward nibbing strake overlaps the after nibbing strake. The blueprints show the deck planks nibbed into the two nibbing strakes here, and even possibly into the aft end of the forward planksheer. This isn't shown clearly, and the drawing notes say nothing about this. The deck planks are parallel to the center line (the blueprint notes are clear about this) and not curved along the deck edge, So there will be some long nibs here, in a pretty complex pattern. Right now I don't know how this will turn out!

Paul, It is hard to say how close the deck color in the photos is to reality. These were old color slides and there was some slight greenish color shift. That was corrected in the edited version I posted. It had rained (or heavy fog) the day I took the photos so the deck was damp, and that can cause the wood to appear a darker color. But it is clear that the decks had not been scrubbed or holystoned and bleached in a LONG time - if ever. It was a working ship and a lot of dirt and tree bark must have been ground in to the wood over the years. Scrubbing the decks to satisfy some admiral probably was never done! Also, I don't know if the museum had applied any type of coating to preserve the wood. On the other hand, since we will never know what the actual color was, using the color in the photos is a step better than a wild guess!

Jo, Thanks. I hope some of it is helpful.

Paul, Maybe it is because I have walked the Wapama's decks and am very fond of this ship, I would vote for painting the model. The fully detailed and realistically painted model is as close as we can get to visiting the ship now.

If the fiber optic isn't bright enough you could buy some small surface mount LEDs. Glue them on a thin wood strip (paper or any non-conductor) end to end, cathode to anode. Then add a drop of solder at the ends to connect them. Do it quickly and the wood/paper won't scorch too much. LEDs have a certain voltage drop each at the design operating current. Just divide your power supply voltage by the LED voltage drop to get how many LEDs you should put in series in a single circuit. Add a current limiting resistor somewhere it the circuit between the LED strip and the power supply. You can experiment to control the brightness (and the amount of heat generated) by varying the series resistor. At larger scales you can glue a thin white translucent plastic strip over the LEDs to diffuse the light and complete the "fluorescent" lighting fixture.

Without sails the jackstaff is most appropriate.