grsjax

I use a piece of wood with a sheet of 6000 grit sandpaper glued to it for touch ups. Put a drop of oil on the sandpaper and use it like a stone.

1/4" or 3/8" MDF works great. Very smooth and hard. Paint it a light color to protect the surface from liquids and you are ready to go.

I am interested in finding information on American sailing barges. I already have a lot of info on the San Francisco barges as they are well documented and there are some still afloat. However barges from other parts of the country are harder to find data on. "American Small Sailing Craft" by Howard Chapelle has a little on gulf coast barges and I have found mention of barges in Maine and on the Chesapeake but little else. Sailing barges were a major contributor to water transportation in the U.S. before the wide spread introduction of steam and I would like to know more about them. History, plans, pictures or anything else anyone can direct me to would be appreciated.

Gravers used by jewelers are also a good tool for doing fine carving. They come in different shapes and can be found fairly inexpensively on ebay and Amazon. This is a cheap set from Amazon.

Cherry and holly. Oil or poly for a finish.

As said the price of chisels and planes has a relationship to the quality. However what is important is the quality of the steel used. I purchased a set of cheap chisels to use for rough work and found that although the finish was poor the steel was very good. After reworking the cutting edges and sharpening they turned out to be very good chisels. The set of 5 chisels cost me about $5 at HF on sale. Take away here is that if you are on a budget and willing to do some work on the chisels and plane irons you can get some decent tools at low cost.

lots of experience and patience were the major tools used.

All true. However there is a big difference between a Harbor Freight machine and LMS or MM machine. The difference is in the quality control. The Sieg factory will manufacture a lathe or mill to what ever level of precision a customer wants. HF buys run of the factory machines that may or may not have been assembled and checked adequately. MM and LMS buy machines manufactured to their specs and check the QC themselves resulting in a much better product. Not to say these machines can't be improved but out of the box they are pretty good. My MM lathe has hand scraped ways and came needing only minor adjustments to be up and running. Your observation that you always need a bigger machine for something is very true. That said it is a good idea to get a machine that will both do precision work and can handle larger pieces (with in reason). I don't think I could reliably do 1/10000" work on my lathe but with the proper setup I could handle 5/10000". But then how often do you need that kind of precision? 1/1000" difference is to small to see with the naked eye and would be more than adequate for model building. Another thing I like about the larger machines is that you can easily modify them to improve performance. Low cost mods like swapping the roller bearings in the head stock for tapered roller bearings is an example. Also the Seig 7x lathes can cut left handed threads and with a few extra change gears can cut threads from 4/in to 240/in. I haven't seen any of the small machines that can do either. An alternative to the Seig lathes are the older Atlas/Craftsman 6" lathes. They can be found for sale (at least here in the states) for reasonable prices.

Size but also power. A Sieg 2x mill, which is what both the MM and LMS machines start as, can handle cuts in hard materials that a small machine like the Sherline or Proxxon simply cannot do. If all you are ever going to do is take light cuts on soft brass, aluminum and wood one of the smaller machines will work fine. If you want to work in steel, cast iron or even some of the really hard woods like ebony you want a machine that can do the job faster and easier. For making small parts for a model I guess it really isn't important but when it comes to making jigs and special tools you will want the size and power of the larger machine. Same applies to the lathes.

Excellent mill. There lathe is also very good. Chinese lathes and mills can be pretty bad but if you get one from a reputable dealer like Micromark or Little Machine Shop you will be getting a good machine. In addition the Chinese machines will be far more capable than the sherline, taig or proxxon products.

Could just be decorative.

Billings makes good kits but from my experience they do not have instructions that will help out a beginner. You might want to check out Model Shipways as they generally have great plans and instructions with their kits. If you can find one, a Midwest apprentice series kit is a good warm up for a more complicated build. I would suggest the crabbing skiff or one of the other open boat kits they make (or used to make, I heard they recently went out of business but there still seems to be lots of them on ebay).

Generally copper was laid over a layer of felt saturated with tar. Could be what you see is the felt/tar layer before the copper plate is applied. Just a guess.

The Proxxon is a fine saw but limited in size. If that is all you will need it is a great pick. However for about half the price ($155 from Amazon) you can get the Skil 3386 9" band saw that will be much more capable. Just my preference but I like to get a tool with more power and capacity than I need so that in the event I want to do more demanding projects I will have the tool available.

A table top bandsaw sounds like what you are looking for. The offerings out there range from excellent to awful so do your homework before picking which one you want to go with. Price isn't always the best indicator or value. Look for good used ones. Many people do not realize that a bandsaw needs to be tuned up before it will do precision work and get frustrated resulting in selling a near new saw for a low price. For fine work you can get blades down to 1/16" and even a small saw should be capable of handling a 3/8" blade for ripping.

Check out a beading tool catalog. Lots of small tools for holding and working on beads make great tools for working on blocks and deadeyes. Jewelry and watch making tools are probably in every ones modeling tool chest already.

Not to high jack the thread but those are not windows but decorative panels.

Cherry looks good on hulls but has a reddish tint so may not be what you are looking for. Stained basswood can look very nice and if you can find a good straight grained walnut it looks great.

Keep checking ebay. They show up from time to time, sometimes are real low prices.

Thanks Mark I did finally find an explanation of the terms aft and fore contours. These are the line of the stem and transom in the x-y plane. Not sure if that is correct. I will check out the article.

I have recently started messing about with Delftship and have a question. In the offset table it asks for aft and forward contour lines. Not really sure what this is supposed to be. Can anyone illuminate this for me?

An easily portable DIY surface plate can be made from a piece of granite counter top. It will not be perfect but for model building use is more than adequate. Check with someone that does kitchen renovations to find a piece of granite.

Don't know about the value but it looks like a nice kit. If the wood has been stored in a heated space all this time the wood has probably dried out to the point of being brittle. This may cause you some trouble when it comes time to cut and fit the pieces. You could try re-hydrating it with warm water or using dilute white glue to soak the wood. The glue will help to strengthen the wood and make it less likely to split.

Phosphoric acid is a common one. Probably other chemicals as well.

I find building the hull, particularly the back bone and frames to be what I enjoy most. Rigging can be interesting and challenging but I see it more as work than pleasure. Painting is my least favorite activity.