grsjax

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.

Dremel makes a router table that is cheaper but does not hold the tool as securely. Here is a link to a DIY router table made from plywood. http://lumberjocks.com/projects/87681

Any of the MS kits will have excellent instructions. The "Willie Bennett" is an excellent introduction to model building. For a less ambitious build try one of the Midwest apprentice kits, level one or two. Good instructions, make a good display model and are not going to break the bank. I believe the Midwest kits are no longer manufactured but can be found on ebay all the time. A final thought. Look for something that interests you and do not start with something that has a lot of rigging required. Rigging can be the most frustrating of operations and the more you have to do the more likely you will decide not to do it.

Lusci's book is available in English here; http://www.bookfinder.com/search/?ac=sl&st=sl&ref=bf_s2_a1_t1_1&qi=,,0mGmG7PqYlcv9692zyzdax,6U_1466387445_1:418:2041&bq=author%3Dvincenzo%2520lusci%26title%3Dlusci%2527s%2520ship%2520model%2520builder%2527s%2520handbook Can't help you with the plans.

Box, pear and apple are the premier woods for all parts but expensive and sometimes hard to find. Low end is basswood for everything. Works well but has its own problems. I like cherry as a good all around wood that is both available and affordable. Maple is also an excellent choice. Walnut can be a bit difficult to work with as it has a somewhat open grain but looks really good. I would go with maple for framing and decks, cherry for planking.

Old kits are worth what someone is willing to pay for them. Sometimes you will see a kit on ebay go for a high price but other times you will see the same kit go unsold for a long time even if the kit is priced low. Only way to know for sure is to list the kits and see what happens. One thing to look at are the plans in the kits. A good set of plans suitable for scratch building might be worth more than the kit.

What I do is clean with acetone or alcohol to remove grease, oil, etc. Dip in vinegar to etch and then use blacken-it or similar product. The blackening gives a good surface for paint adhesion but can darken light colors. If you don't want to blacken the parts leave in the vinegar longer to give a good etch to the surface. Rinse with clean water and either use acetone for fast drying or lay on a paper towel to air dry before painting.

There are some steamboats in the HAMMS collection but I believe they are all late 19th, early 20th century. The National Archives probably have some drawings of snag boats and push boats used by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers on the western rivers.

I believe the boats used by the British on the Tigris and Euphrates were the Insect class gunboats as well as barges and other local craft that were available. I can't remember where I saw it but there was a book on the the first world war in Mesopotamia that has several pictures of the British boats on the rivers.

Just picked up a Billings Boat Viking ship model kit. This is an older kit and Billings may have made some changes but the box it came in was terrible. The model was fine and the instructions were the typical Billings mix of good drawings and poor directions but the box was inexcusable. It was a flimsy box that only opened from the ends. A flimsy box was bad enough but only opening from the ends was worse. Any time you need to get a part out the box you end up taking everything out because you can't see what you are looking for. How much trouble would it be to use a decent two piece box?

I saw the build logs for the Woody Joe kits and they are great kits. However they represent a small selection of small water craft from one area. I would like to see some from other areas. Korea, Vietnam, China, India, Arabia, all have interesting ships that you rarely if ever see models of.

JohnE has a good point about Euro ships but an even bigger lack in the market are Asian ships. The ships of Asia were amazing pieces of technology. Some were as long as 400 feet and they sailed long distances. Be nice to see some of the Chinese, Japanese, Indian and other Asian ships represented in the market.

Small to medium size work boats and merchant vessels. Preferably POF. something that has not been done to death already. Fishing boats from anywhere, small sail and steam merchantmen that worked the small ports rather than the big ocean freighters like clippers and downeasters. The work a day steam boats that far out numbered the big show boats. Better plans and documentation, better quality wood, cast fittings that are well made, no plastic unless there is no other way to do the job, models of boats that were real or at least conform to what a real boat of the type and time would look like.

Depends on the ship and type of gun. Guns may have been made of iron or brass (actually bronze) and a ship might have both kinds aboard. However it was common practice to paint guns black to make maintenance easier. Bronze guns are a bear to keep shiny in a marine environment and unprotected iron will rust quickly. I am sure there were captains that insisted on keeping all that bronze nice and shiny but most would take a practical approach and keep them painted.

Depends, the same manufacture may put out kits of several models that range from excellent to poor. I would suggest that you narrow your discussion of what you looking for to a specific ship type, mode of construction and scale. That will reduce the number of factors that have to be considered. Another factor is cost, do you want the best low cost kit or the best kit money can buy? There is a world of difference between the best, highest quality model of HMS Victory and the best, highest quality Banks Dory.

Try using copper foil. Blacken it and glue to the head of the post.

Since no one else has answered I will take a shot at it. Swivel guns were mounted on stout posts bolted to the frame of the ship. I believe they were at least 6x6 inchs and has a metal cap on the top to mount the gun. The cap was there to prevent the post from splitting from the stress of the recoil.

Rifflers are just curved files. Real jewelers files are much better quality than the ones you find in hobby stores and websites. The thin edge file you describe is a feather file.

1x7, 1x19 and 7x7 strand wire rope in sizes down to .008" diameter is available from fishing gear suppliers. Great stuff for making wire rigging and other things require wire rope. Here is a link to one place that sells it. There are others including Amazon. http://www.afwhiseas.com/Micro-Uncoated-Stainless-Steel-Trace-Wire-Bright-s/2022.htm http://www.afwhiseas.com/Micro-Uncoated-Stainless-Trace-Wire-1-x-19-Bright-s/2227.htm

I believe you are correct but the models seem to be available. Ebay always seems to have a lot of them listed.

The Midwest apprentice series are good kits to start with. The Skiff is the simplest but provides a good introduction to basic modeling skills. A little more complex but still straight forward is the Hampton Flattie or the Chesapeake Crabbing Skiff.

A battle cruiser is a battleship with less armor. The idea is that it could outrun anything it couldn't fight and beat anything it couldn't outrun. Jutland sort of ended this idea although it stuck around until WWII. An armored cruiser is just that, a cruiser with more armor. Originally there were light cruisers, protected cruisers and armored cruisers. Light cruisers were essentially large destroyers used for scouting and screening the fleet. Protected cruisers were heavier but did not have much armor, the protection was from placing the coal bunkers and water tanks around the machinery and other vulnerable spaces. The armored cruisers were armed much like the protected cruisers but had heavier armor. Protected cruisers were used like big gunboats, show the flag missions, isolated postings with limited possibility of encountering a heavily armed enemy and as flag ships for detached squadrons. Armored cruisers worked with the fleet. This is just a quick view of a subject that is really pretty complex. The history of warship design from the 1870s up to WWII has many examples of ships that do not fall into any defined catagory but are lumped in with catch all groups like "protected cruiser". An interesting thing is the last of the battle cruisers were the USS Alaska and USS Guam. The were designed as flag ships for fast carrier squadrons and combined fleets. They were launched in1944. The Navy called them large cruisers but their designation was CB (battle cruiser) and they match the original idea of what a battle cruiser was. Both were laid up in 1947 and scraped in 1960.

Koa is a beautiful strongly figured wood that is mostly brown. However the color can vary between light brown to deep red/brown. Cypress and mahogany are probably to coarse grained to give the right look at a smaller scale. You might want to consider a finer grained wood and use a dilute mahogany stain to get the color right. the harder types of basswood or poplar might be good choices or possibly birch. Another way would be to use koa (it is available mail order from Kamuela Woods in Waimea, Hawaii). The grain would still be to coarse but the use of the original wood would look really cool.

My personal experience is that using a sanding sealer prevents the grain from lifting during sanding resulting in a better surface. I haven't any problems with the finish as a result but I generally use a water based sealer with water based finishes.