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Kevin-the-lubber

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Everything posted by Kevin-the-lubber

  1. Kevin-the-lubber
    That's a good suggestion, thanks. I'm kind of hoping that someone, after they've stopped rolling around at the floor with laughter, is going to show me a simple way that everyone else uses.
  2. Kevin-the-lubber
    Some quick pics of the jig I made for reefing the deadeyes (if that's the correct term). It is basically three bars of plastic with recesses for the deadeyes at the correct spacings vertically and horizontally on the outer two. It uses Vee shapes to align the bars. When finished reeving you'd slide out the centre bar and extract the deadeye assemblies. The bars are held together by a socket thing at each end, one of which can go in a vice. It works okay but I had to thread the deadeyes first as they otherwise fall out of the jig. V2 will probably have clamping bars to hold them in place, but the third hand may work better and just use this to get them all levelled. You can see how I trashed the paintwork doing this. And also how abs-like resin starts to distort after a day or so.
  3. Kevin-the-lubber
    I did wonder if it was someone on here 🙄. I already have the one for Victory so will probably just sell on the spare and the Mayflower as I doubt I'll ever look at that.
  4. Kevin-the-lubber
    I’ll post my version 1 jig this evening after work (how I envy you retirees), it’s along the same lines as yours. On my first ever attempt this weekend, reeving the lanyards was quite easy, using a needle threader, it was stropping to a shroud that I found hard, as the deadeye has to be correctly orientated to the shrouds centreline. I’m sure people can tell us easier ways but for now I’m thinking of making a little tight fitting toggle to snug up the shroud on the deadeye while I wrap thread around it. I realised too that I’ll need a serving machine straight away whereas I’d thought that would still be months away. And that I’d better get a handle on the terminology as it’s like a foreign language at the moment.
  5. Kevin-the-lubber
    I think you’ll be fine with any resin at this size, but personally, for this I’d use syratech fast, because it doesn’t seem to warp over time. I’m sure there will be plenty of other resins equally suitable that I haven’t yet tried, so don’t take that too literally.
  6. Kevin-the-lubber
    Ps. I got a copy of Hackney on eBay today, all three in the series actually; Cutty Sark, Victory, Mayflower. Published by Haynes, presumably of Haynes Manuals fame. Boy does that bring back memories, of buying motorbikes and cars where having the Haynes manual thrown in would seal the deal. And needing them too.
  7. Kevin-the-lubber
    I can’t remember the scale of your galley but if the oar shafts are anywhere above about 2mm diameter I think even syratech fast would be plenty strong enough. This is what I’ve used for the final catheads, where the whiskers are only 1mm. They make a much stronger ‘industrial grade’ resin called syratech blue, pricey though. I haven’t tried that yet. In some ways resin is a little like glass or carbon fibre; incredibly strong until it pops. I don’t think ABS-like would be the way to go for oars, you want them to be pretty rigid. Re’ the sails, yes, probably a series of fairly shallow arcs, with the canvas quite bunched up. Another way of looking at it is that I want sails but don’t want them spread, in part to avoid running rigging but mostly because it blocks the view.
  8. Kevin-the-lubber
    I’m glad you mentioned that. There are 2mm deadeyes on the pinrails and this is as small as I’ll go. So what I probably need to do now is work out the sizing using 2mm at the top and scale to suit working down. The real ship had loads of different sizes but it’s not realistic for me to try to replicate that.
  9. Kevin-the-lubber
    The third hand is a very good idea. I spent ages doing one pair last night using a jig I made, when the third hand would have been better. I’ll have to find mine.
  10. Kevin-the-lubber
    Yes, this is a 3mm size printed using a strong, slightly translucent resin. The strop bracket along with nut & bolt stand out more once painted, but are too small to really add to the model. I included them because it give more purchase for the pin.
  11. Kevin-the-lubber
    Great photo. It'd look like the cat had got at it so I definitely won't go down that tack. I guess I'll have to make my mind up about the sails sooner rather than later, to factor it into the workflow. Once I've resolved the deadeyes and pinrails etc, maybe I'll then start experimenting on sails. Meanwhile... inserting a pin into the lower deadeye works out fine. In this test both the pin and rope holes are a bit over-sized at 0.8mm, I wanted to see how far I could push it in terms of remaining wall thickness. The breaking strain is excellent, I had to pull quite hard and eventually the glue gives way. On the other hand, my first attempt at stropping the deadeyes through to a dummy shroud was another education. It came out fine, using 0.8mm rope for the shrouds, but I rubbed every scrap of paint off both deadeyes along the way. I think these might need to be enamelled before stropping (obvious I suppose, they'll be totally unpaintable afterwards).
  12. Kevin-the-lubber
    Not quite, but they still allow for the fact that you can't bend cables into a tight angle; my guess is that the diameter of the cables has been slightly reduced for today's display ship, to reduce the strain, and taking into account the masts are never going to be subjected to the stresses of being under sail. I wouldn't mind betting that those hearts/thimbles were in fact steel or even cast iron, but that is just a guess. Interesting, isn't it, that the modern equivalents are still called thimbles
  13. Kevin-the-lubber
    There's more; campbells forecastle protrudes further aft than revell, the capstan is further forward, and the catheads further back. I prefer campbells forecastle, to my eye it accentuates the sharpness of the bow profile. Even if Underhill was the definitive plan I think I would still go with campbell in this area, just for the aesthetics. However, the more you seek to work from these plans the more you realise they are representations rather than true plans. I have a feeling campbell didn't always take the trouble to measure things! For instance, the profile of the carrick bitts on both campbell and revell are out of proportion, they are wide skinny little things whereas the real mccoy are hefty chunks of (I assume) hardwood. Given what they do, you'd want them to have a bit of girth. To complicate things further, in Campbell's 'last of the famous tea clippers', his descriptions are based on the square cut forecastle, presumably underhills model; so I imagine the plans we all know and love are from a different time. In the same book Campbell shows a slightly different windlass to that on his plans or revell. So, I think it's really down to whatever you think is in keeping with your intent. I'll stick my neck out and suggest that clippers were no different to any other complicated machine in one respect; bits were constantly swapped, changed, ditched, added, as part of normal repair and maintenance and whatever we work from now is probably only ever a representation of how it was for a relatively short period.
  14. Kevin-the-lubber
    Shipman, I positively welcome it, and that of others. No, I don't think I'd like the flat, drying look. I think it would be hard to pull that off in such a way that it added to the vista, though I imagine someone, somewhere has done so. I'll stick with the plan, or at least head in that direction. I have my first play with PVA'd tissue paper/loo roll coming up shortly, for a tarp, so that should give me some idea whether I'll be able to do it.
  15. Kevin-the-lubber
    You've probably started a stampede for that chain 🙂. Periodically I go to the one remaining model shop in this neck of the woods, which fortunately is very good and covers everything imaginable. You could spend hours in there. Whatever I've gone for I graze as well, just to see what might come in handy, and you're right that there's a wealth of stuff for the model train community. Also RC planes and boats, some of which readily crosses over and is already well known to ship modellers i.e. silkspan, carbon fibre etc etc. It seems like mine is going to be a wool clipper - but only because I've stuck a load of wool bales in the main hold as cargo. I was going to put tea in there but tea chests at 1/96 just look like a miniature rubics cube.
  16. Kevin-the-lubber
    Shipman, you’re a goldmine of CS knowledge! Hemp-wrapped explains it. Even though the eyesight is not quite what it once was I’d expect to still be able to spot a hawser from a mile away. I can confidently say I’ll never take on any model less than 1:100. Even at this scale I’m challenged to make and use some parts, and grab every extra 0.1mm of size that I can justify. 1:168 would be a step too far. But I will see if I can get a copy of Hackney, I could do with something that explains things more succinctly and simply. KimW, you’re dead right that this kit lends itself to extra detailing, in part because there isn’t a heck of a lot to it so there aren’t too many critical dependencies I.e. you could easily lower the main deck without this throwing everything else out of kilter. I also have a second kit and, if I ever decide to use it, that’s where I’ll start. I don’t know how I’d make things like the cat heads and cat’s head without a resin printer though looking at the level of detail on Marc’s Soliel Royale (Hubacs historian), you could try carving them from styrene. I reprinted the cat heads assembly using a better type of resin this week and the whiskers are now much stronger. This was going to be the subject of my first foray into photo-stacking but I have a bit of learning to do there, it’s not as straightforward as I hoped. Now, I suspect I’m about to open a whole can of worms, but I’m still thinking of having furled sails hanging from the yards. I know furled on top is correct, Rob’s Glory had me noticing this more on historical photos, but models always used to have them underneath (didn’t they?) and, probably because that’s what my minds eye expects, I like that look. Is it simply incorrect, a fiction?
  17. Kevin-the-lubber
    There could be two things that I did wrong when I tried to clean the IPA. First, I used clear plastic bottles, second maybe I left it too late. One 2l bottle turned into an almost solid object. The others just didn’t work, I still had very cloudy IPA even after several weeks, with a lot of sludge in the bottom. I also tried filtering it through a double layer of coffee filter papers. Took ages. I’ll have to try again with glass, and also try using the wash and cure as described. I’d like to do it as much as anything because it feels bad to be putting this in the trash in a liquid state.
  18. Kevin-the-lubber
    That's more or less my plan. After testing the wire in the hole bit already and seeing how strong this is, I don't think it'll need glueing at the pin rail, just down at the bottom, which should mean the wire itself can flex at the pinrail and find the natural angle. Less risk then of the deadeye itself breaking, which is a real risk with very thing resin parts. That's the theory anyway, and I'll test this out over the weekend on a mock up.
  19. Kevin-the-lubber
    I've noticed that in the plans, but think I'll try rope. Not least because until I read that they were steel, after visiting the ship, it never occurred to me that they were anything but rope.
  20. Kevin-the-lubber
    Thanks again, and now I also understand the tpi. Gosh, I don’t think I’m going to bother getting that technical (the tpi), an ‘artists impression’ will do for me at this scale. Painting the strops is going to be hard enough.
  21. Kevin-the-lubber
    Thanks everyone, much appreciated. So for the lower gangs, roughly 0.5mm +/- 0.1 should be fine. I bet I find it printed loud and clear the next time I look at a plan or reference.
  22. Kevin-the-lubber
    That looks good. The white panelling gives it a bit more shape than the all teak scheme. I've asked over on my log but hope you dont mind me asking here too - what size rope should be used for threading the lower deadeyes?
  23. Kevin-the-lubber
    I'm falling at the first hurdle today: I need to do a test piece of setting up the deadeyes for the lower shrouds. Can anyone tell me what size rope should be used for the deadeyes, and how I could have readily figured that out for myself? I have plans and reference material galore, so must be missing something. I know the sizes for the shrouds, just not the rope that connects the deadeyes to each other.
  24. Kevin-the-lubber
    I suspect most of us make almost all of these mistakes early on, I certainly did! I hadn’t thought of adding a scrap print when cleaning the FEP, that’s a good idea. Elegoo’s have a ‘tank clean’ function that prints a thin raft across the whole FEP for removing failed prints and I now always use this rather than trying to pop them off by hand. It also saves having to drain and clean the tank. I don’t change the IPA after each print session, that would become way too expensive but also way too annoying. I keep using it until the prints are starting to have a residue on their surface, then for a while I rinse them in a smaller tub of clean IPA, and then eventually I replace the dirty IPA. I tried both filtering and sunlight cleaning, neither were very successful. At some point I’ll probably buy another washing tank and do a two stage clean, first wash while dirty, second to remove any fine residue.
  25. Kevin-the-lubber
    Bill, I think modelling is just like the trades; when you know exactly what you’re doing from the outset, you do it all way quicker and better, and it wouldn’t surprise me if you got to rigging stage on another Cutty in a week or so, given the speed you work at. But everyone, no matter how good, seems to spend ages on the rigging. If I was to start over, one thing I would do is lower the main deck.

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