Kevin-the-lubber

Looks like you’ll be back to having tradesman’s hands by the time you’ve got that finished Richard, that’s one big hull. But welcome back. I never understood tradespeople that ripped people off, but there are plenty of them out there.

Were you supposed to paint it, stain it or something?

I’ve bought it (Amati) from Hismodel, think I get something like 7 sizes tailored to the Cutty, and it really wasn’t that expensive at about £22 for the set plus a little bit of postage. It’ll take 2 or 3 weeks to arrive but I’m fine with that. Thanks for the compliment, this model really lends itself to little tweaks, being a relatively simple kit.

Thanks all. At least it confirms that no-one seems to have ever gone down the green rigging route! I’ll play around with paint and/or dyes at some point, failing all else I’ll have plenty of string for this years tomato’s.

It's not poly then. I hadn't thought of that. Could be - it's 4 strands which do become quite furry when unpicked and it looks to me as though the strands themselves were not wound tight enough. It seems lighter/whiter towards the centre of the unpicked strands, maybe it's just changed colour over time. Anyway, it does look like it could be good for faux cable; all the stays appear to have been wire, of various sizes.

Photo attached. One reel is about .5mm, the other .6mm. It’s not especially rope-like, feels a little waxy/slippy and has a bit of give. I don’t know what linen rope feels like but my guess is this is polypropylene, because of the give and lack of furring. Mind you, the amount of stretch feels like just what you’d want for rigging, so I’ll definitely hand on to it and maybe use a bit of dye. You’re dead right, the CS does have steel cables; I haven’t even begun to think about whether to try replicating at scale or just use rope.

I recently bought an old Revell 1:96 Cutty Sark kit, circa 1975, on eBay, which when it arrived obviously had bits and bobs of leftovers from one or two other kits I.e. I had double quantities of certain things and some non CS parts. It also contained two reels of green coloured rope. This has me foxed? Was this standard back in the day, and are you supposed to bleach or dye it? Or is it more likely just some random aftermarket purchase related to a different line of modelling?

Knowing your work rate, Bill, I’m decidedly daunted by what lies in store for me on the Cutty Sark, as you must have spent maybe 2 months to get this far on the rigging? But I guess a lot of that is probably down to the great care and attention to detail, which shines through in every photo. It’s looking great, the rope work really does look like rope rather than threads, if you know what I mean. On that subject, I ordered a set of Amati ropes this week, is that what you’ve used?

The Astro-Phil looks like the level of cleanlinesses I usually get on everything since I did all the upgrades but I still use a super quality setting (0.12 layer height) as I found the finish at 0.2 a bit too coarse. That said, I did my first FDM print for two or three weeks yesterday, I.e. the filament hadn’t been heated for that time, and it was quite zitty, stringy and delaminating. I’ll be doing it again this weekend and will have baked the filament for plenty of hours by then so will see if this is the difference, as this would be the first time since buying the heater than I’ve not printed for weeks. Maybe as we’ve moved into springtime the air moisture has increased. This is the frustration with FDM, isn’t it, so many variables; but my gut feeling is that ‘perfect prints’ only depend on a few things. I have to admit it’s ages since I checked the calibration. Windows 11? Jesus, Mary & Joseph and the wee fella’s donkey, as if we don’t have enough troubles already!😪

To be honest, not entirely. The trouble (benefit) of 3D design is that, as you’ve said yourself, it’s often quite quick and easy to correct mistakes, tweak the design and so on. Couple that with it being quick and often very cheap to print objects and you have a recipe for winging it. I know that if I was having to make the designs by hand, or outsource the printing, I would take a great deal more care to try to get the design right first time, think through the whole workflow for dependencies and so on. For the printing itself I always try to get it right first time because its such a pain when the supports fail or you find a plate of spaghetti in the morning. But even after a couple of years of printing, there is still quite a bit of trial and error to get the optimal result.

Ditto, both models are fantastic pieces of modelling. I haven't read the Okie log yet but I'm sure I'm going to find all kind of good tips in there.

That’s quite a reassuring thing to hear from someone like yourself. I often find that what I’m really doing is a trial and error process, especially as it’s so easy to print objects. The first go usually highlights what I got wrong, and I then finesse. Recently I’ve started to do something I probably should have done from the beginning - treat 3D as just another tool and use other methods where appropriate, I.e. at 1:100 I’d probably print the body of that lamp but use wire for the guard.

For what it’s worth I’ve been very happy with both elegoo printers, they’re well built etc, and the aftersales service is excellent.

I was racking my brains for a comparison and this nails it nicely! It could be especially good if they go big and make the resin build capacity the same as a standard FDM plate!

John, I don't even know myself so welcome to the magical mystery tour 😊 By way of a general update, I thought I was going to move on to the pin rails this week but haven't had the three or four hour stretch it needs for me to really focus and, meanwhile, have decided I want to rework the forecastle area, which also needs concentration. Hopefully I'll get some time this coming weekend as I got most of the spring gardening done last weekend.

Just in the vein of resin vs filament, I read recently that amazon are developing their own marque of 3D printers and aiming at these having the capability for both resin and filament. That could have been an april fools joke but it didnt seem so. How they'd do this will be interesting to see, given the difference in functional designs, but I'm sure it's perfectly possible; and if so, I would expect this to be the next game changer, where for hobbyists it wouldn't make any sense to choose a single purpose machine.

Hi Alan, one or two years back I ran up against the same issue, where I just couldn’t get the quality of finish on small parts, especially on round objects that had to be printed in the horizontal. I remember trying to print cannons for the victory, going round and round in circles with the settings, trying different nozzle sizes and so on. What I can say is that 0.2mm nozzles will give a finer result, but were more prone to zits and suchlike and still couldn’t give me what I wanted. However this was before I had a heater and upgraded springs so you might find you have less problems. Which is when I took the plunge and bought a resin printer. My view is that having both types is the best solution for modelling. You get immaculate, incredibly detailed prints from resin, there is virtually no tail-chasing with set-up, but there are, nevertheless, drawbacks. Almost everything needs supporting so you have a good side and a bad side, though you can often polish that up. Resin parts tend to be a bit fragile so aren’t so good where a bit of strength is needed, and warping / dimensional accuracy can be an issue. And there’s the additional outlay, plus resin is a bit more expensive than filament. However I virtually guarantee that you would have chosen to print 99% of what’s in your pics in resin and been delighted with the results. The one thing where I think FDM still has the edge is on objects with a flat face. They come out more accurate, don’t shrink or distort and the surface finish can be easily sanded or filled. If you follow my link to the Cutty sark you’ll see the decks I printed, which I think are not too far off being as good as wood veneers. If I’ve tempted you to look at buying a resin printer can I offer a word of advice - don’t get the smallest one, you’ll probably regret that quite quickly. Bite the bullet and get something like the elegoo Saturn. That extra build size will allow you to print a much wider range of items, as the Mars capacity is really quite limited. I did it the hard way and now have two resin printers. It’s not worth selling the Mars as they go very cheaply second hand so I just use it for small stuff.

Thanks John. That’s a bit counter-intuitive, don’t you think, for it to be rigged from so high up, where the masts are thinnest. But I guess the wind forces would be much greater than any loads being shifted so probably not an issue. If I did include this I think it would be when I’m well into the standing rigging so quite a while away yet, and I can see how it looks when I get that far.

Hi John, they’re both very fine looking models; at this end, I’ll probably look at the Kearsage next, just because it’s so unusual, or pick up where I left off on the Victory for a while. I’d virtually dug myself as far as Australia on that one and started the Cutty as a means of taking a breather. Changing horses has been one of my better ideas, the Cutty is a much less complex ship and easier to for learning the ropes of proper modelling. I’m planning on the furled sails approach on the Cutty, just because I like that look, but having never rigged a ship before, nor made sails, (in fact nor done any serious modelling!) I could see myself bailing out with just the standing rigging. By coincidence I ordered a set of ropes for the CS from Hismodel yesterday, having been mighty impressed by the PE nameplate that I bought a couple of months back. I was sorely tempted to splash out on the beautiful Syren ropes but thought I’d better try the Amati first given they are more affordable. Radimir also does various bits for the Kearsage so I may well become a customer for life. I’m not too far off retirement myself, just another couple of years, and can’t wait. It’s hard, some weeks, to make any headway at all, with only an hour spare here or there. As for the Connie, definitely ‘for later’. I’ve had eBay searches running for all the big 1:96 kits for two or three years as these kits seem hugely expensive new, at around £180. Both the Kearsage and Connie came up recently and I was able to get each of them for about £40! So that’s the next 10 or 15 years taken care of! I think all that remains to buy is the Soliel Royale, which looks like the most difficult of them all. At this stage I like the plastic models as I can relatively easily remake most parts, via 3D printing, if I want or need to and have something concrete to work from.

Jim, that's very useful, thanks. Forgive me being dense but is the gin block this one;

John, that's what I thought at first, but when you look more closely they are tied off to the fife rail. I'm more interested in that chain coming off the main mast; what's that all about? that and where the tied off rope goes to. From the angle it's evidently to the foremast (or there's some big fella stood on the roof of the fore cabin holding them aloft for no obvious reason other than you have to have a bit of rope and chain in a ship photo, don't you 🙂). I'm a bit of a lazy researcher so I guess I'd best get less lazy and see whether any of my dust-covered tomes shed light. Mine is also the revell 1:96 and in principle I was going to build this out of the box and see if I can actually finish a first model (!), but as I have a penchant for 3d printing and modelling I have once again gone down the rabbit hole and, unlike most rabbits, have yet to learn when to stop digging. More seriously, I'm just adding a little bit more detail where it's easy to do so and most of the cutty sark furniture is relatively simple to play with.

Hans, you’re dead right about the devil being in the detail. I know I could get a reasonable basic hull done quite quickly but getting exactly what I want, or what it needs to be, in terms of detail and dimensions, is another matter. That broader project sounds fascinating, albeit hard to get my head around, given the seemingly unique nature of the detail on most old ships.

Once you’ve done Allan’s cannons, I need a hull that’s an exact replica of the 1:96 Heller victory and, if you’ve got time, the same for the 1:96 revell Cutty sark 😆. I’d add that, while I definitely couldn’t do the cannons fit to print as quickly as you (probably a couple of hours for me, including the carriages and fine details) they’re fairly simple to model and quite a good thing to learn how to do in a 3D package if you’re a beginner. Along the way you’d learn about simple shapes and extrusion, planes, revolving, cutting and combining and, if you really want to go the whole hog, surface projections. After which you’ll be able to make a very wide range of things for ships. For anyone interested, there’s an excellent beginners tutorial for f360 in an online magazine called diyode, Google it.

That's a very nice looking model and, as others are saying, you are probably light years ahead of the rest of us who have only recently got into 3D modelling and your knowledge would be very welcome here. Despite meaning to switch to Rhino a few months back I'm still just using Fusion 360 and, one day, will attempt a hull. Everything else in CAD/3D modelling apps is, as you say, fairly straightforward once you've learned enough. But I know a hull is going to suck up weeks of my spare time so I'm still ducking it for now. What do you do with your designs? Print them, or are they purely for the pleasure of the exercise? I'm sure there is going to be a market for 'download and print' models

Thanks John. If that chap with the laced top would just move out of the way a bit... :-). It's a great photo though, isnt it. And thanks for the compliment, it took me hours and hours to fettle all those teeth - only kidding, it's 3D printed with a bit of wire for the tie-rods and was fun to make.