Charles Green

Tell us the wood type and dimensions.

FriedClams: Up to this point, I have been one of the quiet followers of your fantastic work. The quality of it has made me reluctant to ask of this: The tires on your vehicles - Have you considered creating a flat spot on their bottoms' to give the impression they are weighted?

To expand on Bob's comment: Should this brush perform like the knock-off it is, others will have to follow. You will find yourself sneaking up, at wasteful cost of time and money, to the brush you should have bought in the first place. Even if the knock-off sprays like you think it should, you will be forever asking yourself if the "real one" could do better. You may find the needle is too soft to resist bending, or the threads at disassembly points for cleaning don't hold up. Pride of ownership is not based on hollow emotional feelings. It comes from demonstrable performance and the saving of time and money. Think of the time to redo the finish on your model due to poor performance of the brush. The real deal is worth owning.

Roger Pellet mentioned oil in the wood; a common characteristic of tropical hardwoods. Wiping the surface to be glued with acetone just before the glue is applied will solve that problem.

wefalck: Le salaire de la peur - The Wages of Fear, was redone, stateside, in 1977 by William Friedkin. The title that time was Sorcerer. It starred Roy Schieder, Bruno Cremer, Victor Manzon, Francisco Rabal, and Amidou. Critics didn't like it, but in its Sorcerer iteration, it's the best action movie I've ever seen. In addition to poor reviews, coming out the same week Star Wars premiered, it faced crushing competition for movie ticket dollars. Also, Friedkin directed The Exorcist. Sorcerer's title suggested some sort of extension on that theme. Viewers looking for that didn't get what they were expecting. The film did poorly at the box office. There are truncated versions of it and other copies with poor video and audio quality. A "director's cut" version is available. I recommend it. The movie's theme revolves around violence but outside of events that form the film's story, it's not a violent movie and it doesn't follow the formulaic structure of typical "action movies". There are no car chase scenes, no sex; just four bad-guys trying to get out of a real bad situation.

In reference to post #12 - Bob Cleek mentions the burning of worn-out ships in order to reclaim their metallic components. In two of his poems, Robert Service mentions vessels made on-site by miners on the Yukon Trail in the late 1800's. From The Trail of Ninety-Eight: We built our boats and we launched them. Never has been such a fleet; A packing-case for a bottom, a mackinaw for a sheet. Shapeless, grotesque, lopsided, flimsy, makeshift and crude, Each man after his fashion builded as best he could. The greed of the gold possessed us; pity and love were forgot; ...Partner with partner wrangled, each one claiming his due; Wrangled and halved their outfits, sawing their boats in two. Then, in The Ballad of the Northern Lights: We poled and lined up nameless streams, portaged o'er hill and plain; We burnt our boat to save the nails, and built our boat again;

In machine work, a "drift fit" describes class of fit between a shaft and hole. At least it did while I was active in shop work. I can't recall the tolerances, but a considerable amount of force was required to achieve a drift fit. Descriptive terms for other fits include: loose, running, drive, shrink, etc. It looks like these terms have been replaced. Now fits are separated into classes identified by Roman numerals. I will guess a "drift" in this case was a galvanized iron rod, driven in an undersized hole and held by friction, rather than by clenching or with a nut. In these times, a drift is a tapered tool, a wedge essentially, used to remove a tool held in an arbor by a taper fit.

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David W: MSC Industrial Supply has a variety of slitting blades with 5/8 arbor holes. MSC requires an account - Contact info only, and $25.00 minimum order.

David W: Search MSC and McMaster Carr for "slotting and slitting blades"; very narrow kerf blades, some with 5/8 dia. arbor holes. There are quite a few from 2" to 4" dia. but I wonder if your arbor carriage will raise enough to bring these small dia. blades above the table. All of these blades are high tooth-count, with no set, made for cutting one type of metal or another. They are designed for use with coolant. They will work for shallow slots/cuts in wood, but a little heat from too much friction will cause them to warp. In your search, filter out the solid carbide blades; $$$$$$! HSS blades with 0.6299/10mm and 0.630 arbor holes are around $50.00. One advantage of using small saws for small work is they allow you to get close to see what is going on. For small-work on your table-saw, you will have to cut dedicated, zero-clearance throat-plates for these blades. If you can find a used PREAC saw, they are designed for two to three-inch dia. slitting blades.

The Colour Blue in Historic Shipbuilding from Antiquity to Modern Times by Joachim Mullerschon, provides a focused, historical view on the maritime and naval use of that color and a generalized history on ship paint and painting practice. It covers all this in 172 pages of text. FYI: This book is an historical overview - not a concentrated study on the Royal Navy's painting practice nor that of any other individual nationality. From this and other sources, my short answer to your question is, not much definitive information concerning it is available. Areas of Mullerschon's text describing Royal Navy painting practice are punctuated with qualifications e.g., unfortunately, no further details, if, also, or, "standardization was not achieved", "official paintings...showed red instead of blue, while the strict order was to keep them black.", etc. Painting practices from other nationalities through the 18th century read the same. An exception comes from paintings, mosaics, models and ancient texts depicting painting practice of the pre-Egyptian through the Roman period. My impression is, together these sources (along with recent archeological discoveries) provide more veracity to that era's painting practice than can be said for what came much later. The book is very well illustrated with photos of contemporary paintings and models from around the world from all eras, along with photos of period, modern models and full-size reproductions. Most of the photos are unique, having been taken by the author. In your case, from all the sources available to you (and Mullerschon's would be a good one) - Pick one with acknowledged credibility and go to work!

Varieties of heating irons shown above are used for dry mounting of artwork and photographs. Art supply and framing businesses are good sources for them.

Welcome Scratchie: Along with myself, both sides of my family are from Minnesota: Motley (near Brainard), Parkers Prairie (near Alexandria) and Minneapolis. Most are still in the state. I graduated from the U in '76 - Forestry. I've been in Idaho for 30 + years but still look forward to visits to Minnesota.

3/16 vs 5mm; the difference is on the order of 1%. In a side-to-side line up of several 3/16 blocks, a 5mm one in the mix may be discernable, but I wouldn't go as far as to say this difference would throw things out of scale. Can't comment on the hole size for the lines.

Poop, as a descriptive term for excrement, appeared in the mid 1700's. I have two sources that take the origin of 'poop deck' back to the Roman times: Eh, What's That You Said? Jargon of the Sea, by Don and Johna Marshall, and Origins of Sea Terms, by John G. Rogers. From them: The French poupe comes from the Latin puppim, the after-part of a vessel. Puppim was derived from puppis; a doll or image. Romans, and their predecessors, mounted a sacred image or doll/idol at the stern of their vessels. From another source I cannot recall, the idol or image was kept in a small enclosure. From that source, the enclosure was the puppis. So, from these sources: from a puppis kept at the stern, to the stern being named puppim, to the French Poupe describing a stern deck.