Charles Green

Hello Decoyman: MSC Industrial Supply, USA company with a division in the UK sells an enormous variety of blades under the categories of "Slotting" blades and "Jeweler's" blades. You will find any arbor dia., blade dia., tooth count or blade thickness you want in HHS, Tin coated or some in solid carbide. You will have to establish and account - no cost, just contact info - and there is a $25.00 minimum order. Their catalog ranges to 6000 pages. It's fun to look through.

Bob: Tru Vue sells a wide range of archival glass and acrylics for framing and case makers. Their acrylic product under the name of "Optimum" has all the advantages of glass without the weight or shattering hazard. It is expensive.

Bob: The bad odor from hide glue occurs when a pot of glue is left to set for a few days, unused, until it turns rancid. Discard unused glue when done with a glue up and there will be no problem. The glue comes in a dried granular form that is mixed with water and heated just prior to use. The dry granules are odorless. I am involved in making a display case for a Native American artifact; a wooden, Tlingit halibut hook, and this raised concern about the archival properties of glues, finishes and types of wood. All common "wood glues" off-gas ascetic acid as do finishes based on organic oils or waxes. This off-gassing persists at ever diminishing levels for years and can accumulate to deleterious levels in the confines of a display case. I've been unable to find data on the archival suitability of CA. When it "kicks over" it does emit a puff of very disagreeable gas. Again, I don't know the chemical nature of this gas or its longevity. Nor are the archival properties of Titebond's liquid hide glue to be found. What my research boiled down to is traditional hide glue and shellac are the only common glue and finish that do not pose any archival threat. These are what I will use but I still worked unobtrusive ventilation holes into the case's design.

These are only my observations on CAD and CAD users: The economics of my time as a hobbyist is blissfully void of the "How long?" and "How much?" demands of commercial production. I can comfortably answer these questions with: "As long as it takes." and "I'll do with or without." On the other hand, commercial economics demands these questions be addressed and in business, CAD gets the nod. CAD is faster than work made with pencil or pen and ink. In my hobbies, plans are made with pencil on paper, on a drafting table with an arm. I have no practical experience nor personal interest in CAD. Following high-school drafting classes and a 12 month, trade-school, mechanical-drafting program, I worked for a while employed drawing maps with pen and ink on vellum or starched linen. I had at my disposal an enviable set of jewel-tipped Rapid-O-Graph pens. The job was a pleasure and my maps were beautiful. I was there when talk of transition to a computerized system began but no one knew what form it would take. I consider myself lucky I moved on before the transition took place. It amounted to an upheaval, the increased productivity of CAD put people out of work and I may have been one of them. A Luddite view? There is some of that, but I never went as far as tossing a sabot in the works. I had moved on. My shop was designed with space for a 40 x 60 inch, tilt-top drafting table with a Mutoh Model 6, straight-arm drafting-machine mounted on it. I had gotten them at an auction some time before for $110.00. I had to bid against one other guy who wanted them too, otherwise I could have gotten them for the opening bid of $20.00! In the shop, I also provided space for a 40 x 60 inch, six-drawer flat-file. Some people admire them. Devotees of CAD usually view them with distain, as a waste of floor space. Conversation then usually segues into the merits of their CAD system. CAD adherents seem to carry a sort of militant allegiance to what ever system they are invested in. I detect their divergence away from pencil and paper carries another defensive element. I get the impression the most vocal CAD adherents would be hard-pressed to draw a three view plan or and isometric view. But with CAD, they don't have to know how. That's a shame. Done free-hand or with a straight-edge, drawing is a tactile art-form. Drawings are an artistic extension of the object being made. Drawings carry the imprint of the maker as much as the object they represent. Even when drawn with a straight-edge, drawings of one object made by different people will show characteristics of their makers. 2H, 4H, 6H, HB, B. Does anyone care? For the Season: Excerpts from Robert Service's "The Trappers' Christmas Eve". It's mighty lonesome-like and drear. Above the Wild the moon rides high, And shows up sharp and needle-clear The emptiness of earth and sky; No happy homes with love a-glow; No Santa Claus to make believe: Just snow and snow, and then more snow; It's Christmas Eve, it's Christmas Eve. Stripped to the buff and gaunt and still Lies all the land in grim distress. Like lost soul wailing, long and shrill, A wolf-howl cleaves the emptiness. Then hushed as Death is everything. The moon rides haggard and forlorn... "O hark the herald angels sing!" God bless all men - it's Christmas morn.

I use sweet gum for framing. With it, I've never encountered a problem fairing a hull's interior with a rasp. The cut/coarseness of a rasp, coupled with the characteristics of other types of wood may conspire to cause chip-out. The ends of the Auriou chair maker's rasp are shaped differently but both are stiched the same. One end of the Corradi sculptor's rasp has wood-file teeth on it. The file teeth will not contribute to chip-out.

As to the "Chair Makers Rasp" referred to earlier: I looked under the title of "Sculptor's Rasp" and found one similar to the one I have. It's made by Corradi and is about half the price of the Auriou Chair Makers Rasp. The Auriou is hand stiched which accounts for its high price but it will cut better than the Corradi. The Corradi is good - The Auriuo will be better.

Mercator: You are now one of four MSWers reported to be in the Boise/Meridian area! Sounds like a meeting is in order - someday! Charles Green, Boise

A curved, chair makers rasp does a good job of fairing the concave, inboard surfaces of the frames. The one I have was purchased a while ago; I can't remember where I got it. The only marking on it is "Italy". I checked the Web. The only one that comes up now is made by Auriou. A chair makers rasp has rasp teeth on one end and wood file teeth on the other to smooth. Follow up with sand paper.

I started out in an apartment and I like things quiet anyway, so I started out with an 80 cubic foot bottle of compressed nitrogen. It's dry and comes from the regulator - regulated. I have an old Badger single action; no model number on it and a Paasche VL double action. No mechanical problems with either of them. Cleaning is the most important part for trouble-free use of any airbrush.

I drew maps with pen and ink for a utility company in the mid-1980's. The medium you refer to was starched linen. The starch would take ink and with care, the ink could be erased. With a linen substrate, the maps could be folded many times and left folded without the danger of separating along the folds. After so many revisions an old map had to be copied on to new material. Some of the copied maps were 3X4 feet in dimension. I would bring them to my Mom. She had a dress-making/tailoring business at home. She would wash the starch out and use the fine linen for making baby clothes. If you can find a source of old maps, ones without historical significance, you will have all the fine linen you will need.

Dr PR's remarkable, focused-stacked, near head-on photo would be hard to duplicate any other way. The photo was taken at a very shallow angle. Employing the Scheimpflug principle would require an extreme amount of lens tilt, maybe more than is possible. P Budsik's reply echos most others in that a DSLR is more than adequate and the digital image is superior for reproduction on the Net. I acknowledge that the electronic image is here to stay. But, the fact that any F mount Nikon or EF mount Canon - DSLRs included - can be used with their respective makers TS lenses to produce the desired effect - in-camera, with a single exposure - seems to have gotten lost in the shuffle. It's all done in real time. What you see in the view-finder is what you get. With a TS lens on a DSLR, no time is spent with the tedium of accumulating the individual images needed for focus stacking and no time is spent later on at a computer arranging them. Taking the series of exposures necessary for focus-stacking requires an undisturbed location. Some locations may not allow this condition to be met. While TS lenses use a method developed in 1904, they offer a time-tested, practical solution to the depth-of-field problem. They are also very useful in architectural and landscape photography.

...that's meet up...

Hello PaavoOso: You ought to be able to hear me. I'm in Boise too! I'm in the midst of chemo-therapy for colon cancer so not many of my days are good but some are a lot better than others. What do you say we co-ordinate our good days and met up? Charlie

I must amend my last paragraph. World War I began in 1914. Scheimpflug began using his method in 1904, during Austria's War of the 3rd Coalition on surveillance photos taken from observation balloons.

For this post , I am placing cameras in the category of "Shop Tools". Recently, I came across a topic from 2013 addressing the depth-of-field problem encountered when photographing a vessel's hull from an oblique angle. Kathy Teel has recently submitted a number of photos of outstanding models in this site's "Images" section. Her last photo (as of 12-13-20), depicting a hull's port, stern section, illustrates the depth-of-field problem I am referring to. This problem is independent of lens quality or the photographer's skill - it is an optical fact-of-life and stopping a lens down will not overcome it. The close focusing distances encountered in model photography exacerbate the problem. Electronically manipulated "focus stacking" was the solution discussed in 2013, but there is another way. An articulated camera/view-camera or an articulated lens fitted to a conventional camera can do the same, if not better job as focus stacking, while allowing a lot more freedom in camera position and composition. And, you can see what's going on in the viewfinder - what you see is what you get. Film view-cameras are still in production by several makers, as is sheet film, but not everyone is interested in film photography, as I am. View-cameras with electronic backs - in place of film - are available but their price is astronomical. However, If you own any F mount Nikon (film or electronic) or any EF mount Canon, both makers provide what they refer to as TS (Tilt - Shift) lenses. TS lenses can achieve the same photographic effects as a view-camera. Both makers provide TS lenses in a wide range of focal lengths. In the past, Pentax made a 24mm, K mount TS lens. They come up in the used market. And there are TS adaptors. Adaptors can couple any lens and camera, but - Any lens used for tilting or shifting must be designed to project an image circle wide enough to cover the film or electronic sensor when the lens is used off-axis. Conventional lenses are not made to do this. "Lensbaby" makes a number of lenses and articulated mounts. I have no experience with them and cannot speak to their optical quality. They cover a range of camera mounts and offer a relatively inexpensive way into TS lens use. View-cameras and TS lenses allow the lens to be tilted/turned off axis, relative to the film/sensor. In short, this brings the Scheimpflug Principle into play and solves the depth-of-field problem. The shift function allows a lens to be shifted laterally, moving the image in the view-finder without moving the camera - but, not of much importance to this discussion. The Scheimpflug Principle also allows correction of distortion inherent in photographing long, narrow objects (like ship's hulls) that seem to converge to a point in the distance. Lines converging in the distance can be brought parallel, if you want. The film/sensor must be able to be tilted relative to the lens to achieve this and this is where view-cameras come into play. The depth-of-field problem is an optical fact-of-life, as is its solution, the Scheimpflug Prinicple. It has been in use since its discovery by Austrian army Captain Theodor Scheimpflug in 1904, for correcting distortion in WWI aerial surveillance photos taken from an angle.

Randy: Thanks for your reply. In my mind, I am certain Clyde M.'s Lexington is a copy of Davis's. I have Clay's Lexington practicum and have mined as far as I can into his references. As a teenager, in the mid '60's, Clyde M.'s 1947, build article in MI was my first exposure to a POF model and I have never gotten over it! Since then, even after discovering Leavitt's and all other Lexingtons are fictions, I have collected everything I have come across concerning that vessel. I couldn't let go of my newfound revelation that two Leavitts involved themselves in the construction of fictitious versions of historical vessels without looking in to it. Thanks again, Charles

Melting of plastic while drilling or sawing it can be nearly eliminated by using bits or saws designed for working that material. The drills will have a steeper pitch. The saw blade's teeth are patterned so that each tooth only removes a small part of what will be the kerf. MSC is a vendor I am familiar with that sells bits made for plastic and Forest (probably among others) makes "No Melt" circular saw blades. For occasional use, the cost of specialized tools may be prohibitive. For occasional use with a table saw: melt a small amount of paraffin along the line to be cut. The paraffin will re-melt from the blade's heat and provide lubrication. This method may work with a jig/sabre saw but I have never tried it. Similarly, apply a spot of paraffin at a location to be drilled. I have had good luck with this method. If the parts are to be glued, the paraffin remaining at the site of the cut or hole and must be thoroughly removed.

Concerning Randle McLean Biddle's article in the current Nautical Research Journal : Photo #2 on page 362 - Walter C. Leavitt is credited as the maker of one of the extant Hanna models. Clyde M. Leavitt made a model and published a build article with plans in Mechanix Illustrated for one of the versions of the brig Lexington. Can anyone say if Walter C. and Clyde M. were related? Do either of them have other acknowledged models to their credit? Was Clyde M.'s Lexington build article in MI his only published article?

You will need to establish an account; no cost or problems, just contact info. I believe there is a $25.00 minimum order.

An American company, MSC Industrial Supply, has a UK division. When on their site look under the two categories of Slotting/Slitting Saws and Jeweler's Saws. You will find a huge variety of blade diameters, arbor hole diameters, tooth count and blade thickness. Their catalog contains around 6,000 pages. You can get most any tool or tooling you want from them.

MSC Industrial Supply. When on their site, look under the two categories of Slitting and Slotting Saws and Jeweler's Saws.

MSC has a huge assortment of metal slotting blades that will fit, HSS or solid carbide if you want. The number of options in arbor dia., width and tooth count is somewhat daunting. Just order carefully and you will get what you want. If there is a minimum order amount I believe it's $25.00.

RE: Roger Pellet My Dad watched Bong in action in the sky over New Guinea. Bong had 40 confirmed kills. His strategy was to get close, then get closer. To reduce the P-38s turn radius he developed the skill/technique of goosing the out-board engine while retarding the in-board engine. After 40 kills, he was taken out of action and put to work promoting the sale of war bonds; the military figured he was more valuable that way. And for anyone interested in P-38s, you have to read The Lost Squadron by David Hayes. The book describes the incredible recovery of one of six P-38Fs that ditched in 1942 in Greenland while on the way to Europe. Two accompanying B-17Es ditched as well. All of the men were recovered but the aircraft stayed. In the early 1980's, recovery of one of the P-38s began - by that time, all of the aircraft were buried under 260 of ice! The P-38 is flying now under the name of Glacier Girl.

For planking, nothing beats a large supply of extra stock. If a plank doesn't fit, you haven't failed. You have learned. Identify the problem and try another way.

Thank you popeye2sea and Roger for taking the time to spell this out for me. Charles