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BETAQDAVE

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  1. This is a question regarding your simple man's guide to small scale sail making. Do you remember what ratio of PVA to water you used for the Witches Brew sail wash? You described it as being the consistency of milk, but would that be skim, 1%,2% or whole milk? I'm making sails for my 1:96 scale Phantom pilot boat and when the material dried overnight, the mix apparently pooled in the low spots and drained from the high spots as shown below which made the finish very uneven. I'm not sure if it was my mix or the light weight drafting vellum paper that I used. I don't know for sure, but maybe I should have used your hurry up method of using a hair drier to speed it up. As light as the vellum paper was, maybe it was still a bit too stiff. I found some very light weight tracing paper that I will try next.
  2. Well Roger, for some more authentic-looking (because the grain varies from plank to plank) wooden model ship decking or board-by-board siding go to Micro-Mark. Black glue is used to bond individual planks of basswood together side-by-side in sheets 3 inches wide x 22 inches long x 0.050 inch thick, perfectly simulating the look of board-by-board construction without the tedious, time-consuming hassle of doing it yourself. Planks widths are available in 1/16 inch, 3/32 inch, 1/8 inch, or 3/16 inch. The price is around $25 per sheet. Have a look here.
  3. Good question! The plans for the MS Phantom show one of these also. No details are provided there either.
  4. I just went through this posting and happily found out that it wasn't due to something I did on my end. I still remember the old Computers for Dummies manuals which emphatically declared that your computer won't blow up if you push the wrong button. Yes, but other bad things definitely could and in my case did! 🙈🙉🙊
  5. Speaking of Dodgy furnaces: My maternal grandparents lived in a three flat building built in the early 1920’s. They had a coal burning gravity hot air type octopus furnace similar to the one below, but without the red accessory that was later added on at the bottom. There was no fan to force the air up since the hot air just naturally rose through the ducts. Each heating vent had it’s own duct that attached directly to the furnace and made it look like an upside down octopus. The building had more than a dozen heat ducts and due to that maze of ducts and the large coal bin, it took up most of the basement. The basement ceiling was also about twelve feet high to allow some clearance below the ducts. Access to the basement was by a 22 rise L shaped stair with a landing half way down that was in a separate room partitioned off from the furnace room with a large heavy steel door, with a closer that always slammed with a resounding bang! I say that because, to a group of young kids ages 3-5 it made us all jump whenever it closed behind leaving us in what seemed like a dimly lit dungeon. Eventually we became more adventurous and started going down there to play, but our parents began to worry about us getting into mischief way down there, so grandfather, who always was a bit of a prankster, teased us that there was a green eyed monster that hid in the coal bin sometimes to discourage our interest in going down there. At first, we began to think that he was just kidding us since we never saw it and started to go down there again anyway. So grandfather decided that now he needed up his game a bit. Taking a pair of flashlights with some green cellophane covering the lenses, he turned them on and placed them in the coal bin just before our next visit. So when we were about to go down to the basement, he told us that he had just seen the green eyed monster in the coal bin earlier and we probably shouldn’t go down there. Of course we all though he was just teasing us again, but he said that he better go down with us to see if it was still there. Well, we had just entered the furnace room, he ushered us inside and closed the door with a bang which set us a bit on edge to begin with and we looked around somewhat nervously and said we didn’t see anything. Now the basement, with its one small window and a single light bulb, was pretty dim down there to begin with, but he suggested that we might be able to sneak up on it better if we turned out the light,. So he did. Walking over to the coal bin he opened the door a bit and we all looked in. Lo and behold, there was this pair of bright green eyes starring right back at us!! 👾😱😲 We all instantly made a panicked run to the door and flew up those stairs as fast as we could! For years after that we never went back down there unless grandfather checked it out first.
  6. So I guess that professional golfer John Daly styling would not be accepted?
  7. Concerning post #49 I think that something like this has been developed, but his aim would be a little iffy.
  8. That's so he can protect himself from being poked in the eye from the projecting spars and rigging.
  9. Or more likely, some of the stuff that we somehow survived to get old.
  10. I just added the topic Alternate Definitions twice in error, I think once would be sufficient. The second one needs to be deleted.
  11. It's actually a drafting tool. Several of these hold a flexible spline in place and used for drawing curves.
  12. The metal fife rails that came with the kit shown below didn’t look much better than the kit supplied anchor so I decided to see if I could do better job with wood. They also differed both, from the detail drawings on the plans and the ones shown in Chucks’ practicum shown here. You can see that the cross bar between the posts and the side half cleat are higher than the fife rail on Chucks’, as opposed to them being even on my kit and the details. The posts are taller than mine, and the spindles are much thicker. The belaying pins included with the kit were much too short to project below the rail which would not allow the belayed lines to be tied off. The first step was to rip a 3/32” X 3/32” maple strip about 6” long for the post material. I marked one face for the cuts and using my Micro Miter Box with the ultra-fine toothed double-edge razor blade once again, I cut it into six sticks about 1” long. In this case, the final length was 7/16”, leaving 9/16” left over to hang onto during the machining. Since this was another process of making each piece an exact duplicate of the others, I utilized the adjustable stop for every cut. The stop was not reset until that particular cut was repeated on every piece. The first cuts were made 3/64” deep and 7/64” down from the top of the post on two adjacent sides. The next two cuts were duplicated 1/16” below the first cuts. Clamping each post in my machinist vise, I carved out a 3/64” deep notch between those two adjacent sides with a fine file between the first two cuts for holding the fife rail. Returning to the Miter Box, a very shallow cut was made on all four sides of the stick 21/64” down from the top of the post to mark the overall height of the post above the deck. 7/64” below that cut, the post was finally cut loose from the stick. Now each post was clamped in my vise with the 7/64” bottom left exposed. Once again I filed a round peg with files and sanding sticks for insertion into the deck. Here is one of the resulting fife rail posts. Then I also needed to make two throat halliard half cleats to be attached to the posts. There is one on the starboard side of the main fife rail and one on the port side of the fore fife rail. I decided to carve these from wood, since cutting one of the kits’ metal ones in half would still be over-sized. These cleats are a prime example of fabricating extremely tiny parts, (1/16” wide X 5/64” high X 5/32” long) so I will provide some photos of the process here. To start with, I sacrificed these hardwood clothes pins for the material as shown below. The long skinny portion was clamped in my vice, leaving the short fat end exposed. Using sanding sticks and files, the top and bottom were shaped. Once the top and bottom of the cleat were shaped, the sides of the cleat were thinned down and tapered to the final profile. Now that the main portion of the cleat was finished I released it from the handle with that razor toothed hand saw and repeated the process for the other cleat. The cleats will be painted iron black and glued to the appropriate fife rail post.
  13. That's opposed to using elite and pica typewriters, where elite was 12 characters per inch and pica was 10. I always thought that 1/6th scale was a peculiar system of measurement to be used for modeling when I had to build my first model of the Wanderer from the A.J. Fisher plans. I had to make a custom ruler just to build it. Luckily, they had the fittings kit that matched.
  14. I decided to tackle the bollards next since they seemed to be a simpler project. The ones I made previously appeared over-sized when placed on the model, so these were now discarded. Originally, two posts were made with a rectangular cross bar and the other two were without. This time, all four will have the cross bar. Since these posts wouldn’t be under any strain once installed, I just used six 2” lengths of 3/32” square basswood stock for the new posts. (I’ve learned the hard way, that small pieces need to be cut overlong to leave a “handle” until cutting the piece loose and to make extras.) To be uniform, I made extensive use of the stop on the Micro Miter Box below for all of the cuts and made the same cut on each piece before moving on to the next piece. On the face of the first post, marks were drawn at the locations of the top, bottom and sides of the mortise for the cross bar, the height above the deck and the overall length of the piece to serve as a pattern. The mortise is centered and 1/16” down from the top of the post. The mark for the deck is 1/4” below the top of the post and the overall length is 7/16”. The cross bar is made from 1/32” X 1/16” maple and is cut overlong at 1”. The first cut in the post was a shallow one all the way around the post at the top of the deck mark to limit the filing of the peg. The next cut was to separate the post from the rest of the stick. The post was set in the vise with the shallow cut up against edge of the vise as shown below to allow the use of a flat file to form the peg at the bottom that will be set into the deck. The mortise was formed next by putting the post in the vice to prevent it from splitting while forming the hole. Two side by side 1/32” through holes were drilled first with a pin vice. Then I used my smallest square file to square the corners of the mortise until the cross bar was a tight fit. The cross bar was inserted into the mortise until it projected 1/16” from the opposite face of the bollard. The remaining end of the cross bar was also trimmed off leaving a 1/16” projection with a fine sanding disc mounted in my cordless Dremel tool. Once the cross bar was in place, I used a #78 bit to drill through the post and the bar joint. I sliced a tiny sliver of wood and inserted it through the hole to lock the joint. Here are photos of the four bollards put in place on the model. There was some thought of putting a copper cap on the tops of the bollards again, but after a little more research I found that it was not all that common a practice on pilot boats. Besides that, I would have to put a cap on all the vertical posts to be uniform. The completed bollards were sanded, given a light coat of light buff deckhouse and set aside for installation later. Next on my list is the fife rails.
  15. Welcome to the clubs John, both MSW and the Phantom build club. Many of our members have tackled this kit as one of their first wooden ships. Originally I bought this kit as a graduation gift for my uncles son while it was on sale. Unfortunately, (Or maybe fortunately) I discovered by way of my uncle, that he didn’t think that his son would be interested, so we ended up just giving him money instead. Since it had been quite a while since I last built a wooden ship, I decided to tackle it myself. Chuck Passaro made a build log that pretty much follows the kits’ manual. I would suggest that you read his log first since his guide goes from the beginning to completion of the model. I have deviated quite a bit from his version, but it was mostly to add things that the kits’ manual either over simplified or omitted all together. My only regret that I have is that I forgot how hard working at this small scale was. I think I would have preferred making it from scratch at 1:64 which would have made all of the tiny parts much easier to handle and add the smaller details, but perhaps I could do that later, if I hang around that long. At any rate, I continue to soldier on with it and switch over to the Wanderer whenever I feel the need for a little more variety in the hobby. As far my Wanderer build goes, the vast majority of the plastic parts I will be making myself since those parts are inaccurate and/or poorly detailed. Good luck on your build, and don’t be afraid to deviate as you see fit.
  16. I've found conflicting information on late 19th century timber bollards. While most bollards were simply bare topped timbers, some had metal or leather caps apparently to provide protection from end grain rot. For one example, in the whaling industry there was a large vertical bollard that the cutting in gear was secured to that usually had a metal top applied to it. It may also have served as an anvil for the ships carpenter. Has anyone else come across any info. on this?
  17. Heading out to my scrap lumber supply in the garage, I pulled out a 15” long piece of 1X8 prefinished oak to rip down to 5” wide for the display base only to discover that my table saw is out of commission right now, since one of the rubber caster wheels had been crushed by the weight of the saw. So the band saw had to be used instead. Since the band saw gives me a rougher cut than the table saw, I also had to use a heavy hand plane to smooth it down. I measured the plan to determine the placement of the support pedestals and marked the location of the holes on the display board. The ends of the board will still need trimming and a rabbet needs to be formed all the way around the board to hold the plexiglass cover, but I will have to do all of that at a later time. OOPS! I thought things were going too smoothly and I was right. 😢 While handling the hull to temporarily set it upside down on the drill press to drill the mounting holes in the keel, I inadvertently broke out a small section of the port side main cap rail right at the lower mainmast deadeye. So now that’s something else I’ll need to repair after getting the ship mounted. The hull was placed upside down on a piece of plywood with some leveling blocks to make the waterline parallel to the plywood. The positions of the two holes 4.5” apart were then marked on the keel at stations #2.5 and 7. The whole setup was put on the drill press table and maneuvered into position below the drill bit. Very carefully, I drilled the 7/64” holes to the proper depth into the keel with a brad pointed bit while trying to avoid damaging the copper plates. Long ago, I had turned a matching pair of pedestals out of walnut for mounting a plastic WWII warship that ended up being made of brass. Rather than order another set of brass pedestals, I decided to modify the walnut ones to suit the sloped keel of the Phantom. First I measured the required height difference in the two pedestals and put a mark there on the lower portion of the short one. By slipping a tight fitting dowel into the mounting screw hole, I went over to my disc sander and held the dowel perpendicular to the disc as shown below. I slowly pushed the pedestal into the disc while rotating the dowel until I came to the mark. Here is the modified pedestal next to the original one at this point. The slots in the tops of the pedestals were cut to fit the width of the copper plated keel and the mounting board was clamped in my padded woodworking vice. Then I laid the model on its side and lined it up with the holes for the screws as shown below. One screw was pushed through the board, the pedestal and into the hole in the keel. Once this one was started, I did the same with the other screw and alternated from one to the other until both were secured. I inserted the masts just to be sure it was vertical and here she is temporarily mounted on the board. Now that the model was on a stable base, it was time to make my repair of the damaged cap rail. The damage was only about 1/8” long, but that’s what made it so difficult to fix. I had to take a file to the remaining portion of the cap rail so I could form a less ragged replacement piece and remove the finish to allow the glue to have something to grip. I used a scrap of 1/32” thick maple, a bit wider than needed, to leave me something to grip with a hemostat while machining it. The ends were trimmed to match and a notch was filed in the joining edge to go around the deadeye strop. Once it was shaped to fit snugly into the gap, I clamped the hemostat in one arm of my triple grip third hand as shown below. Adjusting the orientation of my patch to align with the model in the base, it was slid aside to allow me to carefully apply some carpenters glue to both the model and my patch. Sliding the third hand back into position, I carefully backed away from it and left it to dry. Having left it undisturbed for two days, the clamp was removed, and although it still projected beyond the edge of the cap, I found it to be securely attached. So, using some fine files and a very fine grit sanding disc in my cordless Dremel tool, the edge was trimmed back flush with the existing cap. Since my Dremel tool only required a light touch, I thought that it wouldn’t break off the patch. That’s why it did the majority of the stock removal. Refinishing the patch and the area around it with polyurethane, I found that only close examination would reveal the repair. Who could ask for more? I’m not sure what to tackle next, as my table saw in the very cold 🥶 garage will be out of commission now until things warm up to allow me to repair the crushed caster. I don’t want to keep taking the model off the base anymore than necessary as the grip of the mounting screws will loosen and I don’t want to install the masts and rigging until it is permanently mounted. Perhaps I will work on finishing some of the deck fittings like the fife rails since the metal ones don’t look that great to me anyway. I think that the bollards that I made look too big, and will be redone also.
  18. Generally, the more bends, splitters and other fitting you add, the less suction you get.
  19. In addition to the Phantom and Wanderer listed below I also have a steel model kit of the Game of Thrones Red Keep by Metal Earth. Of course I still have the U.S.S. Constitution in dry dock waiting to be repaired. 😢
  20. Well, it’s been a long time coming, but it’s finally time to install the two-piece finish decking panels which required quite a bit of fiddly trimming to slip under the waterways and line up at the center-line. I test fit the two panels several times, both to make sure they fit properly and to practice my clamping procedure. That’s due to the fact that the white carpenters glue that I have, only has about a five minute window before the pieces can no longer be re-positioned. The port side was done first. Since the hawse pipe fitting for the anchor was made in two separate pieces (One through the bow and one through the deck.) the anchor chain had to be threaded through both of them before the deck could be attached. (Actually I darn near forgot about that myself!) Once it was threaded through, I tied a thread to both ends to keep it from pulling itself out later when I wouldn’t be able to access the pipes. The glue was spread quite liberally on the false deck to help give me a little extra time for the glue to set. The deck panel was slipped into place, the lighting wire ends were pulled through the holes for the deck house lighting, and was especially careful not to knock off the hawse pipe fitting attached to the underside of the finish deck panel. Several scraps of 1/32” basswood were wedged into the gap between the upper waterway and the finish deck to apply pressure around the perimeter. (As shown here on the starboard side.) This gap will later be filled by the beveled lower waterway. After that, numerous rubber bands were stretched across the hull with short blocks of wood slipped under them to apply even pressure along the carefully positioned center of the deck as shown below. The ship was then given two days for the glue to set and I removed all the clamps and wedges to examine the results shown below. To my dismay, when testing the fit of the starboard side deck sheet I discovered that there was an uneven gap along the center line stretching from the main hatch to the stern. By inserting an Allen wrench into the wiring hole as shown below and pulling toward the center-line I found that I could close up most of the gap. So in addition to using wedges along the perimeter, rubber bands with the wood blocks to hold down the starboard side deck along the center, I also had to apply some sideways pressure toward the center-line to close up the gap. So my hands were full, to say the least, trying to get everything done before the glue set. After letting the glue set again for two days, all the clamps and wedges were once again removed to reveal that although most of the gap was gone, a thin tapered gap still remained! I sliced some tapered wedges from a sheet of decking and after numerous attempts of fitting, sanding, and refitting, I finally ended up with this barely noticeable filler. Luckily, I think most of the filler will be hidden by deck structures. I think that my next feature to work on will be the beveled lower waterway once I work out how to accomplish it. Making more templates seems to be the way to go as there will have to be several gaps left for the scuppers. I think the material shall be maple rather than basswood as it will more resistant to denting when it is pushed into place. As I work out the details, I will switch over to my somewhat neglected Phantom for a bit. At any rate this is the current status of the Wanderer.
  21. Been away from my build (and the log) for a while now for many reasons, but I finally made a bit more progress by making the cavels. Contrary to actual photos of the ship, both the A.J. Fisher plans and the Aurora kit indicated double timber or iron mooring bits mounted on the deck as shown below. As a matter of fact, of all of the whalers of that era that I was able to examine, I couldn’t find any with this feature! In truth, the photos actually indicated that mooring lines passed through round mooring ports and were tied off to wood cavels mounted on pairs of stanchions. Here is a detail sketch of the cavels below. I decided to model the arrangement of the cavels similar to those on the Charles W. Morgan. Two of these mooring ports passed through the outer hull, the solid blocking between stanchions and through the cavels. The other four just passed through the outer hull and were tied off to cavels on adjoining pairs of stanchions. Although Aurora had all six of these mooring line ports correctly located in the plastic bulwarks, they were also grossly over sized (nearly the full height of the bulwark) as shown below. So the hawse lips on the outside surface of the hull had to be filed off flat, the holes filled in with plastic putty and sanded smooth in preparation to resizing them to match the size of the holes in the cavels and align with them. These cavels were cut from some 1/32” thick hard maple ripped down to 5/64” wide. I nixed using basswood for these due to the fact that the two with hawse holes required drilling a hole nearly the entire width of the cavel and I envisioned problems with splitting them. (In fact, even with the hard maple, several of them did just that.) First, I held the strip directly up against the stanchions and marked the distance from the outside edges of the paired stanchions directly onto the strip leaving a bit extra for the horns. Second, a set of dividers was used to mark a consistent extension horn length and the cavels were cut and filed to their finished length. I found the horn ends themselves to be difficult to shape with any consistency until finally, I clamped the cavels at the bottom of my machinist vise with the end exposed just beyond the notch to line up the top and bottom of the cut vertically. Then by using a three sided mini file with one face riding flat on the edge of the vise, I filed the top edge of the cavel down until the bevel just touched the end of the horn. Then, with the piece still clamped in the vise, I filed the bottom edge until it also just touched the end to match. Once each end was done, it was flipped end for end in the vise and done similarly. Naturally, I cut several extras just in case any of them split. True, the angled end was a bit shorter than in the photos, but at least now the ends all matched each other. The two cavels that needed the mooring port holes drilled through them were tackled next. Some solid basswood blocking to fit between the stanchions was cut and glued to the backside of those cavels. I marked the location of the holes in the center and brushed the face of the pieces with poly and let them dry before actually drilling the holes to help prevent them from splitting, since the holes were nearly the same width as the cavels. Drilling a small pilot hole with a pin vise, I gradually increased the hole to the inside diameter of the hawse pipe lips. Once all of the cavels were all completed, I made this jig below from scraps to hold them in position 1/64” above the upper waterway while gluing them into place. Making those tiny mooring pipe lips maybe beyond my skill, but later on, after applying the self-adhesive backed wood-grain tape on the outer hull, I will attempt to see if I can form some new lips for the inside and outside lips. For now, I’ll simply leave the holes. Right now I needed to find a way to align those holes in the cavels with the holes passing through the blocking and the plastic hull, because I didn’t have enough room to get a regular drill in place between the bulwarks. This was eventually solved by using a much smaller drill bit mounted in this micro drill chuck that can handle up to a #61 bit and closes to 0. It’s perfect for getting into those tight spots. I simply laid the drill bit flat with the bottom of the hole in the cavel and drilled it by hand until the bit emerged on the outside of the hull. This gave me the position of the lower edge of the hole on the outside and by allowing for the size of the new bit, I was able to enlarge the hole to align with the hole in the cavel. Now that the cavels are installed, the insides of the bulwarks were given the final coat of white paint and all of the masking was removed.
  22. Taking a break from my Wanderer build, I shifted my focus to fabricate and install the lower portion of the deadeyes for the Phantom. Rather than using Chucks method of tying the deadeyes on with thread, I decided to try my hand at soldering again. Here is a photo of all the tools needed to complete these tiny fittings. This close up shows the process in order from left to right. The first step was to make the deadeye strops by wrapping some .27mm blackened brass wire around a 3/32” dia. drill bit, leaving the tail ends slightly extended from the bit. These ends were trimmed off even and flattened with a hammer. A deadeye was inserted into the opening and pinched closed as shown leaving a thin flattened tail that was smoothed with a file to solder to the chain plate. The next step was to make the chain plates. I took a sheet of .026 mm brass to the bench and clamped it down with a metal ruler and proceeded to repeatedly score a 2.0 mm wide strip with an old #11 Exacto blade with the tip broken off until I could snap the strip off. The strip was cut into eight 13.5 mm lengths and the corners were trimmed off one end with a metal snips. (That’s 6 to use, and 2 extra just in case.) When that was completed a sharp metal awl was used to mark (one at a time) the locations of three .69mm holes on the trimmed end. I flattened the plate and drilled each hole before going to the next one. Once all three holes were done the plate was flattened once again and sanded smooth. Now that the three main components were done, they were pinned in place on this jig and soldered together. My procedure for soldering is still a work in progress, but after several failed attempts I managed to work it out by first putting a dab of solder paste between the face of the chain plate and the back of the strop. Then another dab of paste was placed on the face of the strop that allowed me to stick a tiny bit of solder on top of the assembly. When the tip of the hot iron was held against the chain plate, the solder behaved as hoped by melting and flowing were it belonged to make a nice shinny joint. The excess solder was filed down flat so they could fit into those tiny slots that were now drilled and filed into the cap rail for the chain plates as shown below. The masts were temporarily set in the deck with a length of chord clipped to the masts where the backstays will be anchored. That chord allowed me to align the chain plates with the backstays as shown below. Once the angle of the chain plate was established and marked on the hull, the plate was held in place to mark the location of the bottom hole in the plate. I used a .69mm drill to make the hole and tapped a full sized pin through the hole into the hull. The plate was secured with the full size pin in the bottom hole, the other two holes were drilled directly through the plate and half sized pins with a tiny dab of CA on the end were tapped in place. Now that all of the chain plates were installed, they were given two coats of Model Shipways MS4828 iron/cannon black paint. Some touch up painting is still needed, but the next phase of the project will be to mount it on a finish base to reduce the chance of damaging what I have already accomplished. Here is the ship as it stands now. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
  23. Welcome aboard Mike. We are always happy to share our hobby with others. Your skill level doesn’t matter as we cover every level here from the novice to the artisan. Get familiar with using the forum and start a log on your first ship so if you do come across any problems with it the rest of us can give suggestions to help solve them. Don’t get discouraged if you don’t feel that you measure up to the results that some of us show, as we all had to start somewhere and it’s all about the journey to keep improving our work.
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