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I do have one question that is not addressed on the label. How does one dispose of the used product?

There were several articles submitted to Ships In Scale magazine by Antonio over the years which I thought were of great interest to me. So, when the book came out in 2005 and was offered for sale through SIS, I jumped at the chance to get a copy. I immediately put it at the top of my X-mas list and the admiral got it for me. At that time, I think it sold for about $35, so if you can get it for less than $10 you will have yourself a real bargain! He had a very extensive model shop with many innovative ideas and pieces of equipment Since getting the book, I have used many of his ideas to make versions of them for myself. Most recently I modified a broken drafting chair into a mobile support table for my model shop. Both Antonio and I strongly believed in modifying old equipment for other uses rather than to just discard them. Unfortunately, he has recently passed, so the book will be his last. Although I never met him, I somehow feel that I have lost a kindred spirit.

I also use the product I find that it's easy to use. You simply soak the parts until you get the desired finish, set on paper towel to soak up the excess, and let thoroughly dry over night. Unlike paint, it adds very little thickness to the parts. That's something quite important with very small parts!

It's amazing how you can do so much with so little! And bye the way, I see that it's your birthday today so have a happy one!

I am trying to make a matching pair of fairleads for the stern cap rail of my 1:96 MS Phantom as shown in the actual size sketch below. (I drew it at ¼ actual size and reduced it down to the scaled size needed.) My first idea was to print the scaled drawing on paper as a pattern and apply it to a 1/32” thick piece of aluminum bar stock and cut and shape it with drills and files, but the needle files that I have, aren’t nearly thin enough to get inside the hooked ends to file them down. So my next attempt was to make them according to my notes shown below here. The hooks were made from some 1/32” square brass stock that was bent over a piece of 3/64” hard wire and being cut off as shown. The base was cut from a piece of 1/64” thick strip brass. I tried joining the pieces with AC but to no avail since the assembly was just too weak to take any stress applied by trying to file it to shape. Silver soldering seemed to be my only other choice available. However, clamping such veeeeeery small pieces in place for soldering can be just about impossible since regular clamps would be much too large. When using a torch the flames air flow causes the tiny pieces to shift around. Touching a soldering iron to the pieces will do the same. I considered making a jig to hold them by carving a recess into a piece of wood for a tight fit, but I would have to make one for each of them since getting the solder to melt will just burn the original jig. I’m not aware of any other material that could be formed to make such a jig that also wouldn’t just melt or burn. Another method that just occurred to me would be to flatten the bottom edge of some hollow brass tubing and solder them onto a piece of brass bar strip using the solder as a fillet. Then I could make the vertical cuts to open the gap at the top of the fairlead. But, once again that still leaves the problem of holding those tiny pieces together while soldering. Any suggestions on keeping everything still while soldering them together?

Don't forget the decapitation of Combat series actor Vic Morrow during filming from a real helicopter!

Sorry Lou, but leave me out! My one flight was more than enough for me! (I wonder how much those tourists in the video would have enjoyed their flight blindfolded.) 😖

As per Murphy's Law, after being unable to locate my jig saw blades when I needed them (way back on post #2) for this project, I found them today while looking for something else.

I think those are just mortising bits.

Well Justin, first off I would suggest looking at the topic So Where Do You Do Yours Then (Model Making That Is) There are close to 30 pages of suggestions there that would be of help. I myself, have put my two cents in it on page 26. Personally, the thing I have found to be the most helpful to me has been mounting just about all of my equipment on rolling tables or benches. It can allow you to have more space to work in by rolling the equipment that is not needed at the moment out of your way. My entire shop used to share room with our cars where all I needed to do to work was to back the cars out, leaving plenty of space to move the equipment from the perimeter for working space. Once I became confined to a wheelchair, most of my shop moved to the basement, but I still find that having the tools mobile makes my work easier. (Not to mention much warmer in our WI winters.)

Here is my not so good (or funny) trip on an Army Helicopter. Sometime in the spring of 71, while on temporary duty at the Ft. Sill Army Hospital, I had my first and only experience with an Army chopper. In a joint Army/civilian disaster exercise, I was volunteered (?) to participate as a victim in a major highway accident. My part was to pose as a victim with severe head trauma which required me to wear a neck brace and to have my head, including my eyes, to be heavily bandaged. I couldn’t see a thing after that and was strapped down onto a gurney which was hustled off to a waiting chopper and set inside with the doors still wide open. Well, the pilot seemed to think that trying some drastic evasive maneuvers was needed for some unknown reason or other. All I could think of the whole trip to the hospital was that I prayed that the gurney had been solidly anchored in place as I desperately gripped the sides of the gurney hoping not to be ejected from the cabin as the wind howled by me and he made some pretty wild twists and turns. I may have yelled out some choice oaths at the pilot, but with the racket from the choppers engines he probably couldn’t hear me at all. (That was probably for the best anyway since I’m quite sure he outranked me by quite a bit.) It was like riding a monster roller coaster with your eyes closed and you couldn’t remember if your seat belt was hooked up. Luckily, I had not eaten much that morning or I’m sure I would have left quite a mess to clean up. I have never been that close to a helicopter since!!!!!

It's amazing how you're able to put so much detail in your ships at 1:210 while I have such a hard time at 1:98. Outstanding work again Javier!

I came across an add on U-Tube for an adhesive often used by a dentists, one of whom thought of expanding its use on many more applications. It bonds a vast list of materials including wood, metal, and glass by basically, welding the materials together. It remains in liquid form until exposed to a small UV light tool for four seconds. This adhesive dries clear and once hardened, it can be filed or sanded to shape. The video has a demonstration of its strength in the video where a broken wire cable was glued and able to support the weight of a full grown man. It goes under the brand name of Bondic. A web site address of getbondic.io was listed on the AD. It sounds like something with many applications in our hobby. Has anyone here know of or ever used the product before?

I would second that recommendation, especially with the availability of the practicum here at MSW by Chuck to follow. They are a vast improvement over the kits instructions and there are several logs to review on it's construction on our site.

You can go to the Quick-Find Indexes to BUILD LOGS FOR KITS in the wooden kits section and scroll down to La Nina by Igorsr Amati/Victory. There you can follow his build of your kit. According to his log the hull is planked first. Then the bulwark extensions are cut off before the false deck is installed. So cutting notches for the extensions is not necessary.

Another problem has come up concerning mounting the ship on the base. As the keel on this model is just 9/64” wide, I discovered during my search for a source for mounting hardware that while getting 2 bolts in 7/64” diameter in anywhere near the 3 ½” lengths that I will be needing is possible, it would also be extremely expensive! (Like $45 each expensive.) I also thought about using some threaded rod, but there again the cost would be prohibitive. I found that the smallest diameter that is readily available and at the same time still affordable would be 1/8”. So, the problem now becomes how to conceal a bolt that will clearly show as it passes through the 9/64” keel and into the keel supports. It appears that my only solution will be to have some timber blocks on both sides of the keel where the bolts pass thru. While I haven’t been able to find any more info anywhere in any of my references on blocking the sides of the keel, I shall incorporate two pair of them on mine regardless. (Although there is an indistinct indication on the AD photo of some kind of blocking between the keel blocks just below the mainmast and the stern of the lowered whaleboat, it isn’t at all clear exactly what that is.) Each pair of side blocks will span two keel supports and although the exposed portion of the bolts will be minimal, they will be painted black. I made a sketch below to show the location of the blocks and the drilled holes. I had also contemplated threading the ends of a solid metal rod for some nuts, but as I don’t possess a tap and die set for this I didn’t see that the added expense would have been worth it. At any rate, the 1/8” bolt should provide a more secure mounting of the model than one of a mere 7/64” diameter, so maybe it’s for the best anyways.

And here I thought it was my doing. I tried to undo it, but when I saved my correction it reappeared. I just had my computer upgraded to windows 10 (and discovered a host of new emojis) so I thought I had pressed a special key or something.

For anyone interested in reading them in order, here is a list. Destroyermen Series by Taylor Anderson 1) Into the Storm Jun-2008 2) Crusade Oct-2008 3) Maelstrom Feb-2009 4) Distant Thunders Jun-2010 5) Rising Tides Feb-2011 6) Firestorm Oct-2011 7) Iron Gray Sea Jul-2012 😎 Storm Surge Jul-2013 9) Deadly Shores May-2014 10) Straits of Hell May-2015 11) Blood in the Water Jun-2016 12) Devil's Due Jun-2017 13) River of Bones Jul-2018 14) Pass of Fire Jun-2019 15) Winds of Wrath Jun-2020

I'm glad to see that others here have discovered The Destroyermen series. I made mention of the series back in November on the posting of the 1:96 USS Peary DD-226 by rcweir. His model is just the type of ship depicted in the series. Along with the four stack vintage WWI destroyer Taylor starts out with, there are also included many other vehicles of war developed in the story including wooden sailing warships, ironclads, WWI and WWII aircraft, aircraft carriers, dirigibles and submarines. I am currently reading volume 10 Straits Of Hell and am still wondering just how far the story can go before the technology will go on before it catches up with our current state of warfare. Every volume introduces something new and as I said in the model posting, I can hardly put them down once I start.

Time for some more thought on making the base board. The top surface with the launching ways has been worked out to my satisfaction, but I need to figure out how to work out some means of getting access to the battery clip and on/off switch without having to turn the entire case upside down. I have decided that the oak board itself is just wide enough to accommodate the ships spars so I won’t be able to cut a ¼” wide rabbet all around it for the Plexiglas cover as I had originally envisioned. This leaves me with adding a strip around the board to form a ledge for it instead. The length of the base is a bit overlong and also needs to be trimmed down, but due to having our old waterbed frame leaning on both my table saw and radial arm saw waiting to be sold, they will not be available for the tasks of cutting it to length or ripping the oak trim strip. As you can see below, it’s not the easiest obstacle to move aside. As far as cutting the oak board to length, I guess that I will just make a very careful cut with my band saw and clean it up with a hand plane and a bit of sanding. As far as the trim goes maybe a trip to the a wood supplier is in order. While a flat ¼” thick (the thickness of the Plexiglas) lattice type molding is what I would prefer, something else may work as well. Here is a photo of the battery clip and the push-button switch components. (Those are ¼” squares to give you a size reference.) I sketched up a diagram of what should work for the battery and switch that’s shown below here. A hollowed out recess in the front edge of the board will be needed for the battery holder and the switch that will be hidden behind a short removable section of the molding. The battery holder really has a very tight grip on the battery requiring me to be able to pull it outside the recess to handle it with both hands. The switch is a different problem altogether since I don’t want to unscrew the section of molding every time I want to switch it on or off. As you can see by the sketch there will be another recess for the switch module, but it will be a tighter fit and it will be held in place with some adhesive. Some routing will also be needed to accommodate the connecting wires. A hole will be drilled through the molding to line up with that switch and a somewhat tight fit length of doweling will project slightly from the surface of the molding. When in place the switch can then be pressed by depressing the doweling without removing the trim section. At least that is the plan, so we’ll see how well that works out.

I have had the Craftsman version of that tool for years. The biggest difference between the two tools is that mine is cordless with a rechargeable lithium ion battery. It has that offset in the tool sanding and cutting blades that lets you get in real close. It's a very handy feature that remodelers find very useful for under cutting trim mouldings to install new flooring, since the tool itself can literally get flush with floor to make the cut.

I agree Joe, as I bought the very same saw from our local Wood Crafter shop earlier this year. It makes a very fine cut and even people with limited strength like me will find that very little effort is needed to make a cut.

That's a nice way to both get rid of your excess materials and at the same time get the books into the hands of someone who can appreciate them rather than just going into to a landfill.

I find it quite interesting to learn the reasons why and how things were done on a ship the way that they were. I'm sure that a lot of us here without any actual sailing experience can learn a lot from those that have. All of that knowledge can only help to improve our models.

Bad news guys, I am afraid that Doris will no longer continue with her presentation of her modeling on our site. I went to the modelforum.cz to view her Royal Katherine build log and found a quote (July 14, 2019) where she has said as much. Apparently she was expressing her frustration there at having to repeatedly respond to the same questions over and over even though she had provided many detailed photo tutorials previously. She is apparently on several different modeling forum sites at this time and wanted to cut down on the time spent on them to devote more of her time to actually working on her modeling projects. Personally, I think that she is looking for more guidance for her from the sites. Unfortunately for her, she herself seems to be the authority on the subject and there are few out there that know more about the subject than her. However if you want to continue following her work, (with the availability of the translation programs) just go to the modelform.cz website and you can follow her there. I am saddened by this news as my wife and I can't help but appreciate her artistry and find that I continue using some of her techniques. Still, I wish her continued success on her modeling.