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Jaager

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Everything posted by Jaager

  1. It is also possible that knowledge and lessons learned give you the power and determination to persevere , when not having that chip would have lead to the easy path. If you did it twice, that would be troubling. At least you are not a song writer who signed over the rights to a song whose royalties could have supported you for the rest of your life.
  2. The situation is probably even worse. The veneer has a high probability of being rotary cut. Think of a blade producing a continuous sheet of wood that resembles paper towels coming off of a roll. The wood came from a curved environment and will always "want" to go back to that cupped conformation. Wetting, pressing, ironing will just be a futile fight against Mother Nature. Even at a distance, that hideous yellow stuff looks like crap. It will likely not be the joy to work that an appropriate species is. It appears that the ZHL episode was not the aberration that I was hoping it was.
  3. It is a terrible choice. It has a relatively short life. It becomes brittle and releases its bond. It is thick and does not allow positioning. There is no easy way to reverse it. Attach Lino to a plywood sheet for something intended to last 10 years or so - go for it. PVA plus heat can become a contract cement of sorts. A dry even coat on both meeting surfaces plus heat activates a bond. The outside layer has to be thin enough to allow heat transfer at a temp that does not char or cook the outer layer.
  4. I offer another ship that you might give some consideration as a subject : Namure 90 1756 it underwent a bit of a metamorphosis for the Nelson Era but as launched is my choice. There is a bit of fame attached to it now.
  5. The choices Linen seems to be lost into the past. Cotton - limited lifespan - smaller fibers -smaller fuzz Poly - seems to be winning the race. As long as the model itself is plastic, any resistance to using man-made materials is moot. Poly already is what a wax would provide. Wax seems to me to be pointless. If it is beeswax on it - I would question it ever case hardening to become NOT a dust magnet. Paraffin would change its phase with changes in room temp. The semi liquid phase would also hold dust. Renaissance wax will case harden as its organic solvent evaporates. It is probably more positive than negative for linen and cotton. It would offer no advantage with poly.
  6. Northeast US, There are many low cost species that will work. Looking at species that are favored for scratch clear finish wooden sailing vessels is not a productive or economical path for your needs. Pear - Swiss Pear ( is a steam oxidized European wood ) It is expensive here. It is difficult to source here. Basswood is favored for architect's models because it is available precut and does not rival platinum in price. It is also soft and fuzzy. Your economical choice is construction Pine (not Fir). The endcap loss leader at Home Depot. Pick clear with no sap. Yellow Poplar is low cost and would do exactly what you want. Hard Maple, Black Cherry are over kill, but like the above two also have closed pore, so save a finish step. Nut wood species would work - Oak, Ash, Hickory, Willow - they just need a pore filling step Sand-n-Sealer. Your problem is getting lumber into 1:12 scale 2x4 and 2x6 and 1x8 -1x12 clapboard. If you do not have a bandsaw and a thickness sander and a modelers table saw, you can make do with a full size table saw. Just mount a hollow ground rip blade. Borrow the use from someone who has one and bring your own blade. Try to avoid feeding your fingers to the saw or getting impaled by a kickback. If you use Pine, the extra loss to kerf is something that you can stand. Prime any wood with half strength Zinsser shellac - Scotch Brite- follow on with full strength - Scotch Brite and tack rag. Then any paint will bond.
  7. I would use a filler at the stem and paint the hull. or remove the planking and buy a replacement from a site vendor or visit your local WoodCraft store and get a veneer that is better - sawn not rotary cut if possible. Veneer just needs a steel straight edge and a keenly sharp knife. Strop often. The color of the planking is way darker than any species that I believe was used for an actual ship. To my eye, it looks brittle, course, open pore. - not even close to a 1:75 scaled down version of real wood that was used. A Wayback machine view of this: Taper the stem to about half its thickness at the outer char. Cut a rabbet - a proper rabbet = the correct width in the stem. Small chisel. Practice a lot on scrap first. Start the planking at the rabbet and add bonding as it fits aft. Apply the same plank P&S - not all one side and then the other. Planking width 6" -8" in scale with the the garboard maybe a bit wider.
  8. The War of Jenkins Ear. The bureaucracy managing this war for England were incompetent amateurs. Really a lazy effort on the part of the scribbler. Obviously zero understanding. HMS Tiger 1722 was old and obsolete - it was actually a pre 1719 Establishments design. Definitely NOT a frigate. In that era, even a 40 gun would not have been a frigate. With two full gun decks, they were slow slugs that were definitely top heavy. Often not able to use the guns on their main gun deck, because much wave action would flood thru the open ports.
  9. Might this tool help with getting a uniform thickness? https://bridgecitytools.com/products/hp-8-mini-block-plane
  10. It is a Jarmac. The ID label has been removed. It was made in a one-man shop in Springfield, IL. When the owner died, his shop died with him. It filled the small table saw niche during the time between the loss of the Unimat with its saw attachment and the JIM saw. The motor is probably a repurposed sewing machine motor - no power. It sorta worked with stock that was essentially veneer thickness. The fence was a welded bar - low - no adjustment. Simple miter gauge. Two tracks - so a home made sliding table worked for it. If you make a sliding table - about a full afternoon's time expense - it will be machine that fills the crosscut function that the recent chopper saw thread was all about. Note that the blade is a slotting blade - too many teeth for anything more than thick veneer. The companies that made reasonably priced blades that fit - Thurston and Martindale - no longer do. I think that there was a similarly T-ball league disc sander in the Jarmac line. Not really good, frustrating, but better than nothing if it was the only thing available. In my imagination, I can see this machine as a negative example for Jim.
  11. Along with my premise that plastic may be a hindrance as an introduction to wooden ship model kits because of the difference in now the instructions relate (or how the older wooden kit instructions did). Unrealistic expectations because of the many different skills beyond just assembly and and that most of them are common to just about every kit. This gets repetitive and and excessive to do for every kit when there are "how to" books that do this. Looking at the above, I have another premise. A plastic kit is straight forward assembly. Additional knowledge about the anatomy and physiology of the object being assembled is not necessary. For a wooden ship model, it is important to have at least a basic knowledge of the individual parts and how they fit together. Knowing the proper names allows for an easier look up or inquiry about what is going on. Knowing what a proper keel, keel rabbet, stem, stem rabbet, hawse timbers (the first planking layer has to cover the purpose of the hawse timbers) the proper run of planking, would help with this specific problem. Faking it is not likely to yield a satisfactory product.
  12. Rather than the vertical under the counter supports, why not mimic the original and use horizontal instead? I would worry that vertical may not fit well with the run of the planking. The upper part of the planking will run in almost the same axis. You could have flat filler pieces between the pseudo transoms with holes for dowels into the last mold. This would make a precise locator for each filler (reverse mortise) for almost idiot proof slots for the transoms. You could include a few Bamboo skewers as the dowels and burn holes that are their diameter. If you doubled up on each transom (two pieces instead of one in each slot) the planking would have a firm support. The planking will have serious bending and a firm base will have a better grab.
  13. I see the original volume is available on the second hand market Half of it covers masting and rigging I have the US reprint by Sweetman : CUTTY SARK, THE 1933 LONGRIDGE,C N EDWARD W SWEETMAN NEW YORK 1959 Make sure the loose plans are in the pocket.
  14. It is the same as drawing Bamboo trunnels. For years I have used General steel drill gauges 1-60 61-80 They work -I rub the reverse on a sharpening stone from time to time. Then there was one that works really well The Jim drawplate which I think is still available from http://www.byrnesmodelmachines.com/drawplate5.html The Bamboo skewers on the end caps are hit or miss as to which variety is in the bag. Some are soft and play nice but then to crush at the gripper and some are hard and brittle and fight you all the way. I have never seen drawplates for wood and I wonder if there is the necessary range of holes? I have jewelers drawplates, but they are more difficult to use - Thick with a cone on the reverse - it is a lot of work to get enough Bamboo thru the hole to have enough to grip and pushing does not work ar all
  15. Things are not nearly a dire as they seem. Polaris is a double layer POB build. You are doing the first layer. The only function of the first layer of planking is to provide an adequate base for the actual planking. The molds on most POB kits are too widely spaced to provide support by themselves. Even though the first Italian kits termed them bulkheads, this is not what they are. Actual bulkheads are a feature of steel vessels and Chinese sea going junks. Western wooden ships did not have bulkheads. They are a mold of the cross section at their location. For that first planking layer - just good enough for the outer layer is enough. Gaps between strakes are not important. They do not need to be filled. If there are dips and hollows between the molds, these need to be fleshed out. Often a scab of wood does a better job than spackle if the dip is significant. If there is enough support for the outer planking, it does not matter what it looks like.
  16. If you click on the Articles Database link at the top here and scroll down to the Framing and Planking section, the bottom three articles will show how the planking should be done. You do not have the materials to match what is shown, but this may give you a map for adapting as best can. Or you can buy wider and better replacement planking from a vendor at the right side of this page. You cannot spill an "S" shaped plank from wider stock with what is your kit supplied planking, Trying to edge bend to a serious degree is fighting the nature of the wood, so at least you should have some idea about the cause of your frustration. The garboard is the key to getting the rest of the planking to work out. For it, the edge opposite the keel should stay dead straight. Any removal should be at the keel edge and that should mostly be at the stem rabbet. Never bend the ends up the stem.
  17. What with the epidemic of greed which defines the current era, there is a high probability that any plans would rival the kit in how much is the cost. If you have the materials and facilities to fabricate the model from its plans, the parts of the kit itself can be used as 3D plans for to fabricate a total replacement model using appropriate species of wood. Just a suggestion.
  18. I have an original version of the Dobson J never found a way to get satisfactory work out of it. The whole unit wants to move and rock when the blade is being used. After your comment, I can see that it being fixed to a large enough base solves that problem. It does greatly increase the real estate occupied by the device though. The blade is inside a sleeve and held vertical by two plastic screws - and I have not been successful in finding the sweet spot between a wobble and too much friction for the blade to slide easily. The grab helps cause the sliding and rocking. The stock wants to move back and forth with the blade. The brass wires for a hold down are too flimsy. It requires four hands. If fixed to a base, it is then down to three hands. I am not sure that razor saws models that allow for just the steel blade to be replaced are thin enough to fit the sleeve. This important because I have come to prefer a cut being on the pull stroke instead of the push stroke.
  19. It is a bit more involved and depends on the era. Rope, rope and parrels, a wooden shoe, an iron truss and pivot spike. The yards on an actual ship need to pivot and swing on a horizontal plane. Often, the main yard was fixed at one spot on the mast. The upper yards would move up and down the mast. On a model, there are decisions. Sails or bare. Sails, and the topsail yards and above would be up. Bare = down. Sails would more often have the yards at an angle other than perpendicular. Bare = perpendicular. The way that the yards are attached to the mast needs to be simulated. But once the pose has been selected, the actual attachment of the yards can be some something as simple as a section of a brass pin in blind holes in the yard and in the mast. The simulation does not need to actually function. It is only on an RC model where the yards have to actually earn a living.
  20. This is the old style marking gauge: Replace the steel scribing point with a section of a 2mm HB mechanical pencil lead Using scrap wood stock and a chisel a miniature version is easy to fabricate.
  21. I did not see a log with the deck being laid in process. It looks like there is a one piece sub deck on top of the molds and individual planks are laid on top. A deck curve should be easy to add. Use actual deck beams. Now the thickness would be much less than an actual deck beam. The middle would be the thickness of the deck crown, At the tops of the frames. At the side, the thickness would feather to zero. The wider this pseudo beam the happier you will be. This crowned deck would be done using- a shim that is an arc, actually, The old How To Build A Ship Model books show to get an arc or an ellipse over a distance. For the deck - to avoid creating a cartoon by over doing it: A touch of walnut aqueous stain or walnut acrylic paint added to the PVA on the plank edges should give you a scale appropriate caulking seam. No trunnels. Study up in planking butt shifts. A 4 butt shift with just a hint of a seam - not a wide -poke you in the eye bowling alley gutter seam. The grain makes doing a scratch for a cross plank seam difficult to pull off. I wonder if one of those ultra thin saws made from a razor blade would leave an even channel - not deep and filled with walnut PVA would do it?
  22. If there is a lamp assembly store near you - if that is still a thing - hollow brass cylinders of various sizes and shapes?
  23. I would place money on the compounds that polymerize - the vinyl and acrylic components - have one chemical company as their origin. It is probably a toxic and hazardous process not cost effective to replicate in multiple locations. The gemisch that is the commercial product probably has a few more manufacturers but not as many as there are products. Some are just rebranded. If two companies have products in the same shaped dispenser, they probably come off of the same line. A line that forks just before the labeling machines. PVA when polymerized looks like intertwined fungal hyphae. The thinner the zone of just vinyl chains between two meeting surfaces, the stronger the bond. Clamping pressure = bond strength. The limiting factor is the amount of pressure the wood fibers can resist before they crush. If a POB build has molds that are plywood, it would probably be prudent to prime the areas that are end grain with pushed in and surface wiped PVA. Let it cure and then bond the planking.
  24. I used Franklin pre-mixed Hide glue as a reversible glue. It holds too well the way I applied it. I coated both surfaces. I used tolerances that were too exact. Hide glue is a protein. Hot ethanol will denature it and have it curl into small balls. It would have been exactly what I want - if there was room for the hot ethanol to penetrate the glue joint. Hide glue is probably what the pre- 20th century models were assembled with. If your goal is a 100-200 year lifespan it should serve. The Franklin and Old Brown versions are convenient but the high percentage that is water is a worry. The glue pot hot dissolved flakes has much less water and would probably be the wise option. Offering a wide choice of critter origins for relative strength. It is however a witches brew process that takes addition time and skill before the actual wood joining step can begin. This lack of convenience is a difficult hurdle to justify when compared to just applying a bleb of Titebond II spreading it as a complete monolayer on both meeting surfaces. About Duco - it probably helps to read the directions. Totally coat both meeting areas - let dry - apply a wet layer and get together really sorta fast. It does hold better.
  25. Kurt is right. If chop is the way you wish to go Harbor Freight has a mini chop saw that will cut thru thicker stock rather than crushing the fibers It is Harbor Freight so it is not a Rolls. The table wants a layer to bring it up to the level of the bottom of the "vise". It wants to sling the off cut. You do not want your fingers as close to the blade as it would take to hold and prevent that. StewMac has a Japanese Curved-edge Mini Saw that I like - cutting on the pull stroke- good.
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