Jaager

For pure escapist fare Richard Bolitho (28 book series) Kindle Edition by Alexander Kent (Author) One plus with digital, all of the old pulp books and magazines are probably obtainable and not lost to time. It was before my time, but I see this as the material that was filling the space in the 30s and 40s later occupied by mindless TV series. There was aspect from back then, that I heard and enjoyed at their end: radio teleplays. There is a WHOLE lot on content on TV that would be better on radio. We could even do model ship building while occupying our ears with the stuff. You could also investigate audio books.

I am not familiar with this Proxxon but as a ~9" bandsaw for anything serious, it is probably prudent to think of it as a toy. Do you mean a 3" hardwood resaw? As for Oak (as well as Ash, Willow, Hickory, Chestnut, Elm, Sassafras, even Walnut) if you are making a display case, or mounting board, they are excellent. For a model itself, they have contrasty grain, open pores, medium to coarse texture. They are strong enough, but the wood will be a distraction if left clear, and require an additional pore filling step if painted. Their only positive is that they are easy to source. This process is already difficult enough if appropriate species of wood are used. I saw an earlier inquiry about using a bandsaw to slice off planking instead of using something like a Byrnes tablesaw. The majority of bandsaw blades have serious set. The less expensive the blade the more set. It takes several passes thru a thickness sander to remove the surface scars. A lot of loss to kerf and really boring to do. On saws that can take them, a Wood Slicer blade leaves a surface similar to a tablesaw blade with minimal set. The downside is that the blades are bit expensive and they dull fairly quickly. No resharpening. Blades with carbide teeth can have their teeth resharpened or maybe replaced, but the steel backing that has been heavily flexed may gain micro cracks that migrate and join together. I consider the tooth resharpening factor on a carbide blade to be a specious selling point to justify the significant extra cost of a carbide blade. They do last much longer. They are likely more economical than the cost of the total number of Wood Slicer blades needed to last just as long.

A mask is still pretty much a necessity. The cloud of fine particles is impressive. You still want a shop vac sucking up the dust. At least in a garden, the vac will not make you deaf. I think that the sweet spot is ~1700 RPM for the drum. Faster will probably char and slower will make an already tedious operation last much longer. It would probably take a motor of 1/2 HP or greater to avoid it getting hot.

Endsor discusses lofting in his 17thC ship building books. Everything that I have read about lofting from then until ~1860 indicates that the same process was continuous or this whole range of time. The process is: Only the station cross sections from the Body plan were expanded from the design plan -usually 1:48 up to 1:1. The molds made from the 1:1 pattern contained "sirmarks" for the shape of the frames between each station. The shipwrights in the yard did not need to have their hands held to shape the intervening frames. It was master to apprentice - generation to generation. Now, Desmond and Estep come out of the insanity or scams for wooden merchant ship building because of Uboat losses that the new world of warfare that was WWI. They feature at least two practices that are a total break from the pre-1860 tradition. One is all bends with a space between each bend that is equal in width to be bend. Now, French and North American ship builders pre-1860 used all bends, often, if not most of the time. But the spaces were smaller. The most that I have seen is 2/3 timber and 1/3 space. More often than not it was less. At the time of the American Revolution the space was ~1" and often a pair of frames in a bend had 1" chocks so that there was a space in the middle of a bend. Two is that the outline of both faces of every frame was drawn on the loft floor. Instead of maybe 30 molds - there was a couple a hundred or more. Why this labor intensive extra work? I connected the dots: iron and steel replacing wood about 1860 iron and steel requite engineers and engineering precision that wood does not. the master to apprentice chain is broken because the new tech required different skills the new mould lofts translated the engineering practices over to the war emergency wooden ship building for lofting the timbers. No references - just speculation. How this applies to ship modeling: Charles Davis introduces POF to model shipbuilding and presents the methods and styles that he learned in the WWI shipyards as being the style of the 18thC and early 19thC. The earlier methods and builds were an entirely different tradition. He deserves all credit for encouraging POF, but we must go somewhere else for the proper what to do. Harold Hahn also used an all bends and room = space. I do not think that he did this because of what Davis wrote. Hahn was focused on the time of the American Revolution. The framing at that time had almost all wood. The spaces were 1-2" air gaps. There is not much visual interest in showing a POF hull with no below the wale planking if the frames on display are a solid wall of wood. If every other bend is omitted, the frames are a more interesting display. It also saves half the work and half the wood. Compared to planking a carved or POB hull, the volume of wood needed for frame timbers is 10 - 20 - 30 times that amount. The calculation is BF ( board feet ) not the number of strips. The loss to kerf and strange shapes cut from the stock is maybe 50%.

I think that Desmond describes a different species of wooden ships. The 1850s were the end of a long era of guild style shipwrights. It seems like there is a wall not too much later. The main stream changed to composite and then iron and steel. The generation to generation chain of passing of knowledge about wooden ship building was probably broken - except for minor and independent yards. The old lofting methods replaced with a translation of iron and steel lofting over to wood. The lofting of every frame was a new practice - taken from metal methods - metal is not open to variation on the fly. The all bends with intervening spaces equal to the bends in width was new. I would not trust Desmond to be relevant to any ship built before 1900 or so.

from American-Built Packets and Freighters of the 1850s Wm Crothers MacFarland & Co. 2013

For a water rinse, if your supply is hard water, it may be wise to use distilled water.

Would a clamping jig on a sliding table and a gang of slitting blades to make a dado be an easier solution?

I had an extra deep basement dug in July during a drought. It was stopped when limestone shale was hit in one corner. In the Bluegrass region of KY, the underlying rock is an an ancient sea floor and just as flat. It is a giant swimming pool. Turns out that for six months of the year, the water table was well above the floor of my basement. I became quite experienced with sump pumps, pipe flow volumes. It seems that constant pumping generates favored flow channels. The more you pump the more likely is ground water going to flow towards the pump. Larger volume pumps, larger diameter discharge pipes - where to place the outlet? a viscous cycle! Then there is the problem of electric power interruption during storms that are recharging the ground water. A generator. A normal home generator has a gas tank with limited time. An ice storm that crushed a lot of KY and had long transmission lines in Alabama snapped off like a row of dominoes and drawing off the repair crews from KY is going to require more time than you have gas for. I feel your nightmare. I do not miss living it. A wish for a basement decision do-over is something that I will take to my grave.

Here is a link for some supplementary information about skipjack construction: https://modelexpo-online.com/assets/images/documents/MS2032-Willie_L_Bennett-Instructions-web.pdf

It was a long while ago, but I a photo of an open sided assembly line decorator model production in Vietnam. The think the formula is: a country with a skilled, but under utilized work force, willing to work for much less than their skills are worth because their economy is temporarily stuck on a sandbar. When the economy recovers or has its initial bloom, this sort of operation probably has to reappear in the next country with the proper factors. There used to be something named Starving Artists - a large room with a lot of people, each behind their own easel, all copying a master painting projected at the front of the room. I imagine something similar for mass produced decorator models. I do not imagine someone just looking to earn enough for their next hit could be a satisfactory worker. Your two have something extra - the designer had an eye for elegant design, the lines have artistic curves. The wood is not pallet quality crap. It looks like Acer, or Beech or Birch. They are not actually ship models as we would define them here. They are simulacrum of ship models. Tasteful background decoration.

As for the request in the title of this post: rather than use something that is a cartoon and out of scale do a site search = silkspan low cost - it used to come in three weights - it or similar products might be available with those options from dealers catering to fabric covered flying aircraft builders. Those dealers may even have the heating irons with a curved surface and a power control knob which would be about the ideal tool for bending wood.

Underhill probably had the most influence on me. It is not just about scratch building. Beyond the hull fabrication, - the framing, what it has can be used to improve the various components that come with kits, too. When you build the various parts of a ship from raw materials, instead of using the kit supplied parts, you are well on your way to becoming a scratch builder. The final step makes you independent - except for obtaining suitable plans. There are a finite number of them, but more than enough for several lifetimes. That our subject is finite instead of open ended makes it approachable.

If you have a scroll saw, a bandsaw, or a hand frat saw, and a disk sander a near infinite variety of sanding block shapes and sizes can be freed from a cork yoga block. They are sorta large and cost ~$20. The sanding media can be attached using rubber cement or even with staples.

Actually, that is my view of the progression too. I think you have misread me. I see kits as the gateway. When I started, it was everyone for himself - find your own way. Early 1970's. There were hobby shops with owners who could help some with suggestions about subject choices. I sought no help, so I started with the Scientific kit for Sea Witch. A clipper is a very poor choice for a first kit. But the Scientific kits were not kits of serious models. They were decorator models. Simplistic in their components, and mostly impressionism when completed. I did not realize that at the time. Follow on was Eagle/Arrowsic topsail schooner - a rewarding build - augmenting it lead me into scratch. The Shipwright Series of kits is a very gentle introduction that does not cost all that much. It does not take long to get a finished product that provides positive feedback. Unless you have a professional background in fine woodworking or a youth or family involved in it, starting with scratch is a long shot proposition. A factor here, and one that I did not predict, is that a significant proportion of the members, probably a high percentage - see kits as an end in themselves. Their imaginations stop there. I can see why this is so, given the very high attrition rate with scratch and the strong current fad of including internal structures that are hidden with a fully planked and decked model. There is also a shared collegial aspect with the kit-centric community. Scratch builders tend to be cantankerous, independent, and more than a bit eccentric. There is probably a Masters if not a Doctorate in Psychology buried in defining the personality differences in these two groups.

Antonio, If you find yourself becoming a bit overwhelmed and frustrated, a broader perspective may help cement your interest in exploring all this. This is strictly my biased and outside observation, but I have a poor opinion of the old Mamoli kits. You are swimming with an anchor hanging from your neck, given the quality that you are working against. (the Mamoli name is under new management and is a subunit of a larger concern now I believe.) If wood and sail is to be your area of focus: It may give you a more realistic expectation if you ignore anything from plastic kit modeling except the painting skills. Those specific skills might put you ahead, since may of us view painting as a chore and afterthought. Often, any painting is done with wood. A firm grounding in our specific modeling skills can get you past frustration and perceived barriers. Consider starting from scratch. The Model Expo - Model Shipways -Shipwright series looks to be a low cost and rewarding path into all this. When I consider the possibility of a new scratch build, I check the build logs to see if anyone else has selected the ship. What I see is a casualty rate that makes what my Virginian forebears experienced with Pickett's Charge look like a walk in the park. I do not know about kits, but my guess is that it is also a heavy casualty rate.😉

Paper? I did a Google search just now for barrel making plans and a lot came up.

It comes down to your objective in building your model. If your goal is to produce a model that is as historically accurate as is reasonable, forgo any embossing or dimpling of the copper plates. Way more nails were used than any punch tool will produce. The nails were hammered flush. They are difficult to see even on the existing 1:1 reproductions or the few survivors whose currently done copper plates are a joke when compared to the practice of 200 years ago. A model would have to be larger than 1:48 for visual evidence of how the plates were attached to be valid. Any plates made of actual copper will be over scale thickness on 1:48 or smaller. Think painted paper instead.

PVA is polyvinyl acetate. Ac is an organic chemistry abbreviation for acetate. Changing Ac to AC is probably advertising hype. I see five types of PVA: pH neutral (pH7) bookbinders - good for cotton or linen rigging white - dries clear yellow - wood workers - dries amber - is acidic Titebond II - yellow - water resistant - dries amber - is more acidic Titebond III - brown - water proof - dries brown - is a lot more acidic white or yellow is probably sufficient Titebond II if you are compulsive Titebond III if the model is to be aquatic - otherwise probably not worth the negatives I doubt that there are that many companies that synthesize the base chemicals so most name brands are probably different names on containers of the same stuff.

Then there was the diet pills that contained live tape worm segments. Well, they did work.

I have not checked any references so these are open targets for those with more data. I think that some of the rules are: maximum single plank width - 10" with maybe 12" for exceptions like the garboard minimum single plank width - no less than 50% of the max. Large ships can survive with 10" planks - small ships probably want ~6" A gore of 6 to at most 10 strakes is about right. At the stem rabbet and sternpost rabbet the run should be near horizontal The overall run should be sweet. It is about juggling all of these factors

As a gauge for how relentless this accumulation can be, do you have a serious shop vac pulling in the sawdust whenever the saw is running?

It is the circular stern that I am placing at the 1860 +/- and dismissing as being outside my focus era. I also kinda put circular in the merchant ship bucket. From the beginning, I have found the thought of iron and steel hulls, iron masts and yards , chain and steel cable rigging to be too intimidating to model.

I do not know how to write this so that it comes across in the way that I intend it. I mean this as one way to look at it. It may well be incorrect. But it is a vulnerable flank if you disagree I do not place much value in using the survivors from 1765 1799 1800-on as sources of information for how these vessels looked when launched. Especially "officers country" in the stern. They were "improved" - remodeled - rebuilt - about every 20 years. This was done by sequential generations who were hostile to the past and ashamed of and embarrassed by older practices. They were aggressively "modern" in their outlook. A new "modern" every 20 years at a time of profound tech change. Then, when GB or the US became wealthy enough to have surplus to preserve some of the past - it was done by strong personalities who were more driven by preconceived visions in their imaginations than what was left of actual past documentation. For the most part absolutist historians have been left with hodgepodge monsters too substantially altered to rescue back to their original iterations. They are probably more valuable remaining as what they are. But what that is - is far from representing their as launched versions. Zealous PR people tend to exaggerate if not outright lie about what they are selling. Almost everything in your examples are post 1860. I have to draw a line for the sake of my sanity. It is still far to broad, but 1860 is a hard limit for me.

Here goes a stream of consciousness tangent: I have the idea that an elliptical stern was considered as a significant improvement for frigates and corvettes starting early in the 19th century. I have been thinking that a circular stern happened around 1860 or later - and my focus ends at 1860. There was a famous - here - 1 to 1 frigate dual between HMS Shannon and Chesapeake. ( I thought it was fought off the Virginia capes where I live.) (Turns out it was off Boston.) (The Chesapeake captain was an amateur poseur idiot and got himself and a significant portion of his crew killed. The Shannon captain was a gifted professional.) I got Chesapeake plans from S.I. I had to dig for Shannon. HMS Shannon was a Leda class frigate. There were a lot of frigates in that class. They used the same plans: HMS Leda - probably traced - over and over - for every one of them. They even drew the improved "ellipicical stern" in different colored ink on the original 18th century flat stern Leda plan (as well as a more "modern" forecastle). The plan was so over used that there is a low contrast between the lines and the dark background. The NMM offered different sized prints when I bought it. I made the mistake of buying a reduced scale copy. It was easier to place on my home scanner - which is why I chose it. This was before I learned that commercial shops could scan a 4'x3' plan and give me a PDF copy on a USB stick. It was touch and go for picking out the lines from the background.