Jaager

The ASA ( now ABS ) published their first set of rules in 1870. They came into existence in 1862. Their initial focus was the qualifications of ship captains. I would be more than surprised if their rules were not a direct swipe from Lloyd's of London, who have been doing this since the middle of the 17th C. We do not have a problem with getting timber that is long enough. Using planks that are longer than 40 feet - southern US coastal Pine was tall and straight - until they cut it all down - and before 1775 the RN could use it also - anyway - longer than 40 feet in scale is a more common mistake. Why not use 40 feet as the length, and a proper 4 strake pattern? It would be best practice for any country. It would be what they did if they could or were not running a con. The strength of wood when exposed to the force of the sea is not subject to a national fashion or the century. When larger wooden hulls were first being developed, they learned pretty quickly when they got it wrong. The sea does not forgive foolish mistakes.

I have an old Model Boats #2 catalog - English and from 1970 or earlier. It features plans for pond boats and other adaptations of sailing ships for actual use in water. The point and take home lesson from it is that the physics and physical properties of water do not scale. In order to sail and not turn turtle, the hulls have to be adapted to a different shape. It looks like the hulls are much deeper below the waterline and may also have more beam, than the prototype. It does not look like the adaptations are much like a scaled down version of the original below the waterline. I suspect that there is serious engineering design, rules, and principles involved in this sort of adaptation. I well may be wrong about this, but there may be more to this than simply scaling the hull of a scale model.

Dan, If you look at SpyGlass' photo, you will see drifts of wood scrapings. A vac will get most of it, but a solvent rub will get what is left. SpyGlass was not saying not to apply a clear finish, he was saying it is good to: Mask - blue painters tape or green frog tape or the old crepe paper masking tape if you must. Cover any areas that will have wood glued to it, but just those areas and maybe a hair less. So that there is not a bare zone outside the glued on structure - neat looks and all that. . PVA bonds to porous surfaces - the polymers invade the substance of the wood. A smooth glassy surface = no bond. Now, you can prime and coat the whole deck with shellac, and then scrape the shellac off of the bonding sites, but it takes real talent and skill not to take off too much or scrape too deeply. Prevention is easier. Commercial varnish vs shellac - mostly a personal preference situation. But most varnishes work better if the surface is primed first. The common and traditional primer for other clear finishes or paint is half strength shellac. You really have to work hard to find something that is not compatible with shellac. Old style varnish is boiled ( cooked to polymerize it - so that it will dry in your lifetime) linseed oil in mineral spirits. Modern stuff is plastic ( like polyurethane ) in either mineral spirits or lately water. It tends to be both thicker than shellac and glossy. If you apply 10 coats, shellac can be glossy too. It is just not a look that you want for this type of surface. Buffing the surface of a clear coated surface, before the next coat, produces a smoother and better looking surface. Tradition is to use 0000 steel wool. BUT, steel wool leaves bits of itself behind. If it is not totally removed, the steel residue can rust and stain a model. Shellac is soft enough that a plastic abrasive pad will smooth it without having to worry about rust.

That is exactly what I recommend that you use. For the first coat, cut some it 50:50 with shellac thinner. Long ago and far away, that used to be methanol - wood alcohol - but if your drink it, your liver metabolizes it to formaldehyde - and you die. It all seems to be ethanol now - with a trace of something noxious and emetic - and is called denatured alcohol. Drug store alcohol has too much water and water turns shellac white. That is why shellac is not used on tabletops - not everyone uses a coaster. My local hardware has this brand and pints or quarts of denatured alcohol. I checked Home Depot and Slowes - they only list quarts of Zinsser. I go the hardware store route. An old tee shirt square is as good as anything else for application. The first coat will just soak it and not leave all that much on the surface. The next full strength coat will cover the surface, but it is not thick enough material to need skilled brush application. a soft rag is enough. Alcohol repairs mistakes and a Scotch-Brite pad will smooth the surface, if needed. You can use a single edge razor blade to to smooth the surface, with an alcohol cleaning, before you apply any shellac. But if you have open pores, the dust from using sand paper may fill them some. Scrapping does not leave any residue behind.

I have no direct experience with plaster of paris as a filler. I remember it from a book on fine furniture finishing. I thought it strange too. The best I could speculate about it is that the particles are translucent when exposed to shellac. Otherwise, Black Walnut would look like it had white measles. .... I checked my library and I can't find it. It may have been pumice. Anyway, it was so startling that it stuck with me. "Never mind." It is better to never use a species of wood where a coat of half cut shellac is not an effective sealer.

strakes #3 and #4 butts are on adjacent beams.

The only way I can see that there can be 5 numbers in a four butt shift is if the four refers to the number of planks between two planks having their butt on the same beam. The repeating sequence actually involves five planks. The first picture above, numbering from the top down = Beam 1 - beam 3 - beam 5 - beam 2 - beam 4 The second, top down = beam 1 - beam 4 - beam 2 - beam 3 The American "Lloyds" ASA 1870 " No butts of adjoining plank should be nearer each other than the space of two beams ( when a stake intervenes the distance of one beam will be allowed). No butts should meet on the same beam unless there be three stakes between them." The second picture fails that rule.

A light colored vinyl tile flooring, that is peel and stick should be quick, easy for rolling stools and machine stands, and give a better chance of recovering dropped or jumping parts, as well as helping with the lighting. Wet swabbing or a ruff leak - a blue million seams would not be good for the subfloor. By using Liquid Nails, it seems that you do not share Moriarty's philosophy of having a reverse gear faster than the forward gears.

The satin finish or matte is because of scale effect. What is gloss in RL, is not when viewed 50-100 times farther away. Pore filling implies that the wood supplied actually has pores. The ideal species of wood used for a ship model should have pores that are too small to be noticed. Varnish is a verb as well as a noun and a specific type of product. As a verb it covers any sort of clear finish. If you did not have to deal with pesky pores, the traditional, most forgiving, most compatible with other coatings or paints, has the least problem with out of scale buildup, not at all toxic - is shellac. It comes premixed or as flakes. The flakes offer near water clear to garnet, depending on the type chosen. Mask any areas where deck houses, bitts, hatch coaming (the spell checker here - a database with nautical words, and suggestions would be helpful). A sand n' sealer would fill the pores, but it is also way out of scale thick when dry. Check for fine finishing on up scale furniture methods, but maybe mixing plaster of paris with half strength shellac, scraping the surface when dry, and applying full size shellac over that. A significant segment here subscribes to the better living thru chemistry and "modern" synthetics and plastic polymer products. Some of us are dinosaurs, who prefer more traditional materials.

Paul, Answering this quick and dirty:

Also, search the name rwiederrich in the scratch build forum. Excellent exposition of 1/96 masting and rigging on 1850's clippers at 1:96 - a scale that gets into miniature territory, where art competes with technical.

My personal bias: Contact cement is really terrible for anything on a ship model. It tends to oxidize and fail in a decades time line. You get one shot at placement, no fine adjustment possible. Duco is not a good choice and fails any serious strength test. Hide glue I have not tried it, but really old school is hide glue flakes melted in a glue pot. Messy and time consuming, but it should last a couple hundred years. I tried Franklin liquid hide glue as a reversible wood to wood bond - it held too strongly for my purposes. Old Brown Glue is said to be a better choice, but this type is probably too aqueous to play nice with wood. The pot type has a lot less water. CA, some love it and a lot of us moldy figs really hate it and do not touch it. Epoxy, the thing to use for metal to wood, but too messy and ugly for wood to wood. PVA - the go to for wood to wood. The closer the two surfaces, the stronger the bond. It comes white (dries clear), yellow ( aliphatic ) dries amber and has partial to complete water resistance -depending on the formula used. It also comes white pH7 - bookbinders strictly for rigging done using natural fibers. If you coat both surfaces with PVA, let it dry, put the two surfaces together and iron it, the heat allows a bond. It is a contact cement of sorts. I doubt that the strength is anything like a wet PVA bond. A proper PVA bond is stronger than the lignin that holds the wood fibers together. Foaming type would be awful to mess with. Resorcinol glue is the thing if you are building a full size PT boat, not worth the trouble on a model. Your bonding - PVA and clamping or weight. East coast US, what with the humidity, I prefer Titebond II.

I am not sure that Holly has a pith that is a bother. I am guessing that it is as hard as the rest of the wood, or it will pop up as you do your final slices and you can discard it then. With your thinner billets, I am guessing that the physics of drying will have any checking go in the thin direction. But a disaster if it is otherwise. If you took a quarter sawn slice that is the diameter of the log, with the pith in the center and in the middle, your ambition to have a wide board may be thwarted if it cups as it drys. No definitive answer here. You pays your money and takes your chances.

A vessel with the name Flying Fish is the subject of at least two kits. Since you name 3 masts, it is likely that you have the Model Shipways clipper, 1/96 scale. The other is a Grand Banks two masted fishing schooner. Another, but not a kit is USS Flying Fish, a NY pilot schooner, a tender for the U.S. Ex. Ex. squadron, sold at Hong Kong as rotten, repaired, renamed (Spec) and was a notorious opium smuggler, that out sailed most everything that chased her. For the clipper: The data from which has a copy at Amazon -right now - it has all of the particulars needed for the spars

Kenna, Broken record here, but just be aware that by doubling the length, the final model will be 8 times larger. 2x length x 2x width x 2x depth, 2x2x2=8. When you enlarge, do a clear metric ruler first and check for any machine inaccuracy. Home type scanner copiers have a paper currency anti counterfeit factor. Architect copiers would not/ could not abide this sort of error factor. About enlarging the plans, no single part of a model requires the full size of the plans. They are all small sections of it. The smaller sections are easier to use, too. The keel and the lower masts are the largest parts. A keel is made up of shorter segments. You do not need a whole intact plan of a mast to make one. The interesting part is the upper section.

It would be difficult to over praise the improvement an in-line cyclone type trap makes in dealing with collected saw dust, A cloth bag or straight to a vac chamber/filter just ain't in it once you see the difference. My old Sears 16gal shop vac was like being near a jet engine - had to use ear muff sound protection. I bought a Festool Midi because it was supposed to be quiet. It is, but it is expensive as 'ell and turns itself off after 15 min. I bought a 16 gal Rigid from Home Depot that is about as quiet, pulls a hurricane, stays on, and costs less than 20% what the Festool did. I do not need hearing protection, but I still can't listen to Beethoven when its on. Now on to your question. This is what I have now: https://www.rockler.com/dust-collector-remote-switch The remote uses a common low cost battery. I unplug it when I am done - because I live in a condo and it may use the same frequency as some garage door remotes. You can guess how I discovered that. I ain't low cost, but a low cost model that clued me in on this tech, burned out.

Hank, Before you get too far along, You could consider adding a caboose to your "shack". With a 2 1/4" to 4" pipe and 110V communication thru the wall and a couple or three layers of sound batting on the common wall. The weather proof add-on would house a vac. You could keep a Dust Devil type cyclone trap in the main room and move it from machine to machine. The 110V is easily controlled using an RIF remote clicker. Go for quality with the radio control box - saves buying one twice. This way your ears will not be assaulted by the vac, the discharge is to the outside world and you can listen to music while generating saw dust. It would also maybe work with a paint spray booth. With the cyclone trap in the main room, you will not need to attend to catch basin or filter on the main vac all that often.

Although I have totally succumbed to the dreaded syndrome, I do not regret it. I would find it near impossible to do a POF scratch build without a drill press. I also doubt that I could get enough use from one on a kit build to justify what I spent on it.

For solid hulls and masts - before the deck is laid - an oversize hole that covers the rake angle zone and approaches the depth to the top of the keelson. Then, after the deck is laid - a spike ( the cut off point of a ten penny nail ) at the heel of the mast will secure the bottom and functioning mast wedges can fine tune the rake. Other holes, a collection of pin vises and something like a Dremel 8050 (needs additional collets)

JD, If the wood is invaded by Blue Mold and is grey or blue, it should be just as sound as normal Holly. It is similar in hardness to Black Cherry, so it is not rock hard. If you can dent it using significant pressure, but does not crumble, you are golden. It takes dyes well, so the fungal stain is not one that you are stuck with. It is suitable for most every part of hull. It is reserved, because it is expensive and difficult to obtain. Commercial - the infected wood is seen as trash. If yours is grey, it may useful as is for bottom planking for pre-1770's hulls - before coppering - that were treated with light colored gunk. It can be affected by humidity changes, so I would shellac the hidden inside surfaces and use another species for spars. I would be greedy, be very, very greedy. Get as much as can be had. The Fates do not offer opportunities like this much more than once in a lifetime. If nothing else, it could be useful for sale or trade in the future. Unless stored using poor conditions, it will out last you.

It is possible to use a dye on the under the copper planking to match the color of the copper - especially the old penny end point. Using alcohol based dye will avoid the fiber swelling factor with aqueous dyes. Because it is hidden, the shallower depth with alcohol dyes is not a problem. This has no effect on the wood surface v.s. bare wood. I am not using slang, a dye is a totally different material from a stain. A stain is semi transparent wood colored paint. If your wood is quality, a dye offers options for display, without affecting the grain as viewed. A stain is to improve low quality wood. It muddies quality wood. A thought that repeats is why expend all this time and effort using low quality wood, unless it is to be painted?

This thread may add more insight for this topic: *https://modelshipworld.com/topic/23377-nail-drivers

This is my opinion. I am not a professional in the paint industry or a professional cabinet maker. Do not take this as authoritative as it reads. It is just easier to use an imperative verb tense in this case. 1) Shellac is good to use as a primary coat before painting. Use 50:50 concentration as a first coat. It fills small pores, penetrates the wood, locks down the surface fibers and leaves a very thin addition to the surface. Steel wool 0000 ( be sure to remove all steel slivers or = rust/stain) or Scotch Brite leaves a smooth surface for paint and it saves a coat of paint. Copper plating .... which type, how is it to adhere to the hull. If it is adhesive backed foil, shellac may be a good surface. If it is metal/ glue - bare wood AND abrasive clean any copper oxidation layer from the back of the metal. If it is metal paint on bond paper, bare wood. 2) Primer can be dilute paint - shellac is a good base for any follow on - paint or clear. If by primer, you mean sand n sealer - this is mostly for open pore wood species - like Oak, Walnut, and the stuff in a lot of kits. It has particles of stuff like plaster to fill the pores and leave a smooth surface. If you have used a good choice of the species for the planking, it is superfluous. No pores to fill. Skip the shellac and you may need an additional coat of paint. Since you are not painting the interior walls of a house, the additional cost of another coat of paint is nill. 3) Tung oil is for a clear finish. Shellac can go first, or 50::50 Tung oil : mineral spirits. No point in using it over paint. Too much gloss on the paint itself is often already a problem with models: scale effect. Additional gloss from Tung oil would make this worse - unless it is a toy that you are displaying. 4) Tung oil is an oil. It stays wet until it polymerizes. It would be awful as a base for any type of copper plating. 5) Beats the -ell out of me, why anyone would want to. I sure would not go it.

JD, Billets are 1" to 2" thick sections of a small log. The width is whatever it turns out to be. Doing thin slices on wet wood is probably a good way to lose all of it. If you do not seal the transverse cut surfaces - the ones that cross cut the fibers (tubes) - more water will leave from the open tubes than thru the walls. The vastly uneven drying will produce severe checking. The wood will experience extensive splitting. Often along the total length. Minor checking at the cut ends is the norm no matter. But another coat of sealer may help. The last time I did this, I used left over enamel paint and a sheet of Bounty as an applicator. Latex gloves. no cleanup - it does drip, so do not do it over any unprotected surface that you care about. Removing the bark speeds drying. Some wood has wood eating insect eggs and larvae just under the bark. If they are present and not removed, the dry wood may be Swiss cheese. The pith in most wood is not useful. In some species it is spongy. It is also an origin for checking. Removing it may reduce splitting and increase the yield of usable wood. Even though I like the face of quarter sawn slices, I usually slice a billet with the blade going thru the pith. Was it Davis or Underhill who wrote about collecting branches after a wind storm and using the branch forks to get knees and hooks with naturally curved grain? I think species where the branching is close to 90 degrees are more useful than those with acute angles, but not all branching is bad. It is not good for billets, but those sections can be their own thing. A log wants to roll and has no even edge to ride against a fence. A carrier board that lays on the table with a straight edge for the fence..... the log can be fixed to and overhang the other edge of this carrier. I use right angle timber framing brackets to hold a log, Short pan head screws (1/2") for the carrier and long drywall screws to hold the log. The carrier is a bit of a problem with a table saw - it costs 1/2" depth per cut. With a large bandsaw - which is the tool for this - no problem. The problem with large logs is the maximum distance the fence can be from the blade. But in this situation, I do the dangerous thing and long axis bisect the log with the chain saw. This for sure removes the pith and a lot more. For what you have, this is not a factor at all.

If it was in the US, a problem with Blue Mold infection after cutting is about universal. It is a critical problem if you wish the wood to be snow white. Your var. may not be white to begin with, some are yellow. I was told here that Blue Mold is not as bad in the UK. But, I will proceed as though it were. Blue Mold discolors, but otherwise does not affect the usability of the wood. It is just robins egg blue or grey. To counter it, Holly is harvested in the Winter. The cut ends are sealed on site. Old house paint will work as well as anything. It is cut into billets and debarked as soon as possible. It is then immediately loaded into a kiln and stickered for drying. Holly is wet when freshly cut. As I was bandsawing an unsealed log, the blade was pushing water out of the end, I made my own "kiln". 1" foil faced foam insulating sheeting, 200W- 400W of incandescent light bulbs as the heat source. A DC muffin fan as a low cost water vapor exhaust. A thermometer (digital - holds the highest temp) make it too hot for the mold, but not much more. It will take a couple or three months. It is faster than air drying, which is 1 year/inch. Holly wants to twist as it drys. A lot of weight on top of the stack can counter this, but at our scale and volume of wood that is difficult. Not much works for us better than Holly. It is hard enough. holds an edge. bends well. takes well to wood dyes. Almost no grain or pores. I think the grey infected wood makes for a more realistic deck than white. Excellent for framing timber, but above miniature scales, this requires a volume of wood that is better supplied by easier to obtain species. Works well for beams, clamps, hooks, deck furniture, and especially planking. Dyed black, it stands in for Ebony, without the hassle of toxic and invasive wood flour. It should be worth the effort, despite the harvest challenge. Even if your stock winds up stained by the fungus, it will still be as suitable for our purposes as anything you can find.