Jaager

If turning spars is your goal, a generic corded electric drill and a speed control - not sure a dimmer switch will work, but low cost if it does. If you can set a remote ON a maintain the internal speed control setting, no additional switch is needed. Even 1/2 inch drills are significantly less expensive. For this, a lathe is a sledge to kill a fly.

To essay as to why this search may be a dry hole The two "POF" schooner kits - Are not what an actual POF hull would be. They appear to be at best 1/3 room and 2/3 space. Almost a cartoon, if the frames are left unplanked. The Hahn method - a modeler's convention - not a reproduction of actual hull framing is 1/2 room and 1/2 space. The actual framing - from the early 18th century until 1860 was individual to the ship and country of origin. An average - would be closer to 2/3 room and 1/3 space. The other extreme - with some Continental frigates - all room except for all but invisible air circulation gaps. Framing these as built and showing the frames - it would be essentially a solid vertical wall - not visually interesting at all. Leaving out every other bend - a more interesting hull. Since this is Hahn's period of interest, perhaps this is a source for his style. It is my experience that a true POF hull - either done using a modeler's convention style e.g. Hahn/ Navy Board or actually mimicking the the actual vessel would be difficult to mass produce. It is labor intensive, No two parts are identical. Current methods - especially Hahn or Navy Board - have a high waste factor in timber wood stock - almost profligate. And the wood species needed for the timbers can be expensive. In actual practice, a first rate almost required a forest to frame. In England, the first real one was so expensive, the tax revolt was a tipping point for a major change in governance. The requirements for timber stock for a model in the larger scale range almost feels as significant. With the methods in current use, about the only short cut is to start with a set of plans or monograph with the individual frames already lofted.

Lacquer has its own thinner. The irritant factor of the traditional version is fierce - you will want to be breathing a different air supply. The more recent "green" version is not an improvement in that regard. Lacquer can be wiped on, but it is high gloss and builds thick layers. Poly - polyurethane - is a plastic. Works great to finish and protect a wooden floor. Both tend to produce a thick, high gloss finish. Great for a toy-like finish - if that is what you want. I think a convenient factor with wipe-on poly - water is the solvent. Shellac is a wipe on finish. The depth and gloss can be controlled. Shellac tinned 1:1 is an excellent primer coat. About anything else can be used over it. Shellac uses alcohol - methanol or isopropanol 100% - or ethanol that has no water- Shellac likes water - it likes it so much, that it turns white to show its joy. Shellac and boiled linseed oil is traditional vanish. A shellac pad with a bit of linseed oil is French polish. Pure Tung oil can be wiped on, thinned, 1:1 it is a primer coat, or done over Shellac, as many layer as you care to apply, but can take time to dry/polymerize. Tung oil uses mineral spirits as a solvent. Sutherland Wells sells a "cooked" Tung oil is several grades - pre polymerized - fewer layers - faster drying - gloss level a choice. Renaissance Wax can be used over Shellac or Tung oil.

If you want to riff a bit, AAMM sells a monograph. Just one sheet, but also photos of a contemporary museum model. Amiral Paris included it in Souveniers de Marine, but there is not as much information there as there might have been, since I think Paris was part of the ship's crew on the Antarctic voyage. i

Quarter sawn Maple veneer - A good steel ruler with a tapered edge and a sharp luthiers knife - with practice = scale planking. WoodCraft if you have no alternate vendors. As Dziadeczek says get the finish off and down to raw wood. Go easy on the calking seam simulation and consider a Walnut shade rather than black. Subtle, rather than smacking a viewer between the eyes might be worth considering. A glossy finish on the deck of a working schooner would be death to work on - often wet and almost always moving. Shellac is an alternate finish - 1/2 strength for first coat. If it is too shiny, 0000 steel wool can knock that down. Shellac also meets Oddball's Credo.

It is likely that it is heat and not water that allows lignin bonds to reset. Water plus heat produce steam, which is more efficient in heat transfer than dry heat - seasoned wood has air spaces - insulation like.

Bruce, It looks like you have beautiful, clear stock. It does not get much better than Holly. Fortune turned her smile onto you there. I don't know what your building material is over there, but here, the most common construction lumber is 2"x4" x 8' Pine or Fir. It is not expensive as far as wood goes. If you can mill it, it works well as fill stock between the moulds. Do an inside curve, rather than solid to the "keel centerline piece" to save wood and weight. It can be a several lamination. If an additional throw away layer that is the thickness of the plywood moulds is added, two adjacent mould patterns layered in a drawing program with locator guides added - bamboo skewers - straight from the package make good dowels - if you have a drill bit that diameter and a drill press to make sure the holes are perpendicular. Only need to manipulate the pattern for one side - flip horizontal is a big time saver and assures lateral symmetry. Most of the scroll cutting,, layer assembly, shaping to near final curves - done off the hull. - paper or cardboard shims if there is play between the moulds. Do this all the way and it is like having a solid hull. One layer of planking is enough. The planks have about as good a glue support as possible.

I guess I must be missing something about double planking a series of POB moulds. The outer layer is done in a way that covers whatever is under it? Unless the hull is intended to actually float ( and POB is a poor choice for this) why bother with a filler for the first layer? It will not be seen anyway if longitudinal gaps between planks is what is being "fixed". If the run has hollows, a wooden scab is probably a better fix. Bruce, Have you milled your Holly logs yet? If you did not immediately get the logs into a kiln, unless Blue Mold is restricted to this side of the Pond, it is likely to have invaded your lumber. If so, the bad news is that the wood will not be white, rather grey or light blue. The good news, the integrity of the wood is not compromised. It is just as hard, bends just as well - really an excellent species for our needs. It accepts aniline dyes well. The fungus does not affect that - except for the final shade.. I am thinking that infected Holly may yield a more realistic deck than a marquetry white stock.

I have one I really really don't like it. (Actually two - I inherited one from my father.) My Jarmac is sort of pitiful too. Neither is in the same galaxy as a Byrnes table saw. Way under powered, your photo of the motor really brings that home. Feels - cheesy, lots of play - It needs fixing to a sturdy base. The open back can be covered with a plate of cardboard or hardboard with a hole and connector for a shop vac hose A spacer at each bottom corner between the bottom of the unit and a base may provide better air circulation. The fence is long enough that a clamp might be fixed to the back to better lock the position - once you adjust it parallel to the blade. Gonna want to affirm that it is parallel with each movement. The OEM gauge is not all that great. There are 3rd party miter gauges - just not many that are cost effective. You can make a sliding table - definitely worth the effort. With something like this: STEELWORKS BOLTMASTER 11285 Flat Aluminium Bar, 1/8 x 1/2 x 36" A tempered hardboard base a top edge and bottom edge piece of wood 1/2" by 1.5" full width - to keep the slit base as a single unit. A belt and suspenders level of attachment - ( glue and screws/dowels ) = hardboard can debond from itself. a piece of Pine perpendicular to the above outside the bottom support - to cover the blade as it comes thru. -to keep from crosscutting your fingers or hand. I am not sure that the tilting blade feature is not a solution in search of a need. Having to re tune the blade back to 90 degrees every time does make it more trouble than it is worth. I advise against being too hopeful in how thick of a billet this saw can rip or crosscut.

Which component is this intended to be used for? It is too thin for frame timbers - except for miniature scales. In which case - not safe even if flattened. Deck planks - not safe. By not safe - what I mean is that the wood is showing where it wants to go. Even if you flatten it, it will "want" to go back to this shape. Hull planking - already a good start for conforming to frame contours - it may prove to be a challenge to rip if it can't be pushed flat as is. If you still wish to flatten, rather than a water soak, try steam. A steam iron or hand steam generator clearer and a lot of weight.

There are some available directly from Chinese vendors at Aliexpress. The shipping can be reasonable if you are willing to wait for the mule train to walk across the the bottom of the Pacific. Years ago, I bought one from MM and fixed it to the base of my EuroTool DRL 300 drill press. Needed a couple of holes drilled in the base. Does what it is supposed to do.

The 1992 article is on a CD for sale on the NRG store page.

Cutting down to the top of the deck beam level and using veneer for the bulwarks - getting a uniform plank thickness is easier. It also allows for an easier way to do the removable opening. It is also helpful if the upper works planking is simulated using extra thin veneer from the copper to the rail. Consider this also, if you copper, and the material that has been supplied has simulated nails, replace it with flat stock. To avoid the new penny look, age it. A flame treatment works, but to get a dependable bond - the glue side needs to have the oxide layer that the flame produced = removed. There are chemical aging agents.

Kurt, This is suggesting a course that I do not take - too compulsive - too much a pack rat = Wait until you get to the point in a build where a specific cut is needed and get that size. Unless one of our more widely ranging members points to a superior vendor, I default to Wood Carvers Supply.

This has drifted a bit. For where this is now, I add the following: at minimum a 1/3 HP TEFC motor with a final sanding drum rotation of 1700 rpm If more than a few passes are contemplated per session, as much air circulation around the motor as can be had.

For the Unimat SL, which has a relatively short bed for masts, a denken experiment that uses the steady rest holding a ball bearing race - the OD just fitting the steady rest opening and ID in various sizes - close to the spar diameter - cardboard to fix and brace the wood. The end over end to shape the other end.

Black Cherry is useful for most everything. The color would be a bit eccentric for spars and deck planking. But frames timbers, beams, hull planking, bits, a lot of antebellum merchantmen seemed to have clear finish Spanish Mahogany for hatch coming and similar trim and when oxidized - time - Black Cherry is an excellent miniature replication. If you have Sweet Cherry, the color is a lot less red, but the grain is about the same. Now milling from logs is a different thing. To reduce checking and splits during the drying process, it is imperative that the cut ends and branch cuts be sealed. The last thing I used for this is left over latex enamel paint and used paper towels to glob on a thick coat. Anything liquid, which when dry blocks water. 3 inch logs on a 9" band saw - too thick - both for clearance and motor power. Find a local wood workers club and team up with someone with a larger band saw. Buy your own blade to fit his saw. Get a bimetal blade - initial cost is higher - all steel blades dull quickly and break when pushed when dull. You need two perpendicular cuts. A log wants to roll. A 1/2" thick board - edge against the fence - riding on the table - Use right angle framing braces and long #10 or so screws to fix the log to this 1/2" carrier. After the first cut, the cut face goes on the board - After the second cut, the carrier is no longer needed. I do 1:60 scale POF - 2 inch thick billets are working well foe me now. At least 2 years drying time for this.

It is my experience that there is not much on a ship model that requires a lathe. Most of that (spars) can be accomplished using an electric drill in a shop made clamp. The one part that would be difficult to fake - turning up 100 cannon - a lathe and pattern duplicator helps here. The one function that requires a lathe is turning metal to fabricate your own tools. A machinists lathe is essentially a tool to make tools. A mill is a bit more useful, but it too is a machine to make tools. It can act as an expensive drill press and allow you to bull thru wood with milling cut - not wise, probably messy. You can also avoid the expense and get a jewelers generic drill press and a Chinese XY table all for less than $200. The bearings are not designed for lateral stress, but with wood, sharp cutters and light cuts... Right now, we have the great good luck in the presence of Jim Byrnes. The tool functions that you would find practically useful in a multi tool, he provides as single purpose machines that are about a hundred times better. It you are still determined - visit Little Machine Shop for bench top mills and lathes

I have a Unimat SL - It is now relegated to just the lathe function. I burned out a motor using it as a table saw. Everything but the lathe is better done by a single purpose machine. This even though it is a precise and well made unit. Unimat I is neither precise nor well made. It is a toy. Buy it and feel the sentiment behind the message yelled at generations of army recruits: you'll be sorrrreeee.

Kevin, No matter how much jest is involved, unless you have access to a mansion sized building, either realization is a bit overwhelming. The Cutty Sark would be easier, but larger. At 1:48 a masted model is for all intents 6 feet long and about that tall. The Saint-Philippe is about 6 inches shorter. I have lofted Philippe at 1:120 and played with the framing. The hull is about the size of a brig: USS Porpoise at 1:60. Having second thoughts about doing a miniature, I looked at redoing the timbers at 1:60 using Navy Board style framing. I hit breaks real fast when it demonstrated that the mid ship floor timber is too large to be had from a 2 inch wide piece of stock. And the mid ship floor is the straightest, least carnivorous floor. A POF at 1:36 ---- a Baby Huey that needs lots and lots of lumber to frame. Framing at 1:48 would put a serious hurt on a 50 bf lumber stock. If you were just married when you started these two, you would possibly be paying for your kid's college when you finished. The Saint-Philippe is a late 17th century first rate with magnificent excess in its decoration. It could easily stand as a magnificent magnum opus for any modeler.

Is Briar available as solid blocks or billets? Apart from the grain pattern, it might make for hardy blocks. Did the wood handle like it would work for that?

If the bend in the thick dimension proves difficult - wood does not readily comply to doing that - start with a wider plank and spill it to the up curve. Spill = spoil = waste a lot of wood cutting an "S" shape. That is how it was really done - mostly. The database here has planking tutorials the explain all this.

The material that binds wood fibers - lignin - is not water soluble. It is soluble in anhydrous ammonia, an explosive and dangerous industrial agent. It is not soluble in household (5%) or 20% ammonia. These just damage the planking. Heat will loosen lignin and allow for more bending. Water on the surface of the wood - when contacted by a dry heat source - becomes steam and penetrates the wood with more efficiency than just dry heat alone. A microwave and wet paper towel wrapping, or direct steam will work. Soaking in hot water works - but sort of reverses the original seasoning process a bit. Ideal is to let the bent wood dry in its future conformation. If you dry in an over bent conformation, try to keep that at a slight amount.

About the hull - the basic method - explained in Deane's Doctrine - involves the heavy use of arcs. Because pieces of circles make up the cross sections and transitions between them to try to get a reasonable run along the hull make up the waterlines, there is a basic sameness in the shape below the main wale. If you can get lines for a ship about the same age and size, they can be scale adjusted to the beam, depth, and length to your ship. The result would likely be "close enough for government work".

Zero information re: the actual models,, but there are two books Prisoner-of-war ship models, 1775-1825 Hardcover – 1973 by Ewart C Freeston Prisoner of War: Bone Ship Models - Treasures from the Age of Napoleonic Wars Paperback – June 1, 2016 by Manfred Stein