Der Alte Rentner

Each one is a solid piece of brass. It's all just a matter of careful setup on the mill. That dividing attachment makes for effortless rotation of the brass stock. The rest is just a matter of milling away the material that isn't part of the fairlead. Also drilled the hole using the mill. It's quite easy to figure out the indexing. Use high speed on the mill, have sharp cutters, and feed the material slowly. It's almost as painless as working with boxwood. I began by milling a 3/16" square shape roughly 1/2 inch long at the end of a 1/4" diameter brass rod. I wish now that I'd taken photographs of the milling process for these. I thought doing so might be perceived as being repetitive, after all the detail on the binnacles. Similar effort for both..

Using similar techniques with the Proxxon mill, I fabricated the brass "fairleads", as identified by X's A/I assistant Grok, for the steering wheel rope. Close enough to the real thing? It is for me.

They are quite the adventure.. File this tip away for when you "treat" yourself to that project: When attaching the spokes, use double sided tape to hold the hub center and the rim in place on the jig that comes with the Syren kit. That's the only way you're going to get the spokes glues in place. This was not spelled out in the instructions.

(This is a post-post question. Does anybody know how to format photos in these posts, so that they look good on both a cell phone and a desktop PC? This post looks great on my PC at home, but I just called it up on my phone and the formatting is completely different.) A little clean up and some poly, the wheel will be, for the most part, done. Still to do would be the little brass sleeves where the wheel rope would disappear below deck. A little tip: you can manually rotate the divider attachment for the Proxxon mill with the cutter spinning in place to effectively turn the divider into an ersatz lathe. Using this bit, and rotating the Proxxon divider 36-degrees at a time (locking it in at every step), I milled the detail grooves into the wheel hub. Again, using the dividing attachment like a lathe, I turned the axles on the hub. (Now, Grok informed me that the hub s/b called the axle. If so, I turned the axles on the axles..) Nothing's glued yet, and, as I said, some cleanup needs to be done to tidy the wheel assembly up,

Blast! I still haven't caught up to you. Oh well, it's a marathon (at least for me) not a sprint. Enjoy your remaining days off. 🙂

That seems to me to be quite unconventional. Is there a reason you chose the "meet in the middle" approach? Did you use tick marks and math? or just eye-ball it?

You're off to a great start. Exciting times ahead, indeed!

Gregg, The plans that came with my MS kit call for mahogany, though that probably refers to the finish and not the base wood. Be that as it may, in keeping with my non-traditional color scheme, I used boxwood to fabricate the base, and American Walnut stain for the finish. oh snap! I just realized that I didn't make the bottom part of the base wide enough! Good thing you asked the question. Now I can start thinking about how to effect repairs.. So much for making this in one piece. 😒 I added a couple of photos. The one of the wheel and binnacle supports my choices in color and materials, and the one of the wheel from XKen's build shows one possible solution to the base remodeling problem above, which I subsequently employed.

Still waiting for the wheel kit to show up from Syren, so continuing with deck furniture and fixtures, in this case the wheel cheeks..

It helps to have good tools and shining examples here at the website to gather tips and techniques from. Thanks

While I await delivery of the 2nd Syren wheel kit, I'm diverting to the construction of the binnacles, giving me ample opportunity to make use of the Proxxon mill. Since the accessory I'm using to hold the material only has a three jaw Chuck, I'm making square dowel out of round dowel for both the base and the top of the binnacle. d I decided to make another top, this time trying to simulate the lamp on top of the binnacle. Before I cut the binnacle off of the brass rod, I gouged out a groove and then rounded the top on the lathe. ********************************************************* Is there a tutorial somewhere at this website on how exactly to format photographic content with text? I just can't seem to figure out how to get the results I'm looking for. Also, it would be nice to know why posts like this look different when entered via cell phone vs. a desktop computer. *********************************************************

At the minimum, make sure that you're an eighth of an inch proud of the waterway so that you'll have a ledge for future spar deck planking. I'm sure you won't make the same mistake with the waterway that I did, so you're probably good as things stand. By the way you don't have to redo it. Just glue a bit more material to the after end of the existing pieces.

I was perusing my own build log to refresh my memory of the bow framing to pass along a word of advice when you get to the spar deck framing pieces. I know this is already in your notes: but in case your grey cells are anything like mine, you might want to refer to my post #227. ..and to save you the hassle of looking it up, this should be the link to get you there: Make sure you check those specs for the waterways, and think seriously about filler blocks to facilitate spar deck planking.

It's the 24 mm wheel. The scale is a smidge off. According to Syren, "This size is perfect for most 1:64 scale models", whereas the 31.75mm wheel is, "perfect for most 1:48 scale models". Conny is 1:76, yes? Thanks, and glad to help, anytime..

Sorry about the confusion, Jon, I guess I wasn't clear in the above post (#813). What is pictured is one metal wheel (left) unpainted from the MS kit and the Syren kit wheel (right) stained after assembly. BTW, that Syren wheel took roughly 5 hours to assemble, which included time on the lathe to turn the spokes into something more realistic than the blanks that came in the kit. And talk about fiddly work! The assembly required the patience of Job. These photos come from the assembly instructions for the Syren wheel. Note the unmodified blank on the left vs the turned version on the right. X marks the spot! Because it'll be a week before I get the second wheel from Syren, I will experiment with painting the metal wheels from the MS kit. However, I'm fairly certain that once I get a coat of poly on the Syren wheel, I'll simply invest the additional five hours to have the pair. Maybe I'll get lucky and love the paint job. We'll see. P.S. Jon, you don't need to wait until you have to install them to construct the wheels. Think of it like the ship's boats, an extra curricular activity that can be done at any time. Some choose to start with them before they tackle the Constitution itself.