sheepsail

Doubt I I would be in the market for more card models. Although I would not mind if I could find a card model of AE 33 Shasta which was a Kilauea class ammo ship. We have a few souvenirs from that. My dad used to take the kids out on it for shakedown cruises under the gate. I never got to go on any as these were at risk kids under county care. Have a number of photos he took.

At the Maker Faire over the weekend on Mare Island the park service was handing out this volvelle. When you rotate the window, it shows things like the difference between a bark and a barkenteen. Usefull as I keep running into the term sloop. I pretty much know what a schooner is, since those are my favorites. The flip site show some rigging. Still learning the names of the sails. I have an old 19th century textbook which also gives some of this info. Looks like the card might also be capeleble of being used as a binnacle. By chance I have been re reading the Sea Wolf. The brutal sadistic Wolf Larsen makes such a thing in a moment of calm. These were quite popular in the 18th century for doing some of the trigonometric calculation. Tricky though to use as such things are variants of an astrolabe, which require the understanding of stereo projection. Without a good watch Or other timekeeper, they are also somewhat awkward on the rolling deck of a ship or boat.

I just noticed that I somehow uploaded the wrong PDF. That one uploaded is a link to a thread. Part 1-DELFTship_Bkgrd_Images.pdf Part 2-DELFTship_Bkgrd_Images.pdf Part 3-DELFTship_Bkgrd_Images.pdf Part 4-DELFTship_Bkgrd_Images.pdf Part 5-DELFTship_Bkgrd_Images.pdf It is interesting that when I copy the file name, it creates a link to it. Does save searching for it. I think these are buried on the NRG pages. I print these out as I find the hardcopy is easier to use when I am on the WIndows machine. Once I correct the fencepost errors in the Saginaw model, I plan on writing it up in more detail. I got more involved with the physical Forester model which I never imported into DELFTShip. -julie

There is a really good tutorial I downloaded. The title is Modelling a ship's hull with Delftship - CAD and 3D Modelling_Drafting Plans with Software - Model Ship World™.pdf When I pasted the title it looks like it attached a link to this thread as well. This is a bit dated, the basics remain. Most of the changes are to the UI graphics. My workflow is to use Lightburn, the laser etching program, which works much like Adobe Illustrator. This is to clean up the drawing. I then export Illustrator. Sadly apple remove support for Postscript and Illustrator in the latest OS. So I have to use an old copy to convert it to PNG. I like PNG as it is not frequency compressed like JPG. DELFTShip has no trouble importing PNG file. There are three background images, which move around to the 6 sides of the cube as the model is moved, so sometimes they are mirrored. Sadly DELFTShip does not import SVG or PDF vector images, only bitmaps. DELFTShip also only runs on Windows, so I have to sneaker net the graphics to a windows machine. The workflow is a bit strange in DELFTShip. It does not use the normal English based verb action syntax. I suspect it is closer to dutch grammar. There are no menus, only Icons. Each Icon group has functions. I also find that there is a lot of keyboard activity using the control rather than the shift key to select things. The three buttons on the mouse, work a bit different as well. Right is used for dragging, rather than pressing down on the scroll wheel. There is also a lot of flipping between the icon ribbons. For some reason one has to edit in the station locations rather than click and drag them. Even though they are highlighted. One really needs to write down the table of offsets. I think the program can import these as a CSV spreadsheet. I have not tried that as yet. Scaling is done either when the images are imported, or in the parameters section. It is easy to get a fencepost, where the model is off by a foot, as the scale starts at zero. I like to number the scale on the drawing. -julie

Started planking the hull this week. The hot hide glue is working really well. I find that if I place a few drops into an old plastic spoon. Upper right. I can use a tiny paintbrush to apply a small drop or line to the thin planks which are about 1/32 inch square. Unlike other glues, I can let the blob of unused glue dry and throw it back into the pot. Only minimal clamping is needed. The push pins only need to go in about a milimeter or so. Mostly around the curved parts. On the bulwarks I could use tiny binder clamps. Setup time is fast.

Contact cement creeps and stuff shifts about. Has no torsional strength. Can be sort of twisted apart. Does work on stuff like Formica and foam rubber. Not so great on wood to wood joins. I think most people use the casein white glues, such as the Elmer's brand. Had a friend attempt to use gorilla glue for cabinet veneers. Total disaster, humidity caused excess swelling and de-lamination. CA glue is best at gluing skin together. My personal preference is for hide glues, which have been around for centuries. Steep learning curve, and not really the norm anymore.

I have a small drum thickness sander to thin down the wood to 1/32. The laser has no issues cutting 1/32 inch sheets. Xacto knifes and micro planes cut through this stuff like butter.

Applying the under supports to the Bow. Feels a bit like more of the same. I borrowed some ideas from the planking section to use push pins. The hull wood is soft enough to press them in. Does leave a big hole. This will all get covered with the "planks." There is a bit of overlap at the stem. I based this grid on the top plan view, and projected it back. The rough kit suppled hull feels a bit undersized when compared to the plans and photographs. The planks where made by tracing some lines off the plans and extending them. The plank wood is about 1/32 thick, which might be a bit large for scale which is 3/32 so that would make the planks 1/3 of a foot or about 4 inches. Ship timbers do seem to be fairly thick, so this might be close. In the lower right, there is some texture for the lower capstan chain winch. This is set next to the ubiquitous coin, which in this case is a penny. For some reason Apple messed up the color calibration in the latest version so the image looks washed out on my screen on the web page, but not in the preview app. If I leave the default settings uploads come out too dark. Ironically I tested this sort of thing for Apple back in the 1990s. The system does work, if one stays inside the walled garden. I left the ends of the planking strips uncut, They still came apart as even the marking pass cuts almost 1/2 through at the lowest setting. Most likely I will need to extend the lower part of the stern. There should be enough material to cover the bulwarks down to around the water line. Below the waterline the planks are pretty much cut and paste. Sorting this stuff out can be a challenge. I probably should have marked the back, like one does piano or organ keys to reposition them. At least this time they did not warp up, so the laser did not shred them. I used an old 2x4, which I think was from a project about 8 or so years ago. Seems pretty dry. Grain is courser than the century old wood. Those blocks are not long enough to cut the full lengths of the planks. This all gets painted.

I have an Xacto micro plane, which seems to do the job. Also a wet grinder. Would be nice sometime to find a new blade, although the existing one still works well. -julie

The bottle says 'Plaid' located in Norcross Ga. Label says craft paint. Materials indicate water base acrylic. The grouping is called Apple barrel colors. The gloss says it can be heat set in the oven. They would probably have come from Michael's or Arron Brothers. They are a bit old so could be a bit passed the best buy date. I had to add a bit of water to the brush. Here is a shot of the latest progress with the bottle in the photograph. I had to use stronger clamping on the starboard side. Since the center deck is in place. The deck stringer and forecastle beams are just set in place. There is a bit of a gap as the hull block is a bit wider, or the notches not cut as deep as they should have been. This affects the angles where the forecastle beams attach. Not quite sure how I will compensate for this. I need to wait for the main glue to fully dry and see if I can steam and clamp the bulwarks rail. The deck template is in place as I wanted to see how the shadows work. There probably should be something to represent a locker on the port side. The winch probably should be suggested. May be some time before I get to the deck house. I want to plank the outside of the hull first. Was a bit afraid the bulwarks might be too fragile, The tabs did chip a bit where the laser scored marking lines. Once glued things feel surprisingly strong. Even so there will be no more tossing it into the box with the rest of the sticks. I did glue some of the water ways in place. Not sure yet what to do with the scuppers. These are marked with simple laser lines. The scale and photographs indicate these might be about one meter square. The 'Commerce' has haws pipes in these location. The Ron Cleveland, Rigging of West Coast Barkentines and Schooners, has some stuff on loading which shows how the milled lumber was stacked and chained so the water could align and run out of these holes. One of these holes can just be made out in the rub rail on one of the ref photos I copied in the museum with my phone. As noted the Thayer has a series of slots near the deck level. This was something seen in person, which is probably not too noticeable in photographs. These are large ships. It is hard when working at a small scale to get a feeling for how large some things should be. Probably why they have people in the photo. The deck stringers are over 100 feet in length. According to my scale these are nearly 1 and a half feet on each side. -julie

I really can not speak to how well hide glue works in ship modeling as I have no real experience with the more traditional kits and methods. I painted the bulwarks. Not having access to miniature four dimensional dock yard workers, I figured it best to paint things before gluing. My dad had some old paints from various projects. Since I am making this up as I go, using them seemed like the simplest option. The top of the hull, where most of the gouges are was painted with a flat black graphite color. I may make some of the hatches open. The area under the forecastle, behind the galley and crew quarters should disappear in shadow. I am still contemplating modeling some blocks to suggest the capstan winch. Will see what it looks like when I get things together. The milled down sheets from the pipe organ swell shade blades, are not wide enough to cover the whole deck. So I did them in sections. I cut separate thicker pieces for the long deck stringers. Since I had the graphics for some deck stringers. I cut some more without the knee braces. This should help with the installation as there is warping of the decks in three directions. Interesting that when glued up, there are optical illusions which make the straight lines look curved and the curved ones straight. There is a large photograph on the door of the museum to the Forester room. I took a shot of it with my phone. (there are some reflections on the glass.) This shows a bit fuller bow than the model was carved. The station templates do allow for more thickness in these parts. This also shows the ship stripped of most of the fittings. What it looked like shortly before it burned. In the photos, and my recollection the decks were covered with all sorts of junk. The owner at the time was the sort who did a lot of itinerant jobs about town. For the most part hide glue does not need a lot of clamping. I did find that where the forward parts do need to wrap around the bow, that the wood tended to spring back a bit. So I used some telephone wire scrap from a pipe organ relay. When I pre-bent the end of the bulwarks they broke at where I joined the cross grain rails. So I clamped this back after installation of the side and deck structure. Some of this will get filled and sanded so the planking can be laid. The width of the deck was trace from the top view well for shaping these parts. I did cut some test planks from scrap. These feel a bit thicker than scale. For the most part I am finding the parts to align with the traced plans. -julie

Thanks for the correction. I could not remember all of the acronym. I posted this yesterday when working with the machine, and did not bother to look it up. Here is a link to the extinct Mediterranean plant. It is quite fascinating Must have tasted good, as it was eaten into extinction. In the end it was worth more than gold.

A few other note about the machines. For the most part these are industrial machines. They require an industrial space, with active ventilation flues. Why most of them are placed in shared workspaces or libraries. It takes a fairly powerful laser to cut through 1/4 inch of wood. In addition to the ventilation, there is active cooling involved. Even after cutting the parts tend to outgass from the burned edges. The stuff I cut last night smells a bit like toasted Christmas trees this morning. I have been typically spending 3 or so hours per session. Of this the actual cutting is perhap 10 to 15 minutes. The rest is prep and set up. It probably took a month or so to create the base drawings in lightburn. When actually cutting one has to plan how it fits onto the material. There is also time needed for cleanup. Be ware of the smaller machines. The ones what use small diode lasers and DVD type mechanisms. Even these have large heat sinks. I have a few of these that were popular a decade or so back. Typically they only have about 2x2 inch work area. Sometimes these diode lasers are installed on 3D printer frames. Some of these only will move the laser head in a raster pattern. The resulting accuracy is only as good as the lead screw or syncro/servo belting. -julie

Check out my 'Forester' log. I am using a large format engraver in the local Makerspace. I use lightburn and DELFTship. There is stuff on this in the 3D forums. BYTW: I think lazar was a now extinct plant used for food in ancient Rome, till it was all eaten. Laser is Light Amplitude Stimulus Energy Radiation.

Dolomite balls were used to make the pyramids and other large megalithic structures. Bang two stones together and one does not need iron or steel hammers and chisels. It has been shown that working sitting in quarry trenches can cut through anything using similar stones. In a leather sling, they also work well for catapult ammunition. Such things also make good ballast stones. They pack well. -julie