sheepsail

AutoCad and Solid Works were pretty much perfect. But young people can not sell perfection.

I get busy with the Dickens Fair at this time of year. This is a large show what takes over much of the San Francsico Cow Palace exibition halls on the weekends. Seems like I have been doing this for over 40 years. (where does the time go?) -julie (who actually looked at the Forester model today.)

I took classes myself. Found though that there is a difference between Art and craft. Industry usually wants craft. Those who can turn the creativity on and off when the bell rings are the most successful. It becomes about following the lead of others. The other frustration was the cost of tools. I was trained in a popular tool. Yet when working they simply wanted a typist, since the engineers did not want to type the parametric in the program. Not the actual creativity. I wound up spending 1000s on the program, and the company now wants me to subscribe and spend thousands more. On the other hand If I really do need to use it I have the old program what works just as good. For me it is about solving the problem with the tools at hand. These days it is much better. There is a lot of open source stuff. I have a friend who is a top amusement park ride designer. It is much as noted in the quote above. He could take something like Google blocks and create amusement ride walk through with it. We were chatting last year how we get to many questions as to what is the best program to learn. So much of this is now open source. Yet people want the 'Name.' I guess to put onto the old resume. I have been having a lot of fun with Delft Ship which is free, And lightburn which is like 150 bucks. Big packages like Renderman are free if one wants to spend the time learning. I sort of ignored Rhino. A simple free program called Art of illusion started the whole 3d printer craze. I did experiment with Fusion 360, but found one has to log into different machines wich makes it useless for taking into the shop. Especially when they consider 2FA to the phone to be insecure. Most of the big boys figure a designer will be working on a team. Doing piecework. So the design programs which are front ends to databases (now cloud based) really are set up to have a single project or sub project open at any given time. Still the cutting edge stuff is out there. Much of it is so far past the edge of the cut the heads are way off the shoulders as noted. The problem with the schools is that by the time it becomes in style there are too many in the class and the market is saturated with those who can draw a circle in postscript. Saw a lament by another friend who is a 2D hand drawn animation instructor, that the kids just want to learn the prompts to make their work look old skool. -julie (who likes procrastinating on working on her Forester model today.)

I tested fonts at Apple. So I keep wanting to make this myself. Hand lettering is done by rulers and templates. So there probably would have been a lot of pencil lines for guides. The other thing often used is stencils, where the guides are traced using a set of lettering curves. Serifs really do make a difference. These were tool marks back in the day letters were carved into stone and metal. The curves on the serifs really do make it easier for the eye to glide over the glyphs. A lot of font design is getting this right. Much of this was also protected by patents (now expired) and trade secrets. Like anything else it is hours of practice. Most of our testing though was mechanical. Missing glyphs, bad kerning tables, bugs what could crash hardware (fonts are program subroutines.) One time a printer was shipped with a missing font, Which was how I got hired, to test for things like that. Perspective plays a large part in font design as well. Without rulers handwriting tends to tail off on one side do to changes in perspective. This can also be used conversely for giving things a hand lettered look. When in High school even in the 1970s and before electronic bill boards, every week a sign painter would paint the advertising sign on the corner at the entrance into the school. Mostly public service. I used to watch him work with fascination. I guess he did it to keep his skills sharp. -julie (Who is still pretending not to work on her Forester model.)

I make watch straps and other things from old leather Usually pipe organ leather. So I see an image like this and say oooh look at the watch straps. This is an actual advertisement from my copy of Dickens' Little Dorrit, was printed in 1855. We have fun replicating this at the Dickens Fair. -julie (Who is pretending to build a model of the Forester, While acting in the Dickens Fair at the San Francisco Cow Palace.)

I also have both Taig and a Sherline lathes with many attachments which I use interchangeably. At the moment these are boxed up. My main lathe though is a Präzi from East Germany. These were dumped in the US in the 1980s, and 1990s. When they were replaced by the Swiss lathes. The lathe is not so much about the lathe itself. It is about the attachments and tooling. The collets and such what hold the work. Some of the best come from Cowels in England which make some excellent stuff. My other hobby is watchmaking so I have a few of warchmaker lathes as well. I had a friend who had a Sears Atlas lathe which I loved. Ironically to best make the tiny watch parts a big tool and die lathe is something I dream about. With a big lathe one can make the fixtures for the small lathe. As I get deeper into model ship building I am looking forward to seeing if I can use this equipment to turn toothpicks into the tiny fixtures the model so demands. Woodworking and watchmaking prior to World War 1 in the 1920s was done with hand held tools. (there were stories of master watchmakers making lathes from three large horseshoe nails.) So it becomes about sharpening the gravers. The critical thing about a lathe is a parameter called run out. the other is swing. Runout is how round you can make the part and is determined by the bearings. Air bearings are the best. Babbit works surprisingly well. Babbit is tin lead solder so it is liquid when the bearings are spinning and creating heat. So a cheap lathe or dremel will have cheap bearings. So one side will be out of round where the tool catches. Swing is the largest item that can be turned without banging into things. Lead screws are what allow items to be replicated. Such were done with patterns. This was industrialized in the 18th century. (1700s) Milling is also considered lathe work. This is also when the punch cards came about then the paper tapes, which could create the rivets and such. Cams could move the tooling and such in amazingly complex patterns. Someone realized that everything could be created with an infinite number of sin and cosine waves. These were called "imaginary" numbers. Alan Turing used this abstraction to make a machine which could move a string (finite infinity) back and forth and make marks on it. Then use the marks to move the string. Such is what a machinist does when turning the handles of a lathe (2D) or a mill (3D) Good machinist are great at arithmetic, pretty much human computers (what the word originally meant.) They can feel all of this intuitively. (the cards (digital) /cams(analog) record what they do for playback.) What a lot of people do not know about a guy named Babbage in the 1830s and designed the first computer. First he had to make (or invent) a lathe to make it. Leonardo da Vinchi had documented the lathes used by the Greeks and Romans (and Egyptians) and made the Antikythera device. According to Archimedes a screw is an inclined plane or triangle. (which is what a sine wave looks like when graphed) So Babbage had to find the perfect screw. (rimshot) His mechanics Clement and Withworth fought over who actually invented the machine 19th century lathe. Whitworth got the credit. And screws are all now standard shaped. In reality all three invented the modern lathe. Ego can sometimes set thing back a generation or more. As a child I met Frank Oppenheimer. (yes him.) Who was working on a lathe behind a wooden partition I could hardly look over at the ExplOritiorum. He told me a lathe was a special tool since It could make a copy of itself. In other words It could make anything. Such statements like that keep me up at night. Ironically AI, uses this same statistical math. To make copies of ideas. Like a panto-graph, which lathes and milling machines use to make things larger and smaller. This device shows that everything is an infinite sum of waves around a circle. I guess what the Theosophist call vibrations. This is called a space time transform. Often called a Fourier transform after some 18th century dude who was good with lathes and estimating things like the population of France was after they cut the head off the leaders. He and his friends also measured exactly how large the coastline of France was. Ben Franklin was doing similar things in America with Kites and governments. (did you know Franklin invented the spark plug? Fun at parties, Volta used it to light farts on fire. Which is why electricity is measured in volts. Steam engines and internal combustion engines are also abstractly lathes.) In the 1960s and 1970s this math was done with a computer. Some guys named like Cooly and Turky made Fourier transforms fast. GPUs use matrix math billions of times a second to display images. Now abstract ideas. Even more so that there is some weird thing called spin, what creates magnetism or polarization in light. So I think Mr Oppenheimer was right. That the universe is some sort of quantum lathe. Not sure how to fit one other useless abstract bit of info into this digression. A way of visualizing Fourier's singularity. Which is a pixel. In space a pixel looks like a square or cube. In time it looks like a Mexican hat with wide brim or probably a better image ripples on the surface of a pond. These things also have sound. (and color) what we call frequency. This is also what happens at the center of a lens where all the light ray meet. One can make a lens with a lathe. So we come about here in a full circle. AI is simply simulating what is happening at the center of a lens. (and we know what happens when one uses magnifying glass and the sun. Pirates only have one eye as they had to learn how to properly use a sextant or spyglass. Do not look at sun with remaining eye.) None of which answers what brand lathe is best. Personally I'd give emphasis on anything Swiss, since that is what the other countries aspire to. (no AI was used in the creation if this ramble. -- otherwise it would make sense.) -julie

I've noted before, to be suspicious of any Butterworth painting. Especially ones that have something which does not fit the narrative. Or adds new information. Forgers like to fill in missing gaps in the scholarship to prove province. Ken Perenyi forged dozens of them. Designed to fool 'experts' In the book Caveat Emptor he gives specific descriptions of how such is done, using stencils and replicating ships and flags from one to another. Also how old materials and chemistry is used to fool the experts. There is also implications that auction houses are in on some of this as they need material to sell. -julie (who should be working on the Forester model.)

You are making me do weird online searches like "1930s era obscure Mississippi sternwheel homemade houseboat barge made from tractor parts named billy" Google keeps asking my location and if I am a robot. Then there are all the permutations of 'A' Names Arthur Adolf Alexander Albert Andrew Anatole Anthony and then Oliver Oscar Orenthal OompaLumpa OrangeJuce OngoBoingo and so forth. I did learn there is something called a shantyboat. It is driving me nuts that there are no starboard views of Billy. Guess that is what make this build interesting.

That green looks exactly like the green that some of the rooms in our house were painted when we moved in. Now the underpainting in most of the rooms. Was a real popular color in the 1950s. I think the upstairs bathroom still has walls that color. -julie

Still pretty new to model ship stuff. Probably be a while before I am ready for any rope. I have quite a bit of thread left over from sewing projects, including some vintage silk stuff which has no tensile strength left. does remain useful for embroidery. A few months ago when this subject arose I spent a morning or a better part of a day looking at rope walks. What lead me to move forward on making model ships is access to a laser engraver. I for one would love a nice set of easy to cut templates for a laser cut rope walk. Could probably come up with something based on all the stuff I found online. Which do include home made designs. Having the tool is not the same as knowing how to use the tool. -julie

I can not speak yet for ship models. On Pipe organs I have used wax crayons (Black or white) to fill in the text.

I changed the topic title as I see the trailboard term used in the 3D AI thread. The plans call this head board. Looks like it is supposed to be made as two parts. Still curious what makes the carving white, even when these ships were derelict. I spent hours over the years studying the Endurance photos since the ice really made the design stand out. That kit used PE brass. Since my kit had no fittings I do not know if this was an included piece or not Late photographs show the trailboard was removed when the fittings were stripped. Possible that this item is still around somewhere. Most likely the maritime museum, which I think is locked out at the time of this posting due to federal shutdown, what affects the NPS.

May be the best use of AI yet. I keep telling others that AI is like making a wax mold of an item. Lots of detail on the outside, but when you slice it apart the inside is empty. Now if AI could just tell me what material headerboards were made of (metal or wood.) and if wood was the wood pressed in a steam mold? Laminated? Since the boards are the same on all the ships? Ironically I could put the photographs from my question in the deck fittings topic. AI would then make me a header board with the design in relief. Of course I could do the same in lightburn tracing over the design after using the stupid 'apple preview' AI which keeps trying to enhance and remove the backgrounds of my photos. -julie

What materials were header boards typically made of? Many models seem to make this from PE brass. I notice in the Lumber ship photos, they all look identical. What makes the white part stick out even when these were in a derelict state? I also note that in one photo. of the Forester, I got from the museum where the headier board is clear. That the port side is upside down from the starboard side? Were these stamped out of something? It looks like they were mass produced and placed one way or the other depending on which side was needed. -julie

Most of the local coal mining done at the base of Mt Diablo was done by Welsh immigrants. I think they did some of the hard rock mining as well. One of my elementary school teachers was a descendant from the mining families. Would tell stories of the abandoned mining towns. So some of the localization may have percolated through. I myself visited Wales, and can see why they saw similarities in the east bay hills. There may be thin coal seams in the hill I live on which is sandstone. Usually though the cores of these hills are limestone with lots of shell fossils. When they took down a small mountain to cut the interstate through the west of town, we got a bunch of that spoil. I think the coal is under the limestone. One thinks of the pacific northwest as more volcanic. This area though is a mix of both. Something called Franciscan formation after the nearby city. There are quite a few hot springs in the area. The faults turn the stuff on it's side so the geology here is all wonky. I look out the windows to the north and see the dormant Mayacma volcano peaks of the Napa Valley on the other side of the straights. -julie

Yes that was the one. Wonder why my search could not find it?

No real progress. Still figuring out how to do the aft section so I can finish and glue the forward section. I have some technical questions which need some more thought in how to present them. Not to mention finding the photographs and noting the details I want to ask about. (Eidetic memories are good for recall, and information overload, not so great when things change faster then you can remember them...) Wednesday mornings there is a neighborhood walk to the marina. I have been taking time out to go on these nature walks, and interact with others in person. And even listen to what they might have to say. This morning the tide was out. Could not resist this photograph of the wreak covered in seabirds. I am also not too fond of Apple insisting to AI enhance my phone photos. What I see on my screen is not what is being uploaded. All the subtle contrast is lost. There was also mention of the shipwreck in the local paper (San Francisco Chronicle.) this week. Not sure most readers pay attention to such comments. The real trivia is the Martini was named for this town Martinez on the other side of the straights where the Napa river (Mare island and wine county oligarch resorts are.) The only question is what bar did it happen. Here or in the city that calls it self San Francisco. Since we do not drink friscos (a town in texas) obviously the drink comes from Martinez. It is also curious as to why the Wawona was shredded like 1600 Pennsylvania ave. In the dry dock. Granted the timbers were rotted. So are the remains of the forester. I looked at another timber a week ago. Was still there in the pile this week. This is what is called a regional park. Which is sort of connected to the National park, but not a state park. The boundaries cross county lines, so these are not city parks either. Have their own administrative and tax districts. (I stole a rotted 2x4 from the tide a couple weeks back and waiting for it to dry out and cut it into blocks. 'beach cleanup') Next week we are going kayaking in the Suisun marshes. (which look pretty much the same with similar birds.) Now according to the paper 'investors' want create a new shipbuilding center in Collensville. An AI generated 'city' called California Forever. The infrastructure has already started with some widening of HWY12. No there are no desires to re open the old ship yards since the old ones have historical baggage. And the workers are on the dole. Who are lazy and could have jobs if they really wanted them. These oligarchs want to pave over the uncontaminated marshes and write their own history and local laws. Currently lands are held through land trusts coincidentally were recently repatriated to the 'Natives' Who still do not have federal representation 'as they would probably build a casino on it.' (LOL) 'All in the name of national security.' Plus luxury resorts. Like the Blue lagoon in Iceland. (yeah let us build a spa inside an active volcano that has been dormant for 800 years.) Sea level rise anyone? Oh and these Islands are covered with wind farms and have been for nearly 50 years some of the oldest modern power generation in existence. It is also interesting how the 'Narrative' gets written. Much more interesting hundreds of years in the future looking back. A week before the shutdown I got NPS contacts for volunteering. Perhaps I might get a chance again down the line. Weeks ago I could find videos scrapping the Wawona, Now my search profile gives me something completely different. I did find a PDF (not sure it is one I have found before) what gives the arguments relating to the choice as to which of the two ships was saved (Wawona vs Thayer.) I guess these are choices that has to be made. Difficult as it is. The difference between an archivist and a librarian and a museum curator. The librarian weeds out and destroys books people are not reading. Archivists and Curators are both hoarders. Archivist keep everything including the trash which they re bury. Curators like to hide stuff the closed off basements and store rooms that they do not agree with lest someone steal it. I think there is a joke here somewhere, do not know what the punchline is. I must be a hoarder as I keep making stuff for my model. When one does talk to the public about the history of shipbuilding and famous ships, the question gets asked. Why can they not simply put it were people can continue to see and enjoy it? A reason I have been sloughing off on the model is this is fall TV season. So the new documentaries on Pompeii Cleopatra and Egypt are airing. I wanted to go back and watch the old ones as they made it look like stuff discovered say 20 years ago was found months ago. When I looked for the old stuff it was no longer available due to rights issues. Scholars pretend that the people they stole from did not exist because they are old and dead. And it is stupid when the AI says Pompeii was Named for Pompey Magnus (whom Cleopatra's brother executed. Caesar preferred the sister.) If anything it was the other way round. Curiously I had a book that said history ended at this point in time with the assassination of Caesar. So none of this is relevant to model shipbuilding. Other than it is what one thinks about gluing 100s of planks into position. And the Nemi Ships is high on my list. I just ordered a copy of the book on them. If I get there that could be an interesting log. Seagulls are pretty to look at. They are also nasty rat with wings. Feeding on the refuse of what others find disgusting. I once saw one take out a pigeon. Guess this is the natural order of the world. Egypt needs tourist. So they are opening a new mega museum and closing the old one. This also happened with the Viking ships. In France they just do the pink panther heist thing. (do people really believe the stuff on display is or should be fake?) So there is the argument we can not put things on display because it might get stolen or used for the wrong 'Narrative.' So we are being constantly distracted and like egyption workers sold over priced watered down beer and sugar water while smoking and ingesting things that makes us see the golden lamassu in the king who is a living god and must be worshiped. So now one has to make the choice to watch TV or work on the model. -julie (who should probably stop being distracted and create an automatically inserted signature profile.)

Chomp Chomp shred shred. Actually in my search profile it takes me to the Yosemite redwood grove. I looked for it again but could only find this link https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TnE8AM35Fvc&t=20s I think the video of the Wawona in the chompers is on Fakebook. Pretty sickening. Looks like the same contractor who is working with the same tools on 1600 Pennsylvania avenue. Even more scary is I do not have a Fakebook account, but they still have a profile on me and show people I know stuff I am interested in. To forward and share with the heathen sheep.

I was afraid the small scale would not show any detail. Learned a lot from your (@Keith Black) build of the hard coal barge. I am leaning for doing the other ships I want in this scale. The C.A. Thayer and Galilee would be nice additions down the line. The thin strips flex easy. Having access to the laser really helps. Will be interesting what the fiber laser does with the fittings. Of course we will see how I still feel when it comes to the rigging.

Still pretty much rince and repeat on the planking. Most of it is covered apart from the keel which is being dry fit. Also cut out a rudder. May need to fit some of the lower stern decking. Cut some out last week, since the bulwarks extend over the edge and the rear may be a bit oversized there is quite a bit of gapiness. In the photos, the cabins are set back a bit from the rail, so the top view of the cabin may reflect that setback. I need this deck, to place the rudder hole. I am liking the texture effect of the planking. It is what shows in the old photographs. I noticed that I may have used old growth redwood heart for the planking. In looking at the cut sections of the board it looks pink now. There was some discussion in the NPS booth at the Maker faire, if redwood was used in these ships, They did have samples of wood from the C.A. Thayer reconstruction. One of the blocks does have a pinkish hue. To me that looks more like the eastern red colored wood that comes from what they call red eucalyptus. The western tree though is usually called blue gum in the southern hemisphere. Wurlitzer used this wood in pipe organ valve blocks. My understanding is that shipwrights were fairly conservative in the woods used. Hence the controversy over the use of laurel in the Saginaw. There is also debate if this was imported laurel from the southern US, Or the local bay laurel what grows like weeds in the local live oak forests. To me importing wood thousands of miles (before rail) makes no sense, when there are local old growth forest locally. Since most of these forests were clear cut, it is hard to say one way or the other.

Amazing to think this was a San Francisco landmark for many years albeit before my time. Such things are so underappreciated outside the local cultural context. Similar things happened to the cities clock and watch collection, which no longer fit in with the Academy of Sciences desire to teach the fear and hate of technology. At least that collection is still complete in the national museum in Lancaster PA, but it is a bit difficult to visit. One has to learn to enjoy such things while available. The Vaillancourt fountain is next on the deacquisition list. Really need a ♥️ emoji in the likes. Looking forward to following along on this one. I like ships with a local connection.

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