wefalck

If that is according to prototype ...

The tinier the pigment particles are, the closer you get to a 'metal' look. In the old days I used to stir gold bronze paint really well and then let it settle for a while, after which I only worked with the small particles still floating on the surface. I gather there is a similar effect with the marker pens, as in these the metallic pigment particles have to be really small in order to pass through the felt-tip.

See my response in your RANGER building log ...

Wire for standing rigging became more prevalent from the 1860s or so on, initially iron and then steel. I am quoting from memory, but wire rigging has about half the diameter for the same strength as hemp rigging. I would suggest to consult some contempory literature on yacht rigging for the dimensioning of the rigging and how the wire was worked. A diameter of 3 mm for the standing rigging of such heavily canvassed boat seems a bit too thin for the time. I have the feeling that crimping wire for standing rigging would have come into use much later than the early 1900s, but I am not so familiar with yachting practice. On commercial shipping more traditional methods with bound loops around deadeyes or hearts would have been used. Such arrangement is also easier to repair and does not require heavy tools. If traditional set-up methods were used for rigging, these can be easily reproduced in 1/12 scale. I don't see the need for any soldering.

I don't know about Australia and your location, but I typically buy brass profiles from shops that supply architects and architectural model builders (they become fewer though due to the competition from 3D-modelling and rendering). Otherwise, I often go to (mainly Chinese) ebay sources. OK, I feel a bit guilty about that, but they often have very good offers and a wide range of stuff that is difficult to find in physical shops - and it is my money we are talking about after all 🫣

If the main bow-lines indeed lead so far forward, they would need to somehow clear below the fore-course and should also not foul the fore-sheets, though the latter would be loose, when the bow-lines are in use. I wonder, why they wouldn't be led analogous to the main-topsail bow-lines.

Such low-flying exercises are very restricted in densly populated Europe (which is one reason, why e.g. German pilots train in the USA). I have seen and heard a couple of times F104s screaming along the river Rhine almost at the altitude of the tops of the poplars that fringe the river. And during the time of the Balkan Wars in the 1990s I lived in the flight-path close to Berlin's Tegel Airport. Commercial planes were usually still a couple of hundred meters up at that point when approaching and pilots presumably were used to it. But once or twice one of the huge USAF transport planes landed and it's quite frightening to see it almost filling the frame of your apartment window and one hopes that the pilots get it right ... 😲

You are off to a good start 👍🏻 I think some people also use small notched blocks of wood to keep the planks in place and that they nail to the bulkheads temporarily (but you risk splitting them).

Nice metalwork ! These bending tools are useful, I made one mysel.

Pat, I used to suffer from 'tool envy' for many years, until I entered professional life and was able to acquire machine tools. And as we know, machines/tools allow one to make more machines/tools. It kind of developed into a secondary/subsidiary hobby then, together with the supporting process and market knowledge. I love in particular the look and feel of pre-1950s tools and machines, before everything became plasticky and boxy.

Thank you very much for the kind words and the many 'likes' 👍🏻 **************************************************************** Pin-rails 2 As can be seen on drawings and old photographs, the pin-rails often rested on consoles attached to the bulwark stanchions for added strength. As about a dozen were needed, they were ‘mass-produced’ from a shaped styrene profile. Milling the profile for the consoles to support the pin-rails The shaped profile for the consoles A 1.5 mm x 1 mm rod was stuck to a small ‘wax-chuck’ on the micro-milling machine with doubled-sided mounting tape. The rod was then oriented exactly parallel to the axis of the cross-slide and a hollow milled with a 1.5 mm ball-end burr. Slicing off consoles with the micro-guillotine The edges were rounded with a fine file. This profiled rod was then transferred to the newly built micro-guillotine and slices of 0.7 mm thickness cut off. These miniature consoles then were stuck to the underside of the pin-rails. Once painted, they will be attached as units to the bulwarks. Collection of consoles Consoles cemented to a pin-rail Micro-Guillotine The micro-guillotine was constructed around a part-machined cast-iron blank for a staking tool I found on ebay. Originally, I intended to fabricate all parts from steel, but I could not obtain a suitable blank for the rotating table and neither had the right steel bars in stock. So, for the time being at least, the parts were fabricated from 3 mm ABS sheet that I happened to have. The cutting blade is a shortened chisel-shaped scalpel-blade. It is set into an exactly fitting slot in the 6 mm steel runner and secured with a steel ring. The knob on the runner is an old bakelite instrument knob. The 6 mm wide blade restricts the cutting capacity to 3 mm for 90° cuts and correspondingly less for cuts at an angle. This is a conscient restriction, as this tool is really meant to only cut parts up to 2 mm by 2 mm cross-section. To cut at an angle, the plate is turned, rather than the cutter as in other designs. The narrow gap between the guides ensures that also very small parts can be cut. Their length can be set by the adjustable brass stop. To be continued …

Doesn't one normally sand between paint coats?

Work was been interrupted again, this time by some business travel to Tallinn for a few days, where I had also the opportunity to visit the Estonian Maritime Museum. Unfortunately, I came back from there with a sort of bronchitis that bogged me down for a couple of weeks ... Pin-rails Another delay in actual shop-work was caused that I first had to work out were the pin-rails would go and how many pins they have to have to provide the necessary belaying points. Drilling the pin-rails using the micro-mill as a coordinate drilling machine The pin-rails are 2.2 mm wide strips cut from 0.8 mm thick acrylic sheet. The holes were drilled using the micro-milling machine as a coordinate drill to get the distances right. The outer edges of the pin-rails were rounded as can be seen on many prototype photographs. The inner edges were notched for the bulwark stanchions on the filing-machine. Cutting the notches for the stanchions on the filing-machine Cutting the notches for the stanchions on the filing-machine Collection of pin-rails Pin-rails loosely attached at their designated location To be continued …

That's a good idea for making tapered dowels and I seem to remember to have seen a similar procedure in the wide realm of YouTube, but not for model building. As others have already pointed out, masts and other spars are often not simply tapered and in addition have square or octogonal sections. Having observed that, I think the disc-sander method could be a good idea for quick material removal to arrive at the envelope of the more articulate shaped spars. After that, one would need to resort to another method to give them the exact shape.

OK, I didn’t know the geo- and hydrographic situation.

The running part of falls, like the boat falls, were sometime coiled and then wedged between the cleat and the part leading up the davit.

As a minerals policy professional I would slightly diagree with the last statement, though historically you are right. Today, we have mining techniques and strategies that can result in minimal impact. Totally impact-free, of course, is not possible.

... you had a complete building log on www.shipmodels.info, if I remember correctly. And yes, that is what I am doing for simulating wet sand, to play with acrylic gel and gloss acrylic varnish on fine-grained sand. I was too lazy to go back to the beginning of the building log to check and wonder, whether loaded the whole dredged material into the barges, or whether there has been some kind of sorting on the (bucket?) dredger? I wouldn't want to know about the impact on the river flora and fauna of the dreging and the release of the tailings though ... The water must have been turbid for miles down the river.

Wow ... all that with hand-filing, while I struggle to do such things with my machines ... 👋🏻

Allow me to strongly disagree - I think it looks very credible 😁

I was actually thinking of the springs under the seat of the buckboard …

Without shock-absorbers/dampeners they must have been swaying a lot ...

Another thing to look for are toolmaker or watchmaker drill-bits with a thicker shaft, below 1 mm they have a 1 mm shaft and the spiral part is much shorter and therefore stiffer than drill-bits with full-length spirals and uniform diameter. They are HSS and not to be confused with those brittle carbide drills that seem to be ubiquitous now and have either 3 mm or 1/8" shafts.

I think such cross-braces were also used sometimes in full-scale practice ... Looking at the above photograph, I have the feeling that the cant-frames are too much in and also may not be full enough. Could be a question of perspective though. Did you check against the rail- and deck-profile? It would also be useful to run a batten along the frames to the stem-post, horizontally and diagonal - it would indicate kinks and forced runs.

Well, barely a month into project and I already almost missed it completely ... You didn't describe, how you went about the sculpting of the decorations, didn't you?