wefalck

Thanks for your kind comments ! ********************************** After weeks and months of drawing parts to be etched, I felt the need to apply my hands to something else then the keyboard. Also, I accumulated lots of little parts that at some stage need to go together. A step that I have been procrastinating, thinking that certain manipulations are easier to do, when everything is in pieces. When building a ship from scratch, deciding on the sequence of assembly can be crucial. So, the first step was to glue on the main deck, which had already been prepared a long time ago from a piece of bakelite. The holes for the various fittings where marked out over a drawing and then drilled. The translucent property of the bakelite is very helpful for marking out. Once glued on, the deck was carefully sanded to the contour of the hull. I spent a lot of time deliberating the best way to make the plating of the hull and the bulwark. The shape is quite simple, as the sides are vertical from just below the waterline (probably to facilitate the production of the armour plating that needed to be curved in only one direction). The original idea was to cut the plating in one piece from brass shim stock. This would have resulted in near scale thickness of the bulwark plating. I considered this too flimsy, even if the handrail was soldered on. Another option would have been to use 0.13 mm styrene sheet. Again I considered it too soft. Bakelite sheet of 0.1 mm thickness would have been closer to scale, but rather brittle. For practical reasons I decided to use 0.2 mm bakelite sheet. The layout of the freeing ports, the location of stanchions, the ash chutes, toilet drain pipes, and port-holes were drawn onto an expansion of the bulwark that was developed from the original drawings. The drawing then was laser-printed onto an overhead projection foil (remeber these ?). This foil was taped to a piece of bakelite sheet and the drawing ironed onto it, using what is called the toner-transfer methodBakelite sheet for the hull plating with layout by the toner-transfer method The plating was cemented to the MDF hull using cyanoacrylate glue (CA). I am not very fond of CA glue, but it forms secure bonds with bakelite. Hull plating attached On the prototype, the bulwark plating was attached to the hull by an angle iron (8 cm x 8 cm) running along the top of the hull. I simulated the vertical part with a 0.5 mm wide strip of self-adhesive aluminium sheet into which a row of rivets had been embossed. The horizontal part would disappear under a thick layer of tar-based paint that was mixed with sand and onto which sand was dusted to provide a non-slip deck. To be continued soon ...

Squaring up the edge of a plank, when it clamped flat onto a surface with a spacer is actually a common technique. I made myself a little tool for short lengths, but this idea can be adapted to longer lengths: Here I use sanding blocks, rather than a plane, which works better for smaller scales. Likewise, one could make a 'safe-edge' sanding block to bevel the upper edge of the plank. As to marking off the planks as described in the video, you need to have access to the inside of the hull. Could be done on a plank-on-frames construction, if you are working upright and not upside down. Though workmen prefer to mark off on the real thing, on a model you better make templates from tracing paper, I think think.

Gerhard, according to the dates on the files, it is about 3.5 years ago since I downloaded them. I did not keep the URLs. However, if you search in Google with 'Kameke 1837' they should come up. There were 10 files with the text volumes and lithographic tables at the time. The bibliographic references are: KAMEKE, H.F. (1837): Sammlung von Zeichnungen die Einrichtung von materiellen Gegenständen der Preußischen Artillerie darstellend nach den neuesten Bestimmungen bearbeitet. Vte Abtheilung: Die Geschütz-Röhre und die Gegenstände zum Anfertigen und Untersuchen derselben.- 30 pl., Berlin. KAMEKE, H.F. (1837): Erläuterungen zu der Sammlung von Steindruckzeichnungen durch welche die Einrichtung der materiellen Gegenstände der Preußischen Artillerie bildlich dargestellt ist. Ite Abtheilung: Die Lafetten, Protzen und Wagen der Festungs-Artillerie.- 118 p., Berlin (Naucksche Buchdruckerei). KAMEKE, H.F. (1837): Sammlung von Zeichnungen die Einrichtung der materiellen Gegenstände der Preußischen Artillerie darstellend nach neuesten Bestimmungen bearbeitet. Ite Abtheilung: Die Lafetten, Protzen und Wagen der Festungs-Artillerie.- 25 pl., Berlin. KAMEKE, H.F. (1837): Erläuterungen zu der Sammlung von Steindruckzeichnungen durch welche die Einrichtung der materiellen Gegenstände der Preußischen Artillerie bildlich dargestellt ist. IIte und IIIte Abtheilung: Die Lafetten, Protzen und Wagen der Belagerungs-Artillerie und die Mörser-Lafetten.- 124 p., Berlin (Naucksche Buchdruckerei). KAMEKE, H.F. (1837): Sammlung von Zeichnungen die Einrichtung der materiellen Gegenstände der Preußischen Artillerie darstellend nach neuesten Bestimmungen bearbeitet. IIte und IIIte Abtheilung: Die Lafetten, Protzen und Wagen der Belagerungs-Artillerie und die Mörser-Lafetten.- 28 pl., Berlin. KAMEKE, H.F. (1837): Erläuterungen zu der Sammlung von Steindruckzeichnungen durch welche die Einrichtung der materiellen Gegenstände der Preußischen Artillerie bildlich dargestellt ist. IVte Abtheilung: Die Lafetten, Protzen und Wagen der Feld-Artillerie.- 163 p., Berlin (Naucksche Buchdruckerei). KAMEKE, H.F. (1837): Sammlung von Zeichnungen die Einrichtung der materiellen Gegenstände der Preußischen Artillerie darstellend nach neuesten Bestimmungen bearbeitet. IVte Abtheilung: Die Lafetten, Protzen und Wagen der Feld-Artillerie.- 30 pl., Berlin. KAMEKE, H.F. (1837): Erläuterungen zu der Sammlung von Steindruckzeichnungen durch welche die Einrichtung der materiellen Gegenstände der Preußischen Artillerie bildlich dargestellt ist. Vte Abtheilung: Die Geschütz-Röhre und die Gegenstände zum Anfertigen und Untersuchen derselben.- 159 p., Berlin (Naucksche Buchdruckerei). KAMEKE, H.F. (1837): Sammlung von Zeichnungen die Einrichtung der materiellen Gegenstände der Preußischen Artillerie darstellend nach neuesten Bestimmungen bearbeitet. Vte Abtheilung: Die Geschütz-Röhre und die Gegenstände zum Anfertigen und Untersuchen derselben.- 30 pl., Berlin. KAMEKE, H.F. (1847): Die Preußische Feld-Artillerie nach der Konstruktion vom Jahre 1842. Mit Berücksichtigung der neuesten Veränderungen bearbeitet.- 72 p., 72 kolorierten Lithographien, Berlin (B. Behr).

There are many more volumes, including lithographs, of the work by Kameke (1837) that can be downloaded from Google and/or archive.org.

What about making them yourself ? If you have at least a hand-held drill, this is not too difficult.

The darkening of light coloured threads is the same physical phenomenon as for wood: the pores filled with glue act as a sort of optical fibre, leading the light deeper into the material, with less light reflected from the surface and the inside of the pores. This is more or less unavoidable for deeply penetrating glues or varnishes. Low-viscosity varnishes applied sparingly do not fill the pores and, hence, lead to less darkening. I am using cellulose-nitrate based lacquer (Zaponlack in German), which is traditionally used to protect shiny brass and silver from oxidation. It is colourless and can be redissolved or made to penetrate more with a drop of acetone.

I never use CA or PVA on rigging above all for one simple reason: things cannot be undone, if needed. I always use a fast-drying solvent-based varnish. A drop of solvent allows you to loosen knots and adjust the lines, if needed - and often it is needed.

Kind of strange that the freeing-port cut through the rubbing strake. Never saw this before. It also means that the rubbing strake is not below the deck-edge, where the hull should be strongest, but above it, around the bulwark. Correct ? Keen to see the painted result of all these efforts ...

Depending on the size of the hole, when cross-drilling round material or when drilling at an angle into surfaces, I start the hole with an end-mill that cuts across the centre. There is no risk of slipping with the point.

My problem with dial-gauges on small machines is that they always seem to get in my way. The smallest commercially available these days seem to have 50 mm diameter. I think in the past they made it in 30 or 40 mm diameter.

I gather you are talking about the running part ? You would need a hitch that can be tied while keeping the running part taut. As Jan said, a half-hitch with another one for security on top may go, or a clove-hitch - which would be my preferred solution, as it can be slowly untied while still keeping its stopping capability. Nevertheless, some research into how thing are done on mediterranean ships would be warranted.

Mica is a mineral, a so-called sheet-silicate. This structure allows to be be split into very thin layers. It comes in an opaque metallic-brown variety, called biotite, and a transparent variety, called muscovite. It is called muscovite after Moscow, where once is was used as window-glazing in the poorer houses. It does not crack easily under stress and can be even bent into some radius. It is also more heat-resistant than ordinary silicate glass. For these reasons it was used as glazing in ships, lanterns, and still is used in looking glasses in furnaces etc. Until the early 19th century it was frequently used in ship windows.

Didn't we have some statistics at some time (may be in the old MSW) about who posted how much? As in most other fora this is a very skewed distribution I think. Then there is also the question of quality of posts, whether someone really has to say or to ask something, and how much is just expression of praise or the like. In some fora at least the latter seem to make up a good proportion of the posts.

"Carbide is the only way to go. Lesser quality steel will become blunt quickly, ...". Carbides are not steels. Carbides are composite materials made by sintering together hard particles of mostly tungsten carbide (WC) with a metal in powder form, mainly cobalt. I would not dismiss HSS just like that. In fact, I found HSS much more forgiving even on my precision watchmaking machinery. Drilling deep holes below 0.5 mm with HSS is much safer than with cobalt due to the greater elasticity of the steel. When they become blunt depends on what you are doing with them and how often. In industrial applications, where one can control very precisely the conditions, today carbide is the material of choice, of course. What do you mean by coarsness with reference to colour coding ? I never use the colour coded ones, as the rings tend to obscure your view of what you are doing, but thought that the rings refer to the diameters. Why would you want to drill a hole with a round burr ? The cutting edges of burrs tends to diminish to zero in the middle, hence 'diving' in with a burr is a very inefficient way of their use and will dull them indeed very quickly. Burrs are meant for side-cutting. Hobby shops, indeed, are rarely a cost-effective source for tools. They only sell small quantities in comparison. Jewellery/watchmaking/dental supply houses are better sources with a wider range of choices. A new business area that has greatly expanded over the past ten years or so are manicure and pedicure supply houses - they supply the same kind of burrs and polishing tools to a much larger market and hence at lower prices. I believe one should buy the tools one can afford. However, drill-bits and burrs fall (almost) into the category of consumables. There is also a considerable risk of breakage. Therefore, it tends to be more cost efficient to buy twice at half the price, if there is a chance that I break an expensive drill with double the life before it reaches the end of its normal useful life.

I think we had such a discussion before. There is actually no 'best' drill, only approriate ones, appropriate for the material and the conditions of application. In industry drills are shaped for the materials they are supposed to drill. This concerns the cutting angles, secondary cutting angles, relief angles, the angle of the spiral, etc. However, unless you buy from an established manufacturer, you may not be able to get this information. This applies particularly to model supply houses and the hundreds of 'ebay shops' that are around today. There seem to be two major supply streams for carbide drills into the secondary market theses days. One is that from 'seconds', meaning these are drills that did not pass the high quality standards of industrial sppliers, but that are still good enough for occasional use by people like us. The second stream are used ones that have been taken out of manufacturing processes in a scheduled way before they become dull and could spoil a work piece. Also these are good enough for us modellers. However, the traders rarely know the intended application of these drills, so you might get some from an aircraft factory intended for use with high-strenght aluminium alloys, or some from a printed circuit board plant, intended for use on glass-fibre reinforced epoxy resin. As noted above by vaddoc, carbide is brittle and normally requires rigid machines and a rigid set-up for their use. They are unforgiving to wobbling in guiding the movement and to changes in feed. In drill depths that exceed 3xdiameter, I would use them only with a screw-feed, not with a lever feed. Having said that, these carbide drills can be an economic option in sizes below 1 mm diameter due to their relatively low price and if you don't mind to bin a part from which you cannot extract a broken drill. HSS or SS (not recommended) drills in sizes below 1 mm can be quite pricey, particularly for sizes below 0.5 mm and those with thickened shafts (which are much better and easier to handle). And: there are many different qualities of aluminium, brass and steel. Some are easy to drill and others are a pain. We modellers often seem to come across too soft qualities that catch drills. So a problem may not be a bad drill, but bad material.

Another German colleague just completed a model of a Zeesboot: http://forum.arbeitskreis-historischer-schiffbau.de/viewtopic.php?f=16&t=1538

The designers/engravers of plastic kits usually get the coppering wrong, as did many modellers in wood too in the past. Things are changing though through access to information. The moulded-on copper plates usually are far to thick with too prominent stepped seams. The nicety about using adhesive copper foild/tape is that you can closer to scale dimensions. The nails on coppering to do not protrude, but tend to pull in the sheet due to the softer layer of felt underneath. Look in other sections of the Forum for discussions on this subject. Depending on the scale you might either completely forego the nailing or slightly emboss it from the front before applying the tape. The protective paper layer is just soft enough to allow a light embossing. Having said this, it means that you have to scrape clean the underwater hull in preparation of the coppering. While you are at it, you might also want to remove the grossly out of scale plank moldings on decks etc., btw.

I wouldn't use cloth, as most cloths known to me would be too coarse for any of the usual scales of plastic models. However, the vaccum-formed sails may be a useful mould for sails formed from paper, particular, when the sails have not yet been cut out. I would apply a release agent, e.g. a Teflon-spray, and then arrange the individual bolts of sail cloths. They can be attached to each other with acrylic varnish or diluted white glue. Here on the Forum there are various discussions on how to make sails from paper. Otherwise, I would kit out the vaccum-formed sails with boltropes etc. These can be stuck on with plastic cement. You can then apply a base coat, pick out different cloths and re-enforcements in slightly lighter or darker shades etc. Just as you would paint a sail in 2D. If you are not familiar with the techniques of plastic modellers, it may be a good idea to have a look at how the guys do things there. There are really sophisticated painting techniques around that are partly based on the techniques of the Old Masters.

I gather the monograms, coat-of-arms and year of manufacture had the function to not only identify the pieces as royal property, but at the same time made sure that they were not confused with similar pieces, so that the right cannon balls and charges would be used. This is on land probably more important, than at sea. So the monograms must be readable without going around the piece, typically looking down. Hence, their maximum breadth would be probably somewhat under half of the circumference of the barrel, perhaps a third or so, considering the geoemtric distortion when looking down. This is just a practical guess and not founded on any further information.

I am not sure what you are heading for, a reconstruction of a particular ship ? With the hull dimensions you should be able to constrain the spar dimensions better. A lofty rig normally requires a deep hull or a very broad hull in order to give stability. So for a medium deep hull compared to length and breadth one would not expect the upper end of mast length. For your CAD-example my feeling says that the sail-plan should be somewhere between the two extremes - one is grossly over-canvassed and the other one too small for the ship. It may be also helpful to look not only at the proportionate dimensions, but to go a bit into the physics and compare the meta-centres of the sail-plan and the hull, the resulting levers and righting moments, and their relative position along the longitudinal section. The textbooks you quoted should give instructions for this. This would help to further constrain the sail-plan, though you will have an equation with perhaps to many unknowns/degrees of freedom still.

I am not a specialist on this, but a publications comes to my mind that could shed light on this question: MCCONNELL (1988): British Smooth-Bore Artillery: A Technological Study to Support Identification, Acquisition, Restoration, Reproduction, and Interpretation of Artillery at National Historic Parks in Canada.- National Historic Parks and Sites, Environment Canada – Parks, Publ. R64-178/1988E: 595 p., Ottawa (Minister of Supply and Services Canada). This is available on-line, if I remember correctly.

As a sideline: before drawn and extruded aluminum mast came onto the market in the 2nd half of the 20th century, (bigger) yachts were fitted with elliptical or drop-shaped built masts. They were hollow and had a round groove at back for the bolt-rope.

I found that offen nominally round stock is not perfectly round. For this reason the raw material should be somewhat bigger than the finished part. If you check the dimensions of the mast etc., you may find that is only 5 mm at the largest diameter. So your rod will be big enough to fashion the part from it.

This is a Channel stoppen, Not at quick Release gear to let go. When a chain is under strain, it may be difficult to unfasten stoppers to pay out more chain, or to heave in the anchor. Hence a quick release hook that opens under strain.

Yes, that hatch-like area doesn't look too big. Nevertheless, it may be that the boat can be arranged in different configurations, depending on the type of charter, or if the owner is on board - but I I don't know anything about the actual ownership arrangements, of course. Perhaps some catalogue could tell you more.