wefalck

Similar experience with my laser-cutting: I usually need at least three to four runs, until I get the parameters right. Perhaps also, because I am pushing the cheapo laser-cutter to its limits in terms of resolution etc. In this sense, it is actually not so different from making parts with traditional machine tools. That also may take several tries, particularly, when you push material and tools to the limit. However, the advantage with CNC machines is, that once you found the right settings, you can reproduce the same part of the same quality at the push of a button ...

What a pity. It will probably go to a potent private collector ...

My first thought also was, that there would be no stealers on (small) boats, they would be too narrow and short for secure fastening without the risk of splitting the wood. How wide, do you think, your planks will be. Planks of 10 mm x 0.5 mm seem to me rather small at a 1:10 scale. I would imagine that planks would be at least 15 cm wide, if not 20 cm, and a couple of cm thick. That would give you more meat for fitting. The hollowing out of the planks to fit the frames would have been done with either a plane or a spoke-sheave with rounded sole. I think you could find something suitable among the miniature planes luthiers have.

Looking nice overall. I think it the way how the fenders are tied up that makes them look chunky. I would expect to have a whole drilled through at the tope, with rope rove through and tied up with an eye-splice. Also the edges of the fenders would be rounded or chamfered to prevent from cutting into the hull.

It comes out nicely. One can imagine that these were quite sturdy and powerful boats under sail ...

MIne is A4 and plugs into an USB port.

Too high concentration has a similar effect to leaving the part too long in the solution: the chemically altered layer on the surface is porous and the reaction continues underneath with the effect that the first formed layers flake off. As Pat said, taking the piece out frequently, rinse it and check progress is a good strategy to stop the process just at the right moment. Depending on the blackening product used and the brass composition, it may take only a few tens of seconds actually.

I gather it depends on how heavy the work is you intend to do with them. (Disposable chirurgical) scalpels are designed for incisions, with the main force in the plane of the blade, not necessarily at an angle to it. Dito the handles. I am doing mainly light cutting work and not carving, so I am happy with the Swann-Morton scalpel handle and the various blases. I guess the one most frequently used is the No. 11, but I got a life-time supply of vavrious blade types via ebay quite cheaply: they are sterile ones on which the guarantee time for sterility has experired, so some medical establishment had to dispose of them. Scalpels for heavier work are those used in post-mortems and anatomical work. Swann-Morton has a series of blades and handles for that. However, I inherited from my father, who had trained as a medical doctor, a whole bunch of anatomical and biological scalpels with ebony handles. One was given to me already while at school and this remains one of my work-horses, being honed from time to time.

Got one a while ago. It has the LEDs only on one side. Perhaps the light distribution could be improved by putting some aluminium foil around the edges. They are OK for drawing, but it would be nice to be able to cut on them as well, obviously not possible on acrylic glass. I had contemplated to make one myself from a sheet of mineral glass and strips of LEDs at the edges ...

I don't think fabric, with the exception of silk-screen fabric and silk-span (in European understanding), is suitable for models below say 1/50 scale. In any case, on smaller-scale models eyelets can be simulated by piercing a small hole with a needle, applying a drop of white glue on both sides and then opening up the hole again. For metal cringles the PVA can be tinted grey and then you turn a sharp pencil in the hole to give the cringle a metallic sheen. For the sewn one, you tint the PVA beige or beige-grey to match the ropework you are using. You can also make small hollow rivets yourself from thin-walled brass tube. However, you need a punch and a die, that you would have to turn up on a lathe yourself to suit the brass tube.

I gather you are referring to the one below ? I have been watching some of the episodes in the past. Very instructive indeed.

It seems indeed that the lifebuoy as we know it came around in the 1840s or so. In the 1980s it seems that more or less horseshoe shaped designs have replaced the 'classical' one. Before the time of steamships it is sad to say, there was not much real use for lifebuoys and the attitude to human life was also more fatalistic. Men typically went over board in rough seas and strong winds and at night, when it would have been very difficult to heave to, to lower a boat and start searching. Such manoeuvre would have put the whole ship and certainly the boat-crew into serious danger. Before smoke flares and battery-operated lights attached to lifebuoys, it would have been very difficult to find a man in anything else but a dead-flat sea. Therefore, I am not sure that these French lifebuoys that were suspended over the stern were really useful and not just prolonged the suffering My father was telling me, that his father (who was in the German Imperial Navy from around 1910 until 1919) told him that many sailors could not swim and would not want to learn it, because it would just make dying a much more prolonged process. Not sure that is true. He himself could swim, but many navy sailors, who came from inland areas may have not been able to.

I think (without me knowing the actual practice), that you follow the sequence of the prototype: shaping the hull with the clinker planks, fitting the frames including the raisers/bulwark stanchions, and finally planking the bulwark.

In German, we have a saying: "a thing well-done needs time". As you don't do this for money, it doesn't matter.

I have a German sail-making book of 1887 that talks about cloth width from 60 cm to 70 cm. The width, I believe depends on the material and where it is manufactured.

Adding to the information overload and things that the shipwrights would have considered: - they had to balance between the width of the available wood and the need to have basically as few seams to keep tight as possible - too narrow planks at the ends are difficult to fit and you need 'meat' for the fastenings (tree-nails, metallic nails/bolts) - I am quoting from memory, but I think in Eric McKee's books on boats he gives a couple of rules-of-thumb, such that the fastenings should not be closer to the edge of a plank than its thickness to avoid splitting - this means that allowing for tapering there is minimum width for a given thickness that a plank must have before tapering - I seem to remember that there are also rules-of-thumb for the ratio between width of a plank and its thickness to avoid splitting and warping and in some navies such rules were written down, at least in the later 19th century - the available width of planks also depends on the type of wood chosen, the period (as already mentioned by Steven), and the geographic origin or location - oak planking in principle could be wider than soft-wood planks because oak trunks can grow thicker, but wide oak plans became increasingly scarce in Europe due to the massive ship-building activities from the mid-18th century on - for the same reason, massive pine trees in North America became less accessible after the middle of the 19th century, Baltic pine planks tended to be narrower - in many areas of Europe pine and related types of woods were imported by ship from the Baltic region (Finland, Sweden, Russia, the Baltic States, the eastern Provinces of then Germany and Poland; this put limitations to the size of timbers that could be economically transported - soft-wood was mainly imported sawn in Europe, which made stowage more economic than transporting whole trunks, which limited the choices to what was available on the market - certain ships built in SE Asia for European owners/navies may have had rather wide planks due to the availabilty there of large hardwood trees OK, that didn't really answer your question, I suppose, and doesn't help with the practical problem. However, the widths quoted by Steven and Allen are a good guide.

You are a dare-devil ! Cutting into the nice rail would have frightened me to bits ... However, it came out nicely. One tends to see a lot of these davits bent just from a length of round wire, but in fact, both diameter and cross-section actually change according to the expected stresses ... just going through that exercise myself - eight times and starting with a 1 mm brass wire

So the fore-mast sits in a kind of tabernacle ? How is it going to be locked against the 'baulk' ? Did you pin the cleats to the bearer ? Nice job overall !

When there is a deck-load of (sawn) wood, the shrouds would also be points to secure the load. On such quite small boats they probably would not have transported the kind of long logs and planks that came from Sweden and Finland on old barks, brigs and schoners to ports in Germany, the Netherlands, the British Islands and other European ports.

Perhaps the bulwark was too weak to take the pull from the shrouds ?

We probably don't know what the practice was at the end of the 17th century. On small scales I used a cow hitch as surrogate for the sewed-on eye-splice. Looking at your threads, I think it would be quite feasible to make a fake eye-splice and sew this on with a couple of turns of fly-tying thread.

I think John is right. The lower yards would not normally be raised and lowered, unlike the upper yards, where both, lifts and falls may be needed to move the heavy yards up and down.

I didn't realise that the chocks are wood. So, yes, you would have to have something metal and if its turning it doesn't have to be so heavy.

Did they have roller-fairleads at that time and on such rather improvised vessels ?

Yes, that could be. Some kind of glutin glue kept from gelling by adding salt. Or it could be a thick shellac solution, one with lots of shellac and little alcohol.