wefalck

The position of the wheels should be quite well defined by the swing-arms. Perhaps it would be a good idea to drill them through at the car end and pin them to the chassis ... one could make them even working by replacing the plastic spring cylinders with lengths of brass tubing with real springs inside

Some more clutter and dirt around it ?

Gratulations to the completion ! I noticed two things that may have to do with the design of the kit: - the 2CV didn't have an actual dashboard; there was a sort of open 'glove-shelf' stretching across the whole width of the car; close to the box with the speedometer and by the side of the steering wheel the characteristic gear-shifting stick was sticking our near horizontally, with a crooked handle and a ball at the end - the umbrella stick - this seems to have been missing from the kit ? Interestingly, Renault's R4 copied this arrangement, but they inverted the sense of the different speeds, which was very confusing, when you were switching between the two cars, as I did during a certain period. - The front-wheels don't seem to be centered in the wings, they seem to be too far back ... Looking forward to the building of the other kit then.

I believe there are also filled acrylic resins for such purposes, but have no practical experience with them or know of any sources in the USA - just in case you are concerned about the epoxy fumes. Both, acrylic and epoxy, resins can be filled with 'micro-balloons', which are microscopic hollow glass spheres. They can be bought in small bags.

Supposedly ...

Priming has the purpose of reducing corrosion (probably not relevant in our context) and to increase the adherence of paints. Copper and brass quickly develop a very thin oxidation layer that feels slightly 'greasy' and to which water-based paints do not adhere very well, particularly, when brushed on. In such cases a primer might be useful that makes the surface somewhat porous, improving the adherence of particularly acrylics. However, for small parts that are not handled priming in most cases is not really needed, particularly on models that are put under glass immediately after completion. In the case of working models, the situation may be different. Every layer of paint will obliterate detail and make the appearance of parts less 'sharp'.

We had this discussion at other places I think already. Acrylic paints are dispersions of acrylic acid molecules in water (possibly alcohol) with finely ground pigments suspended in them. The curing of these paints happens in two stages or perhaps parallel processes: the solvent, the water evaporates, and the molecules begin to intertwine, trapping the pigment in between. The first process happens within minutes (when spray-painting) or an hour or so (when brush-painting), while the latter process will continue for days or even a week or two. It is not possible to redissolve acrylic paints without breaking up the molecules, i.e. destroying the binder. You can, of course, grind up the dried paint, but all you get is a slurry, but not a paint. You would need to really finely grind it and then add new binder, i.e. acrylic acid solution - but this is not really worth the effort und almost certainly will not yield a satisfactory product. The same considerations apply to dried out oil-paints. Here the binder is lineseed oil and the curing process an oxidation induced by short-wave radiation, namely UV-light. Once oxidised, the process cannot be really reverted. Again, if you grind up the paint, you will end up with a slurry and would need to add more lineseed oil as fresh binder. Not sure that making your own paints from scratch is really an efficient process. Of course the painters of old did this, but then jumped onto the confectioned paints, as soon as these became available around the middle of the 19th century (facilitating the open-air painting of the School of Barbizon and somewhat later of the Expressionists). You are not likely to arrive at the same level of homogeneity and dispersion of commercial products. The resulting product may be ok for painting by brush of small areas, but probably nor for painting larger surfaces, let alone for spray-painting. This is one reason why the technique of painting, sanding, painting, sanding, and finally polishing was developed.

Was there a specific reason, why you used Novotex (bakelite with cotton fabric) for the drums ?

Varnish essentially is a 'paint' without pigment. The purpose of varnish is to protect (wood) surfaces. Modern acrylic paints are acrylic resin suspensions that have also very finely ground pigments suspended in them. They will form a uniform layer of physically (not chemically) cross-linked and intertwined strings of acrylic resin with the pigment imbedded. So, under normal circumstances no 'varnish' is required. However, if an item is to be handled frequently, an additional layer of varnish will be a sort of wear layer, protecting the actual paint. But this is likely to be relevant only for RC models and the likes. Most acrylic paints dry up with a satin sheen. If you want to have a high-gloss or real mat surface, one could apply respective acrylic varnishes to obtain the desired sheen. It is always wise to stay within one paint/varnish system. If you use acrylic paints, use acrylic varnish for the above mentioned reasons.

Funnels were double-walled from about the middle of the 19th century on. For two reasons: in order to keep the flue-gases hot to provide a better draught and to prevent the burning of adjacent materials. The internal flue was held concentric by spreaders.

Such rings would only be needed, if the covers actually sit completey inside the hatches. It they are designed to overlap the coamings, one can lift them off by just reaching under the edge. I seem to have seen this design at least in the second half of the 19th century. This would not prevent the tarpauline to be battened down smoothly.

Shellac is being used, e.g. by watchmakers to glue parts for turning operations onto flat discs, so-called wax-chucks. It is quite strong, as long as you don't jerk or bang it. It has the added advantage that you can take it off with a drop of alcohol, if you are not happy with the result.

Thanks, gentlemen, for your kind words. @Roger Pellet - from the early 1860s on, the experiments by various gun manufacturers to produce a gas-tight breech lock slowly bore fruit, notably those of Krupp in Germany. They constructed a lock that was based on a cylinder in a cross-bore that wedged the actual lock part in place. The key to success was a gasket made from hardboard. In the mid 1860s this principle was replaced by a system, whereby two wedges in a square cross-bore were pulled against each other, thus safely closing the chamber of the gun. The Danes, the Austrains, and then the French found that out to their detriment in the wars between 1864 and 1871 how effective these designs were. The French company Schneider began to develop breech locks in the mid 1860s, based on a segmented screw, which was the design kept for heavy guns and until the drop-block locks for cartridges were introduced for QF guns, based on a design by the German company Gruson. Krupp continued their developments and developed what is called a 'round wedge' lock (Rundkeilverschluß). Hereby a sligtly tapered lock-block is pulled into a correspondingly tapered cross-bore using a thin transport screw, while a short, coarse locking-screw pulls the block tight. The gas-tight seal is provide by a copper gasket that has to be replaced every few shots (while the hardboard gasket had to be replaced during loading for each shot). This remained the Krupp-design until WW1 for heavy guns. The 30.5 cm RK/l22 had this kind of lock and you can see the locking piece in the picture below: The screw that moves the block into place is the thin one on top, while the heavy locking screw is on its back.

A belated thank you ! *********************** Completing the upper carriage 1 With the lower carriage basically ready for painting, I turned my attention back to the upper carriage. The structural elements made from photo-etched parts had already been constructed many years ago. Dito some of the details had been fabricated more than ten years ago, or at least partially. The previous state of the upper carriage I had also turned and cut the gear wheels for the elevating mechanism, but they had not been finished. The back side, after parting off had not been shaped, which was done now and they were also chemically tinned after degreasing and pickling in citric acid. The gears as cut The elevating mechanism consist of a double reduction gears and is driven by a deeply dished handwheel with six spokes. These reduction gears are duplicated on each side of the carriage. The last wheel in the drive has a pinion on the inside of the carriage, which acts on a gear segment that is attached to the gun barrel. How the gear segment is guided is not clear from the available drawings and the model in Copenhagen. On the Russian Krupp-clones the arrangement is slightly different. The elevating gear train in GALSTER (1885) The elevating gears on the instruction model in Copenhagen The gear segment and its attachment to the barrel on a gun in the Suomenlinna fortress Krupp factory photograph of the same gun, but in coastal mount (from the collection of the Architekturmuseum TU Berlin) There is a friction-brake on the axle of the last large wheel of the gear train, which is worked with a cross handle. How this functions is not clear, but it presumably just pull the gear onto the frame via a short thread that is cut onto the end of the axle. On the starboard side of the gun there is a brass disc and an indicator lever that somehow shows the degree of elevation and presumably the range of the gun with different kinds of projectiles and charges. Again, how this indicator disc is coupled to the elevating gears is not clear, as I do not have any suitable photographs. In any case, the respective gear train will not be really visible on the model. The dished handwheel started life as parts photoetched from 0.2 mm brass. In order be able to bend each spoke into the dished shape, a former was turned from some round steel and set up on the watchmakers ‘staking tool’. The spokes were pre-bend by hand and then finally pulled to shape using a hollow punch. The parts then were chemically tinned and soldered together with the aid of some flux. The step-wise forming of the dished handwheel The remaining parts, such as the axles, are simple parts turned from steel rod for strength, as they are quite long compared to the diameter. (Almost) all the parts of the elevating gear laid out The elevanting gear provisionally assembled To be continued ...

OK, this is replica, but I think dark decks, at least for ships built in non-tropical areas, are quite unusual and often a sign of poor maintenance. Most decks are made from some sort of pine or perhaps teak. If not 'holy-stoned' regularly, the wood will attain a sort of greyish colour the older it gets.

Many people don't appreciate how much time and work goes into a job well-done. At least the community here does

In Germany and France at least there are nitrocellulose- or shellac-based sanding sealers that are 'filled' with pumice dust. The idea is simplify and speed up the traditional process of 'french polishing', whereby the wood was 'sanded' with a pumice stone and then shellac was applied, which consolidated the pumice dust in the wood pores, thereby evening out the surface. When you rub the wood down with steel-wool, it just takes away the excess sealer, but does not actually cut into the wood itself, as when you are using sandpaper. You immediately get a shiny and smooth surface without scratches. I have been using this process for at leat forty years now in furniture- and model-making. BTW, shellac is not really water-proof, as anyone knows, who put a wet glass onto a french-polished piece of furniture. Alcoholic beverages obviously are even worse. However, when you spray-paint with acrylics, the water (and the alcohol, if your paint also uses alcohol as thinner) evaporates so quickly, that no harm is done.

Shellac is a traditional glue, used by many trades ...

Try to find some nitrocellulose-based sanding sealer. Sand the wood, wet it, sand again (as previously mentioned by Jaager), let dry thoroughly and then apply the sanding sealer. Rather than using sandpaper, rub down the wood first with 000 steel wool and then with 0000. This gives you a nice surface without appreciably adding thickness, as you basically rub down to the wood and just leave the sealer in the open pore space. Such wood surface can be buffed to get a nice satin sheen, or indeed it can be spray-painted with any paint, preferably one that does not contain organic solvents, such as acrylics.

Shellac, lineseed oil, or acrylic varnish would be options. It depends on what degree of shine you anticipate. You may want to give the wood a treatment with wood filler, rub it down with steel wool and then put on the bands. The final treatment then could be any of the previousl mentioned or, indeed, nothing.

Planking thickness on the real ship will vary around the hull. Some of this is visible from the outside, namely the wales. You would need to check the thickness of the planking on the real ship from appropriate resources and then adapt it to the scale of your model.

I think the best thing would be to get some background information on her or the J Class in general. There are also some textbooks on yacht-building and rigging. I am quite sure that double-blocks would have also been used, say on boom-sheets.

Not sure you can see the pictures in this German forum, but a colleague there is just doing that, he uses down branches and trims them to shape: https://www.segelschiffsmodellbau.com/t7885f20-Slawenboot.html Or lamination from many thin layers (plane sheavings) over a former.

When I look at the linked picture, I don't think that any structure of the the aluminium? lining inside the hangar would be perceptible at a 1:350 scale. I would spray the internal structure in silver and then modulate the silver with a soft (e.g. B8) pencil to simulate the folds etc. in the lining.

I have not doubt that it works. The point was that there are cheaper materials and that there is a risk that the alloys change their properties due to contamination from the plating metals. So they may or may not be re-useable. But one would need to try.