wefalck

Not so bad, we have two balconies, where can have the meals - weather permitting. In fact, I had not been physically out of the apartment for two months, but it didn't really bother me too much.

I think anti-fouling paints in the modern sense began to be developed from the 1820s on. By the early 1860s such paints have been available in many different colours, although the most common one seems to have been iron-oxide red. Before the 1820s and well thereafter ships bottoms where either covered in concoctions of lineseed oil and lime with all sorts of additives, such as ground glass, or in pitch or tar. The former would appear in a sort of off-white, while the latter would be a brownish black. The latter was only used in areas outside the risk zone for a terredo navalis attack. What you seem to describe is the boot-topping stripe, which is an altogether different story. It doesn't seem to have come into general use before the second half of the 19th century. it is a kind of fashion element and its use varied greatly across the different regions of the world. It seems also to be associated with the used of 'proper' paints, meaning that it not normally seems to have been used together the white concoction or tarred bottoms.

I would do (most of) the standing rigging in situ unless you are 100% sure that you can make a mock-up that has exactly the correct dimensions. This doesn't mean that certain operations could not be done on a jig after you marked off the precise lengths in situ. I am thinking of bindings or servings and operations such as that. However, it could be of advantage to prepare yards with their various fittings on a separate jig because it is easier to do this in a comfortable position on the worktable. Some people also prepare whole masts on the worktable and then transfer them to the model. This implies that the turning in of the deadeyes has to be done at that stage and also the ratlines can only be put in after the mast complete with the other rigging has been installed. On the bottom line the decision on which strategy of mixture of strategies to use will depend on the complexity of the rig.

Oops, I honestly believed that this is the camber of the beams, analogous to the camber of a road profile with actually a similar purpose, namely shedding water more easily. Druxey is right, just checked in Paasch's 'From Keel to Truck', and there the transversal curve of the deck beams indeed it the rounding, while the curve in longitudinal profile of a keel is the camber, and that of the deck is the sheer ... good by to what I thought was a good piece of nautical knowledge.

Druxey, I think it depends also on the diameter you have to work with. If your spars are only two or three mm in diameter at the end, it may be rather difficult to employ the classical method. For this you would need to make yourself jigs to hold the material while applying the plane or offering it up to the circular saw.

As for all lathes, collets are basically a must (also from a safety perspective), when you are working with smaller diameter pieces. However, I think the lathe normally comes with collets, doesn't it ? @obsidean12: why do you have a a three-jaw chuck in the tailstock ? I hope it is a free-spinning one ...

Of course, I know that it's a sit-on lawn-mower ... no lawn here, only window-boxes

"I had a bit of a slow time last week, distracted by the lawn tractor passing away at the age of 22 ..." - as my father said, when his cousin told him that he had 90.000 DM tax debts to pay: "I would be glad to have such a problem ..." - lawn tractor problems mean that you have a lawn big enough to need a tractor The pedestals under the gratings look rather masssive. Is that also on the prototype ?

Used to buy a lot of tools, new and antique, in the USA, but since the US Postal Service has discontinued 'surface mail' it often costs more to ship than the price of the goods. So this is only a proposition, if you are desparate for something antique. The Chinese send most of their new stuff for free .. probably subsidized, but it is my money. As for medical treatment, it really depends on in which country you are and what kind of insurance scheme you have. For consumer goods and food there are big price differences between the different European countries. It also depends on, whether you buy brands or not. We buy a lot of stuff during our frequent trips to Spain, as most things there are a lot cheaper than in Paris ... In spite of all that, I think many people live a rather comfortable life in Europe. Of course, there are also poor people, but the poor are still better off than many other people around the world. The socio-economic differences are much less pronounced than in the USA or let alone in the emerging economies or developing countries.

I am sure it will turn up, when we move house as planned in about three years ...

Two steps forward and one step backwards ... 😡 ... as I said somewhere above – on Friday the plastic globe on my 12W LED globe-bulb in my architect’s lamp fell out and dropped right onto the lower carriage on the workdesk. One of the caster-roller snapped off and two others were loosened – then I spent an hour turning everything on the table upside-down and didn’t find the roller – then I sifted through the waste-bin nearby for another hour and still couldn’t find it – eventually I gave up, cut a new bracket on the laser-cutter, fitted it and then turned up a new roller. Perhaps should have done it like this in the first place, as one always spends more time in search of a part than it takes to make a new one, but I just could not believe that a part like that could have been ejected so far ... Still work on the lower carriage ... OK, the gun is the key feature of a gun-boat and its very raison d’être, but this gun and its carriage seem to develop into a model of its own right. Perhaps one day I should build a larger scale fully working (the mechanics, not the ballistics, which would be probably illegal over here in Europe) model, now that I have a pretty good understanding of its functioning. While I was drawing some additional parts to be cut with the laser, I realised, that I had completely forgotten the stiffening brackets for caster wheels. They are essential elements in the construction, as the wheels each have to carry around 15 tons of the total weight of the gun. The brackets were fabricated from steel plates and forged(?) angles, fabricated on the model from tiny pieces of Canson-paper cut with the laser. Stiffening brackets added over the caster-rollers There were also two brackets needed for the operating lever including connecting rod of the gun training mechanism and for the clutch that connects the cranks below the barbette with the gun. The latter allows to connect gears for two different speed ratios, a high ratio for fine weather and a low ratio through as self-locking worm-gear for foul weather. A quite sophisticated arrangement actually, but as nothing of it will be visible on the model, it was ignored. Supporting brackets and connecting rods for working the training gears Connected to the gun training mechanisms is also a kind of capstan to help run-in the gun. A tackle is hooked into each side of the upper carriage and the runner lead by two guiding wheels into the lower carriage and onto the capstan. The wheels were turned from steel rod and their supporting brackets cut from Canson-paper. I meant to closely reproduce the original design, but in the end had to simplify it, because the parts were simply too small to laser-cut and handle. Because they are so flimsy that had to be put into place now and will have to painted over. Rollers in brackets to lead the running-in tackle The next challenge will be the fitting of the eleven gratings distributed around the lower carriage. To be continued ...

If you have the patience, make a break between sessions. Acrylics need time to fully cure, even so they are ‚touch-dry‘ very quickly. The curing is a combination of cross-linking the acrylics molrcules and an outdiffusion of the water molecules. Its is difficult to judge the coverage at the beginning and you don‘t want to flood surface details with paint.

One should get clear versions too, called muscovite by the mineralogists. The above seems to be biotite, which is sort of metallic brown due to the iron content.

I like to work with Plexiglas/acrylic glass. As the name implies, it looks pretty much like glass. I have constructed skylights pretty much prototype fashion around a body assembled from thin pieces of Plexiglas. Essentially, the Plexiglas body is clad in wood. Plexiglas can be worked with the same tools as wood. Since I have a mill, I cut solid cores from Plexiglas blocks and mill them to shape. The sides that are supposed to simulate glass panes are then ground flat and polished. Another option would be to drop pieces of microscopy covering plates into the respective 'windows'. These covering plates are very thin (and fragile) and come in standard sizes of 18 mm x 18 mm and 22 mm x 22 mm, if my memory is correct. They can be scored with a writing diamond and then snapped to size.

They have been and still are very popular in Germany, being shown on TV from time to time still.

The CV (and its rather over-confident nun-driver) appears in several of Louis de Funes 'Les Gendarms de St. Tropez' films. This clip shows the advantage of having 'traction avant'; The soft suspension could be rather frightening to the uninitiated, but the car was actually rather stable, also due to its low centre of gravity: And it had a considerable (unofficial) load carrying capacity: I once took three university colleagues including a backpack for each of us and other gear to a geological field trip into the Austrian Alps ...

First time I heard about that issue. But then I had mine serviced by a dealer regularly ...

Fragile you can say aloud! Thanks to all for your comments !

I don't think that such ships are an aberration - we probably will say the same thing about today's 'hybrid' cars one day. They represent the transition from one propulsion system to another with the associated uncertainties of reliability and availability of fuel supplies (before you could coal in Aden, the coal had to be shipped there first). Having both modes of propulsion increased the safety at sea and the probability that you actually got from A to B. I love this transition period (in ship-building history) because it shows the introduction and progress of engineering and the (cautious) technological optimism of the time.

OK, that is a rather unusual application. Paint pigments, particularly those used for high-quality air-brush painting are so small that they seem to diffuse into other materials. I had an issue with that.

We had this discussion here in another thread: why are people so keen to put layer over layer of stuff onto their parts ? What is the point of 'immersing' in epoxy resin after painting or to 'seal' it ? If its going to be toy that will be handled that makes sense, or if you want to change the sheen of the surface, but otherwise your paint is the surface treatment. UV-induced polymerisation does have a time constant and can be sped up by adding more quantums of UV-light. The printing process just induces the process, but the cross-linking may not have completed yet once the part is taken out of the printer. That's why the parts are exposed again to UV-light, either in a special UV-chamber or to natural sunlight. It is important that the resin is fully cured before you cover the part with something that likely absorbs the UV-radiation, as pigmented paint would.

As a matter of fact, we do have a fairly detailed picture of the paint schemes to be applied on the basis of the ordinances published in the respective offcial gazette. Up to 1895 the black-white-yellow scheme was valid that seems to have been the predominant scheme in virtually all navies around the world. After that grey, with initially hulls in a darker grey, was adopted. The hulls of ships at foreign (tropical) stations were painted white after 1890, reflecting the need to protect the crews below deck from heat stress due to hulls painted black - there was virtually no forced ventilation at that time. After 1895 the yellow for funnels, ventilators etc. was replaced by grey for ships at foreign station, but the hulls remained white. The yellow used after about the 1880s seems to have become darker and more orangy. The exact hue of that yellow used by the different nations varied from nation to nation and also over time, perhaps also as a matter of fashion. It appears that up to the third quarter of the 19th century the yellow was comparatively pale and then became darker. The French used a decidedly 'murky' yellow although they have one of the classical sources of yellow and red ochre in the Roussilon area that supplied much of the artistic world.

@uss frolick Thank you. I have been well aware of HMS GANNET and created a photo-essay on her some ten years ago, while she was still undergoing some restoration: https://www.maritima-et-mechanika.org/maritime/chatham/chatham.html. It is not clear (to me) to what state of her life she actually was restored to, but I believe it is definitely a post-1880 stage. It may be still worthwhile to talk to Chatham about their restoration decisions. @grsjaxOf course, I am well aware of the difficulties around recreating colours, even if you know the recipes and the pigments for the paint used. This is why in Germany in the time between the wars the 'Reichsausschuß für Lieferbedingungen' (RAL, roughly National Committee for Supply Specifications) was set up. One of its tasks was the standardisation of colours, which led to the RAL colour charts still in use today. The respective paint most likely contained natural ochre, lead-white and lineseed-oil as the main ingredients, perhaps in addition chalk as cheaper pigment then lead-white. However, there are rather wide variations in the hue of natural ochre, ranging from a pale yellow to almost red, depending on its chemical and mineralogical composition. For these reasons I have been hoping to identify artefacts that show original paint or the impression artists had of the original hue.

Pictorial and archival records for the early years of the Imperial German Navy between 1871 and 1880 are rather patchy. While we know the general colour schemes of different types of vessels due to published orders in this respect, the hue of the yellow used to paint funnels, ventilators, mast etc. is not really documented for that period. In those early, pre-William II, years the budding Imperial Navy often followed RN examples and until the mid-1870s many ships were ordered from British yards. Therefore, there is a certain possibility that also the yellow colour hue was copied from that used by the RN at that time. My question is now, whether anyone knows about sources by which the hue of the yellow in the RN for the period 1870 to 1880 can be determined. These could be archival materials such as orders as to the composition of the paint used, perhaps paintings (though one has to consider artistic liberty), artefacts bearing traces of the respective paint, or models that are likely still carrying the original paint. Any hints and tips in that direction are welcome.

When choosing an airbrush and a compressor, one should also think about the likely size of the area that one will be spraying and how often per year you are going to use it. In many cases one should get away with a rather smallish outfit. It may take longer, but it is easier to work on larger areas with an airbrush with a fine nozzle than the other way around. Working with solvent-based paints in an air-brush is messy and probably not very healthy unless you have a suitable extraction fan at your workplace. Solvents cannot be disposed off in the sink, therefore the airbrush has to be cleaned over a collecting vessel. In consequence, you may not clean it as thorough as you should. Equipment failure may be the result. For this reason, I only use acrylics. The airbrush can be thorough cleaned under running water. It depends on the use of the model and how it will be handled, but for static models that disappear inside a display cabinet once completed, I use paints pre-thinned for airbrushing from reputable artist supply houses/paint manufacturers, e.g. Vallejo (Spain), Schmincke (Germany). They never let me down and I don't have issues with clogging etc.