wefalck

I gather I am not much of a rower, but it makes perfect sense. Never seen such thing before. I suppose I would have turned to one of those clip-on mirrors some determined cyclists use. Nice 'keeping-with-the-style' solution.

I am afraid, I only have one or two antiquarian books on the subject written in German. You will need to employ the services of Google ...

Nothing looks more like the real thing than the real thing: love the charcoal in the stove

The watchmaker spade drills bits I mentioned above have zero rake. Watchmakers used to forge them from oil-hardening steel, file them to shape, harden them (watchmakers are very familiar with hardening small pieces), and then grind and hone them. They were meant for reciprocating Archimedes hand-drills and cut in both directions. However, they can also be used in electric drills and, of course, in the lathe. I have a small butterfly-shaped jig (the correct name escapes me for the moment) for honing drills on an Arkansas-stone. It holds the drill bits in a collet and presents it to the stone at the correct angle. I never actually used it, I must admit, but I think it could be used to grind the zero rake onto twist drills.

Just a thought: we all love the challenge of mastering a new technology, but it may be worthwhile to ask oneself, if this technology then provides really the advantages sought for. Most ships have at maximum two anchors of the same type and size. So, unless you are building a series of models, it is rather unlikely that you will ever need that anchor in exactly that size again in your lifetime. In order to replicate it by casting, you have to fabricate a master first. Fabricating another copy of the master is probably less work than taking a mold and then casting it ... Incidentally, printing anchors could be one of the few useful application of filament-printers. The slightly rough surface of the prints might be well-suited to the quite rough forgings of the anchors.

As on the left. If you make it as on the right, the metal with rise out of the vent before the mold is completely filled. Also the vents in the mold on the left should go up to the level of the funnel for the same reason.

There is brass and there is brass. Some types of brass machine well, others tend to smear when turned or catch drills. There are special brass drills with a steeper helical angle and differently ground tips, but I don't think they are available as 'numbered' drills. Watchmakers traditionally use spade drills or 'Eureka'-drills. Spade drills one can make oneself. Eureka-drills have straight flutes and tend to be very expensive these days. Both types of drills don't catch easily, but due to the absence of helical flutes need to be lifted out frequently to clear out chips.

The cutting edges of harpoons and of the long knives with which the whale was cut up were sharpend and restored by hammering them out on an anvil. Only then they would whetted with a stone.

What's 'panko' ? Yep, very nice progress again. You might be able to cut out the cellophane tape step when transferring patterns by just ironing on the print-out. Simple copy-paper works, but there are also special thermo-transfer sheets with a shiny surface. I have used this to transfer patterns onto bakelite paper and brass shim with a normal ironing iron.

😯 ... and I see a nice Deckel-clone tool grinder in the background. Would love to have one.

There are some guys here into tool-making, but he beats us all. And, he must have somewhere a second life to spare, for all the time he spends on the tools

I take the table - if the room comes with it

Balkan hemp ? I gather it should be Baltic hemp, as much of it came from the western parts of Russia, I think. Not only in the UK the beautiful cast and wrough iron fences fell victim to war-time efforts, in Germany too, much of it disappeared sadly. I don't think there would be any doubt that as much of the standing rigging as possible and some of the running would be wire on a Thames barge at any time of the 20th century. It last much longer and therefore is cheaper then vegetal fibres.

Perhaps you should search for stunsail booms. These are the 8-shaped iron that hold them to the yard.

Excellent blacksmithing job !

Micro-joinery !

Hhmm ... not too far off then. But why did you attach the side supports so high up on the hull - ok more stability, but it looks a bit like those outside supports, when you have a broken leg ...

Soft pads ... a support for a model ?

Bathroom fittings ?

Read a lot of good things about them and took the opportunity to look at them at a stand during the model engineering exhibition in London in January. However, I found them far too coarse, at least for my purposes. For instance, the needle files could not be used on really small parts.

You must have a huge stock of metals ...

Yep, shellac or zapon are my solution. You can soften it with the solvent again, if you are not yet happy with the shape. This can be also done in sections.

Thanks, Jan, for your kind words ! The photographs were taken with a close-up lense and at an oblique angle, which probably resulted in some distortion of the image. The Euro-cent should look like an ellipse.

Thanks for the kind words ! **************************** Buffer beams In order to limit the recoil and the running out of the gun, buffer beams are installed at both ends of the frame of the lower carriage. Each beam carries four buffers against which the front cross-beam of the upper carriage runs. The buffers are designed as pistons with piston rods screwed to the back of the beam. It is not completely clear what the elastic elements were. The drawings seem to indicate rubber discs with metal separating discs. On some of the guns at Suomenlinna fortress there are remains of rubber discs, while the demonstration model of the Danish navy seems to have spiral springs. Buffer beams on the lower carriage The bodies of the buffers were turned from 1 mm soft steel wire. The spring element was simulated by winding around it several turns of 0.15 mm tinned copper wire. Whether this is meant to meant to represent rubber discs or springs I will decide, when it comes to the painting stage. One buffer dry-mounted The nuts that keep the buffers to the beam were also turned from 1 mm soft steel wire. First, the hexagon for a 0.6 mm spanner width was milled on in the dividing head of the micro-mill. On the lathe a 0.4 mm hole was drilled and 0.3 mm long nuts parted off. And no, I didn’t cut a 0.4 mm thread Buffers and fastening nuts The parts of the buffer beams were laser-cut from 0.15 mm thick Canson paper and soaked in wood-sealer. They were folded and assembled using zapon varnish. In order to make folding more precise, a row of tiny holes were ‘punched’ along the folding lines with the laser-cutter, which weakens the material there. The rivetting was simulated by tiny drops of acrylic gel that was applied with a syringe and a fine injection needle. The needle was ground flat at the end for this purpose. Buffers and fastening nuts – the buffer have a diameter of 1 mm More details were added to the lower carriage. A heavy forged claw at each end of the frame hooks under the rail on which the carriage trucks run to prevent the carriage from lifting off the pivot. The profile of the hooks was taken off the original drawings and cut in multiple copies from Canson paper. These were glued together as a stack and sanded smooth – not a 100% satisfying solution, but filing such tiny but wide claws from the solid I found too fiddly. The lugs that attach the claws to the frame were also cut from Canson paper. Safety claw, pivot plate and drive shaft The gun is trained with the aid of a curved rack, a crown-wheel segment in fact. In to this rack made from bronze, a steel pinion engages that is driven by a shaft from a sort differential, which is powered by man-power from the deck below the barbette. After some consideration I decided not to make the pinion, though I would have liked the challenge, because it will not be visible once the gun has been installed on board. The driving shaft, which also is barely visible was fashioned in a simplified was from a clothes pin, the head of which was turned to shape. To be continued ...

I don't know anything about these AmericanBeauty resistance soldering units, but they appear to me rather over-priced. Just looked at their Web-site and saw for instance an accessory that is called 'grounding vice' at 160 USD. Effectively it is one of those ubiquitous engravers vices that are sold at around 20 USD mounted to a heavy footplate. Likewise, to sell a foot-switch at 56 USD seems to be a rip-off ... resistance soldering is used, for instance, also in watchmaking and -repair, particular to solder feet to clock dials. There, people have build their own units and I have seen construction plans on the Web.