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I just eye-ball the size and then try out the most likely bits - they are all stored in one place. Probably less life-time spent on this procedure than meticously labelling all the screw containers.

On many fishing boats one sees them kind of hanging in the bows from the capping rail with shank in-board. On the other hand, when approaching the ship it would have been probably completely taken in so as not foul or chafe anything.

A boat with a (vague) 'literary' conotation is the boeier SPERWER (1884). The dutch boat was owned in the 1930s by Merlin Minshall (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Merlin_Minshall), a british naval intelligence officer, who is said to have been one of the inspiration for Ian Fleming's 'James Bond'. The boat is very well documented in terms of drawings and preserved in the Zuiderzeemuseum in Enkhuizen/Netherlands: https://www.maritima-et-mechanika.org/maritime/zuiderzee/zuiderzee.html. An ukrainian colleague here on the forum recently completed a model of the boat. BTW, there are also many painters' boats. A french impressionist painter, Gustave Caillebotte, was also an influential yacht designer and competitive sailor.

Don't know, how you guys use your disc-sander, but normally one moves the work-piece along the disc to avoid scratching marks. So you can work on pieces at least twice as wide as the table of the sander. Of course, if you use the protractor, then there may be further limitations. Otherwise, you might need to look into belt-sanders.

... but no sundecks, bars etc. - at least the kind of open sail-boats for 'real' sailing I am thinking of

I am thinking of a sturdy sea-boat, something like one of those replica Cornish Crabbers or indeed a Catalan type that is more suited to the relatively unsheltered coast off Valencia, but my wife thinks more of a motorboat ... Or one of those traditional lateen-rigged boats that are used on the lagoon just south of Valencia: https://www.maritima-et-mechanika.org/maritime/albufera/Boats-of-the-Albufera.html. Would be a challenge, as I never sailed a lateen-rig. Will have to explore all this once we are settled down there.

I know someone, who is really envious of the 1:1 version, but even once he will have the time (after retirement), he will not have the space (living in a city appartment) nor the right aqueous environment (though will be living at the coast) for this kind of boat 😭

I am using a set of angle gauges like the one below to set the table of my (shop-made) disc sander:

Kind have thought so. Difficult to find good model and mould-makers and casters these days.

Somehow I need a double or triple 'like' button ... Out of curiosity: was the prototype forged or cast or fabricated/welded ? Any idea ?

It is also good practice to clamp a piece of waste wood over the hole to be drilled, or a metal plate with a hole pre-drilled to the correct diameter. This prevents the drill from wandering and ripping out pieces on entry.

Mark, I hate to contradict you, but the French and the Spanish did use hammocks. Not sure though since when: LA BELLE POULE (1834) in the Musée de la Marine, Paris Armoured frigate VICTORIA (1867) in the Museo Naval, Madrid The easiest figures to find and with the largest range are the German Preiser model railway figures in 1:90 scale. Of course their dresses have to be adapted, but their sculpting and animation is excellent. There are many tutorials on the Internet on how to convert styrene figures.

I knew about the file-button method, but never actually used it, I think. Instinctively, I would have tried to set up the centre of the respective borehole on the rotary table to mill the round. The file-buttons seem to be easier ...

Horological collets are very good for holding such small things as screws. You also may want to watch out for so-called 'jewelling collets'. These are insert collets that go into a 5 mm collet.

Any wordprocessing or drawing software will do - in principle. Depends what kind of writing you are thinking of. The artful and fancy engravers cursive writing is difficult to reproduce on a computer, but there may be a program or app(lication) in newspeak out there for it.

I think Keith will break the records ...

Looks more balanced now, the brake, indeed !

Here are some more references to Indonesian boat-building. Some of them may be digitalised by now, but I didn't check, as I have most them in hard-copy: Dijkstra, G., Kampa, T. (1984): De traditionele zeilvaart in de maritieme ontwikkeling van Indonesië.- Spiegel der Zeilvaart, 1984(5 and 7) HAWKINS, C.W. (1982): Praus of Indonesia.- 134 S., London (Macmillan Books). HORRIDGE, G.A. (1979): The Kongo Boatbuilders and the Bugis Praus of South Sulawesi.- p., London (). HORRIDGE, G.A. (1979): The Lambo or Prahu Bot - a western ship in an eastern setting.- Maritime Monographs and Reports, 39: 41 p., Greenwich (National Maritime Museum). HORRIDGE, G.A.; SNOEK, C. (1985): The Prahu. Traditional Sailing Boat of Indonesia.- 112 p., Singapore (Oxford University Press). HORRIDGE, A. (1987): Outrigger Canoes of Bali and Madura, Indonesia.- 178 p., Honolulu (Bishop Museum Press). NEYRET, J. (1976): Pirogues Océaniennes, Tome II – II. Polynésie, III. Micronésie, IV. Indonésie, V. Inde, VI. Autres Continents.- 315 p., Paris (Assoc. des Amis des Muséés de la Marine). NOOTEBOOM, C. (1932): De boomstamkano in Indonesië.- 240 p., 101 photographs & 25 ills., Leiden (N.V. Boekhandel en Drukkerij). Zimmer, H.-J. (1993): Beschrijving van de modelbau van een Pinisi, een Indonesisch zeilshchip.- Modelbouwer, 1993(1).

Mark, I have raided indeed all major art materials stores here in Paris and the huge art and architecture materials department store in Berlin. Thin and very smooth seem to be two demands that are not so easy to satisfy at the same time. As I will apply sanding filler either before or after cutting, I might get away with a somewhat rougher material. There are many 80 g/m2 coloured papers for fancy letter writing. As the parts are going to be painted anyway, the colour-fastness of the paper per se is not of relevance. Logically, less glued papers are easier to cut with the laser, as the pulp burns away quickly, while the glues may require more energy and any refactory additives such as baryte or TiO2 are counterproductive. That is why the shiny magazine papers don't work so well.

Pat, that's just ordinary 'invisible', i.e. mat, cello-tape. Plus, as I had put the pattern onto the bakelite paper using thermo-transfer (ironing-on a laser-printer printout), alignment was easy.

That's actually a good idea, glueing/clamping another piece of material over the rod and then to mill or saw away everything. In this way the rod will be always securely fixed. Have to remember that. When doing such thing in my usual micros-scale, I embeded the wires into CA or epoxi.

Thanks, Keith. These boats were designed to have a very low profile, as kind of difficult to spot and hit mobile gun-platform particularly in the wadden seas off the German coast. The main deck was only about 1 m above the CWL, so they had a very low freeboard. They must have been very wet in anything but calm weather. I guess that's it, why there are so many freeing-ports.

Thank you ! Trying to do my best to keep up with you guys *************************************************************** Freeing Ports Originally I had planned to surface-etch the lids and the frames on the inside of the bulwark. The drawings for the masks were ready, but I never got around to actually etch or have the parts etched. Since I now have the laser-cutter, these parts were cut from printer-paper (80 g/m2 = 0.1 mm thick). With a width of the frames of only 0.5 mm, the surface-etched rivets may not have come out anyway. The same for the rivets on the hinges of the lids. At least not with my somewhat primitve home-etching arrangement. If I had etched the parts from 0.1 mm nickel-brass, the overall thickness would have been reduced to a more correct 0.05 mm (= 8 mm for the prototype). The lids have no latches to lock them and the ports no bars across them to prevent items or people being washed over board. This makes their construction simpler. Papers, even the smoothest ones, alway have a certain surface-roughness, at least compared to the bakelite of the bulwark. Therefore, the chosen paper was soaked in wood filler and spread to dry on a thick glass-plate that was covered in cling-film. The latter allowed to remove the paper without it rolling up. The surface was then smoothed with very fine steel-wool. The lids were cut from the thus prepared paper, but it needed several trials to find the right cutting parameters in order to arrive at parts of the correct dimensions. This is a disadvantage of such simple laser-cutters and their software. As the material is practically free, this is only a nuisance, but no other loss. Also the etching may not work out right in the first go, which may mean a considerable loss of money and time, if the process had been outsourced. Laser-cut lids for the freeing-ports Unfortunately, it does not work for very small parts with the paper prepared as above. It turned out to better for the very small parts, including the frames, to cut them from unprepared paper. Perhaps I should switch to dark paper. Due to its lower albedo (reflectivity) it absorbs more energy from the laser. Unfortunately, all the coloured papers I have come by so far are quite rough on the surface. I cheated somewhat for the freeing-ports. As I was afraid that I would not been able to cut them out cleanly and evenly, I abstained from it. Also, the bakelite-paper used for the bulwark for reasons of stability would have had a scale-thickness of 64 mm, when looked on from the side. Therefore, frames and lids were glued flat onto the inside and outside of the bulwark respectively. I hope one will not notice this too much, once the stanchions are in as well. Frames and lids were glued on with zapon-lacquer. Little laser-cut rectangles of 0.3 mm x 0.5 mm were stuck onto lids to simulate the hinges. Installation of frames and lids To be continued ...

The storm is chafing past us now ... In spite of the storm, you managed to produce quality as usual ! Are you going to leave the brackt in brass ? I am using self-tinning solution to make such parts look silvery. BTW, I checked my tool-drawer and the smallest dove-tail cutters I have are 4.5 mm in diameter. Got them some years ago on ebay, but they may well be kind of shop-made. Very small dove-tail cutters seem to be used in gun-smithing to machine the seats for gun sights. However, when you look a the prices in gun-smithing supply houses, they blow you off your feet like Ciara ...

How are you going to fix bracket on the hoop, the latter being aluminium ? Glueing ? Rivetting a spigot down from the inside ? I might have taken out one of my miniature dovetail-cutters ...