wefalck

One can get brass sheet/foil down to 0.02 mm thickness - check out the usual coastal fishing grounds ...

Our knowledge about how the steam-side of these ships was operated seems to be rather limited. You not only have to hoist the ash-buckets up to deck-level, but also carry them across the deck and then discharge them overboard. There must have been some sort of ash-chutes already. At least in the mid-1870s these were installed on both sides, so that you could always discharge to lee. It seems that during the time the ships were flush-decked, the buckets were indeed carried by hand. When ships began to receive engine-houses and other superstructures, typically some sort of overhead rails were installed along which the buckets could be moved. I don't recall having ever seen any ash-hoisting installed on a model. Perhaps you could contact the Portsmouth guys and see, how they think this problem was solved on HMS WARRIOR. She is a few years younger, but essentially of the same structural layout. I don't recall any such information in the books about her I have in my library.

Yes, these Victorian skylights are masterpieces of joinery and a challenge to model, particularly at such small scale. Building them around a acrylic glass core would also have been my method of choice. A few months back I confronted the same problem. In one case I etched little grooves into the inside of the 'wooden' frame to provide for the uniform spacing of the bars. In another case I milled the grooves into a raised part of the acrylic core and built up the panelling with styrene sheet. The bars are/will be short sections of very fine brass wire lacquered in. Lacquer has the advantage over e.g. CA glue that I can adjust the wires, if needed. Painting them without messing up everything will be a challenge still lying ahead. And I agree, you did a good job on those skylights ! P.S. (added after I read druxey's comment) - tools indeed have to be sharp and should have a relatively steep rake; it is, however, also a question of the material, as not all acrylics are exactly the same; I occasionally found that people are trying to sell other clear plastic as 'acrylic glass'; personally, I am lucky to still work from a stock of original Plexiglas, obtained directly from the manufacturers, when my father was working for a daughter company to Röhm GmbH, as it was known then.

Well, deep-buttoned green leather has something to it ... sitting on some, while writing this

Neat, I say, needless to say ... BTW, slotting screw-heads, this is one of the tasks for which collet-chucks were invented for: Pictures from http://www.lathes.co.uk/levin/page4.html I have a nearly identical set from Hardinge for my B6 collets. It was missing the draw-bar, but since I was able to obtain the right tap for the thread and make a new draw-bar, it gets used quite often. The knurled screw at the end is a depth-stop that is adjustable on a very fine thread. Modern versions for use in a vice on the milling machine do not have this sophistication.

Sounds familiar. My beloved wife claims that this is her strategy against dementia ...

Made something similar up in aluminium a while ago for profiling strips of wood or polystyrene. I designed it so that the material would be pushed through, but turned out that the strips are not stiff enough for this, even with guides. This design is open on one side, so that the strips can be pushed against the scraper and pulled through. This may be a better design in principle. When I saw it for the first time, I had the same thought: why would I pay this amount of money for something that I could knock up for next to nothing with materials that are already knocking about in my workshop.

I am well organised, built little cupboard with drawers, racks on the walls and all that. Everything has its place and I know what kind of tools is in what drawer - problem is that I have so many fancy tools that I forget that I had them by the time I really could make good use of them ... Wives and tools: she always shouts at me that I never 'share' anything from the workshop - but the problem is that she takes whatever lies around, rather than using the 'right' tool for a particular job. Same applies during her work in the kitchen, btw. Using the wrong tools for the job, kitchen or workshop, always drives tears in my eyes.

Vitor, you may want to change the title in 'Shop-made Thickness Sander'. Nice idea, btw.

I personally find that irrespective of scale, I tend to pack as much detail into it as is physically possible with the available materials and tools. So building at a larger scale does not really change much in terms of dealing with miniature bits and pieces. It is true, however, that the standard marlinspike seamanship items are easier to make at larger scale ...

Neat ! And happy New Year !

Clever way of making these mast-bands. I am using collet-blocks for my WW/B8 and B6 watchmakers lathe collets and agree that being able to tighten them from the back has advantages.

Now the shipyard workers can have a well-deserved Christmas vacation 👍🎄

Aaahh, you are not 'mixing' paints, as per the thread title, but you want to apply coats of different types of paint onto each other - this is something different, not to be mixed up. There have been already various discussions on this this subject on the Forum. There is a century old golden rule: fat on lean, never the other way around, meaning you can apply lipophilic paints (e.g. oil paints or enamels) onto hydrophilic (e.g. gouache or acrylics) paints, but not the other way around. Water-based paints, such as acrylics, would not stick on oils or enamels very well due to their different physico-chemical properties (surface tension, wetting behaviour, Van der Waal interactions, etc.). The same applies to varnishes, that could be either oil-based or water-based. Varnishes are essentially resins dissolved in some solvent, but contrary to paints do not contain pigments. Some modellers extensively apply 'intermediate' varnishes to seal layers of paint, but these have to be compatible with the paints. It is a common process among modellers to apply a base-coat of acrylics (typically by spraying) and then to work-in details (e.g. weathering, highlights, etc.) using (artists') oil-washes.

Have you searched the more recent literature on this, particularly that coming out of the Viking-ship museums in Oslo and Roskilde ?

Never sailed on a ‚tall-ship‘ (which indeed is an inflationary expression today, also applied to small two-masted schooners and such). However, with my limited experience of belaying man-made fibre ropes on cleats, I found that things get rarely moving before only one figure of eight is left. cleats are different, because they wedge the rope more, but I doubt, that a third figure of eight makes any difference. The only reason I can see is that a locking hitch is avoided (which can be ver difficult to cast loose, when the ropes are frozen), because it keeps down due to its own weight. Having learned to sail before getting into serious model building, it was always logic to me to measure out the lengths of rope so that the tackles could be worked. I then sometimes cheat by cutting it in order to put it on as a separate coil, which makes things more manageable.

I picked up various antique/old foot-switches on flea-markets and replaced the switches with momentary ones (which seem to be difficult to find in electronics shops these days). Thinking of bare feet/feet in socks runs shivers down my spine - there is always swarf or splinters on the floor ... at least in my workshop space.

In fact, I fitted my foot-switches with the kind of switch, that are ON, when you put the foot down and go immediately OFF, when you lift it. Makes the operation also a lot safer.

I never used any of the Unimats, but control all my machines from a foot switch, while having a separate speed-control. These sewing-machine speed-controls are basically variable resistors and one loses a lot of torque and maintaining a constant speed for prolonged periods of time caused me cramps in the leg.

It seems that the 1/350 and 1/700 scale warship and the model aircraft fraternities use this kind of stuff frequently. But as mtayler said, I would have serious reservations against using anything elastic.

I think many of us remember those dark pre-Internet ages, when finding information and advice was quite laborious ... you had to get hold of some (old) books either in a library or through (secondhand) bookstores. So, I think many of us are happy to make life easier for the newcomers ... I for my part was lucky that my university (ETH Zürich) actually maintained at that time a hobby-workshop for both, metal- and woodworking (it was also used by students/doctorands for project work, of course). The metal workshop was equipped with high-class, but obsolete machines donated by industrial sponsors from the area. It was run by a retired mechanic of the type 'shipman' was referring to (rather grumpy first, but very helpful, when you showed real interest and willingness to learn). From him I learned the machining basics, but it another ten years or so before I was able to afford my first lathe (from my first bonus in my first job).

This is why I prefer to just click on 'like', rather than to add a meaningless eulogy. If you don't have to ask a question or otherwise add substantially to the discussion, than better don't say anything. It's a bit of a vicious circle: ploughing through a long building log in the hope to find somewhere the answer to a question is quite tedious for the reader too, if one has newly discovered a log; so I think it is fair to ask a question, even though it might have been asked before. Perhaps the builder then might consider a separate thread on FAQs or noting down the number of the post, where something has been described previously and to refer to that post. I can fully understand that at some stage one may want to cut down on the presence in fora, it just becomes too time consuming and distracts from the 'real' thing.

Tapers, where the length doesn't exceed about three to four times the diameter should work - just for any other unsupported turning. It also depends on how heavy the cuts are. I do such things regularly. I have a collection of old shop handbooks, dating from the 1880s or so to the 1940s and there you find all sorts of useful tips serious modern CNC-trained mechanics would frown upon - not forgetting the health&safety guys

Certainly quite true, though I never really touched an Unimat except playing around with the cranks in a shop. My main safety concern is the 3-jaw-chuck. When turning small parts, such as belaying pins, one invariably comes quite close with ones nose or other valuable body parts ... collets are a much safer option from this point of view. It happened to me that I hit the jaws of 3-jaw-chuck with a file or the jewellers saw, which propels these tools quite quickly towards your face ... Incidentally, I am using for work on small parts a loupe-lamp (one with a retangular loupe) over the lathe. This gives you good illumination and protects your eyes from flying parts. Over the last few years close-fitting safety glasses (similar to the glasses worn by e.g. cyclists) have come onto the market. They are as comfortable to wear as normal glasses. I now wear them all the time, while at the work-bench. Mine have also small loups inserted at the bottom, which is an additional help, though being myopic, I am immediately getting 4 diopters when taking off my normal glasses. There are also safety glasses with optical lenses of different diopters on the market, which I use when doing really fine machine work. It is important that these glasses fit quite closely to the face, as flying parts may not always have a straight trajectory, but bounce off somewhere, or you may be turning your head at the wrong moment, so that something can fly between normal glasses and your face.

I don't want to confuse and complicate matters, but ER collets are designed to hold tools or rods. They don't hold securely, being double-split, when the tool/work does not pass the full length through the collet. For workholding normally other types of collets are used. One needs to keep this in mind, when chucking up shorter parts. ER collets have the advantage of spanning the nominal diameter minus 0.5 mm, more than most other collets. This means one gets away with just a few of them. Some years ago I bought a set of ER11 collets from China and I think the full set of 13 (from 1 mm to 7 mm) cost me something in order of 30€ at the time, shipping included. I use them instead of a Jacobs-drill chuck in the tailstock of my watchmakers lathe and they turned out to be pretty good for the price I paid. A disadvantage from a modelling point of view is, that the smallest diameter you can chuck with them is 0.5 mm. My watchmakers collets go down to 0.2 mm and I frequently use the 0.3 and 0.4 mm ones for both, work- and drill-holding.