wefalck

Yes and no. With softer abrasives, one needs to also a softer material as a carrier, such as wood. Watchmakers use, for instance, boxwood discs charged with chalk, rouge (iron oxide) etc. for polishing. I found that a new and unused milling cutter moved at slow speed gave a quite polished surface, at least on the tiny surfaces we are talking about.

Each brush has its particular use and purpose. Perhaps it would be useful to study the use of brushes on a Web-site that introduces into painting. There are also many sites on painting plastic models that provide introductions. Having said that, the preferred tool for painting larger uniform surfaces today are not brushes, but an air-brush. I believe so-called double-action air-brushes and a suitable compressor can be had for 100€ or even less. My preferred brushes for small details are so-called 'spotters'. These are short-haired, stiff hair-brushes, not bristle-brushes. They come in different sizes. It is better not to chose a too small size for working with acrylics, as these will take up less paint and in consequence dry out faster, so that one has to work fast. When using oils, this is not a problem. Applying acrylics smoothly over a larger area can be challenge due to the fast drying. I tend to air-brush the larger areas and then work in the details and washes etc. with brushes. For washes I use the paints pre-thinned for air-brushing for convenience sake. Some people also use very successfulle mixed techniques, i.e. the apply oil-colour detailing and washes over an acrylic underpaint. Very subtle effects can be achieved in this way, but as said above, drying times are long. When one layer of oils is not thoroughly dried, the following layer is going to be re-dissolved by the medium, i.e. the turpentine, of the next. Drying times can reach from days (for 'lean' paints) to weeks (for 'fat' paints).

„... but that is the reason we all love the hobby„ - what can I say ...

Thanks, Jim. Interesting indeed. You work essentially then on the dry paper ? How do you develop the preliminary drawings of the ships. In some cases there would be photographs, but of course not for the historic subjects. I know that some marine painters work from models - and you ?

Thanks, gentlemen ! Indeed, the technique is quite similar to facetting gem-stones, but there one uses abrasive discs 'charged' with abrasive or polishing powders. I thought of using silikone polishing bit, but they can round the edges of Plexiglas. I do have small polishing discs in brass, but don't have diamantine to charge the discs. Perhaps should look into this, as these hard discs don't round the edges, when polishing. However, diamantine is a bit messy and not so good for the machines ... Yep, the brass columns will be painted to simulate the varnished mahagony. I found virtually all real wood too coarse in grain, even boxwood, at this scale. Also turning such delicate parts with the necessary definition is very difficult. One cannot stabilise the boxwood with CA before turning, because it has to be dyed afterwards. So it will have to be paint. I still have to experiment a bit to find a satisfactory procedure to simulate the varnished mahagony. It will be probably a base coat in a light wood colour with several washes of mahagony-brown to create depth. Then a final clear semi-gloss varnish, again to create the depth one finds on polished wood. I am talking about using acrylics here. The same technique will be used on the skylights, stairs etc. that would have been varnished mahagony or teak at this time.

Thanks for the sympathy, gentlemen !. In the end, I persevered Binnacles WESPE-Class was originally equipped with three binnacles, one on the bridge, the mother-compass on a sort of pole in front of the engine-room skylight, and the third one in front of the emergency steering-wheel at the stern. In the 1890s a fourth binnacle was installed on a platform atop the engine-room skylight, but is left off here. As SMS WESPE was built in 1876 the original binnacles lack the conspicuous compensation spheres, that were only invented in the 1880s by Lord Kelvin. Also other type of compensation gear is not visible on the lithographs and the earliest photograph. A photography of the early 1890s shows a much more substantial binnacle in front of the emergency steering-wheel, which preumably now houses the compensation gear and also sports the compensation spheres. Originally, the compasses must have been illumanted by petroleum lamps, but from the lithographs it is not clear, where these lamps would have been attached. At least there are exhaust funnels on top of the binnacles, which have disappeared in later photographs. This seems to indicated that electrical illumination might have been introduced, when a dynamo was installed on board in the early 1890s for a search-light. The binnacles as they appear on the early 1880s lithograph For the model the individual binnacles were redrawn from the lithograph in order to serve as a basis for working sketch to guide the lathe- and mill-work. One needs to keep in mind that the total height is somewhere between 10 and 15 mm. Redrawn binnacles, broken down into individual components to facilitate machining and painting The columns presumably were made from mahagony and were turned from brass rod before being transferred to dividing head on mill to cut the octogonal shape. Milling the octogonal section of the binnacle columns The actual compass was made, as usual, from brass and so on the model. Body and funnel did not provide a particular challenge, not considering the small size. To the contrary, the glass hood with its narrow frames of perhaps 15 mm width on the original. The body was roughly turned from Plexiglas and then transferred to the mill. Here the octogonal pyramid was milled. Using a 0.3 mm ball-head burr narrow grooves were cut into the edges and these grooves filled in with brass paint. Set-up on the micro-mill to shape the octogonal pyramid of the glass hood Milling the faces of the octogonal pyramid Cleaning up the faces after painting the edges Once the paint had thoroughly dried, the faces were very lightly milled over, which resulted in sharp narrow brass strips at the edges. This is a technique that I copied from making engraved scales. Each binnacle is made up from four parts Originally I had the crazy idea of placing a miniature compass-card underneath the Plexiglas hoods, but even without it, assembling the binnacles was fiddly enough. The binnacles provisionally assembled, pending the painting of the stands (apologies for the poor quality picture and the missing match for scale) To be continued soon(?) ...

Something to admire on those winter days, when you can‘t take out the real thing.

There are very light-weight tissue papers from around 8.5 g per sqm upward that are used by book- and paper-restorers to invisibly re-enforce damaged pages. Wouldn‘t know any brand name in the US. Some German colleagues make sails from them by sandwiching a layer of tissue paper between two layers of this special paper, which is impregnated with an iron-on glue. The sail are quite flexible, when wetted, and can be shaped very well. Perhaps someting like this might be worth a try.

Thanks gentlemen ! Unfortunately, I seem to loose or damage parts during assembly faster than I can make them. It's kind of two steps forward and one step backward all the time. Meant to assemble the binnacles today, but dropped parts unretrievably on the floor and messed up some with my beloved CA 😡 Update coming ... one day.

These books are rather rare. I chanced onto my copies while trawling antique booksellers in Copenhagen in the late 1990s (when I went there on business quite frequently). The full references are: [FRIIS-PEDERSEN, J.] (1980): Sejlskibe - Danskbyggede traeskibbe opmålt, tegnet og foto-graferet.- Handels- og Søfahrtsmuseets på Kronborg Søhistoriske Skrifter IX: 107 p., København (Høst & Søn). [FRIIS-PEDERSEN, J.] (1981): Sejlskibe - De sidste i Grønlandsfarten opmålt, tegnet og fotograferet.- Handels- og Søfahrtsmuseets på Kronborg Søhistoriske Skrifter X: 108 p., København (Høst & Søn). [FRIIS-PEDERSEN, J.] (1983): Sejlskibe - Nordiske fartøjer opmålt, tegnet og fotograferet.- Handels- og Søfahrtsmuseets på Kronborg Søhistoriske Skrifter XI: 96 p., København (Høst & Søn). They have not been authored by himself, but were issued by the museum in Kronborg Castle (now located outside of it) based on his work. In fact most of the drawings I had in mind only showed the cross-sections of bulwarks, but not actually the constructional details of the waterways and covering boards. Above is a drawing of a single-decked small vessel that shows the covering board sitting atop a plank that in turn sits atop the inner waterway-plank that is sort of hollowed out on the inside. One should perhaps also consider that the measures given in the classification are probably the starting dimensions of the timber. If the top-timbers serve as stanchions as well, they may have been tapered quite a bit (are there dimensions for the rails ?). Also the waterways would have been shaped. I always wondered, how the large quantities of water coming on deck in a storm would be drained with this kind of arrangement. With low waterways and on smaller vessels the lowest bulwark plank often was raise a couple of centimeters or so above the covering board to allow shedding the water. The metal scuppers on the inside of the waterway planks certainly would not be sufficient. Later vessels with metal bulwark plating had freeing ports. There are not many drawings of the deck planks in the above books, but in the few, that are included, there don't seem to be any margin planks and any notching into the waterway-planks either. They just butt against them, even, if that means that they feather out (which would be difficult to caulk). It seems, however, that the deck planks may have been slightly curved to avoid too many planks with feather-edges and to have them instead butting against the well-rounded bow-section and the more square stern-section. The above books are also interesting, because they study the decorative profiling of a lot of planks and timbers. Edges were rounded and decorative beads were cut into the margins of e.g. bulwark planks. This is a feature oven overlooked by modellers, unless they work in really large scales. Dito the edges of stanchions would have been beaded.

Well, the idea of these automatic pipettes is to dispense precise and repeatable amounts of liquids from something like 2 microlitres and up by pushing the button.

Yep, understood. But I wanted to show that some model shops try to take innocent modellers for a ride. It may have worked in those dark, pre-Internet ages, but today we have access to a global market and share knowledge beyond the plate and the trade - and they still try. I think these automatic pipettes with their disposable tips would be quite handy for applying measured quantities of glue say when planking. I also thought of creating my own rivet-strips on decal paper by placing measured blobs of acrylic gel, for which these pipettes would be useful too.

It looks, as if the Micro-Mark guys moved the comma too far to the right. On ebay you can get such adjustable pipettes for less than USD30 : https://www.ebay.com/itm/Single-channel-Adjustable-Volume-Pipettes-Transfer-Micropipettor-Lab-1000-l/143391759789?hash=item2162d09dad:g:XCYAAOSwaCtdmJne I remember from the time, when they were first introduced into general lab-work in around the early 1980s, they were not that expensive.

Is this a 'professional secret' or would you mind showing the various stages of how your watercolours are developed ?

I could imagine that it might be useful tool (apart from the price) for free-hand cutting or carving, but how would one make straight long cuts in thicker material ? I don't think it would replace a circular or scroll saw.

There seem to be many different ways how these planks were arranged. What is strange indeed, is that the covering board is so narrow - the idea of the covering board, notched out for the bulwark stanchions is avoid the difficult to caulk seam along the stanchions. Are your 'top-timbers' really the stanchions ? If not, this may explain the narrow covering board. Otherwise, I could imagine that the 2nd (or 1st, which is wider) inner water-way plank has a sort of quarter-round rabbet planed in, that brings its inner edge to plank thickness, so that it can serve as margin plank. I would think that most of the planks are sitting on the deck-beams and certainly not on the deck-planking. In FRIIS-PEDERSEN's books on Danish ships there are sketches of all sorts of arrangements for these planks on ships from the same period as LEON. I would play around with the cross-sections of the planks to see how the puzzle might fit together.

Cross-drilling round stock acurately is always a challenge. One way of doing it, is using a kind of jig: a piece of hard wood (or better metal) is first drilled with the diameter of your work piece, then a second hole is drilled at 90° to this with the diameter of the hole to be drilled and exactly into the centre - careful marking out and drill-press with a vice helps. This jig will help to exactly centre the drill with little chance to wander off. Neverthells, a small punch-mark or filing a flat will prevent the material to be drilled from rotating. A luxury and more permanent version of this would involve some kind of clamping device for the material to drilled, such as a set-screw for instance. I am not so sure that I would soften the brass, as soft brass normally requires special drilss with a steeper fluting and different cutting geometry so that it doesn't hook.

Thumbs up ... what else ? A while ago, I went through the same problem of getting the angle of the hawse-pipe right.

Nice metal-work ! I assume that the emphasis is on functionality and not on prototype looks ?

Actually, your 'dog's breakfast' looks quite realistic in the sense that the interior part often was left quite rough in real ships You may have discussed this earlier, but I am too lazy to go back to earlier posts: I am surprised to see the framework without any bracing during the building. Aren't you afraid of warping during the building ?

Seems to be quite a large-scale project for a jeweller

Cool thing, the miniature plow plane. It seems to come only with a 2.4 mm wide blade, at this is what the German importer says. Correct ?

I actually like this idea of slipping a flat piece of wood for the blades over the round oars. May not work for sea-oars. but certainly for this type of freshwater-oars with wider blades.

Living in France I use a French product ...

And you need the appropriate heat-source, a torch, as the melting point would be around 600°C as opposed to 350°C or lower for soft-solder. There are silver-soldering pastes, btw.