wefalck

Engine-Room Telegraphs On the ‘official’ lithograph of SMS WESPE from the early 1880s an unsual form of engine-room telegraph was drawn. It has a horizontal dial. In the earliest known photography of the ship during fitting-out, the telegraphs had not yet been installed. A short while ago I discovered during a visit to Oslo in the Norsk Maritimt Museum a very similar telegraph on display. Unfortunately, the legend is not readable on my image. I seem to remember that the inventor or patentee was named. A search on the Internet and in my library did not produce anything, so I would be grateful, if anyone has an idea, who the inventor or patentee might have been. Horizontal engine-room telegraph in the Norsk Maritimt Museum, Oslo The telegraph was redrawn from the lithography in order to serve as a working drawing with measures to guide the lathe operation. The original lithography and working drawing The whole telegraph seems to have been made from brass and accordingly the model was turned from brass. The indicator arm and follower were made from flattened brass wire and the ‘wooden’ handle built up from PVA glue. The two engine-room telegraphs at their place SMS WESPE had two telegraphs, one for the starbord and port engine each, of this early twin-screw naval vessel. To be continued soon(?) ...

Only, if coal tar was used, say post 1840s.

Wood normaly is preserved by impregnating it with liquid tar (brownish) or oil, or is painted. This applies also to dead-eyes, blocks, etc. I am not aware of a collective term for ‚blocks without sheaves‘

BTW, Lever is an early 19th and Biddlecombe a mid 19th century textbook ...

Every 1/8 of an inch as dapper as her big sister 👍

Luckily CUTTY SARK is still with us (well, sort of) and looking for photographs that show her channels should give you ideas, how the rigging was done on the real thing. You then can figure out, how to use the parts you have to resemble this arrangement - or to make your own parts to suit. I don't know, where historic research stand now after her rebuilding following the fire, but the standard modelling guide for her pre-fire appearance probably still is LONGRIDGE, C.N. (1933): The Cutty Sark.- 440 p., Kings Langley/ Herts. (reprint 1975, Model and Allied Publications). Apart from being specific on her, the book also describes in detail many modelling techniques that are still applicable today.

👍 Nice rendering of these quite colourful boats ! The wellknown British marine artist E.W. Cooke spent considerable time in Venice and depicted these boats on various occassions: https://www.google.de/search?q=e+w+cooke+paintings+venice&tbm=isch&ved=2ahUKEwi09Kz-rvvkAhVK0YUKHZrNAZsQ2-cCegQIABAA&oq=e+w+cooke+paintings+venice&gs_l=img.3...32078.34487..34676...0.0..0.75.481.7......0....1..gws-wiz-img.Zy-i3WEnjEk&ei=em-TXbTPL8qilwSam4fYCQ&bih=604&biw=1173&safe=off

When it is about freehand-drilling this is a largely academic discussion. Even the worst pin-vice is much better than the error introduced by your shaking and wobbly hand. What you call 'pin-chuck' also runs by the name of 'insert drill-chuck' and as I said above, there are pretty bad ones around as well, that are not fit for the purpose, namely to be used in stationary drilling machines, when you want to use drills smaller than the range of chuck on the machine. A good quality drill chuck has always three jaws, while cheap chucks, collets and most pin-vices are slotted cross-wise, giving them four jaws. On pin-vices concentricity is largely inconsequential, as they are hand-held.

Chapeau !

Excellent ! Did you paint the decorations in situ ? Personally, I would find this quite difficult on the convex hull. I probably would do the painting on decal paper and then transfer it to the model.

👍 The work may not be less on the full-size version, but at least you need less material ...

Don't know what your workshop's machining capabilities are, but you may be able to disassemble the portholes and work them over - just as in real life such castings would have been machined. Assuming, of course, they were brass.

Prompted by the discussion here, I did something that I had in mind to do for already a while: I created a page on my Web-site for hand-held work-holding tools from my tool collection. For this I took a couple of pictures: 1 - Archimedes drill for watchmakers. 2 - Slender modern pin-vice with hollow fluted brass body. 3 - Slender antique pin-vice with hollow fluted brass body. 4 - Shop-made pin-vice with walnut body and head made from an insert drill-chuck; these drill-chucks are unfit for their intended purpose as they usually do not run true. 5 - Eclipse toolmaker's pin-vice with knurled steel body; these come in different sizes. 6 - French-style pin-vice; these are closed with the sliding ring and have usually brass inserts in the two jaws that can be adapted to special needs; 7 - Dito, here the jaws are replaced in hard-wood for delicate parts. 8 - Antique laboratory pin-vice with fluted wooden handle. 9 - Modern pin-vice with fluted wooden handle; these come in different sizes and capacities. 10 - Antique toolmaker's pin-vice for very delicate work in confined spaces. 1 - Toolmaker's hand-held vice that is closed with a sliding ring. 2 - Hand-vice with parallel serrated jaws moved by a screw. 3 - Antique american style hand-vice; the jaws are closed by screwing in the conical body; the handle and body have been replaced. 4 - Hand-held collet-holder; this uses horological lathe collets; the advantage is that work can be transferred between the holder and the lathe when it has the nominal collet diameter. 5 - Castrovejo surgical non-locking needle-holder; they come in various sizes, this one is for eye-surgery. 6 - Antique surgical locking needle-holder; these come in a wide variety of sizes and shapes.

I couldn't agree more with your comments on competitions - it would be quite unlikely that a judge has the same level of knowledge that I would build up on a subject. They could only judge the artisanal execution and then the judges may not understand what I tried to achieve - there seem to be also certain 'styles' of building en vogue at any one time and, if I don't follow the fashion, I am out. So why bother ... we do this for fun (and also to develop knowledge and skills, of course).

Have one like this as well and it is very good, but I wish I bought the type with spring-return, so that it can be used with one hand only.

General Tools 92 Swivel Head doesn't mean anything to us over here - what about a picture ?

Well, we all get to that age one day ... gratulations to the family anyway

The Starret ones are toolmaker pin-vices, meant to hold reamers or files and such things. Eclipse for instance would be European product of comparable quality. The pin-vices or needle-holders I showed originate in biology and horology respectively, I believe. I like the slender brass ones for working in tight spaces, such as rigging. You are less likely to get hooked with the tightening screw. Also, the pencil-size diameter makes for comfortable handling. For bigger jobs I also have toolmaker-style ones.

The 'forcole' came out nicely at this small scale 👍

Who reads prefaces ... but it is nice to know. A lot of other works have used Paasch's engravings.

Quite a few of the illustrations are identical to that of PAASCH's multi-lingual dictionary 'From Keel to Truck', first published in 1885 ...

I beiieve artisanal pen-makers use such duplicators to produce small series of identical pens. I don't know the article referred to, but there used to be a thread-'chasing' system using followers for the Unimat lathes that probably could be converted into a duplicator. From http://www.lathes.co.uk/unimat/page2.html

A nice piece of engineering, Pat ! It works on a similar principle as the cone-turning devices that used to be available for many quality engineering lathes. I would agree that for columns and such things with curved surfaces it would be a good implement. If one creates a reference face to set the tool against, there is also the possibility to finish off sharp corners etc. using the cross-slide, or doing it the other way around, depending on the part.

Normally, a 'duplicator' only works properly, when you can disconnect the cross-slide feed-screw and pull it against the work/template with a weight on a string. Cutting sharp corners/edges (e.g. bands on canon) with a duplicator is difficult to impossible, as the tracer on the template has to have a slightly rounded nose in order follow the template and you would need to work with a pointed tool, rather than a side tool. The whole arrangement also has to be very rigid and without any backlash on the x-feedscrew. Personally, I would not bother with duplicators, but rather make myself a sketch of the object with a precise 'turning schedule'. This means that you decide on a zero point from which to take measurement in both, x- and y-direction. You write down the various carriage movements required to turn up to particular points of your object. You will also have to think about a strategy in order to minimise carriage movements and to support thin parts - for instance, very thin parts with various diameters are not reduced to the major diameter in the first machining step, but you work on the diameters from the tailstock end towards the spindle in order to preserve as much 'meat' as long as possible in order to keep your part rigid. You may need several set-ups to finish parts. For canon, for instance, you may need to off-set the top-slide for taper turning at some stage. Therefore, you decide on the reference surface (the zero point from above), against which you can zero your handwheels after changing the set-up. I am usually working with a small tool that is cut like a grooving tool, i.e. it has a cutting edge left and right, so that I do not need to change tools, when turning up to sharp corners, say the left- and the righ-hand side for a band on a canon. I know the exact width of the tool and consider this in the measurements for my 'turning-schedule'. This sounds complicated, but in fact is only structured working. It is much more precise than any duplicator on the amateur market. It is probably also faster, as you do not need to roughen out the part first in a different set-up, before you work with the duplicator.

Buchsbaum or whatever it called in your language is very common as hedges and these fancy trimmed shrubs. Usually, however, they are too small to be useful for our purposes.