wefalck

True. Usually, edges were bevelled or rounded or profiled using different types of planes - something that is not often reproduced in models. But in the case of the keel/stem, as in other cases, one should check against the prototype what was/would have been really done. One should also not overestimate the radius of any rounding and work to scale. So on a model the edge might still appear quite sharp.

We tend to underestimate the colourfulness of past worlds. The paint has usually disappeared from preserved artefacts and they are typically preserved under unoxic conditions (which is why they have survived), which tend to turn the woods dark, almost black (think of the preserved Viking ships). We now imagine them like this, which is not necessarily correct. The same for say gothic churches or greek statues - they have lost their paint over time or were stripped due to changing aesthetics. So, the medieval and early modern world was probably more colourful than we tend to think today. However, sensitive surface analytical techniques often reveal traces of paint. Which pigments were used depends on their availability and price for a particular time and location. Some earth-pigments, such as yellow or red ochre were cheap almost everywhere. Dito chalk/lime for a white colour. Otherwise, the baseline technique for wood conservation would be to apply wood-tar, which gives the wood a translucent, brownish-reddish colour. Also mixtures with lineseed-oil were used. Adding a pigment to lineseed-oil is easy - you just get oil-paint.

Spending 200+ USD seems to be a bit over the top. Hand-cranking seems to be attractive because of the speed control, but co-ordinating the two movements is not easy. I solved the problem through a speed-control and a foot-switch. You can put an ordinary plug-type dimmer (with the apropriate rating) between the disc-sander and the wall-socket and you got your speed-control. I built myself a micro disc-sander around the headstock of a watchmakers lathe: https://www.maritima-et-mechanika.org/tools/microgrinder/microgrinder.html And I also made this little hand-sander: https://www.maritima-et-mechanika.org/tools/handsander/handsander.html Dust is not really a problem, considering the small quantities of material taken off.

Sure, old toolmaker's tools are the best, but I recently found quite good quality ones on ebay (disclaimer: I have no other relationship with the sellers then as a customer): https://www.ebay.de/itm/Good-Quality-Slim-Brass-Single-Ended-Pin-Vise-Tools-Hold-Drills-Pins-Wire-Vice/281157809979?ssPageName=STRK%3AMEBIDX%3AIT&_trksid=p2060353.m2749.l2649 https://www.ebay.de/itm/Quality-Wooden-Handle-Single-Ended-Pin-Vise-Tools-Hold-Drills-Pins-Wire-Vice/281339713517?ssPageName=STRK%3AMEBIDX%3AIT&_trksid=p2060353.m2749.l2649 Stay away from double-ended pin-vices and those with collets. It is good to have a whole collection of them, as it is handy to leave certain tools in them for quick use.

What does the prototype look like ? That should be the guide.

Working on several projects at the same time can be dangerous, as you may loose track of what you are doing and what you have been planning. Though it happens, that I slip a shorter project in between working on a long-term project. When building from scratch, there are certain natural sequences, as certain parts have to be finished, before you can tackle others. For many details this is not so important and I can take on what I fancy or what seems to provide a particular manufacturing challenge. I may also work in parallel on different parts that require the same machine-tool set up. Or I stop working on something for a while that turns out to be too fiddly and continue with something else, where one can see more progress in shorter time. And then their is procrastination: some parts that seem to be too challenging or which there are different alternative routes I might push in front of me ...

I would let the white glue set to a rubbery consistency and then scrape/peel it off. Too early, then it smears around (as you noticed) - too late, then you may rip out fibres of the wood.

A classical book (for Germany) on this subject is: DITTMER, R., LIECKFELD, G., ROMBERG, F. (1911): Motoren und Winden für die See- und Küstenfischerei.- 2 Teile, 140+102 p., München/Berlin (R. Oldenbourg). The library of the Technical University of Berlin has a copy that I have seen. It doesn't seem to have been digitised yet. Then there is: ROMBERG, F. (1912): Der Ölmotor im deutschen Seefischereibetriebe.- Jb. Schiffbautechn. Ges., 13: 173-263. Also no digital version identified. Wolfgang Rudolph has also written a series of articles about boat engines as used around the German Baltic coast: RUDOLPH, W. (1996): Bootsmotorenbau im Deutschen Küstenbereich (bis 1945). Teil 1: Die Ostseeregion.- Deutsches Schiffahrtsarchiv, 19: 367-401, Wiefelstede (Oceanum-Verlag). RUDOLPH, W. (1997): Bootsmotorenbau im Deutschen Küstenbereich (bis 1945). Teil 2: Die Nordseeregion.- Deutsches Schiffahrtsarchiv, 20: 503-530, Wiefelstede (Oceanum-Verlag). RUDOLPH, W. (1998): Bootsmotorenbau im ostdeutschen Binnenland (bis 1945).- Deutsches Schiffahrtsarchiv, 21: 255-278, Wiefelstede (Oceanum-Verlag). RUDOLPH, W. (1999): Bootsmotorenbau in Berlin (bis 1945).- Deutsches Schiffahrtsarchiv, 22: 343-360, Wiefelstede (Oceanum-Verlag). RUDOLPH, W. (2002): Die Frühzeit der Bootsmotorisierung: über deutsch-skandinavische Kulturkontakte im Ostseeraum.- Deutsches Schiffahrtsarchiv, 25: 325-336, Wiefelstede (Oceanum-Verlag). And: SIEBOLDS, ., BLOCK, . (1907): Die Einführung des Motors in die deutsche Segelfischerei.- 148 p., (reprint 2010, Salzwasserverlag). As a reprint is being sold, Google does not list any digitised version that may exist somewhere. Many early motors came from Sweden (e.g. Bolinder) or Denmark, where the motorisation of fishing-boats began earlier than in Germany. If you search e.g. for 'Bolinder engine', you will get some images.

Shouldn‘t a Late 18th Century Cutter (this is, I assume, what HMS MERMAID is) have a four–siede gaff–topsail ? It would be suspended from a short yard.

There are detailed drawings in Middensdorf‘s Book of 1905 on masting and rigging (in German). He draws on his experience in rigging the Late Flying–P–Liners, which include the PASSAT and the PADUA, as well as the PREUSSEN.

There can be problems with copper-ions inhibiting the polymerisation of cyano-acrylates or other reactive glues. Glues that work on the basis of an evaporating solvent, contact cements, might be a better option, provided that the 'wood' side is permeable enough. Careful degreasing and a light rubbing with steel-wool to remove any oxides on the copper is a must.

A civilised looking emmigrant ship - isn't this a contradiction in terms

Check out 'dafi's' thread on HMS VICTORY: he reviews the changing paint schemes as per the latest research on her, analysing the various layers of paint. Depends on what you want: historical accuracy (if such can be achieved) or something that pleases as a piece of craft.

Iron most likely, or bronze.

It would be the pin and perhaps bits of brass sheet nailed over the hole for the pin. The sheaves where typically turned from lignum vitae, a hard and tough wood. Metal sheaves were used only on really heavy tackle, as that for anchors until well into the 19th century. Metals sheaves became then more common as chain was introduced into the running rigging. I am not absolutely sure, but I think metal thimbles in the strops were already in use in the 18th century.

The Romans cast thin sheets of glass unto sand-beds, but the technology was lost during the 'dark ages'. In medieval times glass sheets were produced by either blowing up a bubble of glass, cutting this into half and then spinning it out to a flat disc of up to 4 feet of diameter, or by blowing a glass cylinder into a mould, cutting this cylinder longitudinally, after the top and bottom have been cut off, and then flattening out the cylinder. Since the 17th century flat glass was produced by rolling. In the first half of the 20th century the main method was drawing sheets from a melt, while since the 1960s 'float glass' is the method for mass production, where by the melt is cast into a trough filled with liquid tin - the melt spreads evenly and the solidifying glass is drawn across the trough. Batch production by casting the melt onto troughs with liquid tin was also used at some time. While glass was expensive as such, quite large sheets would have been available in the early years of the 19th century. Of course, glass is prone to shattering due to mechanical impacts or thermal stress. For this reason 'muscovite' was used instead in various applications, e.g. in lanterns, the looking glasses in powder chambers or furnaces (where it is still used). Muscovite is a mineral belonging to the family of mica or sheet-silicates. Its name is derived from Moscow, where it is found in large, easy to cleave crystals. It was traditionally used in that region instead of glass and exported.

There are four principal ways how a glue or cement connects two pieces: - it acts like a tenon between two parts and in this way locks them together positively; this works for rough surfaces with open structures, such as wood. - the cement/glue displaces the air between two parts and the atmospheric pressure pushes the parts against each other; this works best for large, flat parts and requires a smooth surface, such as metals have. - the glue/cement interacts at a microscopic level physico-chemically through e.g. the Van der Waal's weak interaction - the cement in fact is a solvent and dissolves the surfaces - in the case of plastics, that are effectively welded together. In practice, one may have a combination of two or more of the above processes. For instance, you can dissolve the surface of styrene and press it onto some wood, where the soft plastic keys into the wood structure. Or when glueing metal to wood with epoxy, the epoxi will key into the wood, but the metal is pressed onto the epoxy by the atmospheric pressure. When there is an oxide layer on the metal, this oxide layer may also weakly interact physico-chemically with a glue.

Sails are more or less white/grey, i.e. have essentially 'non-colours' in a physical sense. This means that they would attain a certain hue that depends the on the surrounding lighting, reflecting the light that falls onto them. Artists would try to represent this, if they were reasonably good artists. Beginners or 'naive' painters would tend to represent the actual body colour. This applies in theory to any coloured surface. Its appearance would be different from the true body colour and it has been the objective of artists for century to represent the appearance as well as possible, rather than the true body colour. The lighter the body colour the more pronounced this effect is going to be. As colour photographers (before the age of automatic electronic white balancing) knew, there are certain hours of day, where these effects are more pronounced, namely early in the morning or before sun-set, you have a warm, yellow-reddish light, while at noon everything appears to be more blueish. This atmosphere the painter may have tried to evoke by giving everything a certain tint. So, from a painting you can probably deduct, whether a part say was blue, red, or yellow, but what the actual hue may have been one cannot be too sure. A blue may have been in fact something greenish blue, a red may have been actually a reddish brown, or a yellow an orange, etc. And, indeed, it is know that painters have embellished the subject, say by giving the impression that decorations where gilded, while in fact they were painted in yellow ochre on the real ship, etc.

One could also argue, that the advantage of PVA-glue is that it penetrates deeper and therefore keys better into the wood, while epoxy cements stay more on the surface. The latter are stronger as a material, but do not key into wood so well.

At the shipyard outside the actual museum there is a little building, where they show the tanning process. Somewhere I have a picture, but I didn't put it onto my Web-site. I you look into the above reference book on sail-making from 1843, it talks in detail about the process and that greasing sails was expressedly forbidden in the Royal Navy.

Well, I wouldn't necessesarily trust painting - artistic license and ideas about colouration. Artists are not interested normally in the 'true' colour of things, but in how they appear under given conditions of weather and light. Ship portrays, usually painted by semi-trained or self-taught 'commercial artist' may be a bit more reliable, because those commissioning these paintings where not so much interested in artistic rendering, but rather in a representation of how they see their ship. Then they may have also preferred an idealised appearance, while in reality ships and sails may have looked more tatty and ragbag.

Jan, I believe there is, for instance, somewhere in the Zuiderzeemuseum an explanation of this process. Boiling the sails in the solution is but one step, but smearing them with a tallow-ochre mixture makes them water-repellent and covers them against UV-radiation. See also: https://books.google.fr/books?id=XvgDAAAAQAAJ

First of all, thanks to all of your for friendly comments John, there are a couple of reasons in general for using plastics and not wood: - I think metal in models is best represented in models by, well, metal, of course, and by plastics, because they don't have any surface texture that needs to be covered up - similarly, at this small scale any wood grain, whether painted or left plain (varnished) would be grossly out of scale. - while I appreciate that some people manage to get very clean and sharp edges out of wood, this is much easier for small parts in plastics or metal; turning and milling leaves a surface that requires little further manipulation. - plastics are homogeneous and don't split or rip along any grain, though bakelite as such is rather brittle, particularly the thin sheets. - styrene and acrylics can be glued, or rather welded, nearly without any trace using dicholormethane - it is extremely difficult (for me at least) to get really high quality hard-wood and then confection it to sizes that are useful - plastics don't dust when worked Each of the plastics has different properties, making them suitable for different parts or applications: - Plexiglas and bakelite (hard paper) are so called duro-plastics, meaning they do not contain plasticisers and are very stable over decades, if not centuries. They are also very stable against UV light. - Styrene is a thermo-plastic and contains plasticisers that will slowly diffuse out, making the material brittle over decades. It is also less UV stable. - Plexiglas is easy to machine and you get very clean and sharp edges; it files and sands well; it is of medium hardness; unfortunately, it is not normally available in sheets of less than 0,8 mm thickness; otherwise one can get sheets, blocks, rods etc.; the best quality is the one cast from monomer, not the extruded one. - bakelite is the hardest and stiffest of them, but brittle in thin sheets; owing to this it is more difficult to machine, but it sands well; it can be obtained in sheets down to 0.1 mm thickness and sheets up to several cm thickness; other formats are generally not available; rods that are on the market are reenforced with fabric (e.g. Novotex), rather than the one with paper, I am using. - styrene is the softest of them and dents easily; it is difficult to machine cleanly and does not sand very well; it is commercially available in a wide variety of dimensions, very thin sheets, rods, strips, and other profiles. I hope this sufficiently explains my materials choices.

Indeed, 'tanning' sails was only a practice on small(er) fishing boats that rarely had the opportunity to dry their sails properly, because they were worked every day. The process involved soaking them in a solution made from bark and then smearing them with a mixture of red ochre (hence the 'rust' colour) and tallow or oil. This made the sails rathre stiff and messy to handle. They would not furl very nicely and indeed furly will to some extent damage the 'tanning'. In some parts of Europe, notably around the Mediterranean, it was also practice to paint the sails of smaller craft with all sorts of designs of apotropaic character, wishing good luck to the vessel, or as a signature of the owner. It seems to have become fashionable among some modern 'tall-ships' to sport coloured sails, but this was not common in the 19th century. Not sure, whether at this time they had already cotton sails in the USA, but from some point in time on US American ships tended to whiter sails than their European colleagues, that had sails made from hemp.

Not sure, which part you are talking about, the filler piece behind the stem ? In real terms these Viking ships were build in a rather different way, namely 'shell first', i.e. without any internal structure, which was added afterwards, after the planking had proceeded to some extent. The stem was in fact a complicated carving with a stepped rabbet into which the individual planks fit. I would suggest that you trawl the Internet for photographs of the preserved prototype and of replicas to help you understand, how it should look like from the outside. You then can decide how to reproduce this best with the material available in the kit. You will have to somehow reproduce the stem with the rabbet as landing for the planks.