wefalck

As someone said above: predictably good 👍

Just wondering, why you didn't then make the bulwark thicker right away ? I thought the idea was to have it to near scale thickness. Yes, indeed, she is coming on very nicely !

Personally, I also prefer 'real' books and have a library with some quite rare period books. However, some books have never been reprinted and, therefore, are largely unknown to the modelling community. There is also a space issue for some of us. There is a good paperback reprint of Biddlecombe by Dover and there are several reprints of the 'Lever' - I have an US American, hard-bound one from around 35 years ago. When you do Google searches on the title/author, it usually turns up the holdings in GoogleBooks, Abebooks.com, as well as the ones in archive.org. There is a bias towards English titles though. When you look for French titles, you better go to the site of the French Bibliotheque Nationale.

Did you buy them already ? Always check out the Internet first, there are now many historic books available for free as eBooks. I don't have any of Peterson's books, but seem to have heard that there are quite a few mistakes in them and he generalises from Swedish practices as represented in the models in the Sjöfartmuseum in Stockholm. Perhaps some other Members can comment on the reliability of the books ? From the selection of books, I assume that you are mainly interested in the first half of the 19th century ? That's important to remember as rigging practices evolved considerably.

Good advice from Jaager. As you work, you will feel the need for certain types of tools, say to hold something, to cut something, etc., because your toolbox doesn't have right stuff. That's the point to buy - or to make yourself, btw. Analyse carefully what operations you try to perform and how your existing tools don't do, that gives you ideas of what to look for. There are a lot of useless 'modelling' tools on the market. Sometimes the idea is good, but their make is poor, sometimes they are outright useless. It is also worthwhile to browse jewellery and watchmaking supply houses, fine tool supply houses, dentists and dental technician suppliers, medical suppliers, manicure/pedicure suppliers, etc. Their market is usually much bigger than ours and they often have the same stuff in better quality (and sometimes at lower prices) than 'modelling' suppliers. Ebay is your friend too.

I noticed that you didn't use a stem-post with rabbet to run the planks into. I suppose you will 'fake' (I hesitate to use this word these days ...) it by putting a false stem in front of it ?

Good find ! Such catalogues are invaluable to see what parts actually looked like in their days. If only the scan was better ...

Nacioffi, perhaps you could precise in what period you are interested in ? The term 'hermaphrodite brig' or 'brigantine' tended to be used from the second quarter of the 19th century on for a vessel with a full-rigged foremast and a fore-and-aft rigged main mast. It was a popular rig in European waters up the to end of the sailing ship period, more popular than the brig (or snow). In continental Europe it was also preferred over the tops-sail schooner, which seems to have been more popular around the British Isles.

Thanks, gentlemen ********************** There are two jacob-ladders on each side of the hull, a wider one underneath a door in the bulwark and a narrower one a bit forward. The steps probably were made from wood and had slots towards the hull to prevent the water from collecting there and to prevent the wood from rotting. Milling of the steps for the jacobs-ladders The steps are made from 0.8 mm thick Plexiglas® and the slots milled in. The sheet then was sanded down to the width of the steps and the ends rounded. Then individual steps of the right thickness were cut off on the lathe set-up with a mini saw-table. Steps ready for fitting Unfortunately, the steps could only be cemented to the hull using cyanoacrylate glue, there being no positive locking. A bit of cellotape provided a guide for alignment. Nevertheless, the procedure was a bit nerve-racking. Jacob-ladder on port Jacob-ladder on starbord Further, fairleads for the aft mooring hawser were installed. These were made from oval rings of copper-wire. The rings were formed over two 1 mm-drills taped together, cut off and closed by silver-soldering. The rings were sanded down to half their thickness and one each of these rings cemented to the inside and outside of the hull. The hole was drilled out and filed to shape. Fairlead for aft mooring hawsers To be continued soon ...

One should perhaps also mention that the included angle should always be more or less 90° (as per your sketch A above). However, the angle by which this corner intersects with the keel/false keel changes (as mentioned by others already) along the keel-stem/stern assemply as the angle by which the planks intersect with these changes. The best thing would be to take a 'spline', i.e. a thin straight plank with clean sides at right angles and have it aligned to the outside line of the rabbet as per your drawings. This allows you to estimate how much wood you need to cut away for the inside line so that the spline butts nicely against the rabbet.

Full size practice means the real world, 1:1 scale ...

Not sure, I understand your question right. However, on the point how masts are secured to the hull, one needs to distinguish between model and full-size practice. In full-size practice, a mast is fixed to the hull at three points: 1) the mast-spur, which is a square or rectangular short part at the bottom end of the mast that is inserted into a matching hole in the keel, false keel, or an extra piece of wood bolted onto the same, 2) by wedges around the mast, driven into a frame that forms part of the upper deck structure, 3) at its top by the system of stays and shrouds. On models, point (2) above is usually omitted or not functional. It depends also on the construction, namely whether PoF, PoB, bread-and-butter, etc. Sometimes, people provide a pipe section into which the mast is inserted.

Equidistant steps are more important for effcient use then their position in our out. Remember that they would be used mainly at sea, when the ship is rolling and pitching. Almost every person using these steps would have had some practice at sea, including running up the rigging and negotiating the overhung ratlines underneath mast-tops. So a protruding step would not really be a challenge, particularly, when you are pulling yourself up on the (knotted) rope that runs alongside the steps.

It is safer to mirror-image the drawing in your program and sent them two files. If you have any surface-etched details, you will have two images/files anyway.

There are two main challenges in doing this at home: - getting the masks with sufficient density of the black parts; neither ink-jet printers nor laser-printers do a job good enough for the purpose; you can fiddle a bit with the direction of printing, as the cross-direction usually gives better densities and you can orient your parts accordingly; there are also 'toner-enhancers', used by the PCB fraternity, that intend to fuse the toner into a more uniform layer, but this is still not good enough for most of the intricate etching we do; I think the way to go is to find a commercial reprographer who can print directly from your file to reprographics film. - small frets, say up to credit-card format can be etched to an acceptable standard in a tray, for larger formats you need an uniformely agitated (vetical) tank; the reason is the velocity distribution when you agitate, it is not uniform across the fret, so that some areas are ready, while others are not yet. As a (geo-)chemist with years of experience in a lab environment, I am very hesitant to mess around with large quantities of corrosive chemicals in the home environment. So I restricted myself to the credit-card format with say a maximum of 50 ml solution at any one time. This has also the advantage that I am using fresh solutions for nearly each fret.

Seems that you solved your problem, but just a couple of comments for those, who have a similar challenge: - PDF is a storage format, but there are different ways to generate PDF-files and they may change the scale compared to printing from the original file; I experienced this when comparing the direct print-outs from my 2D-CAD software with print-out made from PDFs generated with the 2D-CAD software; if you buy commercial plans, the publishers should have accounted for this and adjusted the scale when the PDF was generated - when generating PDFs in theory there should be no distortion between the x- and y-axes, i.e. the scale should be the same in both directions. - when printing hard-copies there may well be a slight distortion due to the physics of the printer, e.g. stretching of paper, so it is better to check on trial-prints - when printing at home on a laser- or ink-jet-printer you may be able, depending on the software, to adjust the scale independently in x- and y-direction to correct for such distortions - photocopiers normally do not allow to adjust the scale independently in x- and y-direction, dito when you go to commercial printers to have something laser-printed - unless they have the same software as you and can do the corrections in there (likely to be costly due to the time involved). - if you are on a Mac, the program Preview allows you to open and edit (to some degree) PDFs

Just to note: primers and sanding sealers are two different animals. I pays to reflect upon why one uses what and what the function respectively is. Primers have the function to act as intermediate between the surface and the chosen paint. The surface and the paint may not be compatible from a physicochemical or surface chemistry point of view. For instance, brass or copper are slightly water repellant due to an oxide layer forming on them quickly. Acrylics would not stick on these metals very well. Hence, a primer that reacts with the surface and leaves behind a new surface that is compatible with the acrylic paint. A sanding sealer (including 'filled' shellac) has the purpose to fill the pores of wood, harden the wood and thus to aid in sanding. Traditionally, furniture surfaces are build up from multiple applications of shellac of dfferent dilution, moving from pumice-filled to pure shellac. If you will be using a paint that dries as hard as e.g. shellac, you may forego the sanding sealer and build up the surface with that paint. Modern acrylics, however, can take month or even a year to reach a state of polymerisation and hardness that allows you to sand in the same efficient way as shellac. So, applying a sanding sealer first and then the paint is a more efficient process.

Just use shellac. One should be able to get it everywhere. It's a traditional natural product and compatible with acrylics.

Thanks, Keith ******************* Again, small increments of progress. At the bows the fairleads for mooring hawser etc. were installed. These were milled and filed from 0.8 mm thick sheet of Plexiglas®. Fairleads installed at the bows Then the rails on the bulwark in the rear part of the ship were installed. The rail also serves as a rubbing strake and continues to the anchor-pocket at the bows. At first the bulwark and rail (0.4 mm x 1.7 mm on the model) caused some head-scratching and concerns for the stability of the arrangement. I though about cutting a longitudinal slot into some rectangular styrne, but finally decided to make it in two, with the half glued inside and outside to the bulwark that have been designed higher for the purpose. In this way a 0.4 mm x 0.7 mm styrene strip could be glued all the way to the outside of the hull. A similar strip was glued to the inside. The half-round profile was shaped using a scraper made from a piece of razor-blade and held in pin-vice. The profile was shaped after attaching it to the hull, because it was easier to clamp the rectangular styrene strip while glueing. The glueing was effected by infiltrating CA into the joint between the styrene strip and the bakelite bulwark. Scraper used to shape the rails Rails cum rubbing strip installed around the ship Arrangements varied somewhat between the different boats of the WESPE-class, but there was a WC for the officers in the deckshouse on the starbord side and a WC and pissoir for the men and petty officers on the port side. Each had a half-round evacuation pipe rivetted to the outside of the hull. The pipes were protected against damage by a wooden fender. After a few years of service, a strong wale/rubbing strake was added to the boats that also widened to a kind of sponson at the stern to protect the screws. However, this did not exist at the time for which the model is represented. Evacuation pipes for the toilets protected by fenders To be continued soon ...

The main reason for the 'fat over lean' rule, comes from the old days, when painters used egg-tempera for roughing out the subject and finished their painting of in oils. It has something to do with the surface or wetting properties of the paints. Oil paints are 'lipophilic', which means 'grease-loving' and in consequence water-based paints, such as tempera or acrylics, will form droplets on their surface. They would not 'key' into the surface and also would not form the physicochemical (hydrogen) bonds needed to adhere to the surface. Oils or enamels on tempera or acrylics would spread out on the surface, rather than forming droplets due to the differen surface tension angles. Acrylics and tempera also do have a slight surface 'roughness' that lets the oils key in. The sanding sealer I am using is essential a shellac with pumice suspended in. Rubbed down it provides a good base for the acrylics.

As I said, when you used a sanding sealer, this should be enough to prevent fibres from raising, when applying a water-based paint.

Vaddoc is right, the old painter's rule is 'fat over lean'. However, if you sand down your sealing varnish, you would probably provide enough key for the hydrophilic acrylics to take a hold on the lipophilic varnish. If you have already applied a sanding sealer, technically you won't need any other varnish, you can put the acrylic paint straight on. A coloured primer may have the advantage that you can see imperfections easier than on the wood. The primer should then also be acrylics-based.

Actually not. Laid rope was always calibrated by circumference, whether you work in imperial or metric unit. The reason is very simple that any other method would give differing results depending on where you measure - just try this with a vernier caliper and turn the rope: the measured diameter will change as you turn it. You could use a gauge with holes, but keeping such gauge e.g. on board a ship would be inconvenient. It was easier to wind a thread say ten times around a rope and then measure its length, divided by ten it gives you the circumference. When wire rope and then later braided fibre-rope came into use, measuring diameters became physically possible. However, well into the 20th century wire rope was sold by circumference.

Some people use mock-up masts for this purpose - you can mess around without the fear to drop anything onto the deck or do other damage to the model. It can bring the yard also closer to the working surface, so that one does not need to work with lifted-up arms for too long periods of times.

A quick update to the site linked above: the former Flying-P-Liner PEKING was sold back to German owners two years ago, after rotting away at the South Street Harbour in New York. She was brought to Hamburg and now is being restored as a non-working museum ship - yesterday the first mast was errected again. She will be on permanent display in the new Harbour Museum of Hamburg.