wefalck

Looking forward to the gestation of another wonderful model ... good luck!

Allan, it seems that the version that I found strange was used on lower decks only. The upper deck shows the version with the waterway sitting flat on the beam, but is locked in place with a key (which is also a practice I had not noticed before. Technically speaking, that key would transmit the force from caulking the deck-planks into the beam, rather than to the top of the frames - which makes some sense.

Deviating a bit from the actual subject: The method shown on the last illustration for the 19th century seems to be rather unusal and I wonder, where the author got this from. All my 19th century (European) textbooks show the waterway sitting flat on the beams and not overlapping anything. The arrangements may vary a great deal in detail, also depending on the size of the vessel and whether naval or commercial. The arrangement on this last illustration would be difficult to caulk satisfactorily, just at a place that would be one of the wettest one on a deck.

As usual, your encouraging comments are much appreciated ! ******** In the meantime, I had to make myself a list of all those tiny details that still need to be fabricated and installed. It is easy to forget them, when you are getting closer to the end … Crane above the projectile hatch Projectiles and powder bags were stored in different compartments for safety reasons below the barbette and in consequence, each had its own hatch. That for the powder bags was round, while the one for the projectiles was rectangular in order for them to lifted out on a trolley. As discussed in a much earlier post, the lithographies from the early 1880s do not show any mechanical device to help the 330 kg heavy projectiles from their storage space to the floor of the barbette. Man-handling clearly is out of question. However, drawings related to a later re-fit show inside the deckhouse a winch marked as ‘winch for the hoisting of projectiles’ and a simple derrick-like wall-crane bolted to the rear wall of the barbette. In these drawings it is not shown how the runner rope would have been led from the crane to the winch, there most have been some sort of opening in the rear of the barbette. Also, not clear is, how the in the gun-crew in the barbette and the men in the projectile storage room would have communicated with the winch-men inside the deckhouse. Interestingly, in the same drawing a simple wall-mounted crane for the powder-bags seems to be indicated, but no winch belonging to it. Perhaps the 45 kg bags were hoisted up with the help of a tackle. The assembled and painted parts at their place, port view The small detail (about 3 mm by 3 mm) of the projectile crane caused me a lot of aggravation and took a long time to fabricate. I drew it in several versions to be cut from Canson-paper on the laser-cutter until I arrived at a solution that worked. Assembly was also rather difficult and several parts jumped into the invisible black hole on the workbench, so that they had to be replaced. The pulley was turned from 1 mm steel rod. The hook was fashioned from tinned copper-wire and the shape built up from Vallejo acrylic paint ‘oily steel’. A short piece of rope was spliced into the ring and the spherical weight built up from acrylic paint. Likewise, the powder-crane was cut from two layers of Canson-paper, soaked in varnish and painted. There is no information on what it may have looked like. I did not model the tackle, assuming that during the gun-drill in which the model will be presented, no charges were used and therefore, the tackle was not rigged. Only a shackle was fashioned from tinned copper wire. Lamp-boards Another small item on my to-do-list were the lamp-boards. According to the very first photograph of SMS WESPE these were placed at the front end of the deckhouse surrounding the barbette. In the lithograph and in later photographs they are shown on short poles towards the rear end of the deckhouse and raised above the rails. These lamp-boards were laser-cut in three parts from Canson-paper and painted appropriately after assembly. The petroleum-lamps are not shown, as during day-time they would have been cleaned and then stored in deckhouse(?). The assembled and painted parts at their place, starbord view Not much to show actually for the amount time and effort spent on the parts … To be continued ....

And some pretty solid equipment in the workshop 👍🏻

No, the saw were only sold through 'connections' it seems. I forgot the name of the guy.

There used to be a guy in Germany, who made small batches of very solid and precise small table saws, but as always, he was a pensioner and at some stage had to give up this business. The market is small and the costs are high, so one can really do this only, when margins can be small because you have other income

There are umpteen different types of pin- and hand-vises from different professions ranging from watchmakers, toolmakers to biologists and the medical professions. Some of them are meant mainly for tool-holding, while other are primarily for work-holding. A while ago, I put together a couple of pictures of the different types of work- and tool-holding devices that I have in my workshop (see also https://www.maritima-et-mechanika.org/tools/workholding/workholding.html). : 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 has medium tips for eye-surgery. 6 - Antique surgical locking needle-holder; these come in a wide variety of sizes and shapes. A selection of Castrovejo eye-surgery tools: 1 - fine-pointed non-locking needle-holder with straight smooth tips 2 - fine-pointed locking needle-holder with smooth tips 3 - fine-pointed blade-breaker - this are used to break off pieces from razor-blades to be used a very sharp scalpels 4 - very fine-pointed tweezers - they are stiffer and less springy than the typical watchmakers or biological tweezers 5 - medium-pointed non-locking needle-holder with curved smooth tips And finally a small precision bench-vise with 30 mm jaws that I mounted on a wooden stand so that it can be shovelled around the workbench. There used to cast-iron bases for these, but they are extremely rare: Most of these tools are 'antiques', but some are still available new. Interestingly, different countries seem to prefer different types of tools. For instance nos. 6 and 7 in the first picture I have only seen in France, while no. 3 in the second picture is an US American tool type.

Well, unfortunately, the EU has clamped down on such things more strictly over the past few years. I did carry Sherline equipment from the US in my checked-in luggage, but at that time I was travelling on a UN Laissez Passer 😁. Also, there were special exemptions from import duties, when we could assure that these were 'attachments' that belonged to or complemented existing equipment you already had. The latter would also apply, when you had things imported by mail. My status has changed since and all the import duties would hit me hard ... There is also a maximum value of goods you can bring with you from outside the EU duty-free. I think it is around 300€. Above that you have to declare the items to customs and if they catch you, when you don't, the fines are hefty. Not worth the risk.

The two types of honing guides are available from watchmaker supply houses. The two-wheeled one is a standard tool for honing gravers. It is supposed to be used together with an Arkansas stone set between two wooden rails on which the wheels run. The other type was originally manufactured by a company called Barkus, I believe, to be used together with diamond wheels on watchmaker lathes. There seem to be now Chines clones available on ebay (check the area for watchmaking tools).

The Byrnes saw has one big detriment - it's bloody expensive once it arrives over here in the EU 😬

2 mm is BIG ... by my standards 😁

... or a close shave 😆

I think your rope is untreated hemp for one. Another point is the quality of the hemp as such. I gather today they have to take what they get, while in the old days certain regions specialised in the production of particularly long-fibred and smooth hemp, for instance certain provinces of Russia I believe and also in Germany. The second point is the preparation of the hemp, which is quite elaborate to obtain only the long fibres, while the rest goes to waste. The third point would be how careful and tight the initial spinning was performed. Your example doesn't seem to be particularly tight. The rope-maker also goes along the rope in making with a rough cloth to rub off loose fibres. I seem to have seen rather smooth, tighly twisted ropes. So in essence, at any of our model scales one should really see any fibres sticking out. Many people now use synthetic fibres that are essentially endless and where the problem of 'hairs' sticking out does not really occur.

I love it ...

Another material I used for blocks and that works well is phenolic resin board, as used for circuit boards. It is brown, quite easily available in thicknesses of up to 3 mm in electronics shops. I am cutting strips from the boards with my circular saw. It sands and polishes well. Unfortunately, paper-based phenolic resin rods do not seem to be available, only those with cotton fabric and then only from 8 mm diametre upwards. The phenolic resin has the advantage of being heat resistant, so that one can solder fittings around it.

Others used wet&dry sanding paper. In ship-modelling it is frowned upon, because it is not acid-free.

Tried this method, but the main issue is to drill the tiny holes and then to round off its edges, so that that rope runs out of the block in a tangent, rather than at +/- a right angle ... I have also tried to cut slots into the rod, then insert into these slots brass pieces that were halfround at the top. The problem was also that the solder clogged up the hole for the rope. Tried the same thing with Plexiglas rod, but had the same problem with clogging up holes. I think in my current building log, some three or so years ago I showed all these trials, troubles and tribulations.

Nice piece of micro-joinery!

Somehow, I missed your building log until now 🫢 McCaffery stamped oval paper-discs with custom-made punches from paper. He sort of 'faked' the rigging using NiCr-wire. He basically bent the wire to follow the run of the rigging and then stuck the paper-discs onto the pre-arranged wire-rigging. To be honest, I don't think in 1:96 this is an adequate solution, except perhaps for the very smallest blocks. At this scale one can make blocks - depending, of course, on the machinery at your disposal. 3D-printing is becoming increasingly the technique to go to for such small items. The limiting factor is not so much the size of the blocks, but rather the bores for rigging. It is still difficult to get below 0.3 mm diameter, while for such a boat you would have to go down to 0.2 mm or less - keeping in mind that 0.2 mm in 1:96 means just under 20 mm in real money, which is a pretty hefty rope for a boat. For the moment, there doesn't seem to be a commercial offer for such blocks, but @dafi (of HMS VICTORY fame) showed me some samples that he printed in acrylic resin and they look very good.

I found the price for two pieces of CNC-milled aluminium and a thumbscrew quite steep, to which one has to add postage. Plexiglas in thin sections is quite brittle, so the edges may break out, when abused. It also depends on how often you use the tool. If I was a kit-builder and working on one kit after another with lots of PE, I might have opted for aluminium or steel. It also depends on the thickness of the sheet-metal you want to work with. The folding edges on PE are usually half-etched through lines, which are quite easy to place into these gadgets. I am working with the laser-cut paper parts, where I may score the folding line or not. Being able to see through the holding-down clamp helps in positioning the part. Another consideration for opting for a shop-made solution was, that I turned the base of my miniature edge-sander into a multi-functional tool. OK, I have now various loose pieces to take care of, but only one little box to store it.

There are PE folding gadgets on the market (quite pricey actually). They basically consist of a slab of aluminium and a kind of straight-edge that can be clamped down on it. The straight-edge does not have vertical edges, but a slightly more acute angle that allows you to overbend to account for the springiness of the brass. Picture source: https://thesmallshop.com/collections/photo-etch-bending-tools/products/sms002-the-bug-hold-fold I made one myself, but as it was mainly meant for folding my laser-cut paper parts, I made the straight-edge from Plexiglas, so that I can better see where I place the tiny parts. Unfortunately, I don't have a picture at hand. Concerning the holes: can't you just drill at 0.5 mm or even 0.4 mm ? It is too late now, but I would have foreseen at least a dimple half-etched through or a pilot hole that could be reamed to size (using one of those five-sided reamers the watchmakers use to ream out holes in their tiny watch-hands).

When one looks closely at the above photograph, it is a bit strange, as it seems to show only one block on the starbord-side. The end the guy holds in his hands is loaded and runs down to the block, thence (presumably to the rail and another block(?) and from there back to the tiller. The second, loose, end the guy holds runs to a block on the rail and then to the tiller, where it is made fast with a knot, it seems. Strange assymetric rigging. Steering with ropes running to a tiller (usually facing back out from the rudder!) or a yoke was very common on Arab vessels around the Indian ocean and also seem to have entered through them into some traditional Spanish boats.

Yep, nice metal work!

Coming on nicely! Didn't we have discussion of the flooring already? I think panels made from individual lengths of planks, tied together with cross-pieces would be an option. These panels should be short enough to be taken out between any eventual benches etc. to allow bailing out the boat.