wefalck

I kind of thought that a solid, shaped piece of mahagony would look nice too.

Nice soldering work ! Did you make a jig for this complex part ?

Very pleasing run of the planks 👍

I didn't read the caption on the drawing carefully and didn't realise that this is actually a drawing after an etching by Baugean. Baugean's etchings have been published over the last few decades several times and an annoted edition (which is on my bookshelves) is this one: HARLAND, J. (2000): Ships & Seamanship - The Maritime Prints of J.J. Baugean.- 208 p., London (Chatham Publishing). I quickly looked through the book and found several instances where such gaff was depicted, namely images no. 18 (A French Frigate with yards-a-cockbill - in mourning), 24 (American Frigate), 38 (An American Armed Schooner), 112 (A Dutch? Galiot), and 171 (A French? Brig). In all cases it is clear that sails are bent and not flags. Harland refers to them simply as 'gaff top-sails'. And then I dived into the resources on my own Web-site and found the following two images of models in the Altona Museum in Hamburg: Ship JAVA (1852) Medium clipper TRITON (1858) It must be noted, however, that these models are not from the time, but were built by shipwrights/sailmakers around 1890 on the basis of drawings and paintings in the museum.

... or it will split

Baugean's drawing in the first post clearly shows sails on both gaffs on both masts. You can see the rope with which the sails are bent to the mast. Looks weird indeed.

A yard is suspended at some point along its length, while booms or a gaffs are suspended/pivoting at one end. So the item in the above image is not a yard.

True, but Beaugean shows actually sails bent to them ...

My preference is nitrocellulose lacquer or its 'filled' version, sanding sealer. The solvent is also a solvent for the wood rosins so penetration is good. One coat may be sufficient. I rub it down with steel-wool, which gives a nice satin finish. A treatment like this does not add any appreciable thickness, it is more in the surface, rather than on it. If you prefer something a bit more glossy, you can polish the surface with a soft rag - on a model you can do this also with cotton sticks all-over or just at places that would become polished by hard use. Different grades of shine create some interest in a surface and also look more realistic.

I don't think that Biddlecombe will be of much help. In neither of the plates such gaff is shown. I have seen it on some 'clipper' ship depictions of around the middle of the 19th century. If the drawing above wasn't by Beaugean, I would have thought that draughtsperson misinterpreted a square gaff top-sail. Incidentally, it was something specific to the late German deep-water barques, particularly the flying-P-liners, that they had a double gaff with a triangular gaff top-sail. The surviving KRUSZENSTERN ex PADUA, the PASSAT, the PEKING, and the German sail training vessels GORCH FOCK I and II are still rigged in that way. However, I don't know, whether the second gaff has any specific name.

What do you mean by "the size is 1/8" ? The volume of the part ? 1/96 and 1/100 are close enough, there is only a 4% difference in length, however, the difference between 1/100 and 1/76 is 24% ! In other words, piece of 100 cm length would be in 1/100 scale 1 cm long, in 1/96 scale 1.04 cm, but in 1/76 scale 1.32 cm

Why would you ?

In 1:1 scale the process looks quite similar:

So you got hold of a copy of the book on the history of her builders, good !

As said, this technique is very versatile for many small parts. Here the sequence of creating a ventilator from round brass stock using some fancy machine tools and accessories: Turning the shaft of the ventilator in an excentric 2-jaw-chuck. The future cowl is to the left. One could have this done in an ordinary 3-jaw-chuck or collet, but would have needed round stock of about twice the diameter and needed to remove a lot more material. After parting off the ventilator it is transferred to the upright dividing head in my micro-mill, where the back of the cowl is round-milled. The dividing head is driven by the worm-drive for this milling operation. Then the inside was milled out in the same set-up. The back of the cowl is shaped on the micro-grinding machine using a diamond disc. The back is closed with some copper shim soldered on and then hand-shaped. Collection of ventilators produced from round brass stock in this way. The height of the head of the smallest is 3 mm and the shaft has a diamater of 1.2 mm. Using this technique I have produced a variety of parts for my current project (SMS WESPE 1876), including rectangular bollards, chain stoppers of various kinds, etc. Another application was milling the outside shape of 2 mm-blocks in brass and Plexiglas: In the same set-up they were then drilled and slotted, or rather the sheaves were part-milled by turning the blocks in the dividing head over the predetermined angle. For all the machining operations I made myself a table in which I calculated how much the mill had to be fed in what position of the set of future blocks held in the dividing head. This is a powerful technique, particularly when you can transfer parts from the lathe to the mill and vice versa without loosing concentricity and, hence, the reference point. Paul is right in saying that it requires a good kit-out and some practice in machining, but it is quite do-able with a bit of patience and I am entirely self-taught.

Just to say: I had a look at a couple of German textbooks on rigging, one of 1869 and one of 1903. As expected, the latter only talk about steel masts, but the former does not mention this kind of masts at all. There are, however, proportional dimensions for different steps on the mast from which one perhaps can deduct the information you need.

Has there ever been a video recorded, showing you sculpting ? I am particularly intrigued by the repetive accuracy. Getting one ornament right is one thing, but getting them all looking the same is quite another thing. I know, you are using a proprietary Czech sculpting material, but would you have any experience with a brand available in other parts of Europe and you could recommend ? It seems that your material becomes rather smooth and translucent after baking, which is good for the following gilding. I am not aware of another sculpting material that reacts like this.

Nice work, indeed. I gather the real challenge is still to come, as the shape becomes more complex and as this is going to be the part that you are planning to leave unpainted.

To get back to the original topic: this technique is also useful for producing flat identical parts of complex shape. The outside shape is milled as per the video and then you saw off the parts of the desired thickness with a circular saw. In order save material, you may start with some rectangular stock to which a stem or spigot is hard-soldered. If you have a independt 4-jaw-chuck for your lathe, you can also turn the stem onto the rectangular stock, which may be the method for materials that cannot be soldered. Talking about parts for polystyrene models: I would probably make those from Plexiglas stock, as this can be glued (or better 'welded') to polystyrene with either the usual liquid cement or with methylene chloride.

The material Doris uses are plastic foils, I exchanged with her on this years ago. These foils have been popular in the 1960s and 1970s in Western Europe as a quick-n-dirty fix for cheap furniture or interior decoration. In Germany there is a brand called d-c-fix (https://www.d-c-fix.com/). Over the decades the material degrades due to its high content of plasticisers. While Doris does nice things with them, I would be very much concerned about the longevity.

I have used the method frequently and designed my shop-made micro-mill with that method in mind. One can use it also on somewhat larger parts and economise the material consumption by hard-soldering a thinner spigot to it. One can do this also with bar stock or thicker sheet. The method also works for Plexiglas or Aluminium, of course.

I tend to use two screws to fix my models to their display cases the same nuts that are inside the hull also are used for temporary mounting screws that hold the model to a piece of wood that in turn can be held in a vice etc.

Actually iron-on veneers are what the name says, not foils. It it is what industry uses to cover say chipboard in proper wood. One can buy it in sheets for DIY use and the iron-on edges in real wood are the same. While it is a useful DIY material and can turn out well, when sanded, filled and polished with shellac, I would advice against its use in planking. Such veneers are produced by shearing off thin layers on a sort of lathe. This process damages the wood structure. That doesn’t matter too much in an ordinary DIY context, but the resulting wood structure is far too coarse for model purposes. There is another variant that is/was sold in Germany under the name Mikro-Holz (micro-wood), a very thin, but dense veneer backed with an self-adhesive paper. I used it on one of my first model in the 1970s and it still sticks. It can be treated like real wood with fillers and polished with shellac.

Ahh, I already had withdrawal symptoms 🥴

Ah, ok. It is a rather simplified version of a 1860s picket-boat fitted with a spar-torpedo. The pictures indicate that the boiler is of the return-flue type, stoked from the smoke-box side. Most of the time such picket boats had a locomotive-type boiler that is stoked and operated from the same side I think. The fire-box is totally encased in the boiler, which explains that the lagging is going all around. The prototype boilers would have had much more elaborate fittings, with double sight-glasses, double check valves, double feed-pumpes, manometer, safety-valve, etc.