wefalck
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Straightening thin brass wire
wefalck replied to vossy's topic in Metal Work, Soldering and Metal Fittings
I roll short lengths of (soft) wire between to pieces of really flat hard wood, e.g. a piece of beech and my beech work-top. I recently also discovered molybdenum wire that comes in various diametres and is much more 'springy' than brass. It has become readily available from Chinese sources due to the fact that it is used to separate the glass from the LCD-screen in mobile-phone repair. Beware, it is very tough and can only be cut with very hard tools. -
Talking about wire for rigging, there is now also molybdenum wire easy to come by, down to 0.035 mm diameter - it is used by mobile-phone repair guys, who separate the glass from the LCD-screen with it. It can be fished cheaply in spools from China in the wellknown bay. It is virtually impossible to cut it by accident with scissor or a scalpel, it is just too tough - beware of dents in the tools.
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There has been a 1:100 scale (sorry metric ...) model of the GERMANIA by a German modeller: https://www.arbeitskreis-historischer-schiffbau.de/mitglieder/modelle/germania3/ It may be worthwhile asking on what drawings his model was built. Keith, if you want, I can contact him and ask. He lives in Spain and specialises in models of such yachts.
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I think something has been lost in translation here ... at least I don't understand what is meant. Calico is a kind of cotton - did you mean you polished it with a cotton rag ?
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Thanks a lot for those details ! And what voltage did you use ? And it goes without saying, of course, the parts are brilliant !
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Can you say something about the conditions for the galvano-plastic: e.g. voltage used, concentration of the copper sulfate (?) solution, what kind of anode you used etc. ?
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I don't know the US American market for DIY products at all. Over here in Europe we have plain Plaster of Paris (gypsum) and Plaster of Paris mixed with cellulose to delay somewhat the setting and make it easier to level over cracks in the wall and so on. I gather it is used in dry-wall construction to level the surface of plaster-board etc. It comes in cardboard boxes of 250 g, I think. Bought mine years ago. There are also now acrylic-based repair 'plasters' in tubes. It works nicely, but sets after a few years in the tube. The shelf-life is not as long as that for real plaster, which is practically unlimited. Here I used the acrylics-based plaster to create bricks:
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I made brick paving like this by smearing a layer of plaster into a wooden frame and then carving and painting the bricks. Much easier, as the wood-grain doesn't bother you.
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I gather worming, parcelling and serving would be a bit over the top, even at 1:48 scale. Intuitively, I would serve with the lay, as against the lay has the tendency to open the rope. Not sure what the full-size practice is, but once wormed and parcelled, it would not matter to much anymore.
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What silk, that's the question. One has to be able to get the right one, spun in the right way and is has to be less than 10 den. And then - see the earlier discussion on silk - I am still a bit hesitant about silk, though that silk will be painted as per prototype. Talking about silk and deviating a bit from Johann's thread, I also experimented with silk covered copper wire, as used in the old-time electrics. It looks good, but making splices look prototype-like is difficult, because the rope would have been spliced first and then served all over, while the wire is already served.
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I am curious to see what would be the thinnest rope you can serve - for my purposes I would need to go below 0.5 mm diameter to be in scale. Then also finding a serving yarn will become a problem.
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Indeed, these deck prisms, though in common use since at least the middle of the 19th ccentury, are rarely seen on any models. One reason is probably that they are not marked on many plans of the time.
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That sound encouraging, as I have some really challenging parts in the pipe-line. What thickness of brass have you been using ? I have quite a bit of experience in experimenting with home etching and found that getting a sufficiently uniform blackening is the challenge. However, I have been working with brass sheets covered in photoresist and transparent masks. I can imagine that the heat-transfer of the toner lets the lines from the printer melt together better. Not sure what the European equivalent to your paper would be (doesn't the printing ink interfer ?), but could imagine that other papers that have a coating that prevents the toner from penetrating too deeply should work. I should experiment with double-sided toner transfer: if one includes register marks and carefully makes a sandwich with spacers, it should be possible to transfer the toner onto both sides of a brass-sheet for double-sided and surface etching. Would be worth a try - I almost gave up the home etching due to the blackening problem.
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Ferric chloride solution is not such a concentrated acid, so there is no risk of it attracting the first water drops, as would happen with concentrated hydrochloric or even sulfuric acid. However, one should cover a wooden workbench in plastic or work in a shallow tray, as any splashes leave nasty stains on wood. Similarly, all metal tools should be out of reach, as even the fumes can lead to slight corrosion. Beware also of corrosion of metal parts in your sink, when you clean your equipment. Always rinse with large quantities of water. Spent ferric chloride solution is basically inert, when neutralised with a base and could be discarded into the sink after considerable dilution. It is better, however, to collect it and take it to your local dangerous substances collection point, clearly labelling what it is.
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One needs to be aware that this method only gives very simple parts and works really only with thin brass. Due to overetching, the parts will not have a square cross-section, but become smaller towards the back. The method also does not fully exploit the possibilities of the technique, namely to produce surface-etched parts. If you just want to cut out simple, not too small parts, the method should be fine. One thing that puzzled me on the above images was that they are negative. Like this you would be etching holes. Shouldn’t the desired parts be printed in black, so that the toner protects the brass ?
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Thanks ! For those, who think they don't have Michael's machining capabilities: one can actually buy small insert-chucks or buy (e.g. from Chinese sources) a small brass drill-chuck with collets and fit it with a stem to go into a larger lathe-collet. P.S. On Underhill: one should remember that he focused on the last three decades or so of commercial sailing ships, so one has to be cautious to back-extrapolate his descriptions into the time say before the 1880s.
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Michael, not sure I grasped the purpose of the sub-chuck. Was it that you didn't have a small enough collet for your lathe ? I found small brass pins a better starting material for making screws and bolts than just brass wire. That is probably because the stamping process in making the pins hardens the material, which then turns better than plain drawn wire. The problem is that one has to do all the machining in one set-up, as the rough pins cannot be re-centred. Hence, one has to make the pins long enough for holding during secondary operations. The watchmakers use for slotting screws a square collet holder in a special small table with a V-groove that is typically inserted into the holder for the hand-turning T-rest. A small circular saw is mounted in the lathe for that purpose. For slotting by hand, there are also special extra-thin slotting files. Nevertheless, I like the idea of the saw-guide with a noth that is held against the screw 👍
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I think I have seen this before somewhere 👍 What would be smallest diameter of rope it would work on safely ? Personally I am thinking of ropes below 0.5 mm and would not be so sure that the respective serving thread could exert enough sideway force to move the device forward. Otherwise, the device I had in mind for my ropewalk would look quite similar to the above, except that it would register into a strengthing rod between the two frames of the machine to provide a guide.
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I have seen this arrangement before, but didn’t know that name. I can see very well spray being kept out, albeit at a reduced efficiency of the ventilator due to some air bleeding out of the drainage holes. However, a serious wave would flood the hole system anyway.
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My machine is still in the planning phase (I actually don't need one at the moment, but it is an interesting project), though I have accumulated most of the materials needed. The base will be 6 mm brown bakelite, which should look nice together with the steel and brass of the mechanism. I may stay manual only, as I won't have to do that long ropes. I also thought about driving the serving thread spool along with a leadscrew, but then came to the conclusion that one would need a hell of a gear ratio to make this useful, plus change-wheel for different thread thicknesses. Probably not worth the effort. One point that concerned me was the pull needed to really wind the thread tightly around the rope. This would seriously deflect the rope. So, I will shape a kind of follower or travelling steady in which the rope runs in a channel. In the front a notch will be cut out of the channel in order to be able to feed in the serving thread. It will run over a flat surface so that one can control with the index finger the resistance.
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Don't know what collets the Dremel uses, but the PROXXON collets are very good and durable. This would be one of my key criteria - for a hand-held tool you don't want to mess around with drill-chuck that obstructs your view etc. The collets accomodate up to 3.2 mm, which is 1/8", so one can use both metric and imperial inserts and drills.
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I have been able to locate the arcticle I referred to earlier: https://www.proto48.org/p48_art_06.htm This is the idea for equal spacing from the above article that shows some excellent railway models: Below is a watchmakers staking tool by Boley. Not mine, which is virtually identical, but more complete, but a picture gleaned from the Internet. They come with a wide variety of punches, pointed, flat, hollow, concave, etc. and anvils. And this is my watchmakers jewelling press: It has a micrometer stop, so you can set the exact depth for punching or the thickness for say squashing wires flat. Some staking sets also come with such lever and depth-stop, btw. I make punching inserts and anvils for the job in hand. Don't have pictures yet, but I just made an anvil and die to shape miniature ventilator-handles for my SMS WESPE-project.
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What kind of dimensions/scale are you looking for ?
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