wefalck

Coach-lining seems to be a craft that has persisted much longer in the anglo-saxon world than in continental Europe, where it all but disappeared after WW2. Nowadays it seems to become more popular again, as it sort of merges into 'custom-painting' of motorcycles in particular and in particular in the USA. There the same 'one-shot' paradigm prevails. On the Internet there are videos of real good artisans in their field. It would be worthwhile to have a look at their 'lining' brushes and the paints they are using. The problem for us modellers is that we should excel in at least a dozen, if not more, crafts ...

I didn’t mean to say that smaller brushes dry out slower, what I meant is that due to the small volume one replenishes more frequently, thus keeping the paint moist.

Toyed with this idea at various times, but unless the background has a uniform and 'simple' colour that seems to be difficult to achieve, even, if you cut the decal very close to the lettering, thus minimising the printed area.

A lot of people make white decal paper - but that doesn't give you white letters ... A semi steady-hand option would be to print the outline of the lettering on a clear decal sheet and then fill the letters with paint, while the sheet is flat on the table. Should be a lot easier than doing it on the model and wou have infinite tries too.

Custom-printed decals would be my first thought. However, you need a special printer that is able to print 'white'. It is a while since I searched the market, but then there were only one or two models around for home use. There are various suppliers for custom-decals for modellers though. Not sure how good the market for these still is, but there are also dry rub-on letters, e.g. by Letraset. Dito. for lining, inclduing curves - check out model railway supplies. It would be probably an overkill for just one or two name-boards, but one could also etch a stencil from thin brass and then spray-paint with it the lettering. Finally, there is a steady hand ... 👹

Also noticed a few years ago that the booming market for nail-'artists' (perhaps better artisans) provides many interesting articles for modellers. In fact, it seems that they initially borrowed tools and materials from the modelling scene and then developed further. The larger market then has brought prices down. As noted, lining and dotting brushes are particular of interest. Brushes are one of those items, where it is better to go to a shop and try them out. You put a bit of saliva on your finger tips to we the brush and form a tip. However, self-service racks in many art-materials shops have led to brushes often being damaged by negligent would-be customers. It happened to me that I had to walk out of reputable shops because they just didn't have (anymore) what I wanted. In desperation, I tried mail order and got a batch from an UK supplier. One or two of their brushes were not ok, but they refunded the money when I mailed them a picture with the defective ones. Winsor & Newton also do a series of short synthetic brushes, which have some advantage for detail work, though they do not hold as much paint as the standard ones. The fact that they hold less paint requires more frequent refilling with fresh paint, which is better with acrylics that would otherwise begin to dry in the upper part of the brush. Since my wife gave me one of those mugs with paint-brush soap, I have used this, but before that I used the special washing powder for wool, which is very effective and keeps the brushes elastic.

It is good practice (which was not always followed, of course, depending on how much the mate/master cared) to tighten all rigging in harbour and as far as possible at sea. Any unnecessarily loose rigging will wear and spar etc. will bang around, when the ship is moving, which can be a nuisance to one's own crew and the neighbours. This may be only modern yacht practice, but halliards and other ropes running along masts are usually tied together and away from the mast in order prevent them slapping against the mast when the wind gets into them, the noise of which can be ennerving. Tying together halliards, sheets and so on in a triangle in mid-air seems to have been navy practice. Apart from looking neat, it also keeps the ropes suspended and hence drier than when hanging/lying somewhere coiled up.

You are getting better and better, Pat ! Just to put on my 'know-all hat': https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gutta-percha This rigging warrant is a find we all dream of, when we are researching a ship. The last war, floods and neglect due to lack of interest sadly destroyed so many records in my home country ... particularly the pre-1900 navy is not very well documented, not speaking of merchants ships.

Quite daring to do the moulding once the piece is in place - or a sure hand !

I think Valparaiso was not hit so much by the earthquake. I don't remember seeing anything particular, when I was there in October 2011.

How do the tin-clad houses below/opposite the museum in Valparaiso look like now ? A couple of years or so ago the area was devastated by a fire. The museum is worthwhile a visit.

There some reasonably price micro-motors now on the market from the usual Chinese sources. Know some colleagues who have one and they seem to be happy with it for carving etc. I have been thinking of adapting one to my micro-mill, but for the moment I was happy with the top speed of 5000 rpm of the current arrangement for Plexiglas and brass. Wood may need indeed higher speeds. Nice adapatation by the way. Does the big mill have a light enough 'feel' on the handwheels for such delicate work ?

Busy smithy and excellent output !

If one spends already a whole working day in front of the computer, one may want to look at something different and may want to have a different haptic experience ... Spending 600 $, even Canadian ones, on a model seems to be an awful lot of money ... never spent more than maybe 100€.

Back on old MSW there were some Russian guys who made some simple single-lip milling cutters from hardened silver-steel/drill rod or HSS toolbits and shape-milled with them the main oulines of blocks on the PROXXON FM50. Not too difficult to make such cutters.

Try a set of eye-protection glasses with magnifying glasses. They usually have +3 diopters and I can wear them for hours - they also prevent nasty things from flying into your eyes ...

A lines drawing done in pen and ink or even a print-out has a finite line width and a certain contrast ratio against the paper. Scanning these approximates the lines with pixels, resulting effectively in a loss of contrast, as line is degraded into a more or less wide cloud of dots. Any software that is supposed to convert the cloud of dots into a chain of vectors has to interpret this. The precision of this interpretation will depend on the angle the original line had respective to the axes of the scanner. So you are bound to have lots of artefacts and deviations. The worse the smaller the original drawing was. Personally, I am going down the same route as mtaylor. It may feel tedious in the first place, but it is probably more efficient than trying to remove all those rogue pixels before sending a drawing through a vectorising program. You, as a shipmodeller, are also much better in deciding what is a reasonable line and what not than the vectorising program. I have done this for years using a mouse. As I will be getting an iPad with a stylo for Christmas, I am looking forward to do this kind work now on a tablet. Still have to find the right CAD software, as it seems that there is no iOS-version of my favourite EazyDraw for the MacOS.

Unless some of the mouldings are painted white, one could cut thin stripes from water-transfers (decals) or buy such stripes, if available in your part of the world.

I gather in the part of the World I am currently living in, the 'golden' would be pronounced something like 'do-raad', with a short, open 'o'. BTW, why are these vents collade 'dorade-vents' ? Haven't heard this term before.

Somehow I liked the bright steel parts. Many older museum models have such parts left bright - does work for a model, but not possible, of course, in real life.

Marcus, I believe 'maritiem digital' is a sort of portal through which one have access to (some) material from various museums, including, I think, Rotterdam. I have not looked at it for some time though. Concerning the varnishing, I found this always a bit garish on the Dutch boats that have been converted into yachts. Must be some sort of fashion, but in reality doesn't say anything about the quality of maintenance. A thick layer of varnish on a model too looks much like a cheap souvenir model, where also 'glossy' seems to be taken as a sign of quality. I gather something a bit more glossy than satin would be right. Personally, I would apply some cellulose-based woodfiller, rub this down with very fine (0000) steel-wool and then polish with a felt-wheel in a power-drill. On the hard wood you used this should give a nice sheen whithout adding a perceptible layer of varnish.

A certain standardisation and composing gangs of men of different levels of knowledge and experience. Most parts were too heavy to handled by one sailor alone, so one would group experienced and unexperienced sailors together. Experience comes very fast with the nine-tailed cat being around ... There were no formal qualifications and exams for sailors of non-officer grades. They were moved on in hierarchy, if their superiors were satisfied with their qualities.

One notes also that the mesh is not square, but rectangular. I will try to pull in one direction every second wire from the fine wire-mesh I bought for this purpose. The wires are only 0.04 mm diameter, so it will be a challenge.

First they looked like made from those binders for plastic bags, these plastic strips with a wire imbedded ... however, it is now clear that the ridge is an etching artefact: the attack of the etching agent does not only happen perpendicular to the metal sheet, but also sideways to some extent. It is particularly pronounced, when etching in a tray and can be reduced by the commercial spray- or foam-etching processes. I have actually tried to play with this effect to achieve certain 3D-effects. Javier, not using magnifiers may be a wise decision 😏 - when taking photographs, I recognise very well this sobering effect ...

@Pat, I have been thinking of a similar route for the mill/lathe. When I looked at this a few years - technology may have evolved since, the 'shutter speed', i.e. the number of frames per second, was a bit to slow for machine work. You get the image with some delay. That would not matter though for inspection work or slow manipulations. I also had at some stage a screen projector, i.e. a microscope that projects the image onto a screeen. I thought of using it in the same way as the mentioned digital version. Perhaps it was not adjusted well enough, but in the end I did not find it very useful, also because it took up a lot of bench space. So it was sold again. @Valeriy, you are right the grating in your picture looks quite new (where was this taken ? There must be other places with Krupp-klones or original Krupps around the former Russian Empire). This particular one looks like a restoration. However, as one of the few detail pictures of the WESPE-class guns shows, this is the original pattern: This pattern of grating can be also see on the large-scale instruction model that was made for the Danish navy at about the same time: Krupp was happy to sell his guns to Denmark who has been in war with the German states only a dozen years earlier. The Danes armed one of their first armoured battleships with these 30,5 cm guns. The good thing about this is, that the Danish archives in this way preserved some material on these guns. The lower carriage, however, is different from that of the WESPE-class, because it was housed in a revolving turret, rather than in an open barbette. @paulsutcliffe - thanks for your kind words !