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wefalck

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Everything posted by wefalck

  1. wefalck
    The principle of the tool in the first post is neat, particularly for long, thin parts. I think I will go on to make one myself from metal. I have used for years this centre-finder (about 50 mm long): It was and still is a bit pricey at 52€, but this is what you have to pay for quality measuring tools.
  2. wefalck
    I also had the issue with disc sanders taking off too much too quickly and made myself a little sander that allows to sand plank ends square and at angles: I also constructed a miniature disc sander around a surplus watchmakers lathe. It is powered by a relatively slow-speed motor with controller. In this way the grinding process can be controlled better. For grinding I use either cheap diamond grit discs or flat discs with fine sandpaper glued on.
  3. wefalck
    As I certainly stated here repeatedly, I never use CA glues for anything else, but proper joints. I certainly do not use it to re-enforce any rigging. The lacquer or varnish I use is called (in German) zapon-varnish. It cellulose-based and contains also components that keep it slightly elastic. It's main traditional use is to protect silverware and brass (instruments) from tarnishing. The very varnish also keeps rope coils in place. Of course, one can use a lacquer or varnish as glue too. Below a couple of pictures of various types of coils, all coerced in place with varnish. The first picture shows how the coils are shaped and kept in their place, while the solvent evaporates - usually in a few minutes.
  4. wefalck
    Not sure what you mean by 'fumes'. You would use only a tiny drop of lacquer/varnish, applied with a brush, you wouldn't dowse the model in it. The stuff I am using is very similar to nail-varnish and smells like that as well. Actually, I like that smell.
  5. wefalck
    There is an intermediate method: scan the body plan with sufficient resolution and then import the picture into your (2D) CAD-program. You then can draw in another layer each bulkhead/frame half by tracing the scan with a vector line. It is useful, if your program has a spline-function or similar to smooth the hand-drawn curves. A graphics-tablet is also useful, but I have done it with the mouse or even a track-ball/-pad. Making the drawing big helps to even out the inaccuracies of tracing.
  6. wefalck
    I tend to use thin organic-solvent based lacquer for this. Drape/coil it and then soak in the lacquer, so that the rope becomes stiff. Further adjustments can be made by applying a drop of the respective thinner - the rope becomes soft again and can be coerced into shape. If you find a solvent for the glue-stick glue, this may also be an option.
  7. wefalck
    At least the level of evidence on her is quite high, when I compare this with the navies of my home-country of the same period - usually we only have some pictures taken from the distance, if any at all, and virtually no plans 😥
  8. wefalck
    I was going to ask these questions too. It seems like an unusual place to store the hammocks, as it would be difficult to cover them in foul weather. Or were they put there only to dry ? But why then rolled ?
  9. wefalck
    White metal contains lead, which is the culprit, I think. The worst cases (pun intended) are glass cases fitted with silicone - it gives of acetic acid fumes, which speeds up corrosion in form of lead acetate.
  10. wefalck
    It has been around for some years. It sort of tries to cut into the market of lathes made on the bases of extruded aluminium profiles, such as the Taig/Peatol ones. As there are still plastics in their structural parts, I wouldn't expect a too high accuracy. Also the motors seem to be rather underpowered, judging by the powersupply-plugs. The idea of a modular machine is a good one though. One could use the parts for setting machines for specific purposes, but would need lots of parts, as reconfiguring is a pain.
  11. wefalck
    Looks like a neat idea, but - it seems to be rather wasteful on material, as you need a large sheet and the corner squares are waste - particularly thinking of larger boxes - it may be difficult in practice on large thin sheets, because you may cut the groove through - the joints should be virtually invisible - with the proper acrylic cement, which is essentially uncured acrylic glas and does have the same refractive index as the acrylic itself; the cement has a rather high viscosity, like honey, and would be difficult to infiltrate into the tight joint, there is no capillary effect. Manufacturers of e.g. Plexiglas recommend to cut the sides with a very slight bevel to accomodate the glue and then fit the parts together flat. When well done, i.e. with no air bubbles trapped, the box becomes virtually seamless.
  12. wefalck
    My concern would be the glue - glues on self-adhesive materials may not be very persistent.
  13. wefalck
    The funnel is connected to the boiler-house via a kind of apron that also accomodates the funnel rake of 2.5°. The apron was turned from a piece of acrylic rod and then taken into a 'wheel-collet' on the vertical dividing attachment of the micro-mill. With the vertical axis inclined by 2.5° this allowed to drill out the apron at this angle. In the same set-up the holes for the two safety-valve exhaust pipes and the steam-whistle were drilled. Boring out the apron for the funnel The funnel is actually only a sleeve and inside there is one smoke-pipe for each of the four boilers and a stiffening pipe in the middle. These pipes of 1.8 mm and 2.3 mm OD respectivel were turned from thin Plexiglas™-rod and then partly drilled out to the approximately scale wall thickness. Taking the funnel into the upright dividing attachment on the micro-mill, holes were drilled in the appropriate pattern. The upper ends of the pipes will receive stays from thin polystyrene sheet. Funnel with smoke-pipes To be continued soon ...
  14. wefalck
    The freeing-ports normally could be locked in a closed position.
  15. wefalck
    I think that it is how it was done. I think they used some sort of anvil on a long arm. I faintly remember having seen an illustration somewhere.
  16. wefalck
    Conversely, I have never seen a photograph or drawing with these guard-bars on the outside of the hull (just checked a 1910 text-book on iron-shipbuilding and it shows the bars on the inside). There they would be rather prone to entangle the lower sheets or being sheared-off in harbour (unless the hull had sufficient tumble-home). Restricting the swinging out of the freeing-ports would also defeat their objective, that is to clear out as much water as quickly as possible. I don't understand the point about the 'stays'. There would be no stays near the bulwark, or did you mean the bulwark stanchions ? Or did you mean the shrouds ? In any case the distribution and size of the freeing-ports would be chosen so as to not interfere with any of these elements.
  17. wefalck
    The use of this additional layer of wood may have been at earlier times. The 19th century hull I have seen don't seem to have intermediate layer. However, there was a layer of tarred and sulftur-impregnated felt under the copper. Before good antifouling paints were invented, iron ships were clad in a layer of wood before the customary tarred felt and copper sheathing was applied. This was needed in order to prevent the electrolytic corrosion of the iron hull by the more 'noble' copper. Heavy metal ions, including copper ions, can inhibt (partially) the polymerisation of cyanoacrylate cements. They can also interfere with the structure of other cements. The fact that the area, where the copper was attached was brown, seems to indicate that the oxide layer became detached from the metal, leading to a failure of the bond. This is indeed one of the mechanisms by which copper antifouling sheathing works: the oxides slowly becoming detached and with them anything that intends to attach to it.
  18. wefalck
    Jaager, if you didn't rub bright the back-side of your heat-treated copper it is no wonder that the plates are falling off ! The cement bonded to the copper oxide that slowly comes off the solid copper. I have stuck birght copper plates with contact cement to a model and they are still there after 30 years. There have been various discussions about the colour of copper sheathing on this and other fora. The work-day look would be a dull reddish brown, perhaps with a bit of green in the zone between the wate and the air. It does not look metallic at all. Painted, very thin paper plates may be route to go for small-scale models.
  19. wefalck
    Well, bought mine at a time, when the FET was not dreamt of and I had not knowledge off or access to the US american market - that is, if the Byrnes products actually existed at the beginning of the 1990s. At that time I wouldn't have been able to afford the FET and it is considerably bigger than the KS115 This fence-alignment problem is partly a design issue and partly due to manufacturing tolerances. Early on I made a fence-extension from extruded aluminium channel that can be clamped to the other end of the table. I also screwed down onto the saw table a thin sheet of aluminium to reduce the gab between the blade and the table. I don't do that much of sawing, so I can live with it (more or less).
  20. wefalck
    Due to the structure of ropes - three or four more or less round strands winding around each other, it is difficult to measure a diameter. On a three-strand rope a caliper would touch on one side a strand and on the other side the space between two strands. This is why traditionally the size of ropes is given by the circumference, which can be measured by laying a thinner rope around it. In addition, direct measurement instruments, such as the vernier caliper, though known in principle for quite a while, did not come into common use until well into the 19th century. This is, indeed, rather inconvenient from a modellers point of view, as the circumference of our 'ropes' would be very difficult to measure. However, as pocket calculators are common and virtually every mobile phone has a calculator, it should not be a big deal today to convert circumferences into diameter or vice versa. In many case a division/multiplication by 3 should be good enough.
  21. wefalck
    The arm-rests are a good idea to steady them and make the work less tiering. Most modern ironing-boards are too flimsy and poorly made from aluminium. My mother had solid one, made from 1" steel tubes, which was heavy and stable. Haven't seen such for years. The ones with expanded metal tops are for steam irons.
  22. wefalck
    Well, what else one can do, but to join-in into the chorus of praise
  23. wefalck
    Personally, I think that such discussions are useful and interesting, as they convey information beyond the immediate topic. It is the essence of fora to have such discussions in the open and not behind the scenes via PMs. Good to know that the Lloyds volumes are being digitised, as many libraries do not have all the volumes. What about Bureau Veritas ?
  24. wefalck
    Good advice to contact the NMM. However, I would bet that she had iron knees. There would have been plenty of iron in Norway and Sweden (e.g. from Kiruna). Iron knees would make more room in the hold and being stronger.
  25. wefalck
    Somehow, the diagram appears to be correct in principle. However, there should be enough line to lower the boat into the water. I have also seen a lead-block fixed somewhere at the bottom of the round so that the fall would clear the boat, when swung out. The stay on top of the davits should be just that long to keep the blocks above the attachment points in the boat. There was either a ring-bolt cast onto the bulbous end of the davit, or there was a piece of sheet-iron fiddled onto the swivveling pivot for the blocks, with a hole punched for the stay. These are the arrangements I have seen in real life, it could have been different, of course, on the ALBERTIC.

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