wefalck

Inspired by Michael Mott’s excellent tool (https://modelshipworld.com/index.php?/topic/14463-restoration-of-bassett-lowke-albertic-by-michael-mott-scale-1100/&page=5&tab=comments#comment-452268 and newer version further down in the thread as well as BANYAN’s review of it: https://modelshipworld.com/index.php?/topic/15249-michael-mott-designed-third-hand/&tab=comments#comment-473797), I decided to put into action something that I had planned to do for a long time. From my late father’s estate I inherited a cast-iron foot that presumably belonged to a some sort of chemical laboratory equipment. Not being impressed with the commercial ‘third-hand’ I kept this piece of cast-iron with the view of converting it into a tool with less and better controllable degrees of freedom. Also just having a pair of cheaply made alligator clamps didn’t add to the useability of that tool that, in consequence, spent most of its life on the shelf. I also inhereted a good quantity of pre-war quality alligator clamps. Third hand with small hooks for rigging work The cast-iron foot was de-rusted and a proper seat for the bar-clamp had to be filed – I could not find a way to clamp the piece to the table of my milling machine. The foot then was primed and painted in my favourite ‘bottle green’ (RAL 6007). Third hand with small clamps in steel Working predominantly in small scales with tiny parts, I sized the tool appropriately. The main bar is 6 mm steel and the two pillars are 10 mm aluminium. I actually prefer steel, but in this case working with aluminium was faster on my small machines. The arbors for all the clamps are 4 mm steel rod. The diameter of 4 mm was chosen, as the alligator-clamps have sleeves that are meant to be pushed over 4 mm-banana-plugs. Third hand with alligator clamps Thinking about the likely kind of applications, I made a pair of small sprung clamps from steel, a pair of larger toolmaker-style clamps (excellent idea by Michael, btw) in aluminium to be used for soldering, a pair of small hooks in 0.5 mm piano-wire for rigging tasks, and a pair of collect-chucks. Third hand with toolmakers-style clamps in aluminium The collet-chucks are a commercial products from China with ten collets that clamp from 0 to 3.2 mm. I thought this might be a good idea for clamping wires and perhaps ropes safely without distortion or marring. They were so cheap at 1.50€ for a chuck with ten collets that there was no point in makimng them myself. Third hand with collet chucks to hold wires etc. I also plan to make set of clamps from bakelite for soldering, but have not received the material yet. The thumb-screws are also bought-in, as I have local source here in Paris that sells them for one Euro a piece, which is not exactly cheap, but good value considering how much time I would have spent making them myself.

I have been thinking of adapting a dentist's angled drilling head ('hand-piece') for such purposes, but the problem is that it only takes short inserts with a fixed diameter. So one would need to construct a collet/chuck as well. The problem with smaller motors is that they have higher RPMs in order to deliver power. Otherwise you don't get enough torque. This in turn needs a well-balanced chuck in order avoid vibrations. In your case I would replace the Philipps-screw with a headless screw (which is what these little collet-chucks come with anyway, as far as I know)

Found a recipe: 40ml 25% H2SO4; 5 g SnCl2; 50g Thiourea. Add the sulfuric acid to 700 ml distilled water and dissolve the tin-chloride in it, add the thiourea and add more distilled water to give 1 l solution. I would divide the recipe by 10, as it seems to go a long way, the tin layer being only a few micrometres thick. Also the thiourea breaks down after a while which you can see from a yellow layer of elemental sulfur on the inside of the bottle. I have this effect in my commercial product, but it still seems to work. Not sure what the thiorurea does in the recipe.

Actually, no. This is a deoxidiser for soldering-iron tips. Something different from a tin-solutions that plates brass etc. through a chemical reduction reaction.

Pat, it is not really a brand, but was sold by a German trader specialising in modelling tools (https://www.fohrmann.com/). I just checked, but they don't list it anymore. Ther German term to look for would be 'Glanzverzinnung'. Actually, I do have a very useful antique book from the 1880s or so that has a lot of useful recipes for making all sorts of workshop solutions and materials yourself - from a time, when you couldn't just go into a shop or mail-order such things. I should check, whether there is a suitable recipe in it - though nowadays with all those safety and environmental concerns it becomes difficult to buy the ingredients ...

Pat, the tinning solution I use is a German commercial product. They don't give the composition, but it most likely contains Sn(II)-chloride, hydrochloric acid and thiourea. You just dip the copper or brass part into the solution and by a currentless (so it is not a galvanic process) electrochemical reaction a thin layer of tin is formed. In itself it may be too thin for soldering, unless the two parts are really pressed together, but with a bit of soldering paste one can easily solder together etched frets. As a matter of fact, I almost always tin my etched frets in this way to facilitate soldering, unless I want the brass colour. Also, when the painting is not perfect, the silvery colour shines through and looks more like iron than the original brass colour, of course. I also tin like this other brass parts that are meant to simulate iron or steel - this is usually better than painting.

It depends also on what size of areas you would want to paint. For small quantities I use pre-thinned ready to use paints. Of course, you buy a lot of water there, but it saves the hazzle of messing around with thick paints and trying to get a homogeneous dilution. Over here in Europe I have used Schmincke Aero-Color (artists' range), as well as Vallejo's modellers paints. There are quite a few specialist suppliers for modellers on the market now, e.g. Gunze from Japan.

PROXXON has been doing something of similar size over here in Europe for many years, but it is a 12V cable-version: There was a problem with the take-up of the end-thrust by the motor-bearing alone, but I sorted this with a small metal disc at the free end of the electric motor.

I know this etching-problem very well: for instance, you cannot have raised rivets on both sides of a part with just one go in etching. You have to have two parts back to back. I designed my frets so that I have register-holes through which I can insert locating pins and then soldered two mirror-image frets together. As noted above this also has the advantage that you can work with thinner sheet, which reduces the amount of undercutting. To facilitate soldering with a minimum of solder, I cleaned and degreased the frets carefully and then plated them in a tinning solution. For the actual soldering you only need some flux and a tiny amount of soldering paste.

I made such things from silk-covered copper wire, which can be bent into the desired shape and direction. The eyes have to faked and wound with very fine thread.

I wouldn't necessarily subscribe to the statement that 'historic' paint mixtures have a shorter life than modern mixtures. It always depends on what you are talking about. Mineral paints based on mineral pigments are essentially permanent and form a strong chemical bond with the substrate. For instance, any houses, e.g. in Italy, haven't been painted for centuries and the paint as such remains intact, apart from the general weathering of the surface. Paint on wood is different, as it not normally forms a chemical bond with the wood, but kind of mechanically holds on to it by locking into the surface. 'Modern' and 'historic' seem to have different ageing and weathering behaviour: while old, e.g. lineseed-oil based paints seem to weather over the whole surface, becoming dull and eventually wearing thin and becoming flaky, modern e.g. latex-based paints may have a higher weathering resistance over the surface, but eventually the paint film develops cracks and weathering occurs underneath the paint film, so that it detaches as large flaps.

I love these 'steam-punk' details one does not see very often on models. There are several models in the museum in Paris that show such alternatives to the classical dead-eyes, with which the French navy seems to have experimented since the 1830s. It is interesting to note that many technological innovations diffused only slowly into the navies. Apart from conservativism in the higher echelons one reason is that battle or storm damage was more difficult fix without a shipyard.

Were these cheek-block housings actually so square ? I seem to have seen examples with rounded-off contours, presumably to reduce chafing, when the upper sails are taken down and to provide more clearance for the chain.

As geochemist I always try to dig deeper into these things ... Red is used here in Europe too to paint whole houses or the timbers of half-timbered houses. Particularly the country-houses of Sweden in some regions are known for this. The colour there is known as Falu Röd = the Red from Falun (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Falu_red). Falun was one of the big copper-ore producers since the Middle Ages or even before. Apparently, the pigment is derived from the tailings of copper-ore processing and contains finely dispersed iron-oxides, mixed with accesories, such as copper- and zinc-compounds, perhaps also some aluminium-compounds. The hue of these iron-oxide based pigments depends on the amount of water in the crystal assembledge and, hence, on the amount of firing. Higher temperatures of firing turn yellow ochre into more reddish to brownish ochres. As noted above, the type of binders and fillers further allow to modify the hues. Unlike these mineral iron-oxyhidroxide pigments that were cheap and are stable in the light, most organic red dyes were expensive and are not so stable.

Pigments and dyes in a maritime (or nearly so on inland waterways) are always interesting subjects. What was the pigment on New England buildings ? Iron oxide tends to be more yellowish/brownish, rather than bright red as a pigment. The filler in the paint may also change the hue, as would indeed the surface the paint would have been applied to. Any idea about the actual pigments and their sources in the Midwest ?

In order to answer your questions, one has to look at the 'construction' of ropes. Ropes are made from fibres that are spun into threads. These threads are gathered into strands. The strands are twisted against the 'lay' of the later rope so that they kind of wind around each other - this is what the ropewalk is for. Sewing threads or crochet yarns may consist of two (typically) or more strands, but the strands are not as tightly twisted as in a ropewalk. Therefore, they cannot be used directly. If you chance upon a three-strand yarn, you can unravell it and then treat it in your rope walk. The starting point for us are different 'sizes' of yarns. Each yarn will be come a strand, so each size only gives you one size of rope. If a given manufacturer offers only one size, you may have to look somewhere else. If you twist together three ropes already produced in your ropewalk, you get a thicker rope - of course, but actually a different type of rope, a cable, i.e. a rope made of nine strands in groups of three. Another version is the shroud-laid rope, which consists of four instead of three strands and is only used for specific purposes. On the prototype it would also have a core of a thinner rope.

I just take a brass or copper wire of suitable diameter and punch it flat at two points with a round, flat punch. I then lightly mark the centre in the flats and drill. The wire is then bent to the shackle shape around a pin nailed into a piece of wood. The shackle now can be cut off from the wire and both flat ends shaped with a fine grindstone in the hand-held electrical drill.

The wax is being printed, i.e. extruded hot from the printer's nozzle.

I would agree that our tools should be as aesthetic, as our products ...

On the prototype the rope would have an eye-splice in the end and would be attached to the block via a shackle. I don't know what scale your model is in or what lengths the blocks would have, but making shackles down to a length of 1.5 mm isn't too difficult. Likewise, it is quite easy to make 'false' eye-splices into the end of your rope using a sewing needle.

I gather the yards would have been used, when no other equipment was available, e.g. when moored in a river or so and discharging into/loading from barges.

Harbours in the old days could become very congested with the often long waiting times to complete the loading. As yards were considerably longer than the width of the hull, at least the lower yards were lifted up at an angle in order not get entangled with neigbouring ship or harbour cranes etc. The universal joint would help in this. Before these forged universal joints were introduced in the late 1840s(?), the truss and parrel would have to be loosened for the purpose.

As to the video above: the seamen finish/begin the serving in a similar way in full-size practice. On a model, I would feed the end through the rope with needle, as shown before somewhere, this is safer.

The mechanical point about the band-clamps (if you are referring to device that consits of four angles around which a string is lead and tigthened) that the resulting vector of force points to the centre of the workpiece, i.e. it pulls a frame or the side of a box together and also ensures that the corners are 90°. Now in the case of planking the question would be: do you see it running along the strake or perpendicular ? Running along the strake would not be useful unless you run the string over some piece of wood that are put perpendicular to the plank, so that you get a downward force. Winding your vessel with a string running perpendicular to the strake, on the other hand, might be useful to keep planks down. However, planks are often bend in two directions, i.e. not only along the strake, but also to follow upward sweeping curves. With just a string the latter might be difficult to achieve. I frequently use band-clamps in making display cases for models.

I don't know what the design of the spindle today looks like, but one should take care that no oil enters the ball-bearings, as this may dilute the grease there and could lead to early wear.