wefalck
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Mini self contained airbrush
wefalck replied to Bill Hudson's topic in Modeling tools and Workshop Equipment
I have a 'normal' airbrush only and would venture the guess that, while it looks neat, it would not be very handy for detail work, given the bulky air container. I wonder also, for how long the battery charge would last. -
French Atlatinc Coast (Ports, Forts, Arsenals and similar)
wefalck replied to Blas de Lezo's topic in Nautical/Naval History
The site of the Musée de la Marine is a good starting point: https://www.musee-marine.fr -
It is not unusual for small craft to have no capping rail at all, particularly, when they were clinker built, where the longitudinal strengthening provided by it would not be needed. The strange thing however, is to have a capping rail that actually does not cover the frame-heads. It may well be that they added this plank to provide better seating, when sailing, as you would like to balance the boat with your body. Who knows? The builders may not have been aware of the various boat-building techniques and just build something simple that did the job. As many of us are sort of rooted in the naval or yachting tradition, where everything had to be 'ship-shape - Bristol fashion', we tend to forget that such craft were built for plain functionality and not following any established traditions in craftsmanship.
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Gratulations to all involved !
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OK, photographic evidence has precedence, but this construction appears to be rather unconventional. A capping rail is called a capping rail, because it caps the heads of the frames. In addition to adding longitudinal strength it also protects the end-grain of the frame-heads from deterioration. Handcoloured photographs typically reflect the expectations or conventions of the colourists. It would be interesting to know, whether these boats were painted outside or tarred. In many regions of the world, boats are just repeatedly given light coats of tar. With the weathering, this would take on a mottled, greyish-brown look as in the coloured photograph above. However, whoever coloured the photographs may have been guided by the visual image of boats e.g. in the USA or Europe.
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Printable scale rulers
wefalck replied to FlyingFish's topic in Modeling tools and Workshop Equipment
Indeed, paper is a living object and shrinks/expands in different directions as e.g. a function of humidity. The only way to verify dimensional accuracy is to compare measurements against the drawn scale with data given numerically, either on the drawings themselves or through other sources. This requires that the measuring points of the numerical data can be uniquely identified in the drawing, which often is difficult. "... exact data at each station" - this actually looks as if you were using chain measurements. Are you checking the overall accuracy then against any total length taken off the body plan etc. ? -
Printable scale rulers
wefalck replied to FlyingFish's topic in Modeling tools and Workshop Equipment
Bob, you are absolutely right, when it concerns 'modern' engineering drawings or builder's plans. Here, the dimensions (incl. tolerances and surface qualities) indicated are the reference for laying out parts. I was referring to the 18th/19th century ship's plans or modern reconstruction drawing. There you normally find a scale drawn on the bottom of the drawing. The classical method would be to take off lengths with a compass and read the dimensions on the scale. For many years now I am using a sort of digitised procedure: I import a scan of the drawings into my 2D CAD program, where the internal scale is set appropriately. I then redraw what I need in a different layer and can read the dimensions at model scale directly on the computer. I always work 'outside-in', rather than concatenating parts in order to avoid cumulative errors. For machining parts, I print out the part in a larger scale and note down the micrometer readings needed, based on the data in the CAD. -
The coverage is a bit uneven across Europe, but there are hundreds of (scientific or semi-scientific) books or papers with plans. These are reconstruction plans based on documented evidence and not edited for modellers. Concerning the Iberian Peninsula, the coverage of Portugal is pretty good (thanks also to the museum in Bélém/Lisbon), while the coverage for Spain seems to be a bit more patchy - there is no 'national' maritime museum, only the very good naval museum in Madrid, which however does not cover vernacular craft. It may be a bit tedious to go through all the 178 pages of my literature list (https://www.maritima-et-mechanika.org/maritime/maritimebibliographies/maritimebibliography.pdf), but you can find there references to literature on boats across Europe and worldwide.
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Printable scale rulers
wefalck replied to FlyingFish's topic in Modeling tools and Workshop Equipment
To be honest, I never understood why one wants a ruler with different scales. You take a measurement off your drawings and transfer it to your material. If the scale of the drawing is different from the scale you are building in, you take your pocket calculator (or your smart-phone today) and multiply/divide with the appropriate factor. These days I work in my 2D CAD from scanned-in drawings or my original drawings. Both, the scanned drawings and the original drawings, are scaled so that I can take direct readings of distances on the screen or get the dimensions, when clicking on a drafted item. -
Again my 1910 German textbook on iron shipbuilding states that wooden deck-planks laid onto iron decks are either screwed down from underneath using wood-screws (cheaper method for smaller vessels) or bolts. The bolt-holes are drilled through holes pre-drilled into the plating near the beams - not through the beams - and then the hole is opened up from above for the plug. When the iron deck is not built flush, either the edges of the outer plates are thinned out with a shaping machine or thin gap-strips of wood are used underneath the wooden planks. The rivets would be countersunk in any case.
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Off-topic, but still with maritime relevance: my father's family comes from northern Germany and while researching the family tree, we stumbled onto two serious obstacles: - In Prussia a mariage license was 20 Goldmark, a significant sum for a poor sailor (as many of my ancestors evidently were), so they started a family, saving up for the time, when this could be legalised; however, it seems that my biological great-great-great-grandfather was lost at sea and his son was therefore registered under his mother's maiden name; she subsequently married another man, who adopted this child. In addition, many church records have been lost in the aftermath of WW2. - In Eastern Frisia church records are quite complete, but there the old Germanic tradition persisted until around 1870 to not have family names per se, but to denote a son by adding -son to his fathers first name. Plus the range of first names was quite limited, so that we have church-books full of Xxxxsons, but we don't know who is who.
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Seems that people now can have several 'gender reveal' parties ... everything is in flux ... The German government just put in a new legislation that allows you to change your name once a year (if I understood correctly) - this is the end of genealogy. It was already a mess, when men were allowed to take the wife's family some 40 years ago. I think the (western) world lost its compass and bearings.
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It all depends on the technology one has access to. These days I perhaps would cut myself a stencil with my small laser-cutter and use it for spray-painting. A completely different approach could be to have a professional making a printing screen (serigraphy) for you. Could be expensive for a one of.
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My German late 19th/early 20th century shipbuilding textbooks explicitly quote thermal and acoustic isolation as the main reason for putting wooden decks over structural iron-/steel-decks. On warships linoleum may have been used instead. Foothold on steel-decks was increased by painting them with an oil-paint/tar mixture to which sand was added, before dry more sand was sprinkled on. Torpedo-boats in the Autrian navy were painted black and didn't have wooden decking. In the Adriatic (where all the Austrian naval ports were) climate it go so hot underneath in summer and condensation trickled from the celing in winter that they put door-mat like mats in port over them.
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I like your inquisitiveness to the set the context right, talking about the paper on Mexican anthropometrics ...
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Sorry, I am a bit late to the discussion, as I have been travelling. Of course, I don't know what they really did, but if it was me, I would have put floor-panels across the boat. If there is a finger-hole provided, they could be lifted one by one for access to the bilge and bailing. My grandfather owned (but mainly used by me ) a flat-bottomed rowing-boat on Lake Constance (Germany). The bottom had a slight rocker and at the lowest point a narrow panel in the floor could be lifted out for bailing. The bailer was a shovel-like implement with a short handle. The floors had longitudinal planks grouped into panels between the benches for easy removal to clean the bilge. On the question of the 'box': many small boats had a small locker (that could be perhaps locked with a pad-lock) in the peak or the stern in which the boat's small accessories, such as the bailer, or personal items could be stored.
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I think one should make a distinction between 'weathering' and painting to achieve a weathered look. The former tem is applied by various modelling communities to a variety of techniques using materials other than paints applied after the main paint-job to achieve an (ab)used, chipped, worn and weathered look. However, weathered wood planking on ships' decks can be achieved by using different transparent layers ('washes') of paint only - very much as the painters of old have done. There is, of course, a gray-zone between the two approaches.
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I just use two staple-like clamps made from springy steel wire.
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Great metal-work, as always 👍
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Decks on real ships were bare wood. So, on a model no 'finish coat' should be applied. Sanding sealer and then rubbing down the deck with fine sandpaper and/or fine steel wool are sufficient.
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HMCSS Victoria 1855 by BANYAN - 1:72
wefalck replied to BANYAN's topic in - Build logs for subjects built 1851 - 1900
I gather I should finally get a resistance soldering kit ...- 973 replies
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- gun dispatch vessel
- victoria
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Engineering textbooks on seagoing ships from around the 1860s onwards usually show double-walled stacks. If there were several boilers, the outer pipe would enclose the smoke pipes of up to four boilers. I gather these river craft were constructed as simple and cheaply as possible. The draft then was ensured by the very high stacks. A bit off the actual topic, but as smoke stacks became very hot, the stacks could not be painted directly in the colours of the line, the paints of the day would not survive the heat. Therefore, a separate sleeve for that was often attached with some distance from the actual stack.
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Were these stacks simple pipes ? At that time double-walled stacks were common, as they improved the draft (because they stayed hot inside) and reduced the fire-hazard to adjacent supersctructures.
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HMCSS Victoria 1855 by BANYAN - 1:72
wefalck replied to BANYAN's topic in - Build logs for subjects built 1851 - 1900
At 1:72 scale perhaps I would brush over the fact that the sheaves were in slots of these battens and just set them into notches.- 973 replies
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- gun dispatch vessel
- victoria
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Apologies, Eric, for not looking/reading carefully ... What actually puzzled me on this photo with all the ladies on the boiler deck is that they are all rather precariously perched there with no rails around the deck. I am aware that risk awareness dramatically changed over the centuries, but when the boat is moving, the boiler deck may have not been a very stable and safe place. Perhaps the ladies and others just posed there for the picture, but would not normally be admitted there - hence, some simple ladder or the like for the crew may have been sufficient at the time of this picture.
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