wefalck

I think Sherline sort of developed their proprietary standards for a lot of things, such as T-slot sizes and spindle cones. However, they make variants of their accessories according to other standards, such as chucks with a 12x1 thread for the Unimat and 14x1 for other small machines. They also make spindle tooling with the cone for the WW watchmakers lathes. The key point too watch out for are the distances between holes/slots for fasteners that need to match the distance between T-slots of tables. Interestingly, while their lathes and mills are not bad at all, I found Proxxon rather poor in what they offer in terms of accessories, such as rotary tables for instance, and spindle tooling. I think they also have a proprietary spindle cone. At least the spindle does not take ES type collets, but something slightly different. While Sherline and Proxxon parts have a good finish in general, most things that come more or less directly from Chinese sources seem to need some finishing and adjusting treatment. If you don't mind to do this (like me) and have the necessary, you can a good starting point for a quality tool at a price for which you might not even get the materials in some countries, if you were to make it from scratch.

As to the Sherline motors: I liked them and they had a good price-performance ratio, so that I fitted two to my watchmakers lathe and the other to my historic milling machine. The older one I fitted around the year 2000 to the lathe and it is still running with its first set of carbon brushes, while the newer one developed problems after about 10 years (don't know how many hours it was actually running). Sherline asks around USD50 for a pair of simple pieces of compressed carbon with a sping attached (which would be also beyond the exemption levels for tax-free importation into the EU - I shopped around Europe, but no one seems to stock these spare parts). So I got some of the right size from a far-east source at a fraction of the price. However, the collector was eating the brushes away very fast, so that I had to dismantle the motor (for which I needed to buy an imperial size wrench) and found that the collector had lost several lamellae and the windings were cut - a total write-off. Right from the beginning this motor never seem to have been running as quietly as the other one that I have. I suspect that there was manufacturing problem with the collector as the root cause ...

For space reasons I tend to work on models for which the plan at the model-scale fits onto an A4-sheet. If needed, I clip the plans onto a cheap A4 drafting board (hardboard with clips) that I can toss around the workshop. The original plans would be on the computer anyway.

I think these questions cannot be answered categorically. Points to consider: - the glueing of styrene is rather a welding, so painted surfaces do not stick together - you have to able to carefully remove all the flash, ejector marks and sometime reshape parts, when the moulds have not been carefully aligned; this may be best done, when the part is detached from the sprue - when using enamel paints, there is no need for priming, as these paints usually slightly dissolve the styrene and therefore stick very well - the fewer layers of paint, the better; this includes primers - for a static model, that is not handled, I would carefully degrease the surface with dishwashing liquid and then even paint directly with acrylics (railway models are handled frequently and the railway modeller, therefore, would give you advice to the contrary) - the amount of paint coming out of a spray-can cannot be controlled very well and using these is better left to large surface areas, such as hulls - some parts are, indeed, easier to paint, when on the sprue, but this only works, when the area where the parts are attached can be hidden - notwithstanding the glueing issue, it sometimes better to assemble parts of the same colour first, as you may need to clean-up excess glue and fill-in seams; the paint may also hide seams - if possible, parts of different colour are better painted first and then assembled

I usually have success with either acetone or nitrocellulose lacquer thinner. For short lenghts, I may also roll the wire between two smooth pieces of hardwood until the lacquer peels off.

Can you risk this ?

I seem to have seen comments on the Internet that many of the machines where not thoroughly cleaned before assembly or burrs not removed carefully. Swarf or grinding dust in bearings and on load-bearing surfaces can cause havoc. Therefore, it seems to be good advice to dissamble any such machine completely, clean and degrease carefully before re-greasing/-oiling, assembly and adjustment. The advice to treat Chinese machinery as being in an 'advanced state of machining', rather than as a ready-to-run product seems to be a wise one. I never bought a complete machine, but only bits and pieces of accessories (e.g. chucks), and this advice seems to have been a good one there too.

Didn't go up in the building-log, did you discuss your plating arrangements somewhere ? BTW, I like your attention to detail !

If these additional axes are 'disturbing' the main x-y-z-axes, such as a column that can be inclined, or a head that can be rotated, you will have a heck of a time getting them aligned again, after you used this feature - and you have to check every time you are using the mill that nothing has moved ... such features are probably ok on Schaublin-quality machines, where there are also positive locks for the main positions, but on these little machines they are more of a nuisance. However, I have seen on the Internet people providing for positive locking using taper pins etc., which allows them to quickly align heads etc. A tilting table and a rotary table that can be mounted horizontally or vertically are more desirable additional axes.

"Some serious Googling can often lead to unexpected treasures in tooling for a good price." ... and to more expenses

Actually, the pictured Proxxon-mill is the only one of those discussed that has a lever-operated runner, like a drill-press. Normally, on a milling machine you have to lift either the table or the head inclusive drive-unit, which makes drill on a milling machine a slow operation. One has to remember that a drill-press is unsuitable for milling operations, except the very lightest ones, because the spindle is not desigened for radial loads, only for axial ones. In addition, drill-chucks are also only designed for axial loads. Lucky those, who have the space for such a Hardinge ...

I think one has to settle the required parameters first, that is maximum envisaged size of parts (then multiply by 2), moveability, required precision and viewability, etc. Sherlines, Taig, and some of the smaller Proxxon models as well as the watchmakers lathes converted into a mill are all benchtop machines, they can be moved around easily. Anything above 20 kg probably will have to have a permanent bench-space or even a dedicated stand. Weight is usually the result of increased rigidity by heaving more metal or cast iron/steel instead of aluminium around. This makes for precise quiet running machines - if you are talking about the high end and not the cheap Chinese blobs of cast iron. The spindle speeds of the typical bench-top mills are arranged for metals or plastics, not for wood. Some manufacturers offer conversions for the higher speeds that are neede to mill wood cleanly. Most of the small bench-top machines are made from aluminium. One needs to keep this in mind, if one envisages to work on steel - don't think only of the models ! Once you have a mill, you almost certainly will begin to make your own attachments for the mill and your lathe and ...

The term patent winch appears at various places in both, the English and German literature. The kind of winches as on the first picture appear on all sorts of vessels, mainly merchant ones, from around 1820 on. They reduce the number of crew required to haul-in lines, because they can be operated by one or two men, while a capstan would require several. These geared capstans also have obvious mechanical advantages. However, I was not aware that they were used as haliard winches with a winding drum. If they had no winding drum they would have had a spill-head on either side and could be operated by two to three men, depending on the load; one or two work on the cranks, while the third (or boy) would make sure that the rope doesn't foul, when coming off the spill head. The second picture shows a brace-winch that were common at least on large German ships (e.g. the Flying-P-Liners) from around 1900 on. There drums were conical to give a varying purchase, depending on the angle of the course.There are some quite detailed drawings of them in MIDDENDORF, F.L. (1903): Bemastung und Takelung der Schiffe.- 401 p., Kassel (reprint e.g. 1977 by Horst Hamecher). I can post them here, once I am back in Paris (travelling currently). At the same time small sheet-winches came into use that were mounted at the bulwarks. They look similar to the little capstan-like winches on modern sailing-yachts, but the axis is horizontal rather than vertical. I would tend to think that your winches are more like the ones shown on the first image.

Pat, I work a lot with acrylics (Plexiglas™, I have an affinity for it as my father worked for a daughter company of Röhm GmbH, one of the major producers; he developed inter alia acrylic varnishes for tablets) and have the benefit of owning a complete copy of Röhm's technical manual for working with acrylics. The problem when turning, milling or drilling acrylics is that the material has a comparatively low heat conductivity. So the cutting energy cannot be dissipated quickly enough and the material heats up above the melting point. So you have to chose the right combination of feed-rate, cutting thickness and rpms. In practice the best strategy when turning is to reduce the cutting thickness per pass. The tools also need quite an acute cutting angle, as you would use for wood. A tool-bit for brass wouldn't work. The tools should, of course, also be very sharp. So, general purpose carbide turning bits wouldn't be a good choice, HSS is much better in this case. If you get the parameters right, the part should come out almost polished - I usually get a nice satin finish that is better for painting anyway. Turning down a 10 mm acrylic rod to 1.8 mm is a chore ... would you have access to acrylic cement somehow ? I am using Röhm's (now part of Evonik) Acrifix 192, which is essentially unpolymerised acrylic glass. It polymerises quickly when exposed to day-light and particularly UV light and then has the same mechanical and machining properties as acrylic glass. You could turn your brass ferrules a tad longer than needed and then fill them in with the cement. Once polymerised, you can take them back into the lathe, face them off neatly and then polish the face. For acrylic rods, have you tried architectural modelling supply houses ? Here I can get 2 mm rod.

Somehow the gallion appears to be too low above the waterline ... we have Marquardt (occasionaly) on this Forum: http://www.segelschiffsmodellbau.com/ and one could pose the question there.

I bought some of those eye make-up sponges quite a while ago, but never had an occasion to really use them. However, I have used their larger brothers a lot for domestic DIY purposes and they work very well, particularly with acrylics, where you don't have a lot of time to equalise out brush-strokes.

I am all for building machines and accessories myself - if they can do something a commercial product cannot do or cannot do with the desired precision. Wood has its (beautiful) uses, but makeing machine tools from it is one of its less desirable uses. When I saw the original post, I was thinking that there x-y-tables and drill-stands out there on the market in exactly the right dimensions that would cost just a bit more than the materials that go into such a home-grown machine. I would rather spend the time to tweak these into something reasonably precise - as one may need to do with these Chinese products.

... the original question concerned the 1812 practice

Actually, an interesting question to which I don't have the answer is, how the tarpaulin was tied down on men-of-war up to the early decades of the 19th century. From around the middle of the 19th century on, a system of metal or wooden clamps was used, behind which the tarpaulin was fixed with battens that were tightened with wedges. On transoceanic voyages on merchantment the battens were even nailed down. The coamings around the hatches on earlier men-of-war were to low for such a system. Another way is to have a fitted tarpaulin that is shaped like a box cover and that has eyelets in the vertical parts that correspond with small eyebolts screwed into the coamings through which a line would be reeved. Somehow, I have feeling that this is rather Victorian and beyond naval and yachting practice.

Not sure what 'quarters' are ... Anyway, whenever the weather allowed hatches at this period would have been covered with gratings in order to provide fresh air and light. In heavier weather, the hatches would be covered with tarpaulins battened down tightly over them.

I think that internally stropped blocks appeared around the middle of the 19th century and were certainly quite common in the last quarter of the 19th century. There were also blocks with external metal strops (used e.g. for catting anchors), but they were abandoned in favour of the interally stropped ones, because the metal axle is shorter in the latter, leading to less breakage. One could add to the nice drawings above, that the chocks would have had bronze inserts as bearings for the axels; similarly the wooden sheave would have had a bronze bushing. Internally stropped blocks may have had cast-iron sheaves, particularly when the running part was wire.

I gather, at this period and in yachting context, the blocks would have had an internal 'frame' or cage of wrought iron. The wooden shell is only there to keep the blocks from becoming entangled and shaving. Blocks with rope strops or external iron strops would be rather unusual on a yacht of the 1880s. What scale are you working in ? If you are referring to the 1/16 scale, as your 'current build' seems to say, then there is nothing to prevent you from reproducing the prototype practice. That saves all the worries of hooks or eyes becoming detached.

You don't say what scale you are working in. In general, kit-supplied rigging thread is not very suitable. I would look into making/getting a rope-walk to make your own rigging material. At smaller scales the very fly-tying yarn you use for your bottle-ships would be a good starting point. For other materials, there are a lot of suggestions here in the forum. Coming back to your actual question: in real life, the standing rigging would not look like drawn with a ruler, but would be sagging under its own weight, forming some sort of shallow catena. This is not so easy to reproduce in a model, it can turn out looking like sloppy workmanship. In general, the standing rigging shouldn't be used to pull masts etc. into position. The masts have to aligned properly all along. Prototype practice of course is different and the standing rigging may have been used to 'trim' the masts. On a model changing temperature and humidity may throw your mast and rigging out of 'trim' or worse, can even break a mast, if set too tight. They are not strings on a guitar. So, I would set the rigging just tight enough to look neat, nothing more.

Look at how a real wooden ship was constructed. This should give you some ideas. I suppose the false? plywood deck is going to be planked over ? So there would be waterways all around the deck in front of the frames/stanchions. The space between the stanchions would be filled by 'filling' pieces. Details of the construction would have to worked out for the period and origin of your prototype.

Made a fly-cutter for the mill over the weekend: I could have turned the blank on my lathe, but I was able to source some 6 mm-lathe blanks in the USA at a reasonable price, which saved a lot of shop-time. Worked on some skylights for SMS WESPE that were milled from a solid piece of Plexiglas/Perspex and it works like a charm - if sharpened properly.