wefalck

Yep, have a set of them and also use them on the lathe ...

The carbon was 'lamp-black', i.e. the very fine sublimated combustion product from different types of (vegetable or animalic) oils. Lesser qualities - and would think these were used in the prototype, were also made from charring wood or bones (while ivory black sounds like a contradiction in terms, in fact it was made by charring ivory). Have a look here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carbon_black. In China and Japan ink for drawing and writing was/is prepared on the spot from rubbing ink-cakes in a shallwo vessel and then adding water together with gum arabicum as a binder. This would also be an option, if you don't like ready-made inks.

First a question: what's WOP ? There would be no problem applying thin washes of acrylics over say nitrocellulose-based wood primers/fillers. As said above, thin layers of dilute paint are the secret. In fact, I am using the paints that come pre-diluted for airbrush application. As to 'permanent' markers: my experience is that in the long-term they are not so permanent. The term 'permanent' mainly refers to the fact that they are not water-soluble. The ink or pigment used mostly is organic and hence eventually will break down under UV light. Striktly speaking 'india ink' is not an ink, which is a dye in a suitable solvent, but a very dilute suspension of colloidal carbon particles (soot). It is the carbon, the soot, that makes the ink so permanent. The carbon will not break down, like organic inks, under UV light. India ink should also work over nitrocellulose primers.

On the prototype, such fittings would have been bolted on. So why not use some suitable nails in pre-drilled holes ? I still would use some adhesive to first attach the parts and then pre-drill the holes. The additional nailing sorts out any differential movement from temperature-induced expansion.

I think some misconceptions on how planks are/should be running come from the fact that model-builders start from narrow straight stock. This is not what happened in real life. There are a few boundary conditions that determine the width and shape of each strake. They are partially structural and partially aesthetic: - You want a continuous strake running along the sheer - You want continuous wales that may or may not run more or less parallel to the sheer - You want, if at all possible the same number of strakes all along the hull The latter condition is not so easy to meet, particularly in full-bodied ships with sharp waterlines. Here the circumference of the hull will change a lot from bow to stern. You can accomodate this by a varying plank width, but you may not have trees wide enough and bending planks across the width is very difficult. So you may end up with lost strakes etc. The keel may be the only straight element in the whole hull. Now in order to bring the garbord down to the keel, you will have to bend and twist it. In addition, while the lower edge may be straight, but the upper edge certainly cannot be straight, so that you can meet the last bullet point above. In essence, you may have a double curved plank that is bended and twisted in itself. Trying to fit a straight narrow plank as garbord will result in the above mentioned problem that its end will end up somewhere half up the stem or stern. You would need to develop a cardboard template for the garboard, and possibly a couple of planks above it, in order to cut a plank from a wider piece of wood. Starting planking in sections, top-down, bottom-up and perhaps from the wales up and down is the solution to the conditions mentioned in the first two bullet points. BTW many modellers (including myself in my earlier years) tend to think of the bulwark as part of the hull. However, from a structural point of view it is not. Structurally on ships the hull ends at the sheer plank and is closed with the deck. The bulwark normally does not have a structural function and is somewhat expendable (we have all read about bulwarks being knocked off in a gale). In (open) boats the situation is different, of course.

Does this question pertain to USS CONSTITUTION ?

The trouble with all these 'cancer' studies is that it extremely difficult to eliminate so-called 'confounding' factors. We never know the whole exposure history of the individuals concerned, they may have been smokers, they may have had other exposure histories, there may be a mix of substances, etc. etc. So it is almost impossible to pin down a single substance as cause.

I found that wifes are far more careless when using potentially dangerous chemicals such as bleach ... and resistant to advice

What about e.g. (machine)gun barrels ? There are dozens, if not hundreds of parts that are round and will come out much crisper, when actually machined. I wouldn't be able to live without a lathe (anymore) regardless what kind of models I would build ...

This could be an inherent design problem with these 'continuous' machines. Perhaps you can unwind the individual threads and then gather several unwound threads as a strand. On a machine with fixed distances between both heads, you would, of course, run multiple threads as one line, zig-zaging backwards and forwards between the heads, which automaticlly puts the same tension on all strands.

I had seen this before and it is quite amazing. For the parts of a vessel that are permanently under water such complicated joints with many angles and corners may be not such a good proposition, as there would be many places prone to attack by rot. On the prototype the joints would have been tarred before assembly, which would be not so easy to do successfully with the complicated patterns. Besides, such joint are very costly to make, requiring a lot of fitting ...

Even when working on platic kits, you may still need a lathe ...

You don't say what finished sizes of 'ropes' you want to arrive at, but I see that you are working in a 1/90 scale. This may require some rather thin ropes in places. For these you may want to look into 'fly-tying thread' as used by the fly-fishing fraternity. They are man-made fibres. My preferred brand, due to sizes and colours available, is Veevus from Denmark. You can fish such threads in the wellknown bay.

... one is never at the merci of the kit designers (who have to - to be fair to them - find a balance between the amount of work invested in them and the profit they can make from a kit), one can always do one's own research and/or study reputable sources.

I would obtain a copy of HARLAND, J. (1985): Seamanship in the Age of Sail.- 320 p., London (Conway Maritime Press). This book is probably the best modern compilation on handling ships, giving examples for when, how and why certain sails were set or not and how they were handled. It is based on an extensive research on contemporary publications, pictures and other records.

I gather using full length planks has the advantage of making it easier to get clean strakes and hence to look neater on a model. Whether this is prototype-fashion is another question in addition to the scale plank length. The problem is to get the butting ends aligned properly. Perhaps the best way is to fit a full length plank and then to cut it into shorter sections before attaching it. This ensures that the planks have exactly the same wiidth at the butt.

The fewer layers between the material of the hull and the coppering the better. Any additional layer can become detached and may be incompatible with the cement used for the coppering. CA is problematic due to the fact that copper ions can 'poison' the polymerisation reaction, which then will not take place. CA is also a sort of 'redox' agent, i.e. it reacts with the fine film of copper-oxide that forms immediately once you cleaned the copper. As a result, CA can leave stains on the copper. A contact cement would be the best choice.

I don't know anything about these boats. In general, the details of rigging tend to depend very much on the person in charge of it. So it could be useful to find out more about the background of the people involved, e.g. whether they were American or British, had a RN or merchant navy background, etc. This can give you some hints of the likely practice employed for a given period.

Of course, I did not imply that anyone should ever attempt to drink sulphuric acid ! I tried to point out the difference between 'toxicity' in the scientific-medical sense and other detrimental health effects. Peolple tend to confuse these. Oh, btw, I have a PhD in geochemistry and many years of practice in chemical laboratory work

NB, sulfuric acid is not toxic ! I doubt that you could drink enough to experience any toxicity from the sulphate ions ... sulphuric acid dehydrates and oxidises organic tissue, which is something completely different. It is important to not mix up different categories of hazards. Otherwise, people get worried about things, while in reality materials can be safely handled with the proper procedures and precautions. Having said that, for me there would be certain no-nos in certain working environments. For instance, I am working seated at a wooden workbench. This means that I would shy away from using at this workplace strong oxidising acids, such as sulfuric or nitric acid. A spill is difficult to control on a wooden bench and when seated, you cannot get out of the danger zone quickly - you will have it all in your lap.

Looks good, Chuck, but when one can see the strands like this, one could also really splice the rope

I gather the answer to your question also depends on what kind of vessel and what period we are talking about. Without such information one can only guess, but the real practice may have been rather different.

Moxis, here in my building-log you can see some applications: https://modelshipworld.com/index.php?/topic/8957-sms-wespe-armoured-gunboat-1876-of-the-imperial-german-navy-by-wefalck-–-1160-scale-when-first-commissioned/&do=findComment&comment=465372. I am laminating e.g. MDF with it and manually engrave plate-lines etc. Not easy to see, but some 20 years ago I built the shell of this dinghy from planks cut form 'hard-paper' and cemented together with CA. The reason was that I needed very thin planks and due to the clinker-construction could not really sand the surface: If this Polybak® is less brittle than the phenolic resin-based material, this would be of advantage. However, with a 0.3 mm end-mill at very high speed, but low feed you shouldn't have any problems on a CNC-mill, if the material it clamped down properly. I am using ordinary HSS- or carbide-metalworking tools with it. Single-lip engravers also work well, as do diamond-impregnated tools. One has to remember that these materials, Polybak® and 'hard paper', are laminated materials and not homogeneous. In the very thin qualities you have essentially a very thin layer of pure resin, the resin-impregnated paper, and then another very thin layer of pure resin. The pure resin is rather brittle, which is why one has the paper in between to take up the tensile stresses, just like the steel bars in re-inforced concrete. A tool jerk my cause chipping of the pure resin layer. When machining 'hard paper' in a router, i.e. when generating a lot of dust and heating up the tools and the material, one should have a reasonably good ventilation. I bought a life-time supply of 0.2 mm and 0.4 mm 'hard-paper' sheet from a small company specialising in such materials in Berlin, where I lived at the time. There are various German companies on the Internet that offer the material, but I don't know, whether they would sell in small quantities and to private people. Thicker qualities, 1 mm and above, can be bought in small pieces from electronics supply houses (e.g. Conrad in Germany, Austria, and France).

Interesting discussion. The material would be called 'hard paper' (=Hartpapier) in German and is essentially a variant of Bakelite. It is paper soaked with a phenolic resin and pressed between steel-plates while setting due achieve a smooth surface and uniform thickness. It is commercially available down to 0.2 mm thickness and was/is used as insulating material in electrotechnics. Before being superseded by expoxi-based materials it was also used for circuit-boards. There are other variants of the material that are based on layers of cloth soaked with the resin that are used for making silent gears and the likes. I am using it a lot in my models because it is stiffer than polystyrene and does not contain plasticisers, so that it has a better long-term stability. Basically bakelite artefacts have been around for some hundred years now without degradation. Polystyrene will be brittle by that time. 'Hard paper' has some good properties, but is also rather brittle and may splinter easily when duller tools are used on it. One has to learn to work with the material. This Polybak® seems to be an interesting stuff. Unfortunately, their safety data sheets do not say what resin they use, it is only labelled as 'proprietary' compound. Otherwise, one could look for a similar product here in Europe. I would be very interested, as the phenolic fumes that are given off when machining my 'hard paper' are not all too pleasant and possible not too healthy either.

We don't really know, but popeye2sea is most probably right. However, the question 'bluff bowed' or not is not so simple. You would need to ask 'bluff in the waterlines or in the cross-section'. You can have bluff waterlines and sharp cross-sections or vice versa.