wefalck

The tanning of sails was only done on small(er) boats, where there often was, due to their operating conditions, no opportunity to dry the sails before stowing. The tanning, which involves dyeing the sail in a bark solution and applying a mixture of tallow/oil with yellow or red ochre, makes the sails somewhat water repellent and resistant against mould (the main objective), but at the expense of slightly damaging the fibres. Tanned sails are not as strong as undyed sails for the same material. wefalck

True, a partial coat of gloss may locally change the 'depth' of the lustre of the paint. Actually, if the decals aren't too complicated, I would cut them with a sharp scalpel as close as possible to the printed area. This avoids this 'silvering' effect. wefalck

The set-up and tools depends on the lathe you have, the size of the cannons, and on how many you have to make. As one has to turn up to left and right shoulders as it where, i.e. to the bands, I would use a narrow straight tool. That is a tool that is 0.5 to 1 mm wide at the front and has side-relief ground into it. For brass there should be no top-rake, or it will 'dig in'. People tend to make cannon from one piece, but, as you have to turn it around at some stage to finish both ends, they may be difficult to hold, because the profile is not cylindric, but conical, or even curved. Therefore, I would break down the design into two parts. The bands offer convenient separation points. Because the parts are shorter, you can probably also work without tailstock support, which makes working sometimes easier. The front part you can drill through a the calibre of the gun and in the back part you drill a blind hole with exactly the same diameter. A short piece of rod allows you to align the parts for soldering or glueing. I would turn the basic shape using the slide rest and then finish off the rounded corners either using a file or a hand-graver. Again, the short sections make this operation easier. Finally, I would go over the pieces with steel wool while the lathe is running. I would finish all the front parts and all the back part together, so that you can keep the same set-over for turning the conical parts. Duplicators are probably nice (I never use one), but to make a good template is not that easy. I make myself a table or sketch of the slide-rest movements, so that I can repeat exactly the same movements for each part. This is akin to what a CNC-lathe would do under computer control. When the guns are to be painted anyway, you may want to consider using Plexiglas/Perspex or aluminium as a material. I think it is cheaper than brass and lighter. Personally, I love to work with Plexiglas. It is also easy to glue and takes acrylic paints well. wefalck

You don't say what you are working on and how the finish will be. Typically, decals are applied once the basic paints are on. Some people apply a glossy varnish at the place were the decals go - this prevents air from being trapped in the pores of matt paint, which manifests itself by a silvery sheen in clear parts of the decal. Any wheathering etc. is then applied. Finally, a light matt or satin overcoat will blend everything together. wefalck

Yep, there is lots of useful stuff in that profession. My father trained as a MD (but never practiced) and after he died, I found a lot of interesting 'tools' in his drawers, including a collection of old-time anatomical scalpels (really heavy duty - I don't like to imagine what they were used for ), a really sharp bone chisel, needle holders, arteria clamps, pincettes, etc. wefalck

Thanks,@realworkingsailor, there is no real urgency. I have a particular future application in mind and if you did get a chance at some stage to take a picture, this would be much appreciated. Tulles have the disadvantage of all commercial threads: they are fluffy with a lot of fuzz. I think that threads of these fabrics are particularly fluffy to make them soft and flowing. The hairnets the ladies of our grandmother's generation used to wear might be something else to look into, though the mesh-width might too wide for this purpose. wefalck

@realworkingsailor, that looks like interesting stuff. Unfortunately, the picture on their Web-site is rather small. Would you have a close-up of the (unpainted) material ? wefalck

I don't know any details about these nets, but could imagine that it would be possible to make one's own nets in larger scales (say 1/64 or larger) using fly-fishing fly-tying threads. I would make myself a jig with appropriately spaced rows of headless pins to mark the location of the knots and then knot away. There is a special type of knot for nets that can be found in the literature. For smaller scales, one could perhaps just pierce the thread with a needle, where the knot is supposed to be and secure the crossing with a drop of lacquer. wefalck

Are you guys talking of sheaves or really of the axles, i.e. the pins on which the sheaves run ? I have never heard that the axles were made from anything else, but metal. The friction of wood on wood would be rather to high and they would very quickly wear down without constant greasing. I think there has never been a complete shift over from wood to metal as far as blocks for organic and man-made fibres is concerned. The sheaves of blocks for wire rigging to my knowledge have (almost) always been from cast iron. The wire rope would simply saw into wooden sheaves. Also, wire rope requires relatively large sheaves that would be quite expensive to make from wood. wefalck

Excuse my ignorance: what is a 'geostationary' ? I know about geostationary satellites ... Did you mean a haemostat forceps by chance ? As I am not a great fan of coca (cola), using it as glue, might be a more useful application (apart from using it as a rust converter) ... or did I get something wrong there as well ? wefalck

I made a tumbler from one of those plastic film containers (remember films ? ) lined with sandpaper and mounted on a 2.35 mm arbor to be used with my hand-held drill. However, it did not work, as I only had a dozen or so blocks (1.5 mm long) to do. It needs quite a large amount of blocks to work. Perhaps I should have added some rice grains or something like this to make up the numbers - only thought about that possible solution just now . With too few too small blocks they don't really 'tumble', even at slow speed, and themselves don't have enough weight to excert sufficient abrasive forces. wefalck

Thomas Ender made various coloured pencil drawings on board of SMS AUSTRIA during the passage to Brazil. The main purpose of the voyage was to take the austrian prinzess Leopoldine there to become the wife of the brazilian Emporer. Ender's artistic legacy is preserved in the Kupferstichkabinett of the Viennese Academy of Fine Arts. I have several books on Ender, but only one plate shows another deck view of SMS AUSTRIA. As to the accessibility of the shrouds, I seem to have seen that in some instances a sort of net with a mesh-width similar to the ratlines was installed on the inside of the bulwark reaching to the top deadeyes to facilitate climbing into the shrouds. wefalck

Sherline et al. call their mills because they are mills. As I said, it has nothing to do with spindle speeds, only with the geometric arrangement of the machine tool - and the design of the spindle: a drilling machine is designed for axial forces, a milling machine for radial forces and axial forces on the spindle. The table of (co-odinate) drilling machines may also not be designed for being moved under load, i.e. for milling, though using it for light milling might be ok. wefalck

The spindle speed has to be a function of cutter diameter and material to be worked. For a cutter of say of 50 mm diameter and working steel, you would go down to a few hundred RPM. Conversely, with a small router in wood you need probably 10k or 20k RPM to achieve a clean cut. wefalck

There are litterarly thousands of 54 mm or 1:32 scale figurines in either white metal or plastic (hard or soft) on the market. One has to look a bit around other fora for this. They come in whole figures or also as separate arms, bodies, heads etc. Some imaginative surgery will be needed probably. The Tamiya plastic soldiers are 1:35 scale and visibly smaller and more delicate than the 1:32 scale figures and in comparison there is a much smaller range. The 54 mm scale market covers all ages and subjects. The G-gauge has a scale of 1:22.5 BTW. I have never heard of any 1:29 scale. wefalck

What lathe do you have and are you talking about collets for the tailstock or collets for the headstock ? These days one can get cheap and quite good quality ER-type collets from the usual Chinese sources. However, ER-collets are toolholding collets. Due to their design the material has to be held must pass through the whole length of the collet. If one takes in short lengths of material, the collets will distort, when tightened. Therefore, one cannot use them in the headstock for holding (short) workpieces. wefalck

I seem to be overtwisting my yarns (it is very difficult to see on those fly-tying yarns I am using currently). If I simply cut loose the 'rope' from the ropewalk, it would curl up in a mess of kinks. So, I cut loose one end, secure it with a knot and then let it un-twist in a controlled fashion while keeping some tension on it. I believe that the man-made fibres from which these fly-tying yarns are made do not stretch a lot compared to natural fibres, such as cotton or linen. So there is little chance of 'hardening' it. wefalck

Not sure what is meant by 'hardening' ... I am using the 'topless' method as described by Frölich on my home-made ropewalk. This first twist the yarns that then are laid/lay themselve into the opposite direction. Whether the resulting rope has a pronounced tendency to unravel or not seem to depend on the type of starting material. When I use cotton or linen, the friction between the yarns seems to keep it together. The fibres of fly-tying yarns, on the other hand, seem to be rather smooth and springy so that unsecured ends spring open quickly. wefalck

Lucky those, who build ships up to say the mid-19th century - before outside metal straps on blocks, double hooks (devil's claws), shackles and the like became dominant. The various rope strops are really easy to reproduce down to 1:100 scale in comparison. I made shackles down to 1.5 mm in length, but this is tedious and probably not viable for larger ships with elaborate rigging. For blocks seized to eye-bolts I used strops with two false splices in the past. The false splice can be reinforced by a seizing with a few rounds of fly-tying thread. In another method simulating served strops I use silk-covered copper wire. Once this wire was very rare and I recovered some from my father's (who was a radio amateur and early electronics buff) scrap box and from flea-markets. With a market now catering for radio-nostalgia, this copper wire seems to be available again from commercial suppliers. For the strop I form a loop around the block and another one through the ring of the eye-bolt; the ends overlap and are secured by seizings of fly-tying thread. NB. before using fly-tying threads I used a very fine two-ply yarn that once was sold for repairing ladies' stockings - as today they are considered consumables, these threads seem to have disappeared from the market. wefalck

I use to good effect those stronger razor-like blades with re-inforced back (I believe they are also sold as blades for 'balsa'-planes). As they are ground from both sides at the cutting edge, these 'scrapers' don't seem to need a burr for cutting. Steel wool gives a very nice satin finish on hard woods, but also leaves behind tiny fragments of steel that may be diffisult to remove from corners, between stanchions, etc. wefalck

The 1:100 scale range is rather limited and largely restricted to pedestrians of various nationalities, as they target architectural model builders. I don't think there are many useful poses. At the above link you can download the full catalogue and judge for yourself. These surgeries or conversion are quite a bit of work. However, there may be certain repetions in pose required, e.g. for gun-crews, so that one may consider taking molds from conversions done and re-cast them in resin. Though this may result in the loss of very fine detail (e.g. individual fingers), the figures are probably still better than the metal casts offered by some suppliers. wefalck

From an anatomical point of view the best available figures on the market are those by Preiser in Germany, though their nominal scale is 1/87 to suit the HO railway gauge. They have a few modern sailors, but nothing for the Napoleonic period. Converting suitably posed figures from one of their unpainted sets is not too difficult by carving and sculpting. They also have an unpainted 'anatomy' set, that can be dressed using sculpting putty. Within the next few days I will be showing some examples here of Dutch fishermen, that I have created out of figures from one of their sets. wefalck

A self-centering 4-jaw chuck is only useful, if you work a lot with square bar stock. It does not replace an independent 4-jaw chuck. The point about the independent one is, that you can center round, square of rectangular material to any point with (near) zero run-out. With self-centering chucks you are at the merci of their production tolerances (which can be pretty large for stuff in the 100€/$/£ price range). wefalck

In theory, a 4-jaw chuck can be centered perfectly. In the above case this would be an overkill. The pillars on which a model rests are not really pieces of precision machinery. The issue of centering perfectly is only really relevant, if you have to say turn a piece in the chuck to machine the end that was originally in the chuck, or if you have pre-cast holes or something like that. Otherwise, the procedure of centering is just like that: centering by eye, turning slowly (perhaps with a dial indicator touching the piece), losening one jaw, tightening the opposite, turning by hand, and so on. Very tedious. I very rarely use a 4-jaw chuck for turning round material. As I said, collets are really the best option for our purposes. Unless you really do high-precision machining, collets allow you to re-chuck material. There are also now jaws sticking out. The downside is that the maximum diameter is rather restricted, depending on the size of your lathe. wefalck

I agree with what was said above, a jacobs chuck is fro drilling, which only involves axial forces, not for turning, which involves mainly tangential forces. Your second set up is the one that would normally be used in turning. A general rule is that a part should only protrude 3x the diameter, if unsupported by a tailstock. If the part is longer, one should center-drill it and use a life or dead center in the tailstock to support the outboard end. Personally, I am not so fond of 3- (or 4-)jaw chucks because of the risk you mentioned, namely to be caught by a jaw. Most turning work I do with collets. On the other hand, if you keep your hands well off the headstock, you should be ok. wefalck