wefalck

In the days of pocket calculators (now almost gone) and smart phones scale conversions shouldn't be an issue. Simply take your calculator and divide the prototype measure (ideally in the same units as you will be using in model construction, e.g. millimetres or inches) and divide this by the scale you are working in, say 1/60. In this case divide everything by 60. If you are on inches and feet, unfortunately, the story is not so simple, unless you use 'thou(sands of an inch)' - converting into 1/16ths, 1/32nds, etc. needs one more calculation step. I agree, for those, who are not metric, a ruler might be simpler

There are various UK-based small manufacturers who offer white-metal figurines in O-scale suitable for the 'Victorian' period. Have a look at this trader's Web-site for a start: http://www.scalelink.co.uk/

Making served eye-splices is a challenge that has bugged me for years, particularly in smaller scales. Looking at your method, I was wondering, whether one could not serve first a short length, then form a 'false' splice by stiching the loose end two times through the standing part, set the splice with lacquer or glue, and then continue to serve the standing part. This would result in a less bulky splice, as it would be served over only once.

Nail varnish is a solution of cellulose nitrate. The same stuff, zapon, is used to protect metals, such as silver and brass, from tarnishing and can be bought in DiY stores cheaply. I have used it for decades to fix rigging, because it can be dissolved again with a drop of acetone and corrections made. Beware, today there are also nail varnishes based on acrylics. These cannot be dissolved again very easily.

Indeed, dafi made a lot of experiments with fly-tying thread for small scales ... Personally, I found the Veevus-brand from Denmark the best: http://veevus.com/. They have various useful colours, such as greys, tans, and of course black. Also they go down to 16/0, which is useful for making really small-scale ropes. Usual disclaimer: I do not have any business-relationship with the company other than as a customer. I got the stuff from various ebay-sources btw.

Crisp ...

Personally, I would follow the advice of the others and use fillers between the bullheads of the kit ... Solid hulls can have long-term problems, depending on what wood was used and how they were constructed. If you use a single log of some wood with prominent grain it may warp, depending how it was cut from the tree. A layered, bread-and-butter construction avoids this, but then you might as well use the bulkheads of the kit. In bread-and-butter construction with time the layers may also come apart and should be screwed together in addition to the glue. For stationary models, when you don't want to show the interior, I would always go for fillers between bulkheads. This makes a very solid and rigid construction and allows good fairing of the hull, if the fillers are softer than the bulkheads (but not too soft).

Pat, that looks like neat progress ! May I ask a counterproductive question ? Why were the davits made from white metal ? If they were brass, it would be indeed a lot easier to solder bit and pieces on. Normally, the davits would have a sort of short piece of tube at the end, in which an eye-bolt swivvels to which the block for the boat-haliard would have been shackled. The swivveling motion is needed so that the tackle is not being twisted as the davits are swung out. The stays would be attached to the top of the eye-bolt, rather than the davit itself. I have seen the cleats for the boat-haliard attached to the round davit by tight wire windings, just as cleats would be attached to shrouds with a thin line. That can be easily reproduced with say 0.05 mm copper wire. I did not examine very closely the images of your prototype, whether such solution would be correct in this particular case, but I think it would be appropriate for the period.

Ooops ... I would have probably re-enforced such masts with a steel wire of suitable diameter right away. If you are lucky, you might still be able to drop a wire in that just sticks out a bit over the fracture and lift the upper part over it, so that it serves as a locating pin before glueing the parts together again.

May be the changes in the plans reflect the changes the original may have seen over the years, while in preservation ? Wasn't she made fit for the sea again in 1976 ?

Very clever tool that little thing to find the centre or quarter a tapering spar. Have to remember this

Excellent work, as always. Like the 'iron'-work. Using an end-mill to drill obliquely into surfaces or into curved surfaces is a good practice I am also using often. One has to be sure, however, that it is an end-mill that cuts across the centre.

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.