wefalck

Well-done, that looks almost like the 'real' thing. I didn't read again from the start and apologies, if you discussed this, but wondered, whether these 'chamber-pieces' were really fired from wheeled carriages. I thought they were only used for tranportation. It would be rather difficult to control the considerable recoil without any tackles and such. I though the guns would be placed flat onto the ground to profit from the friction and perhaps wedged down. Any insights on this?

On modern reconstructions/restorations, they typically bevel the planks that there is a gap of a few mm on the outside. This is necessary to avoid splitting the wood with the caulking iron by accident. Deck-planks on iron and steel ships often seem to have a groove planed in half-way down the thickness in addition to the bevel mentioned in another post above. This served as a sort of 'reservoir' for the oakum, preventing it from being squeezed out, when the planks became wet and expanded and acting as a seal, when they shrank on becoming dry.

There was a special tool to unload muzzle-loading guns. It looks like a cork-screw, but with two parallel wounded screws. With this the ball could be extracted, which was slightly undersize and the wads that kept the ball in. For the powder a wooden shovel the size of the bore was available. However, unloading the charge was a rather dangerous operation, as one could imagine. Unloading of later breech-loading guns was a bit simpler and somewhat less dangerous. Normally, the bag was loaded in silk bags that could be pulled out and put back into their transfer containers. The rammers for the projectiles could also be used to unload them by pushing from muzzle. For this the rammers were hollow in order to clear the fuse. In gun-drill no 'hot' charges were used and special drill-shells, both of which where filled with saw-dust/sand mixtures that had approximately the same weight as the powder. The barrels of early breech-loading guns would wear out rather quickly, so that, apart from the cost, rarely practice shooting was undertaken. Apart from the mentioned gun-drills, target practices involved e.g. a small-caliber inlay barrel or even a hand-gun barrel. There are maintenance manuals and instructions available from roughly the middle of the 19th century for several navies.

It's indeed one of the few maritime/naval museums that has not yet been given a new 'mission' by museum specialists that have no clue of (and interest in) the actual subject. It has a wonderful collection of large-scale models. A very personal selection from repeated visits here: https://www.maritima-et-mechanika.org/maritime/madrid/madrid.html

I think on earlier boats these connecting rods (as they would be called on locomotives and the likes) were indeed baulks of timber. I gather the opening in the cladding would have been kept as small as possible to keep spray from the wheel out. Wouldn't have been there be quite a bit of repair on those boats, so you may be able to patch up the existing hole a bit.

I prefer collets for small parts, much safer and more precise. Does the Atlas have a taper in the spindle and is it bored through?

What's the material? They look rather grey, like die-cast zinc.

Indeed! OK, these would be worn tires, but one could add even more realism by rolling them under a not too fine file , which would sort of impress a fake thread onto the running surface.

Thank you very much, gentlemen, for your kind feedback ! *********************************************************** More Crew While dispositioning the crew according to the envisages story-board - the crew undergoes some gun drill under the supervision of a petty officer, with the captain (Kapitänleutnant, but I didn’t manage to paint the two embroidered stripes on the sleeves) looks on, the first officer (Leutnant zur See, one stripe on the sleeves) takes notes, and two men man the helm - I noticed a certain emptiness and lack of activity in the other parts of the boat. So, I sifted through the Preiser-sprues in search for some additional suitable figures. Thus, more mid 20th century German railway staff joined the 19thcentury Imperial Navy. There will be two stokers taking a break from their arduous work, a rating on signalling duty walking back towards the mast, and a petty officer on the after deck going about his duty. As before, jackets had to be trimmed down and breast pockets scraped off in order to represent blouses and high-waist trousers. The single-breasted railway-jacket was converted into the double-breasted one of the navy, caps or hats altered. The painting proceeded as before, but I noted that the practices from the other figures paid off. The stokers wear the white working blouse and trousers, which seems a bit strange in a boiler-room environment full of coal-dust, soot, and sweat, but I suppose the undyed cotton stands up better to serious washing than any coloured cloth. After painting, these figures were dusted with grey pastel. To be continued ....

As to the the disposition of the figures, it is useful to make a sort of 'story-board', at least meantally, that notes down what is happening, who is involved (officers and ratings), and how many are needed for the task.

The long beading needle are good idea, as they allow you to align the ratlines properly before you pull the thread through 👍🏻

At this scale buckets should be easy to make from thin paper or sheet-metal. They were either zinc-coated sheet-metal or emaille. Just look up photographs of the real thing and get inspired. The typical brushes as used on boats could be made in a similar way with thread as the pommels on childrens' knitted ski-caps - talk to a female family member, they probably will know, or have again a look on the Internet. This thing should be fitted to a wooden broom-handle then.

Rats in the ruts …

I am teaching a course of which one element is the interaction between science and society. One thing I tell my students is that it is sometimes (more) interesting to look at what is not subject to research and why. There is the myth of 'independent' science and research. In reality, much of the science is driven by what politics think is 'relevant' and, hence, makes research grant money available. One of those effects could be that pre-Hispanic culture is favoured over the 'colonial' culture. Similarly, there is a lot of money for research on societal/social issues, but little on the material culture of the respective societies. This overlooks the fact that these are usually closely interwoven. For these reasons, research into boats as such in many parts of Europe finds little interest on the side of public funders and museums neglect this aspect often.

Indeed, I thought that many of the photographs may have been taken by (international) travellers. The Baltic coast, in which I am currently interested in, didn't quite attract so much international tourism. For the local summer vacationers, these maritime things were not attractive enough I suppose. In addition, due to WW2 there have tremendous archival losses. It's also a question of attitude towards the maritime history. The UK has much closer links with the sea than most other countries. There is a lot of information also in Scandinavia, the Netherlands, Italy, and to some extent Spain and Portugal. France has caught on in more recent decades, but Germany is a developing country in comparison.

I am glad that the crushed glass worked. I wasn't aware that you can actually get in various meshes for decorative purposes. How much of this will be visible in the end, when the model is completed?

I like that kind of research and it’s quite surprising how many photographs there are of this ‚remote‘ area. I found it difficult to find similar pictures for certain European areas. Perhaps there were more travellers in Mexico? For the bananas, you could look into seeds. I thought of caraway seeds, but they may be a bit small for 1/32 scale.

I thought that the smokebox and the stack were a bit on the large side … but then such ships were often crowded around the bow. Check that in then end there is enough space for cranking the winch.

Thank you very much gentlemen. I don't do this kind of painting very often these days, so I missing a bit the routine (the last time I painted figures is already ten years ago. Thank god, the hands are still as steady as they used to be (which is not as much as I would wish). I found working acrylics with a brush always a bit of awkward because they either dry too fast or run too much. Perhaps I don't have the necessary practice. Perhaps I should go back to using oils for the faces etc., as I used to for 1/35 scale figures many decades ago. I gave it a try on some 1/87 figures for the botter-model, but was not so successful either. However, oils stay workable a long time, which is a plus and minus. With acrylics you can go back to the same area after a few minutes. It's always amazing to see what the real figure modellers can do with their brushes ... And yes, we may go through several bottles of Port per year, so there is always a supply of fresh corks.

Pat, think a jig like this will work. On the other hand, I wonder whether a simple (but dimensionally precise) mock-up of the mast-head wouldn't be sufficient. The cheeks could be held temporarily in place with pins driven through the holes. This would then ensure a tight fit to the mast-head.

Already another month passed, but not idle, albeit interrupted by several travels ... ******************* Painting the figures In order to better see how the sculpting turned out and any imperfections, the figures were given a spray-coat of matt white paint (Vallejo Model Air). This also served as a primer that made hand-painting easier. I like the consistency of Vallejo Model Air paints also for application by brush, but several coats may be needed for certain colours. The crew figures with a white base-coat Unfortunately, only at a relatively late painting stage some molding flash was noticed that could not be removed anymore. Also, it turned out, that some faces were actually not molded very well, which made it difficult to paint them. Painting such small figures requires a bit of a strategy. However, regardless of scale, I usually begin with the face and any other exposed skin. The reason is that, apart from white, most other clothing colours tend to be darker and have a better coverage and perhaps more importantly, clothing covers the skin, so in order to get precise edges between the clothing and the skin, it is more natural to paint towards the skin, rather than trying to approach the clothing with the skin colour. At this scale no attempt is made to paint eyes and such details, but rather to paint the shadows under the eyebrows and in other parts of the face. I find the way of how Canaletto treats the staffage in his paintings a useful reference. It is fascinating, how he can bring the ‘people’ to life with just a few brushstrokes and blobs of paint. Almost completed paint job on the crew figures It may be counterintuitive, but it is sometimes better to begin with painting details and then work with the main colour towards them. Or to use an iterative procedure: painting say the main colour of the clothing, then adding detail, followed by touching up with the main colour, where the brush had gone astray. Narrow lines, such as embroidery, are difficult to achieve, but too wide lines can be reduced in width by painting the main colour against them. The painting proceeded in several iterations and I have not taken pictures of the various steps. The crew ready to go on board The Vallejo Model Air paints have a slight satin sheen, which is good for many applications, but in order represent cloth better, the figure were given at the end a light spray coat with matt varnish. To be continued ....

BTW, if you repost pictures from other peoples' Web-sites, it would be polite to provide a reference to the source ...

I am surprised that they are allowed to sell this still. I thought stools/chairs with three or four casters don't get a CE certificat anymore due to the risk of them tipping over and rolling away under your butt ... chairs have to have five casters these days.

Sounds like a good solution! I was indeed wondering, how you would deal with this area of the hull ...

Some people, including myself, use hypodermic needles as marlinspikes for making false splices miniature rope. One has to blunt the edges a bit - they are obviously very sharp and meant to cut, but you don't want to cut your rope. You twist the rope a bit so that it splits and then you push the 'marlinspike' through. Now you can feed the free end into the needle and slowly pull it out with the rope inside - repeat and you will end up with a reasonable splice. As I had a nice ebony handle lying around (which may have come from some antique medical instrument from my fathers estate), I made a brass ferrule for it and cemented a hypodermic needle into it. I think it was a 20G (yellow). For serving, I would try to get hold of some 16/0 fly-tying thread, which is not fuzzy. Indeed, serving without some 'helping hands' is difficult. I tend to use half-hitches, rather than just winding the thread around. Each turn in this way can be set and does not come loose. Of course, having/building a serving machine would be the next step up ...