wefalck

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 ...

I gather there various constructional and hydrodyamic factors play together. Modern freight carriers have a much higher L/B-ratio than these rowing boats. A long parallel midship section is not detrimental to water resistance, but rather encourages laminar flow. If you did cut out that part and stuck together the bow and stern sections, the overall shape would not be so dissimilar to that of the boats of old. One can only speculate how clinker building developed and Greenhill believes that it originates in expanding dugouts by adding planks while at the same time the dugout mutes into a sort of hollow bottom plank, eventually becoming the keel. This lends itself to smooth curves in (shell-first) planking with large radii. There is strength in flexibility in this construction as we know from experimental replicas. It is only with plank-on-frame construction that tight bends are possible, leading to a rigid skeleton with a shell around it (certain Dutch vernacular boats are probably the most extreme examples in that respect).

Talking about launch parties: I always found it quite daring to be on a ship the runs down the launch-way, particularly, when it is a side-launch. The risk of capsizing is definitely there.

Talking about memories, I seem to remember a whole room being dedicated in the NMM in Greenwich to the Sutton Hoo find, where they showed a section of the boat in 1:1 of what it looked like after excavation: basically there were the imprints from the planks long gone and the remains of the iron rivets. I gather if several 'old codgers' get onto the same project that cuts down construction time compared to a single beavering away in his own workshop. Preparation and fitting times for planks are not so much different whether it's 1:1 or a model.

Seems to reflect the current state of France: headless 🫣 Nice paint-job, btw 👌🏻

Another source for extremely thin, long-fibre 'Japan'-paper are supply shops for art- and book-restorers. This paper is used to 'invisibly' double up ripped or damaged book pages and works of art. I got one that has only has 8 g/sqm. For extremely fine woven fabrics serigraphy (screen-printing) supply shops are also an interesting source.

I use a standard lifting office-chair with armrests. The inclination of the backrest can be also set. It was given to me for free as an office surplus.

Somehow I haven't been aware of this project, thanks! One process that seems to be not so in line with how they did it in the old days is the use of templates. OK, they try to replicate an existing ship. In those old days they probably strung a cord from bow to stern and used this as reference to ensure that the boat turned out symmetrical, but otherwise everything would have been shaped by eye, I think.

Under the right light conditions and with the right background, this could look almost like the real thing 👍🏻

Perhaps it's not design, but just how it came out ... they needed an outlet or inlet and the place was dictated by the interior arrangements. And/or it was too much trouble to remove an old feature ...

I have both, single and double roller filing guides (or 'rests' as the watchmakers call it), but never really understood the value of a single roller guide ...

... absolutely and if you are myopic in addition, this multiplies the magnification you get out of your myopia, when you take off your normal glasses. For years I got the 3x magnification by just replacing my normal glasses with plain safety-glasses. Now I need the additional magnification of reading glasses 😢

I can only join into the chorus of praise ... 👍🏻

Don’t know USN practices, but on this side of the pond gaiters were worn - if at all - by landing parties only. So, you could perhaps show a landing party drill on deck. I tend to paint clothing etc. matt and anything flesh satin. Have been using mainly Vallejo Model Air paint even with a brush the last 15 years or so. Watching your progress …

Good to see here more progress indeed 👍🏻 These roller filing guides are useful implements. They used to be standard items on watchmakers lathes.

Nice find, I didn't know about that book, but then I am not a 'yachtie'. I knew that site and find it quite annoying in the sense that you cannot actually download easily the books ...

There is no 'scale' for rivets, only size. So the question is how big on the prototype would these rivets be? Second question: what type of rivet? There are many ways in which rivetting and forming their heads can be performed: half round, countersunk (barely visible on a model), half countersunk, flush (which then would be invisible on the model), hollow rivets, etc. So a picture of the prototype you want to achieve would be needed to give you informed advice. I would, however, suspect that rivets in 1/200 scale on AA gun mounts would be rather small, with heads of a diameter somewhere around 20 mm max. This means, that in at a 1/200 scale we are talking of diameters of less than 0.1 mm. Assuming that we are talking of half-round heads, the only practical way would be tiny (really tiny) blobs of paint or white glue. It would be a challenge to achieve consistent sizes. In summary, I think I wouldn't bother. The tool you showed, although I don't know it, seems to be the kind used by aircraft modellers to indicate flush rivets by slightly marking the surface. This is not what you (presumably) need and the resulting marks would be grossly overscale anyway.

What I tend to do to such flat black parts is to run a soft pencil along the edges etc. to highlight them. Using a cotton stick, you can also slightly rub the graphite away from the edges. Similarly, using dark-grey pastel, you can lightly highlight areas that would normally be more illuminated to accentuate say round parts. Depending on how you want to show the model, pristine builders's model style or slightly 'weathered', you can add traces of ash or rust around the furnace of the boiler using white or brown pastels.

Just stumbled across this log, while I am waiting for something to dry in my workshop ... I think the model looks very convincing and the strategy is good in the absence of real plans. There would have been, however, sources of plans for both, commercial and naval vessels built in and around Venice, that one could have explored. Venice at this time was under Austrian rule (formally Kingdom of Lombardia-Venezia) and the arsenal built for the Austrian-Hungarian navy - miraculously the archives largely survived two evacuations: 1866 to Trieste and 1919 from there to Vienna (though I seem to heard that many boxes are still unopend in the national archives there ...). So some lines plans that could have been adapated may have been there. Depending on, where the other ships your are modelling were built, this might be still a possibility. I like unconventional approaches to construction when it serves the purpose. At small scales wood is not always the best and most convenient material. Wood can also be messy to prepare, if you don't have a suitable workspace. And at small scale, the wood-grain is usually to coarse and needs to be covered up with fillers. So acrylic, styrene, bakelite-paper etc. can be indeed better options - even when the final surfaces are supposed to bare wood, as for decks. Painting may give a much more realistic appearance at small scales. At small scales real copper indeed probably is not the best material to represent coppered ships' bottoms. Very thin paper painted is a better way - I agree with you there. However, your overlapping plate-seams appear too pronounced, I must say. To be quite harsh (apologies), I think it spoils this lovely model somewhat. If you look at images of real coppering (me and others have posted a lot of pictures here on MSW), show that the seams are not very pronounced, as the copper-sheathing in fact was quite thin. I would have probably just butted the plates against each other, as even the thinnest paper would be overscale. Looking forward to further progress 👍🏻

The problem will be exacerbated when you work from scanned original drawings. Every line that is not absolutely aligned to the axis of the scanner will become a fuzzy, jagged something. There are a few strategies to overcome the problems discussed above: - never ever use chain measurement. By way of example, it you have a row of identical boxes fitted to each other, don't measure each individual box, but measure the overall length and divide it by the number of boxes to give you their dimensions. - Similarly, when drawing plans for a ship, do not start from the details, but from the overall dimensions and fit the parts in. The percentage lengths mentioned by Dr PR above go this way. - Think about the practicalities of building: what materials and what tools do I have available or can obtain; dimension parts accordingly, if the deviation would not really by visible. - Think also which part would the easiest to make fit to other parts; say you have to make a flange for a pipe, in which case you may fit the inner diameter of the flange to the available wire/round stock; the inverse, could be also the case for bigger parts, where it may be easier to turn the pipe to the diameter of a flange for which you had a drill for the whole; etc. - Unless I would make a drawing for publication, I tend to make no real drawings for parts, but rather (computer) sketches to which I add the measured/calculated dimensions; I then work from the numbers, rather than taking off another set of measurements from a drawing. - Work from parts with well-known dimensions; say, you need to construct a shell-locker, then start with the dimensions of the shell, which typically are very well documented in the literature of the time, etc.

That's kind of strange, that the the bulkheads are behind the gun-ports. Normally, such laser-cut kits are well-engineered ... I gather you will have to show the lids closed in this case, at least the ones in front of bulkheads.

"I think good lighting helps more than magnifyers." ... Unfortunately, there comes a time, when this doesn't help anymore 🥲

It also depends on for what kind of work you intend to use it: if you are working with machine-tools, hand-held drill/grinder or lathe etc., it would be advisable to use safety-glasses that enclose your eyes and protect them from flying swarf etc. Reading glasses are good, but do not enclose the eyes sufficiently. To my knowledge, however, the safety-glasses are only available with a x3 magnification. I have got a cheap version of the loupes dentist use these days, but they are designed to be standing over the patient and cannot focus close enough - we like to be with our nose closer to work, when sitting at the workbench. So, I don't really use them. For lathe- or milling machine-work I also have a binocular microscope that can be screwed to the bench. The depth of field is very short, so that it is not really useful for bench-work, but it is really excellent for observing close-up what a minute drill or milling cutter does.

Well, in old days I had small pocket calculator on the bench. Now, that the iPhone is always near me, I use its calculator - that's the simplest and fastest option. For converting imperial into metric measures or vice versa, you just need to remember that 1" = 25,4 mm. Converting metric measures into fractions of an inch is not straightforward on normal calculators, while the opposite is easy.

Some years ago, I considered making a model of her based on the Heller plastic kit, which is based on the plans published by the Association des Amis du Musèe de la Marine (as presumably the OCCRE-kit is). The project was abandoned due to the extensive changes that would have needed to be made to the plastic kit. However, in this context I took a number of photographs of the model in the museum in Paris (which, together with other sources preserved in the museum's archives, formed the basis of the plans of the AAMM). The model is in the 1839 livery, when she was painted black on the occasion of bringing back the remains of Napoleon I from St. Helena. You can have a look at the pictures here: https://www.maritima-et-mechanika.org/maritime/models/bellepoule/bellepoule.html. The model is not on display currently, after the refurbishment of the museum BTW, Odin is a Germanic god, not a Greek one 🫣