wefalck

Well, it seems that in fact carved decorations were removed from some/certain ships at least before going to sea, particularly very prestigious one. This would apply more to figures and such things, rather than to ornaments. On humble ships, such as the NONSUCH, the carved decorations were probably not gilded, but rather paint yellow/ochre.

There are various other options in addition to the ones mentioned already: - A stone from a so-called glacier-mill - a natural phenomenon whereby a rock swirls around a sort of meltwater syphon under a glacier, creating a funnel-shaped feature and eventually an almost perfect sphere. - An early canon-ball, but it doesn't seem to be shaped well enough for that - A well-used stone from a ball-mill - a rotating steel cylinder in which several stones like this are placed to crush something; as the material seems to be limestone from the look of it, it would not be too hard and could crush probably only organic material. In what part of the world was it found?

The shipyard had been closed for much of August, only the drawing office stayed open to prepare work for autumn ... ******************** Anchor-winch 4 The remaining item for the winch is the pawl-bit against which also the bowsprit rests. It is surprisingly thin, only 240 mm square, according to the original drawing, which conveniently translates to 1.5 mm on the model. A strip a tad wider than 2 mm was cut from a scrap of 1.5 mm thick acrylic glass. Care was taken to cut it parallel to a manufacturing edge, which is clean and square. In this way, only one edge needed to be machined and the manufactured edge provided a good datum for this. The pawl rest in a cast-iron U-shaped frame that is bolted to the front of the post (updating the design a bit from the older style wooden pawls drawn in the original drawing). Rather than adding this part to the post, I decided to mill it from the solid. Hence the 2 mm strip. Originally, I intended to drill 0.15 mm holes for the axes of the pawls, but my drills turned out to be too short for that. This would not be really necessary at this scale anyway, but would have later, once a wire was inserted, facilitated the positioning of the pawls. I have to eyeball it now. Milling the groove into the ‘cast-iron’ frame The post was milled to size, letting material for the frame for the pawls standing. The shape of the frame was then milled out and the ends rounded with a safe-edge file. In the final machining step, the groove was cut. Shaping the head of the pawl-bit I don’t have square collets (I plan to make one day a set of square insert collets for precisely holding square stock), so a round one had to make do for the next operation, namely shaping the head of the pawl-bit with different burrs. Because of the relatively soft acrylic glass and with light cuts, this is not a problem. Shaping the head of the pawl-bit The pawls will be short lengths of 0.2 mm x 1 mm styrene strips, but will be made only later, when everything comes together so as not to lose those tiny bits. To be continued …

I am using old cotton underwear and a cotton-wool ball inside. These are disposable, so no need to keep it.

I think it made perfect sense to cut notches for the cant-frames. Structural members need a positive location, it enhances the rigidity of the structure.

I wouldn't want to be inside one, when the gun was fired - that's awfully tight space. It seems that Peugot originally made a variety of articles using cast iron and steel, such as coffee-grinders, pepper mills and then started to make wheel-spokes, which took them into making bicycles and eventually cars etc. Bicycles and pepper mills are now independent companies from the car manufacturers.

Sound awfully familiar 😬 And yes, it's better to take pictures on a medium grey surface. I tend to use a medium green surface, as most of our parts are usually not green and that gives a good colour contrast. Good progress so far. Looking forward to the rest of the engine !

I cannot claim that I know what the RN did at the time, but I would think that there is an eyebolt going through a substantial member of the top. The lower end would be made fast again to an eyebolt that goes through the deck and a beam. It would be set tight with a lanyard and bull's eyes. A similar method was used for guiding the lower yards on schooners or cutters, where the gaff and mast-rings would interfer with parrels. Not sure that a brig with a rope instead of a secondary mast would actually be called a snow. The purpose of the so-called snow-mast is to allow the gaff and the parrel of the main-yard to be lowered without interfering with each other.

There are no hard coal-mines in the UK anymore and neither in most European countries, only in Poland I think. This is becoming a real problem for the European steel-makers (Trump will be happy ...) and also for the preservation railways and traction-engine owners. Coal has become very expensive, as it is imported from South Africa and Australia.

The small pad under the bit to slide under the deck is actually a clever idea 👍🏻

Are you referring to externally or internally iron-stropped blocks? The latter have been in use at least since the 17th century for specific heavy-duty applications, such as cat-tackles, but were not used much in the rigging as such - the external strop could cause damage to sails etc. Internally stropped blocks are much more complicated to manufacture for both, the prototype and the model. Hence, they were only used, when higher load-bearing capacity was required. They have to be attached to spars or rigging with either a hook or a ring that was forged as part of the strop. This restricts their use to certain locations. Hooks were used e.g. for blocks attached to masts or where they were constantly under load. Otherrwise their is a risk that they became unhooked, even when a musing was used. I gather blocks with rings only became more common when chain and wire-rope were introduced into the running rigging. They required shackles, which in turn only became more common once thread-cutting became standardised after the middle of the 19th century. With wire-rope only internally stropped blocks can be used, as it would not be possible to make safe strops from wire - the radii required are too tight around the block. From a mechanical perspective internally stropped blocks are a much better proposition than externally iron-stropped blocks, as the strop supports the axle just outside the sheave and is not separated from it by the wooden shell. The wooden shell is only there to prevent chaving and hooking in rigging and sails. Making internally stropped blocks in small sizes, say below 2 mm length has been bugging me for decades, as there is very little material for attaching a hook or eyebolt.

It's a nice site and seems to have been considerably developed since I visited in 1994. The rea around is also pretty.

Well, water is not an organic solvent. I don’t know the composition of Minwax Poly and whether it would dissolve in Acetone. Rather think of nitro-based or good old nail varnish - not the modern acrylic variety.

In the early 20th steel was used for some parts of the running rigging that did not need to go around blocks. For those parts chain or hemp was used.

I soak the lines in organic solvent-based quick-drying varnish. While the solvent evaporates, I coerce the line into the desired shape. A drop of acetone will reverse the process, if needed.

Nice ideas ! Looking at the engine, I actually wondered, whether the flywheel wouldn't actually run in a pit, making the engine foundations level with the engine-house floor. At leas this was the arrangement in most of such engines in preservation that I saw.

Something that one doesn't see too often, neither as model nor preserved examples. I gather they were too complicated and expensive to maintain by the average farmer. Rubber or steel tyres (as in early ones) were easier on time and budget. In Germany, Lanz also made a tracke version of their Bulldog. Well done - what will you do with it?

Somehow, I had missed this project up to now 🙁

I probably wouldn't buy-in someone elses parts, I was thinking of kitting myself out to do 3D-printing - or at least do the designs myself. On the other hand, as for my laser-cutting, parts usually do not turn out right at first shot. As @dafi knows well, there are usually several runs necessary to get the dimensions right for printing - unlike for substractive machining, where one in most cases ends up with the correct part. However, I love this late 19th to mid-20th century manual technology of substractive machining and those old machines. In addition, I am already spending a good deal of my wake hours in front of a computer, so manual workshop work is a pleasant diversion.

As has been discussed at various places around the forum, ships were built from a variety of wood species, preferably oak for structural parts (keel, stems, frames) and planking below the waterline. Other species included elm, beech, pine and fir. The latter two were mainly used for decks, spars, planking above the waterline (probably only in merchant ships), etc. All wood on board was treated, with the exception of decks. Depending on the location and purpose pine-tar ('Stockholm tar'), coal-tar (after the 1840s) or lineseed-oil was used. Before sheathing with copper or zinc became common for ships going below a certain parallel, the underwater hulls were treated with a variety of concoctions meant to discourage fouling and attacks by Terredo navalis. In domestic waters, ships were given only a coating of heavy tar. The linesee-oil may have been mixed with different pigments (chalk, yellow and red ochre, soot) to create paints for deocarative purposes, but also for added protection against UV radiation (which as such was not really understood then). Practices would have differed across the regions and evolved over time.

Well, you would also need a milling machine or a shaper with dividing head to precisely cut the square teeth - probably not worth the effort …

… but we are sinking slowly into technological obsolescence, considering what can be done with 3D-printing already.

Thanks again for your interest ! ******************************** Anchor-winch 3 The winch drums were fashioned from 3 mm Ø round acrylic rod. Each side was built up from two pieces. The problem here were the square holes for the handle-bars. In principle, one could cross-drill two holes and file the square, but at 0.5 mm x 0.5 mm this would have been quite a challenge. There would be other options, such as broaching, but this requires specialised tools. The simplest thing is to divide the drum into two parts, to slot the end of one part, cement the two parts together and one ends up with perfect square holes. Set up for slotting the ends of the winch drums Slotting the winch drums To this end, a piece of rod was faced on both ends, and drilled 0.5 mm for the axle. It was then transferred to the dividing head on the micro-milling machine and the ends were slotted 0.5 mm deep with a 0.5 mm circular saw. Finally, a round disc of the same diameter was cemented to the end, leaving two perfectly square cross-holes. Milling the eight sides of the winch drums In the next step, the axle of the dividing head was tilted by 1.5° for milling the eight sides of the drum that is slightly conical. The drum is bound by iron hoops at both ends. These were generated by milling the drum to 0.2 mm diameter above the target dimensions. Then, the diameter was reduced by these 0.2 mm, leaving two ‘bands’ of 0.3 mm width and 0.1 mm thickness at both ends. Close-up view of milling the eight sides of the winch drums The thinner ends of the drum were faced off on the lathe to the correct length and then the drum halves parted off to the correct length. The spill-heads were done in the same way, but are cylindrical (or eight-sided prisms), rather than conical (or eight-sided truncated pyramids). A smaller burr had to be used, as the distance between the reinforcement bands is only 1 mm. Before parting-off, the outside ends were slightly dished with a round-burr in the lathe tailstock. Milling the spill heads For the ratchet wheel a short length of 3 mm acrylic rod was turned down to 0.1 mm above the target diameter of 2.0 mm. The geometry for milling the ratchets was worked out on the computer. I arrived at ten ratchets 0.2 mm deep (= 32 mm on the prototype, which appears reasonable). In watchmaking there are special ratchet-wheel milling cutters that can also cut curved teeth, but I don’t have any, so I had to make do with a dovetail burr, which is good enough, as the ratchet wheel does not need to be functional. Also, two 0,2 mm thick discs as flanges were parted off. Milling the ratchet wheel Unfortunately, these transparent parts are difficult to photograph and, indeed difficult to see during machining. A first coat of paint will eventually show any errors … The parts of the anchor winch made so far assembled The anchor winch at its future location To be continued …

If it's not too late: I would scrape off the moulding lines from the parts! Makes for a much more professional and realistic looking model.

... exactly - this would be a sort of 'artisanal' model finish and not a realistic representation. On real ships neither brass nails nor varnish were used at that time.