wefalck
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Everything posted by wefalck
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Aren't you afraid that adding the stays later might pull (ever so slightly) the shrouds out of alignment and, hence, also the ratlines? -
That's quite a high-tech stand ! ... somehow it reminded me of those eerie-looking outside braces doctors use to align broken legs ... Perhaps the camera is challenged with the illumination and contrasts, but I found that the underwater body doesn't quite stand-off from the mounting board. It seems to make it difficult to appreciate it's wonderful lines and the artful planking job.
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I am wondering, musing about the physics involved, how the recoil would be distributed ... part of it obviously would act backwards (depending on the type of locking mechanism) and part of it sideways ...
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The question is also of what period we are talking. CUTTY SARK for instance has a release gear fitted, which allows to safely let go the chain without using a sledgehammer. This kind of release gear, where the chain is hooked up to a rotating bar with thumbs sticking up, was used until stockless anchors came into use that pull up into the hawse-pipe. The bar has a lever at one end that is rotated by hand to lower the 'thumbs', thus relasing the chains.
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I can't work when my blood-sugar levels are down and I am hungry ... hands are shaky and I can't focus mentally ... Nice shipwrighting btw.
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Concerning the submachine gun that fired around the corner: it is a German MP40 and apparently this kind of barrel extension was actually experimented with for urban warfare during WW2. Today, with video-cameras, GPS etc. for aiming it might work ...
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Or, perhaps we are the intelligent ones that survived ... 😇 Considering the 'fully comprehensive insurance'-attitude of modern attitude, the future development of our gene-pool is quite worrying 🤔
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... and even, if he wasn't barefoot, leaning onto the ladder with the bare forearms isn't such a survival idea either 😲
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I am not an expert on the Vickers, but I think your photographs shows a tripod-mount as 'heavy' machine-gun for land-use. There, the tactical situation is different in the sense, that when you combat attcking infantry, you only need small changes in elevation, as the enemy is approaching or for spraying enemy positions at greater distance, you don't want to change your elevation once you are sure that you hit those positions. Hence the elevation screw. In naval combat situations, your own boat and that of an enemy are moving fast, hence you constantly have to adjust the elevation to keep the target under fire. I think naval light guns, including machine-guns had some sort of friction-brakes on the pivots and horizontal bearings. One sometimes sees little hand-levers with which these brakes can be adjusted or completely locked. These friction-bearings probaly are just split rings that can be pulled together with a screw that is operated by the hand-lever.
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Sometimes mothers aren't any better: ma mother wanted to make some 'fruit flambée', heated them in a large copper pan that was kept for the purpose, poured the rhum over them and put a match onto it - pouff, it was suddently all flames and white smoke: she had forgotten to turn off the extraction fan, which had sucked in the flames, which in turn ignited the grease in the filter. She was lucky to realise quickly what had happened and switched the fan off, so that no big fire developed, ouff ... Another time, there was some banging heard in the house and my mother, who was in my sister's room reading stories to her shouted at me (by habit in such cases), what I was doing ... but it wasn't me, when I checked the kitchen it was full of white smoke and foul smell - she had forgotten that she put some eggs to boil before she went to my sick sister's room and in the meantime all the water had evaporated and the egss exploded. Decades later, when the kitchen was dismantled, we still found mummified egg in some corners behind the cupboard
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There was also a 1953 franco-italian road-movie 'Le salaire de la peur' with Yves Montand and Peter van Eyck, where four guys were hired to drive two lorries with nitro-glycerin to be used to extinguish a burning oil-well into the South-American djungle ... one lorry makes it.
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Interesting, I hadn't heard of this technique. There used to be a guy called Red Adair, I think; who was a specialist for putting out such fires using controlled blasts, which may work on a similar principle.
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Yep, those jeweller's flush cutters are very useful to nip off things flush. Had one for decades. They are meant to nip off steel watch springs, so they are very hard and tough. I use a piece of card/paper behind the shrouds, on which the shrouds and the ratlines have been printed. This gives you a good guide to check that you didn't pull the shroud out of alignment and that the ratlines are correctly spaced.
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I think one has to try for oneself with one's equipment. There are so many contradictory recommendations around, that one gets easily confused and discouraged ...
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I happen to have an Adept No. 1 hand-shaper - but admittedly rarely use it ...
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Did I mention, that I once tried to make gun-cotton? My father had a useful book, that told you everything about how to make explosives and how to test them ... perhaps I was lucky that it didn't work, because the cotton-wool I used was actually not cotton.
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Brass chain can be first chemically blackened and then rubbed with graphite.
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Very convincing results ... we became to expect this from you While looking at it, it occurred to me, that such industrial premises may have had wooden pavement, that is small blocks of hardwood, set end-grain up into a bed of sand with asphalt caulking. Some cities in the 19th century even experimented with such pavement to reduce the noise from cart-wheels. Would be fun to make, glueing stacks of battens together and then sawing slices from it ...
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As I said, I never used any cleaning kits, but that may depend on your air-brush and how diligent you are with cleaning. Acrylics dry very fast, so as soon as you don't get an even spray pattern, you should rinse the air-brush and begin again. For rinsing, the air-brush needs to be taken apart as per instructions. Take care not to bend or dull the needle - I usually wipe it gently between the fingers. Careful re-insert it without poking it against any part of the mechanism. I gather they sell 'flow improvers' - this probably is some sort of surfactant adapted to the composition of the paint that will reduce the surface tension of it, which has two effects, it aids in forming very fine droplets and it facilitates the adherence to the paint on say plastic or metal surfaces.
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Indeed, Vallejo's ranges of different paint formulations (for brushing or for air-brushing) do not have the same range of colours. It is, however, possible to thin their other paint formulations for air-brushing. In this case one should use their recommended thinner(s), as other thinners could break down the emulsions on which these paints are based. I only have a very small air-brush with a 1 cc reservoir and found this sufficient for my relatively small projects. A small reservoir prevents you from wasting paint. As the paint ducts are simple and as I wash out the air-brush immediately after use under running water, I never had the need to use any special cleaning fluids or devices. I don't use it very often, so it had stayed with me now for nearly 40 years ... On pre-thinned paints vs. paint-tubes: it is correct, that compared to the amount of pigment you get for your money, they are expensive. However, me personally, I prefer to pay a premium price and have something ready to use after some thorough shaking. I do not waste any paint in mixing vessels etc. as the bottles have nozzles or pipettes from which just a few drops of paint are transferred into the air-brush. The pre-thinned paints seem to have a suprisingly long shelf-life. Some bottles I had for more than 30 years and they still work.
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The most primitive way would be to print the drawing on paper, cut the shape out and suspend it from several points at the edges from a thread, then draw a line in prolongation of the thread across the shape - where these lines intersect is the centre of gravity. This can be done for individual sails, whole sail plans, and longitudinal sections of the underwater-hull. There may also free-/share-ware computer-programs that do that from various graphics inputs. Some CAD-programs have such a function.
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OK, I see. Perhaps, as a reality check, you could take the loftiest (relative to hull lenght) sail-plan in those archives and compare it to your reconstruction - this should give you the enveloppe in which to develop your sail-plan. If you work with average dimensions for each part and add these together, you may arrive at an overall too lofty plan. Another cross-check would be to graphically determine the centre of gravity of your sail-plan and compare this with that of other sail-plans. This then can also be compared to the centres of gravity of the hulls. This is what designers such as af Chapman would have done in order to see, whether hull and sail-plan balance.
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Are you sure, you got the proportions right? I know that some of these later 18th century vessels had very lofty spar-plans, but here the mast appears to be rather tall. The packet would have required a large amount of balast to remain stable ...
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There should be some 3D-printed studded-chains available in 12 links per inch ...
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