wefalck

I don't have a Dremel, but a 45+ years old primitive hand-held drill, the steel collets of which are of really good quality (like the PROXXON ones). It is used frequently for all sorts of grinding and polishing operations, less on wood, but more on metal. I am running it of a transformer with variable output and most importantly off a foot-switch (as all my power-tools), which gives you control without having to move the position of your hand on the tool. I also have one of those early PROXXON pen-size engraving tool, but I found the motor too weak, particularly when you reduce the speed to less dangerous (for the work-piece) values. My wife gave me for Christmas a cord-less (no-name) glass-engraving tool. While I like the idea of a cord-less machine as such, its speed-range is far too high and strangely enough you are at the highest speed setting, when you turn it on. Being cord-less it also cannot be controlled via a foot-switch of course - a sort of Bluetooth foot-switch would be a good idea actually. I keep quiet about it to my wife in order to not disappoint her, but I rarely use it. I gather she thought I could do some glass engraving, but that's not really my vocation. And I use these drills rarely for drilling ...

I cannot comment on its real usefulness, but I think it is still made. I saw it being offered on a Web-site not that long ago.

... that is my hope, but I started today the cutters, let's see how that goes.

BTW, in both, the Austrian-Hungarian and the German Imperial Navy, some boats carried a couple of large forks, looking like row-locks, with a stem long enough to clear the oars, in which the masts and sails were stowed, when not in use and being rowed.

It is always dangerous to back-extrapolate in time, but since at least the middle of the 19th century several navies published boat-handling instructions. I have, for instance, the copy of such a book for the Austro-Hungarian Navy of 1894. According to the above book, the boats were lowered with all the gear stowed in place. At this time it was not common anymore, to store boats in each other and most of the gear was kept inside the boats, when they were onboard. The larger boats were permanently kitted out with sails, water-barrels, bread-box, compass etc. The smaller boats were kitted out only for the intended operation. Basically the whole rig was stowed assembled and when needed the mast were stepped with all the gear attached. It was forbidden to go up in the masts, for any work on them they had to be lowered. Bowsprits were not used anymore at that time, so the whole rigging was inside the boat.

Done that too, but I think we made it only down to Mustique, if I remember correctly.

Thanks, gentlemen! Keith, the boat is 52 mm (2") long with an 11 mm (just under 1/2") beam. ************************************************************************ Painting the Gig The boat was given a few thin coats of white acrylics (Vallejo) all over with the airbrush - the results of which was quite sobering: all the imperfections that were not quite visible in the ‘raw’ state now began to stick out. The jagged edges from the laser cutting that seemed to disappear under the varnish are no rather visible. Also, using toilet-paper as the basis for the boat-cover was not a good choice. I used it in military-modelling in my youth to simulate tarpaulins, but perhaps then my standards were lower. I choose it, because I wanted something that looks limp and more casually draped, as can be seen on many photographs of the time. However, it turned out to be fuzzy on the surface and the edges in spite of being soaked in sanding filler. On the next boats I will try some Japanese silk-paper that I bought some time ago. I hope when it is wetted it will drape well. The completed gig on an ordinary port-wine cork I then brush-painted the boat-cover in thick white acrylic with tiny drop of Vallejo 71.288 (Portland Stone) mixed to it. This gives a very light off-white colour. I don’t actually know, whether these boat covers were oiled or painted canvass. According to the painting regulations for boats, the top two strakes where to be painted black. Due to the cover not much of them is visible, but I managed to tatter on a bit of black here in there. The completed gig on an ordinary port-wine cork I will now turn my attention to the other boats, considering the experience with this one. If they turn out better, I might try a gig 2.0. To be continued ....

Kevin, using black acrylics to fill the seams did not work for me. They are just drying too fast to be wiped off easily. I know that some people used oils for the purpose, but that makes it difficult for the following acrylic washes and the final varnish, as the oils are water repellent. I would rather use some black ink. If you have one of those old-style drafting pens, where you can adjust the line-widths, this might be useful for applying the ink. From the gloss varnish it should wipe off quite well, but may still leave a bit of 'haze' - I found that this doesn't do any harm. It would depend on the pride the master takes in his ship, but clippers in general were well-maintained (the premium freight rates paid for this) and so the decks may have been holy-stoned from time to time, navy fashion. I think I would go for a very light yellowish-reddish tint.

Going around at night in a dinghy, one can also have strange encounters: we were motoring back out to the boat in a moon-lit night in the usual condition of constrained perception, when suddenly there was a big splash. We first thought that we hit something, but when we switched on the torch, we saw a baby barracuda flapping on the floor of the dinghy. It had jumped out of the water and landed in the dinghy.

You need to work with very dilute washes, to the point that you barely see any paint on the brush, and to apply this to planks selectively to get a random pattern, but not too different. Opt rather for lighter shades. In my case I assumed the deck was teak, but you would have to check, whether CUTTY SARK's decks were teak or pine, I don't remember. Compare also photographs before and after the fire. And yes, a wash with burnt umber or other dark brown can bring out nicely the surface texture, but you don't necessarily want this on a well-maintained clipper-deck. At the very end I sealed everything with gloss(!) varnish and redrew the engraved plank seams with a 0.1 mm thick permanent marker. One could also use a pen and ink, I suppose. I wiped off any excess immediately, so that only the engraved lines were filled with ink - that's the reason for the gloss varnish, then the ink does not get into the surface roughness of the acrylic paint. Finally, I spayed the deck again with flat varnish and applied a very dilute white/off-white wash to tie everything visually together. The very last step was to spray on some flat varnish - such decks are basically flat and not satin. Quite a bit of work, but I think it pays off.

Reminds me of our trips to the Carribean, e.g. the BVI and USVI. Took the dinghy to on-shore bars and restaurants and after some drinks (the bartenders took a 1 pint plastic beaker and went up and down the shelves until it was 3/4 full - the rest was topped up with orange juice - a concoction called 'Force 12') we had to find our anchored boat in the dark. They all look the same, the hired boats. Eventually, we tied some towels to the rail, to look a bit more distinct ...

Kevin, why do you want to get surface texture on a wooden deck? At 1:96 scale plastic models one usually has to work hard to get rid of the misguided 'wood' texture molded in. Wooden decks are normally kept very smooth. The example below is in 1:160 scale, the bakelite-paper deck was lightly engraved with the plank seams and thent he wood character was achieved by giving each plank a slightly different colour, imitating the natural variability of wood. The piece was given a base-coat of Vallejo Model Air 71075 ‘sand (ivory)’ using the airbrush. In a next step single planks were randomly given a light wash with Prince August 834 ‘natural wood transparent’ or Vallejo Model Air 71023 ‘hemp’ (which turned out to be a bit too dark actually). In a next step randomly selected planks, particularly those ‘hemp’ ones were given a very light wash with Vallejo Model Air 71288 ‘Portland stone’. Another very light wash with Vallejo Model Air 71041 ‘armour brown’, toned down with yet another very light wash using Vallejo Model Air 71132 ‘aged white’, pulled everything together.

Thank you, I keep trying ... ******************************** Work on the Gig continued The planking progressed reasonably well, but I actually needed to more strakes per side to be able to go up to the sheer-line. Not good for strake counters … I attribute this to the wider overlap needed than expected. This was particularly the case, where there is a significant angle between planks, e.g. at the turn of the bilge. For the other boats, I will have to cut the planks a bit wider. Planking completed A few conclusions from this exercise for the other boats: - Cut the planks tapered only on one side, as they can edge-bend, when soaked in varnish - Cut the planks for 30 to 40% overlap not 20% as done in this example; this gives more flexibility to adjust the planks - Do not try to imitate full-scale practice by running the planks into a rabbet on the stem, rather attach the outer stem and keel-piece after the planking is complete and has been trimmed down to the rabbet line. Planking completed The planking now was cleaned up and the excess at the transom trimmed back. I tried to sand the jaggy edges a bit, but that did not work very well on the paper. However, in the varnished state it is not very visible. One has to see, when it is painted. The hull was lightly rubbed down with fine steel wool to smooth the surface. Then some spots, where touched up with some putty. Rubbing strake from 0.2 mm copper-wire installed According to the prototype cross-section, there was a rubbing strake added to the top-strake. It was ‘faked’ by attaching a 0.2. copper-wire below the last strake. Now the boat was ready to be cut from the base. The bulkheads were cut down and the keel-piece trimmed to a line that would be followed by the tarpaulin cover. There is a hoisting chain fore and aft to which the falls of the boat-davits will be hooked, As only the rop ring will be protruding from the boat-cover, this chain was simulated by a drilled together piece of tinned 0.2 mm coper-wire. It was hooked into a bulkhead and glued down with varnish. Boat cut free from the building base Most modellers seem to show the boats open, but most historical photographs show them covered. The design of the cover seems to vary a bit and I could not find information about this. Some photographs show the cover going down over half of the sides of the boat, with ropes apparently zig-zagging down to the keel and back up on the other side. Others seem to show a line going through a hollow seam to pull it tight around the boat. I opted for the latter to show more of the planking and the (later) paintwork. Gig with simulated cover I was debating with myself, whether I should first paint the hull and then add the cover, or the other way around. I opted for the second, as messing around with varnish, could damage the paintwork, even though it made it more difficult to hold the boat during (spray-)painting. Basis for the cover was a piece of ironed-flat toilet-paper that was draped over the hull and then soaked in varnish resp. sanding filler. It was smoothed down over the edges and down to the rubbing strake. Once dry the paper was cut back to the rubbing-strake with a new scalpel-blade. Underside of the gig showing planking I almost forgot the rudder, that seems to have been kept shipped, when the boats were suspended in the davits. It was drawn on the basis of BRIX (1883) and laser-cut to be laminated from two layers. The pintels turned out to be far too small to reproduced, but the respective bands were simulated by flattened, tinned copper-wire. Gig with rudder shipped The gig is now ready to be painted. To be continued ....

While I was talking ... one member there made me aware of this offer: https://timesavers.com/search.html?q=drills&go=Search Not sure whether and at what price they would deliver to Australia.

Pat, I posted an enquiry a week ago or so on a watchmaking forum about sources for spade-drill 'down-under', but unfortunaly no useful replies came forward. Sorry. Probably, that forum has mainly members from the USA and Europe.

Do you really want to spoil your model with sewn sails ? I would think twice about this, because they never look right. I would rather go for something like silk-span (Japanseide), glue and paint. There are various examples for such sails her on the forum. They look much more to scale.

Not 'my' time and my preferred aesthetics, but very impressive rendering 👏

Thanks, gentlemen ! Phil, this is exactly what I am going to do for the other boats. The original idea was to curve both sides, because I was not sure how well the 'planks' would bend across the wide side. However, once soaked in varnish, they can coerced into shape quite nicely without buckling. This is a learning process. Some 25 years ago I built a small clinker-dinghy in 1:60 scale like this over a wooden former with thin bent frames and planks from bakelite paper. I had the benefit of a plank layout, as I used the paper-model in Eric McKee's brochure on clinker-building as a basis. The bakelite paper can be sanded over the edges and feathered out for the plank above with a engraving chisel. That worked very well.

Ketih, I am using a really cheapo laser-cutter. The input are b/w JPEGs, which are converted to pixels and when it finds a black pixel - zap! This conversion and perhaps the mechanical resolution of the stepper-motors limit the efective resolution to 0.1 mm. This means that the 'planks' are only about 7 pixels wide at their widest part, tapering down to about 3 pixels at the ends over a distance of 200 pixels - so steps are programmed in

Thanks, gentlemen, for the encouragement - much needed Pat, the gig will be represented cover, so no need to worry about the internal structure. There will be only one small boat shown uncovered and I have to think about that construction. I first have to check, whether for this bent or sawn frames were used. ***************** Planking the Gig Just a little update on my efforts to plank the gig. The framework was fixed to a piece of wood to keep in shape and for ease of handling. The ‘planks’ were laser-cut from Canson-paper as indicated earlier. Unfortunately, I do not have a software (yet) to develop a planking layout, so the planks were tapered, but straight and all of the same size. However, when wetted with varnish, the paper, unlike wood, can be relatively easily bent and shaped across the wide side of the plank. Planking in progress When laser-cutting the planks, I ran into a small glitch, that is the outside of the planks have such a shallow curve, that the ‘stepping’ due to the 0.1 mm resolution of the cutter becomes quite pronounced. I hope I can remove this later by sanding. When fitting the planks, I found the best way was to fix them in the middle first and then work towards the ends. This is not ideal at the bows, where the plank has to run against the rabbet. Paper as such cannot be sanded for a close fit. I cut them as best as I could with my micro-scissors. When soaked in varnish, the paper can be moulded and squeezed, so that I did not need to thin the overlapping part of the lower plank, which would have been quite impossible in paper. Planking progresses from the middle to the ends Finally, the hull will probably require some touching up here and there with putty. Let’s see how it looks in the end with some paint on. To be continued ....

Pat, it is difficult these days to name suppliers. In watchmaking, the spade drills are also called pivot-drills and they are in principle available down to 0.1 mm. Some 30 years ago I bought a few in a local (Nottingham) watchmaking supply shop. The straight fluted ones are also called EUREKA-drills after one brand. Not sure that they are still made. The Internet does not turn up much useful. I think they were available down to 0.3 mm diameter. I can post a question re. suppliers Down-Under on a watchmaking (tool) forum, where I am also a member.

Thanks for the link to the pics, Pat. I didn't realise, that you were talking about those lugs, I thought it was the spider-band for belaying pins. As someone suggested above, spade drills would be a good option to drill thin brass. Not sure, where you would find them Down-Under. There are also straight-fluted drills for watchmakers, but they tend to be expensive and even more difficult to find.

Pre-confectioned paint did not come onto the market until about 1860 and then it was originally mainly anti-fouling paints. For everything else, the components, that is pigment, medium (mainly lineseed oil), and thinners where supplied separately. Paints were mixed adhoc according to either prescribed recipies or whatever the bo'sun saw fit. RN ships were supplied with an annual dotation of material and were expected to make due with them. If the captain was prepared to pay for the materials, there was a certain leeway for colour-schemes. On the merchant ships the colour-schemes were pretty much determined by the local fashion of the period. Overall, it appears that around the middle of the 18th century ship became more colourful, with wales painted in different colours, coloured bulwarks inside, coloured spars and or spar-tips while masts and parts that may have seen chafing were only oiled. After the middle of the 19th century paint-schemes became more sombre, with black and white dominating. It seems that black hulls became more prevalent due to the increasing contamination of harbour waters by oil and soot from steam-ships. Around European waters in the first half of the 19th century, it seems to have been common to have had inside bulwarks, deckhouses, spars or their tips and doublings painted in either pale green, pale blue or light ochre to match. Painted or scraped wales seem to replaced by all-black hulls from the later 1840s on, but these were retained by certain local ship-types much longer.

Ah, you use low-melt solder, not silver-soldering with a torch ... Do you a picture of the item ?

There were at that time so-called field-forges, used by the military. They are essentially a cast-iron basin on legs with a hand-driven ventilator underneath to supply the draught. They have a half-hood in sheet over it to arrest sparks.