wefalck

I was actually wondering, what the reason for this rather elaborate construction was ...

Kevin, at that time either oil-based paints or (shellac) lacquer based paints and varnishes would have been available. Oil-paints, when new can be quite glossy, but it also depends on the pigments and other accessories used in the paint formulation. When exposed to the wheather, it would dull. Oil-paints remain a bit elastic, so would be well suited to paint structures such as coaches. Shellac-based paints, being harder, could be polished to a very high gloss, but would be more prone to cracking. Colourless shellac varnishes of wood can be polished to your wishes, between satin and high gloss, and would be quite tough. On the other hand they are not really weather resistant. I think the wood-work would have been either painted with an lineseed oil-based paint, or be treated just with lineseed oil.

Talking about paint-schemes: over here in continental Europe I think by the early 19th century most stage-coach services were state-run in one way or another, with inns being sort of franchises. The coaches were mostly painted yellow with black iron-work and lining. Also leather-work including roofs, boot covers, etc. was black.

I gather, such questions are difficult to answer, which is why no-one chipped in so far. Internally strapped blocks require the manufacture of rolled iron-bars and the possibility to drill accurate and matched holes for the axle. This kind of manufacturing technology only became available around the second quarter of the 19th century. That should give you a time frame. This kind of marine technology diffused quickly around the world and was adopted, where the respective manufacturing technology was available together with the necessary raw materials.

Actually the same techniques can be applied to wood, metal, and plastics. I prefer metal or acrylic glass for small parts over wood, as I then don't have to worry about the wood-grain. If you need to have the parts look like wood, it is quite easy to simulate this with paint. I have, for instance, milled the cleat-shape from a suitable rectangular brass profile and then sliced off individual cleats. If you let a spigot protruding from the foot of the cleat, you have something to hold it in a pin-vice for further shaping operations and, of course, for mounting it later on. The same technique works for acrylic-glass, which is easier to shape, but more brittle than brass.

Allen et al., this is the heat-activated paper repair I talked about: https://www.neschen.de/en/product/filmoplast-r-2/#pdetails. Not sure about the availability outside Europe, but I am sure there are equivalent products, as all around the globe paper- and book-restorers face the same challenges. The prices are not Chinese supermarket prices, but a roll 50 m long and 20 mm wide will probably get me through all the models I am likely to build in the next three decades, before I am getting too old and tatty for this.

I have been tossing around the idea of using ink-jet or (colour) laser printed for a couple of decades or so. The biggest issue is the light-fastness of the pigments they use. There are various studies on the Internet, where people used (accelerated) test on different combinations of inks/toners and papers. Very few really hold on over more than a few years. Reds are notorious for their fading. So my conclusion was to stay away from home-printed parts. OK, there may have come new inks/toners onto the market since I did my survey, so I may be wrong .... I have used, however, b/w printing to give me the layout, which I then painted in acrylics, say for flags. We had the discussion on sail materials several times in recent years here. I fully agree with Allen, that cloth in most instances is not a suitable base for scale sails except at very large scales. Paper can be at least an order of magnitude thinner than the thinnest woven fabric. The problem with many papers is that their wet tear-resistance can be rather low. A friend of mine started experimenting with a special paper as used by book- and paper-restorers. This is a long-fibred rice-paper coated on one side with a heat-activated acrylic glue. When applied onto a sheet of paper, it is almost invisible. My friend made three-ply sails with this special paper on the outside and a core of thin silk-paper in the middle. In this way, he achieved three things: the sail has a reasonably good wet tear-resistance to be shaped, painted and handled, it is translucent, if only thin washes of acrylics or inks are used, and by cutting the outer layers into strips of the scale-width of the sail-cloths, the seams are reproduced to near scale thickness. I have not tried this myself yet, but it seems to produce quite impressive results for set sails. I have to make some trials, to see how it works for gathered or brailed-up sails.

Iteresting trials, indeed. The importance of the colour of the primer reduces as one increases the thickness of the paint layers, but this will also depend on the pigments in the paints. For 'gilding' another option might be 'gold' leaf (e.g. https://www.amazon.co.uk/Imitation-Metallic-Handicrafts-Decoration-Furniture/dp/B0924GTH3P/ref=sr_1_7?crid=1CR56NNXM68RG&dchild=1&keywords=krylon+foil+metallic+gold&qid=1628411413&sprefix=Krylon+Foil%2Caps%2C654&sr=8-7). At this price it is not real gold, but brass hammered out very thinly. Most of it comes from China these days. Got a booklet like this, but did not yet around to try it out. Being brass, it probably needs a protective varnish, such as used to protect brass- and silver-ware. The gold-leafe is applied on a slightly tacky lacquer and then burnished with a steel or agate burnisher (the latter one can get from craft shops that cater for porcelain painters). I am not sure that I would have used primer at all on the white-metal parts. I would probably burnish them and then apply the paint directly. Primers contain pigment/fillers and these always roughen the surfaces compared to burnished metal. That is ok for coloured surfaces, where you want the the paint to key into the primer, but for 'metal' surfaces, the surface roughness of burnished metal would be the best you can get.

These cooking stoves were in reality quite complex pieces of engineering, that were also designed to minimise the risks from handling open fire in an environment tremendously susceptible to fire-hazards. Well done !

Didn't look into this thread for a while. It is coming on very nicely, the diorama. Love getting lost in detail ... The Jordan kits seem to have been available over here in the mid 1970s. I vaguely recall a review/building log in a German modelling magazine then. People were amazed by the detail in that scale. I remember envying other kids in the early 1960s, who had inflated tubes to go onto the water. My father never let me have one - perhaps because I wasn't able to swim yet at that time ... it was also difficult to carry the thing inside the car, when we were going down to the Rhine river on the summer weekends - it had to be inflated at a filling station.

I think Håkan is right, the term 'tabernacle' also came to my mind. In other languages, e.g. German it is als called a 'mast-stool'. Otherwise I silently follow the evolution of this project. I find the choice of dark wood a bit sombre, but really like what you are doing with it !

Copper wire down to 0.05 mm is readily available from electronic supply stores or through the Internet. For small unstudded chains, such as used for hand-rails, I developed the following procedure: take two wires of the diameter that is appropriate for the scale wire diameter of your prototype; twist them together, so that the length of each twist is about the length of scale chain link; half the twisted wire and twist together the two halfs into the opposite direction with the same amount of twists - the result looks like a twisted chain. May need a bit of practice to get this done smooth and evenly. For galvanized chain - common from the late 1840s onward, I start with either blackened copper-wire and slightly dry-bush it in silver, or I take tinned copper-wire and let black ink/acrylic run into the depressions after twisting. For anchor-chains, of course, you need to check the protype dimensions and chose the right scale link sizes - there is no 'one-size-fits-all' or something like '1/700 scale anchor chain' ...

Nice subject. I had something like that in mind for some time, an early post-WWI type with a visible marinised surplus aero-engine - very detailed aero-engine kits have come onto the market for 1/48 WWI aircraft modellers.

Where in the Adriatic does the prototype actually come from ?

'Chariot', have you tried ebay-shops (usually Chinese) selling hardware for jewellery-making and associated stuff ? The variety of items there you may have never seen or heard off before is quite amazing ... Otherwise, a DIY-process as Bob suggested may be the only solution ... check out the building logs of Michael Mott and KeithAug, if I remember correctly, at least one of them has done such small hinges.

The tighter you wind the strands, the harder and stiffer they become - which means that the two pairs will slip past each other, with the final product looking like a three-stranded rope with a fourth strand running along a groove (diamond-shaped cross-section). Perhaps you rope was soft enough so that the strands squeezed together ... Making a ropewalk yourself and according to the dimensions you need is not really magic and certainly within the capabilities of anyone, who arrived at the stage, where he feels the need for proper rope ... the parts, such as gear wheels, bushings or ball-bearings, rods for axles etc. are readily available on the Internet; the other materials one can get at any DIY store. Unless one needs to produce hundreds of metres of rope, I find single-use machines, such as those of Domanoff rather expensive for the use they will get.

It is also quite possible to assemble silkspan-sails from individual panels and add doublings etc.: Cutting the panels from a sheet of silkspan stabilised with acrylic varnish Assembling the sail using acrylic varnish as glue Boltropes, cringles etc. attached as per Allen's description, sail also painted to look 'tanned' Sail rigged and reefing ropes attached It also works with what is called silkspan over here in Europe, that is a very thin silk cloth.

Thanks for the suggestions. It seems that the company is still around actually, at least for selling existing stock: https://www.irminiatures.com. However, looking at the pictures, the figurines are 1970s standard as far as details and animiation is concerned. In addition, individual imports from the USA have become largely a no-no due to high shipping and import duty costs, unfortunately.

I agree (from experience) that using some thread is easier to handle than wire for rigging. On the other hand, it depends also on the diameter of rigging and the metal chosen. Copper kinks relatively easily, but it easier to turn into loops etc. than harder wires, such as steel or NiCr. On the other hand, when twisted, the wire becomes less prone to kinking. There is also tinned copper-wire that is a bit stiffer than pure copper. I found it not so easy to turn more than two wires into an evenly twisted wire-rope. The tension on each strand has to be equal to prevent buckling of one or more strands. With some practice this problem perhaps could be overcome. The problem with using thread to simulate wire-rope is that the twist is much steeper than that of wire-rope and the individual strands stick out too much. When making your own rope, this could be perhaps overcome by trying to make a multi-strand rope from thin threads ...

I agree with the others, she is coming along nicely ! Deck details, such as flag-locker really make a model coming to life. While the decks of a warship obviously were kept very well in order, they and the bulwarks were certainly not as empty as seen on some models. Metal or plastic sheet is a good choice for small detailed items such as the locker. Wood may be just to 'grainy' for that. Oh yes, and the bowsprit begins to look like the real thing too. I love this transition period, where 'engineering' slowly creeps into the traditional fitting out of ships.

@knightyo, it appears that you picked copper-painted paper, rather than real copper-tape. Copper-tape today is available in various thicknesses and presumably with various adhesives. It seems to be used in various industrial applications as conducting tape. Another tradtional handicraft application is in stained-glass window and object fabrication, where each piece of glass is surrounded by copper-tape that is folded into an U-shaped channel; the pieces then are soft-soldered together. This tape is much thicker than that for industrial applications. I probably made this point earlier: coppering in seawater develops after a while a dull brownish-red oxidation surface. So the question is how you want to present your model, in working-day appearance or as a show-piece of your craftsman skills. In the latter case, I would not worry too much about the initial appearance of the copper, it will develop a dull reddish surface over the years, if not varnished. I don't know how at that time the sheet-copper was treated after rolling, but I could imagine that it was given a rub down with chalk after annealing between and after the rolling passes to remove scale. So, the plates probably would have had a clean uniformly copper-coloured satin surface. Therefore, I would not worry about giving the plates a different appearance. Any colour differences would even out after a while in the seawater. The effect of 'coppering' is probably based on a collection of processes, also depending on the species against which one wants to protect the ship. The copper plates are applied over a layer of tarred felt. Tar contains lots of unhealthy compounds, including polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs) and phenols, which probably would cut short the life of many nasty little things. The copper itself is smooth, making it difficult for barnackles and seaweeds to get a foothold. If they can get a foothold, say at the seams, they may dissolve some of copper - while copper is an essential element for many living things, too much of it is not very healthy. Then the copper surface is constantly, but slowly, eroded by forming copper-oxides and -sulfates, which again makes it difficult for unwanted growth to get a foot-hold. So overall, the copper-sheathing is a 'defence in depth', with various complimentary mechanisms.

I have used soldering tin with rosin core for this purpose. After pushing the drill through the jaws seem to close on it quite centrically …

I agree, that digressions into contextual aspects of the modelling subjects can be very interesting, as they help us to understand why things are as they are and how they were used ... The pieces of industrial history you mentioned are very interesting as such and over here in Europe we are certainly not aware of the details and interconnections. I could bend the story from IC powered tractors back to steam-powered farm implements by mentioning, that another big US American farm-machinery manufacturer, John Deere, bought out in 1956 a well-know German manufacturer, who started off with farm machinery in 1859 and then took up building portable steam-engines (locomobiles) in 1878 to become the biggest manufacturer in Europe. In the early 1920s they began to develop the IC powered tractor and the Lanz 'Bulldog' was successful well into the 1960s in its various variants, including road tractors that took over the role of steam traction-engines for heavy haulage.

Recommending brands is always tricky as their availability depends on the continent you are on. Nevertheless, I have been using DaVinci synthetic brushes for decades. As noted by a colleague, they come in many diffrent shapes and sizes, intended for different sorts of jobs. These diffrent shapes are mainly designed for use on flat surfaces. I personally found that on models with their three-dimensional surfaces the standard brushes with long hairs often do not work so well, but there are also types with shorter, stiffer hairs, e.g. so-called spotters, that work better. There are also speciality brushes, such as lining-brushes with very long hairs, that are traditionally used by sign- or coach-painters to paint long, narrow lines. In more recent years they also seem to be used by so-called nail 'artists'. They are difficult to use on small, three-dimensional surfaces, unless you have a lot of practice (which I don't). Having said that, I prefer to spray-paint using an air-brush whenever possible and when a uniform coat of paint is required.

As far as I am aware, there are two (traditional) types of lug-sails, the standing lug and the dipping lug. As the name indicates, only the dipping lug is normally shifted to the lee, when tacking. The difference is that the part of the yard before the mast of a dipping lug is shorter than that of a standing lug. Also the tack of dipping lug is belayed onto the mast, so that in consequence the luff is inclined. On a standing lug the tack is belayed somewhere forward on the boat, so that the luff is more or less vertical. A standing lug can also be taken around the mast, but you will need more crew for this to control the tack and the large part of the sail before the mast. You probably have to take the sail down for this except in very light winds. Tradtionally, lug-sails do not have a boom - for a good reason, because they are the sails of working boats, where you want to take in the sail quickly with a small crew and do not want to clutter the boat with another spar where you have to handle nets etc. The boom seems to be a modern addition to sporting boats.