wefalck

Thanks for the kind words on this 30+ year old effort of mine Here in Europe the term 'tractor' seems to be used only for IC-engine powered tractors, otherwise they are 'traction engines'. However, this is not a 'tractor', but rather a 'ploughing engine' as it does not pull the plough across the field directly, but rather by cable and winding drum: From: http://fumtools.co.uk/product/ploughing-engine-and-steam-traction-engine-jumbo-fridge-magnet/: And yes, the torque these engines can excert depends on the psi in the boiler and the cross-section of the cylinder(s) and not on rpms, which is why they survived for certain high-power applications (such as the deep-ploughing mentioned above) into the 1960s.

Yes, I meant holding while carving ...

You are getting better, Mark, practice helps. How do you fix the parts during carving ?

Well, the driver has his tea-break with his emaille-mug, if you look carefully The class Z7 was about the second biggest Fowler made. Their biggest was the Superba - several of them were ordered by the Mussolini-government to drain the Pontinian swamps south of Rome to get rid of the Malaria problem that plagued the city every summer. I think some of the German sets that were custom-build to drain the fen-lands (before they were considered wetlands to be protected) in northern Germany and to allow peat extraction. After the peat was extracted, the remaining moorland was deep-ploughed with a single shear plough in one pass to a depth of five(!) meters. One of the ploughing engines and a plough have survived in the Emsland-Museum close to the Dutch border.

In the UK there is a real steam-engine scene, whole in continental Europe and much of the rest of the World these thingies may be only known as a historical phenomenon. Also, due to the industrial development lagging behind, they have not been as wide-spread, as in the UK. Having had the Matchbox model of a traction engine, I was aware of their existing from an early age on, even though I grew up in Germany, I certainly was not aware of the extensive 'steam scene' in the UK until I came to live there in 1987. I then attended various 'steam-fairs' and it turned out that the uncle of a colleague of mine actually had one ... This model was built around 1989/90. I just got my watchmakers lathe, but building a working model was certainly out of scope at that time. I happened to chance upon the Keil-Kraft kit, which was still current then - the company faltered since then. Just at that time the monthly Model Engineer published a series on building a working model of a Fowler Z7 (HAINING, J.: Countryman‘s Steam - Fowler Class Z7S.- Model Engineer, 5 August 1988 - 1 June 1990.), which came very handy for detail drawings, particularly for the actual steam-engine. A local museum owned a Fowler Class BB1 ploughing engine which I could photograph and sketch for more 'typical' Fowler details - the makers followed their design practices independent of the size of the engine. The visits to various steam-fairs furnished further photographs of Fowler engines. The assembled, but not yet painted model The Keil-Kraft kit was ok with respect to the proportions and the principal structure, but lacked most of the technical details that are very visible on such engines. Most notably, there was big hole, were the two-cylinder compound engine is supposed to be. So most of these details were built from scratch in brass, steel, aluminium, Plexiglas, and styrene. The engine, of course, is not working, but the appearance of the engine, the gearing, the ploughing gear, etc. has been faithfully reproduced as far as it is possible at 1:76 scale. Fowler was a very interesing and innovative company in the field and the market leader in steam-ploughing sets. A set consisted of two identical ploughing engines and a so-called balance-plough that was hauled between them across the field. The sets were expensive so that only very rich land-owners with large fields could afford them. Typically they were operated by contractors, who would move from farm to farm. Off-season they were employed in drainage work, pulling tree-stumps and everything, where a strong winding drum with a steel-cable was needed. The winding drum has an interesting history and was the key innovation by Fowler. The invention was not made by John Fowler himself, but by a young German engineer, who came to the UK to learn and in search of work. Max Eyth also became an important sales engineer, first helping the Viceroy of Egypt to build up a cotton industry and later in his home country from where he worked also in Eastern Europe. In Germany he also became known as a writer through his memoirs and various novels. Compound cyclinders with their drainage cocks, safety valve, and steam-operated whistle The history of Fowler as a company is written up here: LANE, M.R. (1980): The Story of the Steam Plough Works. Fowlers of Leeds.- 410 p., London (Northgate Publishing Co. Ltd.). Fowler not only produced plouging engines and ploughs, but also a wide range of traction engines, locomotives, and other items. The clutch-system to connect the winding drum to the steam-engine Two-speed driving gear and clutch and boiler-feed injectors including water-hose Driver's view Driving stand with all the levers, valves and gauges

I am using either shellac or something called zapon-varnish, which is similar to nail-varnish and is used tradtionally to varnish brass and silver aginst tarnishing. It is less brittle than shellac. The great advantage of such varnish is that it can be softened with a drop of acetone, so that one kan adjust knots or the belaying. If applied somewhat diluted, it is virtually invisible.

How are you going to make the belaying pins ? I am going to have the same problem in the not too distant future - but an order of magnitude smaller I gues. What I have been thinking of, is to turn the belaying pins and their sockets in one piece - this safes me drilling the tiny (0.25 mm) holes for the pins. The belaying pin then will be cross-drilled half-way for the stems and the stems soldered in. Not sure, whether I can hard-solder such small parts with equipment without melting everything.

Sorry for the belated thank you for your kind words ! ********************************************* Block-making 2 Somehow it seems to be always two steps ahead and then at least one step back … apart from the actual manufacturing problems, I somehow loose about 30% of the originally made blocks somewhere along the road. They jump of the tweezers and other tools … and the bakelite being light and elastic they jump far away and never seem to stay on the bench or in my apron … I was not really entirely satisfied with the blocks I had turned out so far and tried out different variants of the above method over the past few weeks. Perhaps my improvised mill from a broken 0.2 mm drill was not sharp enough, anyway, the milled slots had a tendency to break out. I got myself from China (a lot cheaper than from European sources, where companies would have charged me for the shipping alone the amount of money that I paid for the item) a proper 0.2 mm end-mill, but the same happened. This is probably due to the fact that this kind of bakelite has a layered structure inherited from the paper that is used in its fabrication. Perhaps it would have been better to cut the block perpendicular to the layering. Cutting the grooves for the copper-wire straps I tried out a method that has been shown on various fora, namely saw cuts along the full length of the block to simulate the grooves for the sheave and then to drill a hole for the rope. The rest of the procedure was as above. Drilling the blocks with a 0.2 mm drill A problem was also cutting off the blocks from the billet. Somehow my method was tedious and at least about one in five blocks ended up flying around the workshop to be never found again. Not very efficient. So, I built a tiny gadget for the saw table of my lathe along the lines of the cross-cutting slides used on table-saws. This clamps the billet and the cut off block securely during the cutting and allows to locate the saw-cut precisely. A miniature cross-cutting slide for cutting off blocks from the billet It is a piece of rectangular aluminium 8 mm x 6 mm into which a recess is milled at the bottom so that it fits over the saw table and is guided parallel to it. Then a step is milled into the front, over which a 6 mm x 6 mm brass angle fits to serve as down-hold. The angle is guided by two pins that have been hard-soldered into it. Two screws (I have added a second one since taking the pictures) push the angle down onto the workpiece. The saw slot was cut in situ with the 0.2 mm wide saw-blade that I am going to use with the gadget. Now I can cut off the blocks safely and quickly without the risk of losing them. The cross-cutting slide used on the watchmakers lathe saw-table After separating, the blocks are shaped and rounded off individually using an abrasive wheel in the handheld drill. Earlier attempts with a small homemade tumbler were not successful, as the blocks are too small, too light, to few and the material too hard. Doing the rounding off in the hand-held vice works quite well. All the previous methods were aimed to efficiently round off the entrance to the borehole in order to simulate the sheave and thus to make the rope enter and leave tangentially to the sheave. In order to achieve this now, the rounding-off has to be done manually. Not so easy as the bore is only 0.2 mm. For diameters above 0.25 mm I purchased a diamond-studded round fret-saw blade, but this is the smallest diameter on the market. After some head-scratching I fashioned a micro-chisel from a broken fretsaw-blade, which is held in a pin-vice for the time being (have to make a graver handle). With the chisel the groove is rounded into the bore, while the rough block is held in the hand-vice that I have adapted for the purpose. The groove for the ‘iron’ straps were filed with a miniature (1 mm x 1 mm x 1mm) triangular file. Brass insert-jaws in the hand-vice, fashioned to hold blocks during manipulations The next challenge was the external strapping with a hook at the end. In theory, the straps are strips of flat iron bar. While it was possible to flatten the copper wire that I was going to use in controlled way, the material broke easily and it was difficult to place the flat sections before twisting the ends together to form the hooks. Therefore, a practical concession needed to be made and the straps were going to be round. The next issue was to hold the block while attaching the strap. I made a special clamp from Novotex for the third-hand, but it did not hold the block securely enough. In the end it occurred to me that also the hand-held vice could be used, while clamping it into a larger vice. Still the overall operation is very delicate. Finally, the tail end of the strap is cautiously bent into a hook. However, the copper wire is too soft to serve as a hook and also the structure of the two twisted ends is too obvious. Therefore, the hook was covered in a drop of soft-solder, which stiffens it and covers up to some extent the twisted structure. In addition, the back of the hook was somewhat flattened to better simulate the shape of a real hook. Overall, this is turned out to be a very time-consuming procedure and I reckon, that it takes me upward of an hour per block, adding up all the different steps, notwithstanding that they are made in small batches. That’s ok for a small ship, but would be out of question for a larger sailing ship. I am still not entirely happy with the fact that the blocks and in particular the hooks are not as uniform as I would have wished them to be. The lighter 2 mm blocks and the darker 1.6 mm long double blocks (they will be eventually all painted white) To be continued ....

Isn't there any ratchet mechanism on the windlass or is it not finished yet ?

Ochre is a pigment widely used on ships of all times. Unfortunately, ochre is a complex mineral with varying properties depending on the source and its further treatment/refinement. Basically it is an iron-oxyhydroxide (FeOOH), but can be mixed with magnetite (Fe3O4), colloidal iron-hydroxide (Fe(OH)3), iron carbonate (FeCO3), and various other impurities, such as manganese compounds. In practice, the colour of natural occurences can vary from pale yellow to a blueish dark red. The more mineral water it contains, the paler the yellow and the less (in general) the more orange-red it appears. By heating it, one can make it deep red. Given this variability and the cost of refinement, since the middle of the 19th century the better quality is synthesised by precipating it from an iron solution, but the temperature variation still is there. In addition, ochre is rarely used by itself as pigment in paint preparation, but often diluted with some cheap white pigment - which changes it tint, particularly, if the pigment changes the pH of the paint, as e.g. ground limestone would do. The kind of binder used and any addition of driers will also change the tint of a paint - and glossy surface looks different from a satin or wheathered one ...

Just to add to Bob's comments: I have been using Vallejo et al. acrylic paints pre-diluted for airbrushing in such pens. As they come in bottles with pipettes, they are easy to adminster to the pens. Both, a curse and a blessing is the fact that acrylics dry very fast. So frequent cleaning of the pen is required, but that is easy. The typical draughting sets usually also include such pen-inserts for the various compasses, which could also be useful for making your own decals in this way. Earlier this year I also was able to buy cheaply one of those old-time gadgets with which one can generate broken lines - the pen is lifted and lowered by a toothed wheel as you run it along your ruler. Thought it might come handy for exactly that purpose or for generating rivet lines using a tailor-made toothed wheel and acrylic gel ... in fact the pens might come useful for generating welding seams as well, though I had not need yet to try this out.

Vallejo has been around catering for artists for a long time, so I think they know what they are doing. I use their Model Air range also for brush-painting, when washes are required or the build of thin layers of paint - obviates the need for dilution. However, I am working on small models only, so the higher price for less pigment is irrelevant. I don't think colour-matching to some historical prototype is really relevant in our realm, as we mostly don't actually know what colours exactly were used and how the respective paints were mixed up from what components. So this is all rather speculative the further you go back in history, particularly in the time before the 1920s, when the first attempts at standardisation were made.

Where did you see the masculine form ? In fact, the 'La' is not a grammatical article here, but part of the ship's name in French. In Germanic languages we typically do not use the article in ship names, at least not in this kind of name, hence we tend to drop it from French names.

To make matters a bit more complicated: in the old days waterlines often were not laid out along the line that you would have, when the hull rests in the water; rather they were slightly raised at the bow and stern. This was done for three reasons, it gives the hull a more 'dynamic' look, it also visually cancels out any 'hogging' of the hull due to older age, and finally it counteracts the visual impression that the waterline is bent downwards at the ends, when comparing it to the upsweep of wales and the sheer-line. The craftsmen of old (the sign-makers and coach-painters in particular) used very long-haired brushes to draw lines. Some modern car- and motorcycle painters still use this technique of 'lining', which requires a lot of practice. There are also specialist tools for this, which basically consist of wheel onto which paint is dispensed from a reservoir. The tools are popular among model railway and steam-engine builders, where lining occurs frequently. A further option are waterslide transfers again from the realm of model railway enthusiasts. They do straight lines in various widths and colours. For white lines one may cut these also from 'decal' sheets with a white background - or paint the transparent ones in the desired colour and cut them to width afterwards.

The common disposable scalpel blades are not meant for wrenching, i.e. side-forces, they are meant for straight downward cuts in the plane of blade. Swann-Morton and similar suppliers also make 'post-mortem' blades that are thicker and hence stronger, but I think they are more expensive and not so easy to find on ebay etc. In the old days at least they made pretty heavy scalpels. My father trained as a medical doctor in the late 1930s/early 1940s and I inherited from him a set of heavy anatomical/post-mortem scalpels with nice ebony handles. The blades can be honed very sharp. It is always useful to make oneself aware of what happens, when you cut something with a knife-edge tool: you basically drive a wedge into the material in question. The thinner the wedge, the easier it is to drive it in. To drive the wedge in, you have to displace material. The tougher the material, the more difficult it is obviously to displace it. And here comes our impatience into play: we want to remove as much as possible with a single cut. But the tougher the material, the thinner the shaving etc. should be. Removing the material in layers/steps is often the answer to flexing blades - it makes wrenching the blade unnecessary. Thinking strategically into which direction the material needs to be displaced also allows you to make relieving cuts first.

Thank you very much to all of you for the friendly comments ! I don't remember for sure, but I probably coated the bare metal in zapon-varnish. This is the varnish that is commonly used to prevent the tarnishing of silver and brass objects.

Thanks. I knew about these kits - I think they were marketed also under other brands, but never got into this. Was tempted though at some stage, but found them rather big. Still looking for a 54 mm kit with German mid-15th century gothic fluted armour and the so-called 'Schallern'-type helmet, as kann be seen in the Wallace-collection in London or the Kunsthistorische Museum in Vienna. This type of helmet was the inspiration for the WWI German steel-helmet and later for a certain Star Wars-character. Got a small collection of source-books on medieval amour to inform the modelling.

I build this in the early 1990s on the basis of a kit by Friulmodel (https://friulmodel.hu/termek/mp-5-knight-hospitaller-c-1150/). The helmet was still good for around 1200, but the shield had to be changed to the more modern, rounded triangular form of the time. The chain-mail and helmet is the bare white-metal, polished, while the coat was painted with the airbrush in acrylics. Details were added with a brush in acrylics and oil. The background is modelled after the Chorin-monastery not far from Berlin. The bricks and stonework are shaped and engraved from plaster of Paris and painted.

Incidentally, this appears to be a sailor's model and when I interpret the jumble on the second picture correctly, the model was rigged as a 5-masted ship, not barque. There seems to be also an anachronism, as on the model the shrouds are rigged with dead-eyes, but at that time bottle-screws would have been used. For all ships French I would turn to the Association des Amis du Musée de la Marine in Paris (https://www.aamm.fr). They are usually helpful and also have English-speakers. Arguably the best source on early 20th rigging of steel ships is this (albeit in German): MIDDENDORF, F.L. (1903): Bemastung und Takelung der Schiffe.- 401 p., Kassel (reprint 1977 by Horst Hamecher). The Author was responsible for the design of inter alia PREUSSEN.

It would be difficult to know what materials and techniques the Vickers-Armstrong model-workshop used, if the model was actually made in-house and not contracted out to professional modell-building workshop. However, I would first consult textbooks on paints and paintfinished published around that time. They give recipes, list raw materials and application techniques. Raw materials at these times often went by 'common' names and 'trivial' names for chemical compounds that sometimes are not so easy to identify today. However, there are encyclpedias/dictionaries that explain these to the interested public or the commercial people of the time. Such books can be now downloaded from the Internet in many cases. I am not so acquainted with the English-language literature on this subject, so I cannot point to specific works. This is a time, when people began to experiment more frequently with man-made materials ('plastics' in the widest sense) and this can occur as construction materials and as binders in paints as well. However, these 'plastics' were not normally derived from mineral oil, but rather from organic raw materials. Celluloid and bakelite come to mind, as examples, but there are also casein-based raw materials. The post WWI period also has seen an increasing use of synthetic dyes and pigments in addition to the traditional mineral and organic ones. There is also an abundant literature on conservation and restoration issues and techniques, either in the form of textbooks or scientific articles in journals or as contributions to symposia etc. Certain individuals or museums have specialised in particular aspects, such as metal or wood conservation, or paint restoration. Obviously, the big maritime and technical museums around the world face the same problems and might be prepared to provide advice or can at least direct you to the right sources of information.

According to my German 1878 textbook on (naval) boatbuilding, the diagonal planking was up to 30% lighter, than a carvel-planked boat and even more so for a lap-strake built one. However, building costs were higher and they are also more difficult to repair. The diagonal-carvel system (as in this example) was used particularly, when the hull was to be (partially) varnished on the outside, rather than painted all over. A tropical hardwood was preferred for the inner planking to better resist rotting - it would have been very difficult to replace inner planking without essentially dismantling half of the boat. The model is coming on nicely. It's a pity that not much of the inner diagonal strakes will be visible at the end.

Good Luck !

If the spindle has an outside thread, as some have, you can also try to find an ER collet chuck to screw on. Collets run much more concentric than jacobs-chucks. Apart from the Morse-taper issue, another issue might be that the rpms are just not high enough for cleanly milling wood.

The original manufacturers of acrylic glass (Plexiglas) recommend using water as a lubricant. However, with such thin rod it is not really needed. Just use the finest piercing saw blade you can get and don't work too fast. Scoring and snapping-off is also a procedure recommended by the manufacturers. Works for rods and sheets up to about 3 mm thickness.

Got this kit in 1977, but dumped almost everything except for the hull. The hull (and the awfull deck) are vacuum-formed styrene, if I remember correctly, so if you keep the deck, the two parts should cement together with the usual styrene cement. If the parts are ABS, you would use a standard 'contact' cement, the kind that you apply to one side, let it almost dry and then bring the two parts together. You don't say, where you are based, so there is probably no point referring to any brand of cement. As I said, I dumped the deck-part at that time and made a new deck from a sheet of ABS that was carefully fitted to the inside of the hull. It was cemented in place with some little wooden blocks that were cemented into the hull first. All glueing was done with contact cement. I 'planked' the deck with paper-backed self-adhesive wood-veneer. The deck-houses and hatches were built up from sheets of ABS also covered in this kind of wood veneer. Not sure, whether I would do this again, but it lasted very well until today. I then glued bullwark stanchions to the inside of the hull. With the hull stabilised like this, I half-filled it with Plaster of Paris to give weight, trimmed off the horizontal part of vacuum-formed hull and added a wooden capping rail. Incidentally, this was my first model that was built from scratch except for the hull, because I just wasn't happy with what the kit provided.