wefalck

He did it again !

The battery was sitting on a small shelf or bracket and retained by a couple of threaded rods. I remember this well, because one day I got it back from service and while I was checking the oil (it happened that they forgot to put oil back ...) I noticed that the rods were not fixed - a sharp braking and the battery would have slipped onto the drive-shafts and into the steering, which could have spellt disaster ...

Ah those bygone days in the late 1970s/early 1980s cruising open top around southern France ... At some stage I had to replace the front wings with a good pair from the breakers, but had to match the colour - was able to do quite a decent paint job with a mohair brush ... yes, car model builders spend quite a bit of effort on their paint jobs.

Sometimes such humble service vessels do make it into preservation. For instance, the Harbour Museum Hamburg does have a suction dredge and a floating crane, both pre-WWI, in its collection of vessels (to which recently the restored Flying-P-Liner PEKING was added).

Having all those nice photographs, videos and animations actually allow you to copy such tools for your own purposes - of course, if you have the right machinery and skills. I think the Chinese are in a transition, as the Japanese were in the 1970s and the Germans in the 1880s, away from entering the markets in industrialised countries by catering for the cheap end towards making quality products. 'Made in Japan' or 'Made in Germany' once was meant to serve as a stigma and warning and now has turned into a mark of quality. The same will happen with 'Made in China' eventually.

Fly-tying threads are usually measured in 'deniers', that is weight of 9000 metres of a yarn (see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Units_of_textile_measurement). In other words, the lower the of 'den' the finer the yarn. By using a rough bulk density of the material (nylon) of 1.1 g cm^3 and some simple calculations, one can estimate the diameter of the yarn. The finest thread (apart from monofilament) I have come is Veevus's (of Denmark) 16/0 which is equivalent to 50 den. The problem with fly-tying threads is that they are quite expensive, as a spool may cost you 2 to 3 €, but contains only 75 m. If I got my calculations right, it would have a diametre of around 0,04 mm. Again, if I got my calculations right, one spool of the 16/0 would allow you to serve a 1 mm diametre shroud of 1m length. I got my supply of Veevus through the well-know electronic bay, where you can find various other brands too.

Where these cross-Channel steamers ? Or, being in a Lancaster museum, they were crossing the Irish Sea ?

Would have frightened the wits out of me to cut into the impeccable previous work, but it has come out nicely - who dares, wins !

I think this is what boat-builders do, they cut the planks a tad wider than needed and then repeatedly offer them to the rabbet (or the previous plank) and mark the areas, where material has to taken off. A trick the old Inca etc. used when they fitted these amazing stone-walls without grout: they did not attempt to fit the whole surface fo the stones, but only the outer visible edge. So a minute inward leaning bevel of the planks should do the same trick. Another point would be to fit the planks only dry and not humid, as they would dilate and elongate, of course, when wet and then develop gaps when drying. Apologies, if you had already been through those loops - I must admit that I did not read all your text and only enjoyed the pictures.

Things never seem to be straightforward, there always seem to be a lot of set-backs caused by technology or materials limitations or, indeed my clumsiness. I seem to loose or destroy many parts during further production steps. Making the boat-davits in my mind seemed simple process, but became rather involved, so that I have to break the reporting on it into two installments. The process is not finished yet ... Boat-Davits Originally, the WESPE-Class was provided with four boats, later a small dinghy was added to the complemenent. The very first photograph shows the boats suspended outboard from the davits in the traditional way. A few years later ‘barrings’ or boat-racks were installed above the walk-ways along the deckhouse and the davits elongated accordingly. I gather the boats were prone to damage and prevented the boats from being alongside each other in a ‘parcel’ (as was common practice for flottillas of the same class of boats). For the same reasons at some stage sponsons were installed to protect the screws, which projected beyond the profile of the boats, from damage. However, as I will show SMS WESPE in her original configuration, I choose the shorter, fixed davits. Micro-Ball-turning on D-bed lathe with ‘right-angle tailstock’ as steady The davits presumably were hollow, but were not simply curved pipes, but changed their diameter and cross-section along the length. They apparently had a cross-section of a flattened oval in the curved part in order to resist the bending force of the suspended boat. This makes the construction of the davits a bit more involved. At the upper end there is a ball that holds four rings for the stays and the hook of the boat-tackle. Set-up for ball-turning on D-bed lathe They started out as 1 mm brass rod (steel would have been better, but is more difficult to drill and to solder ...). The machining steps required a bit of planning in order to keep unsupported areas to a minimum. First the ball was turned in my small 6 mm lathe, where I could use the so-called ‘right-angle tailstock’ as a steady, using my home-made ball-turning attachment. The turning bit was a broken 0.2 mm drill, the end of which was ground at a suitable angle. Davits after the ball-turning operation The pieces of brass-rod then were transferred to the dividing head in the micro-mill for 0.2 mm cross-drilling into the ball – four holes were needed in each. Aligning the drill and the ball is a bit tricky, as the drill might slip, bend and break. Cross-drilling of ball-ends with 0.2 mm drill in the dividing head on the micro-milling machine (view through binocular microscope) This task provided the incentive to finally commission the antique stereo microscope that I bought a while ago, but never got work properly. By close inspection I discovered that one of the two objectives was misaligned – some previous owner must have tinkered with the adjusting and setting screws. Playing around with the screws, I managed to get proper stereo vision which made the cross-drilling job rather easy and I managed to get the 24 holes without drill break. Axial 0.2 mm drilling on 6 mm D-bed lathe The remaining eight holes are axial and were drilled on the lathe. The next two steps in shaping the davits were also carried out on the lathe. The section behind the bulwark is cylindrical. In order to safely turn down the the relatively soft 1 mm brass to 0.7 mm a so-called ‘Jacot-tool’ was used as a steady. This is essentially a an excentrically mounted hardened drum with groves of known diameter along the perifery. These grooves can be aligned with the centre-line of the lathe. Normally this tailstock-tool is used as a steady to burnish axles and similar watch parts. After each pass, the drum was turned to a smaller groove in order to provide good support while turning down the shaft of the davit. Set-up for using a ‘Jacot-tool’ as steady for taper turning In the following step, turning the tapering upper end of the davit, deliberately a groove one size too small, forcing the rod off-centre. This resulted in a slight taper as desired. The procedure was repeated with inreasingly smaller grooves until the upper end reached a diameter of 0.6 mm. Using a ‘Jacot-tool’ as steady for taper turning I didn’t take pictures of the next steps - lots of work with handtools. The davits now were taken into a collet in a square collet-holder. Under the stereo microscope the cross-drilled holes at the top were aligned with the sides of the collet-holder. This allowed bending the davit in the corret direction. Bending was effected with bending pliers against a scale-drawing of the davit. That these slighly marred the back of the davit did not matter, as the shape had to be filed anyway. With various very fine files the shape of the curved section of the davit was developed. To be continued ...

You have to try for yourself. However, it is always good practice to provide locating pins for similar for items to be glued somewhere, particularly when the sufaces to be glued are small. This prevents shearing forces from being applied to glued joints, which may peel them off.

There is an old painters' rule: fat over lean. This means that you can apply oil-based paints (enamels, artists' oils, and the likes) over say nitrocellulose based primers/sanding sealers, gesso, acrylics, water colours and the likes. But not the other way around. This acrylics will not stick to any surface treated with oils. Not even sanding may help. Similarly, most cements and glues do not stick very well or at all to surfaces treated with oils. The 'sticking' of glue usually is either one of the following processes or a combination of both: - a physico-chemical interaction between polar surfaces (I am not doing a tutorial on chemistry here now, but it may be sufficient to say that oils results in non-polar surfaces - that's the effect of water forming droplets on a greasy surface); many contact cements and in particular also CA work like this. - a mechanical interlinking with the aid of the physical presence of a 'cement' that keys into the opposing surfaces; white glue typically does this. The reason that you can say cement copper plates to a wooden hull is that there is this physico-chemical interaction between the cement and the copper on side and the cement keying into the wood on the other side. If you make the wood oily, the cement doesn't have chance to hold onto the wood. Not sure, why 'tung oil' and similar 'hardening' plant-based oils (lineseed oil is a traditional European variant) have become so popular among many ship-modellers. It can create a lot of problems further down the road, when you need to make alterations etc. before the oil has fully polymerised, which can take months or years.

Well, personally I would not spend my precious time on something of which I know that it is historically incorrect, but this is my personal choice.

Then do as you please ...

There are various kits for 'staten jachten' on the market ... some of the kits are/were made in the same regions that produced the 'decorator' pieces. Good quality kits don't come from there anymore. Not sure, what you are up to. Do you want to identify a kit on which your specimen may have been based on ? I gather you would have to clear your mind, what you want to do with your 'wreck': do you want to restore to what it may have been once, namele a 'decorator' piece or something like that, or do you want to use it as a basis for a better rendering of such type of ship (I would recommend against that option).

Interestingly, these 'decorator' pieces often seem to use massive wood, rather than plywood for structural parts as typically in kits. They reason may be that their centres of manufacture are or were around the Indian Ocean, say on Mauritius, where they had access to sawn tropical wood.

Most of them look pretty 'home-grown' to me and bits and pieces can be sourced here and there. Whoever made the model, seems to have had certain artisanal capability, but evidently did not know too much about ships in general and this type in particular. The model is a bit incongruent in the sense that there are well-executed details, say the cabin-roof, the rails and so on, while others are pretty crude, such as the windlass or the anchors.

I don't think this is kit-build model, doesn't quite look like it.

I was wondering about those hinge-pins ... ;} But would have been a waste of time, indeed.

I gather this applies when handling wire coming off a winch drum or situations like that. No gloves when working with machinery.

My preferred containers are film-bottles. Lucky me, who always kept them, particularly the clear ones, as they are now a rare commodity.

It's always difficult to make recommendations, particularly for products, when people don't state the country they are living in. 'Pore-filling lacquer' may actually be a poor translation. In German we call the stuff 'Porenfüller', the correct term in English would be 'sanding-sealer'. Essentially, this is a fast-drying nitrocellulose lacquer filled with some pumice dust. It fills the wood-pores with a mixture of lacquer and pumice and gives a smooth and tight surface very quickly. I often use it also as the final finish, because after sanding and/or rubbing down with steel-wool it preserves the natural appearance of the wood. Depending on the kind of wood used, it can also be polished to nice even sheen without having the appearance of a thick layer of varnish.

IP ? ... and I always tried to find a use idea for those 'pizza-savers' - thanks for the tip, Bob. Tha'ts a modeller's mind: whenever he comes across 'something', he thinks, how it could be used in the workshop.

I am years away from this ... at about the same time I made some sketches according to my ideas, Johann came up with his solution. Just think of Johann's solution, but rather hanging from the rope being served, I though of guiding/suporting it on a rail. Both ideas have their advantages and disadvantages. Johann's solution is light enough to move along the rope by itself, but requires that rope it stretched quite tightly. In my case, one would need to guide the steady manually, because the friction on the rail would be too big. One could go, however, to the trouble of installing change-gears (or stepper-motors) the couple the progress with the rotation of the rope, as noted earlier.

Probably the most comprehensive source on rigging the last large sea-going ships is this (albeit in German): MIDDENDORF, F.L. (1903): Bemastung und Takelung der Schiffe.- 401 p., Kassel (reprint 1977 by Horst Hamecher). Middendorf did design the rigging for some Flying-P-Liners, notably the five-masted ship PREUSSEN. I believe this book as also used by ship-designers and riggers in other countries. I am not aware of any contemporary English-language book (Kipping was reprinted then, but the contents is much older). Indeed, every piece of rope to be man-handled would be natural fibre. Otherwise wire would be used, or chain. Chain was used in halliards, sheets of square sails and many other places. As the quality of wire became better, chains were often replaced by wire. However, whenever it had to go through tight bends, chain would be preferred. Sailing-ship seamen did not use gloves or mittens in general, because the grip in the rig would be less secure. However, Dana describes in his book how they made themselves mittens from raw-hide diverted from their cargo in order to better survive the icy conditions around Cape Hoorn. Leather gloves or mittens would be essential to handle wire-rope.