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wefalck

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Everything posted by wefalck

  1. wefalck
    You could make yourself a little jig for making the shackles: just to pins in a piece of wood around which you wind the wire for the shackels. Make sure that you pinch the eyes in a way the connection between them is right in the middle, i.e. are symmetrical to the loop of the shackle. Another method that works for really small shackles is to flatten the wire at both ends a bit with a punch or flat pliers, then drill the holes for the bolt and finally file the ends round. These guys most probably did not have much access to sophisticated hardware, but then as they found turnbuckles, they may have also found shackles. The turnbuckles, however, do not seem to the marine version.
  2. wefalck
    On the original question: the question is always what one wants to do with a tool. One may need different sizes and different types for different jobs. I have a whole range of sizes and types. There is also a short version used by tool-makers to hold small files or reamers, which I find quite useful for certain applications. I got them in a second-hand lot by chance, but one could also shorten commercial ones, of course. For drilling, there are also miniature archimedean drills. I got one from a watchmaking supplier nearly 40 years ago that virtually clamps down to zero. The advantage is that they have free-spinning head, which allows you to put pressure on the drill, while moving the dolly up and down. There are also spring-loaded 'single-action' models. Don't go for the cheap small archimedean drills that have appeared on ebay & Co. a few years ago, buy quality.
  3. wefalck
    The idea is to pull up the edges of grown-in toe-nails. Bought one of thosen years ago to be used indeed as gear-puller and for similar tasks.
  4. wefalck
    I must admit that I don't know next to nothing about the shipping around the Pacific coast of the USA. I am always amazed that at the beginning of the 20th wood was still used as constructional material for quite substantial steam-ships, but then wood must have been a comparatively abundant resource in that part of the world. Why did you settle on the odd scale of 1/71 (if I understood correctly) and did not go for the common scale of 1/72 ?
  5. wefalck
    A marine dictionary, such as Paasch's 'From Keel to Truck', that in it's 4th edition of 1908 not only covered English, French and German, but also Spanish and Italian, might help sorting out questionable machine translations. I think it is available as PDF.
  6. wefalck
    Yep, but Bavarian locomotives were not painted in 'any' colour. The standard livery was green before the state railways were unified into a national railway in 1925. The 'livery' of the 'Reichsbahn' was black with red frames, wheels and inlays in works. At some stage the S2/6 also was painted in yellow-ochre for an exhibition or something. I think the lining then was red, but one would need to check.
  7. wefalck
    Same for me ... posted too early or too late. I think there is a lot of tradition involved in Europe. You N-Americans seem to have been much less inhibited by traditions. Push-barges didn't came into use on European rivers (mainly the Rhine) until the 1970s or so. Before it was side-wheel or propeller tugs with a tow of a maximum of four to six dumb barges. On Eastern European rivers, that were less well-regulated, wheels seem to have persisted longer, though quite a bit of research had been going on to improve screw populsion in shallow waters through putting the screws into tunnels. One river on which sternwheels have been used for quite some time was the Rhone, but not for tugs, but for fast packets. No idea what reasons where, why they kept for so much longer 'towing' than pushing.
  8. wefalck
    I was thinking of parallel towing in harbours etc. However, it seems that in N-America the rivers tend to be more violent than even the unregulated rivers here in Europe.
  9. wefalck
    I wouldn't really know, as the description does not mention the solvent. I know what kind of varnish is used for, but wouldn't know the viscosity or drying time of this particular product. Another option used by some people here would be a shellac solution. The solvent is alcohol, which dries fast, but not as fast as other types of organic solvents. The advantage is that from shellac flakes and alcohol you can mix up solutions to any viscosity you find useful.
  10. wefalck
    Objectively, there is no reason not to use it in the house. We use only tiny quantities and would not keep the container open for long times. Of course, if I were to treat a silver chandelier or something like that, I would like to have good ventilation ... However, the law is the law. You would need to find a fast-drying varnish based on an organic solvent. The point is relatively low viscosity, good penetration because of low surface tension, good wetting properties (particularly when working with man-made fibre ropes), and easy reversibility of the bond. These are all properties that do not really apply to acrylics or PVA glue. I have never used the latter two for this purpose for those reasons.
  11. wefalck
    I gather this would be a colour often referred to as 'duck egg blue'. Adding a wash of ochre could get you there or mixing it up for another coat. Adding orange possible makes it too dark. I would assume that the owner's would put on any colour they could lay their hands on (like the famous houses in the La Boca area of Buenos Aires) and that took their fancy. Black hulls with white trims has been the fashion since the middle of the 19th century. Black and white are also among the cheapest colours you can get. It was only after WW2, when synthetic pigments made it possible to have the same price for all colours.
  12. wefalck
    I am using so-called zapon varnish, which is fast-drying and remain a bit elastic. It is basically invisible and does not add volume to knots etc. Old-time nail-varnish, not the modern acrylic version, is/was essentially the same. The main use of zapon varnish is to coat silver- or brass-ware to prevent it from tarnishing. As the USA seems to have overtight regulations on organic solvents in some states, it may be difficult to find. Unlike white glue or acrylic varnishes, this varnish can be easily redissolved with a drop of acetone, if you need to adjust the knot. Not sure, why you want to cut close to a knot. Normally, when a rope is tied to something with a knot, there is a 'tail', the length of which depends on the situation. The only situation I can think of for cutting close would be when belaying to a pin and you want to prepare the coil separately. Another situation for making close cuts would be after splicing. Here, the varnish prevents the strands from slipping out after being cut back closely.
  13. wefalck
    Interesting feature, these push-knees. That is something rarely seen in Europe on tugs until a few decades ago. I would have thought that the driver would have been tied up alongside for manoeuvering it around and then tied up to the shore and two anchors laid out at the rear to keep it in position and to move it along for the next pile.
  14. wefalck
    In case you need supporting information, there are several surviving examples, for instance in the Deutsche Museum in Munich. This Wikipedia page gives an overview over S3/6: https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bayerische_S_3/6. It's in German, but that shouldn't be a problem with GoogleTranslator. I was surprised to see a Bavarian locomotive in blue in did a bit of search on German fora. It seems that they were painted for unknown reasons in blue for a number exhibitions around Europe, but blue was never a regular livery.
  15. wefalck
    Must be a specialist, who sees any problem with the stern ... I think that the 'garlands' would be a job for a laser-cutter or for photo-etching in brass ... or may be 3D-printing to obtain some plasticity.
  16. wefalck
    There seems to be a certain parallel to the boats from Norway that tended to rigged with a single square sail right into the 20th century. As has been shown by the replicas of Viking boats, when using bulins on the square-sails, they can go quite high into the wind. Looking forward to further progress ...
  17. wefalck
    It seems that 'warm' LEDs actually have a layer of yellow, transparent varnish on them. That's why they a 10% lower output in lumen, compared to the cold white ones.
  18. wefalck
    Another option is, if you have a lathe with a face-plate, to cut a ring-slot with a boring tool. This is what I did.
  19. wefalck
    Well, yes, unfortunately, I snapped one and lost it into nowhere 😡. I will replace it after the planking.
  20. wefalck
    Well engineered! It's only a pity that these 'angel's eyes' for cars only come in this unpleasant cold white. I made a similar one for my antique mill some ten years ago. As it is cast iron, I attached the ring-light with a neodynium magnet.
  21. wefalck
    Thanks for the 'Likes' ! ************************ Quick update In between travels I managed to attach the outboard part of the covering boards: I also scraped all the pieces to the same level, but some of the joints will need a bit of filling with putty to give a uniform appearance of a single board. To be continued
  22. wefalck
    I think I would have had a cardiac arrest while the first paint went on ... Loosk like my favourite green, British Racing Green or RAL 6007 Bottle Green. Difficult to get these days, but I had it mixed up in acrylics for the paint-jobs on my machines. And I think this is enough paint to give a balance between the realistic impression of the real thing, while preserving the beautiful planking and varnishing job.
  23. wefalck
    Because of the B/W photographs, we tend to have a much more dim impression of the time between 1850 and 1950, but in reality, the world was quite colourful. Perhaps not as colourful as after the aesthetically sometimes questionable colour-explosion during the later 1960s and the 1970s though. However, coloured paint was expensive, so 'simple' and lightfast colours, such as black, green, red-ochre and the likes dominated. It was also a matter of fashion: during the 1830s to 1850s (sea)ships were painted with quite a bit of colour, but thereafter black and white dominated. I gather, it is your aesthetic choice, Keith ...
  24. wefalck
    Brass parts to be handled other than for assembly probably require an etching primer. My models are barely handled, so I am ok with painting directly on brass. However, I mainly spray-paint, which makes it easier. Using a solvent-based varnish as primer might go a long way to facilitate brush-paining with acrylics, because bare brass has a slightly hydrophobic surface, regardless how well you clean it. Other people actually use paper, cardboard or styrene for metal-bands, which is fine as long as there is no load on these parts.
  25. wefalck
    Source: https://www.arbeitskreis-historischer-schiffbau.de/mitglieder/modelle/bawaria/ Jig used in construction: Source: https://www.arbeitskreis-historischer-schiffbau.de/mitglieder/modelle/wittelsbach/

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