wefalck

I make myself a drawing of the layout of the ratline and place this behind the shrouds. This helps to space them equally and also to detect quickly, whether the shrouds become distorted by the process. Prototype fashion, the ratlines are not tied to the first and last shroud, rather there would be an eye-splice that is lashed to the respective shroud. You can fake this by a modified knot, where the loose end returns back parallel to the ratline.

Now, with the successfully launch completed, I also switched over to this project of which I had been only vaguely aware up to now ...

What would worry me is that the boats are very close and hit each other and the rowers in the water. I gather life-vests would prevent the rowers in the water to duck through the surf, but on the other hand being knocked unconscious could be fatal ... I would rather watch this from a deck-chair on the beach!

That's a leeboard, there is one on each side. As the name suggests, when sailing the one in lee is lowered and the one to windward raised to prevent drifting. Very common on flat-bottomed boats without protruding keel. Mainly used in tidal waters.

On the topic of cheap vs. expensive: obviously you get what you pay for, but often it is also a question of fine-tuning and adjusting. It pays to delve into some old-time mechanics' instruction books that give tips for adjusting machines to increase their precision and performance. One should also not forget that lathes and mills are self-replicating machines, meaning that you can replace sometimes crudely made parts in a machine with more precise and improved parts made on the very machine ... there are lots of ideas and instructions for this on the WWW.

I believe the original one was made by the same guys that made the Unimat lathes and marketed from some time of the later 1980s on as UNIMAT 1. It was essentially meant to be an educational toy. It was all-plastic with a fairly weak 12V electric motor. All plastic means that it was not really suitable for metal work, though they did show examples of metal work. It is still made and marketed by https://thecooltool.com in Austria, near Vienna. Later a metal version, UNIMAT MetalLine, was brought onto the market, which is a more serious proposition and can be used for light metal work. Over the last decade or so plagiarised versions of Chinese origin also appeared on the market, which cost half or so of the original one. In a way such combinations sound attractive, as one needs only one motor unit and can put together a wide variety of machines, such as lathe, horizontal mill, vertical mill, coordinate drilling machine etc. with one kit. From experience, however, I can say that in a production flow in shipmoldelling it may not be very practical, as you may have to move a part between machines for several operations and by reconfiguring the machine you loose the original set-up and, hence, precision. It is also time-consuming. I cannot comment on the precision and rigidity, as I never had or operated one, but have the feeling that their claims are a bit exaggerated. These machines also seem to be quite expensive for what they really are.

I know from experience what is is like to try to bring a boat off the beach through the surf and I would rather not do it, if I don't have to ...

Did you mean to point to the tackle? The resolution is not high enough to see clearly where that tackle leads to. It could be either a backstay that can be cast loose so as not to interfere with the mainsail when sailing before the wind or it could be the tackle to lower and raise the leeboard. Normally, on Dutch ships, the tackle for the leeboard runs horizontal along the rails though.

Progress has slowed down due to travels and other, pre-Christmas activities ... In the meantime:

Ahh, as in ‚slop house‘, where they sold cheap food.

Just out of curiosity: what is a 'flop house'?

Brass photo-etched parts are usually intended to represent something else than flat (or folded) sheet-metal parts. So I would venture the guess that in most cases they would require some surface treatment, such as chemical blackening or painting. I can't think of too many brass sheet-metal parts on a real ship. Typically, brass or bronze cast parts were used. However, in some cases PE bits may be tweaked to look like cast parts, e.g. bronze reenforcements/cladding on bollards or pin-rails and such. There is a certain 'artisanal' style of models that are mainly intended to show off the workmanship of the builder, where the materials are left unpainted. In such cases one could perhaps leave PE parts untreated, but they may require some special varnish (zapon lacquer) to prevent them from tarnishing. Otherwise, I can't really see a reason to leave PE parts untreated. Often, PE parts need to be soldered together and in an untreated state the solder tends to show up unsightly.

For working on concave surfaces, you may also want to consider so-called riffler files resp. rasps. Here are a couple of random example from the WWW: Rasps are intended for wood, while files are primarily intended for metal, but can also be used on wood. They come in many different shapes (and price levels).

Have you ever tried chemical tinning? At least over here in Europe we can buy such solutions from both, model supply and electronics supply houses. It kind of makes parts looked like steel, which they would be in real life.

I think the overall impression is very good and looks 'disorderly' realistic. I agree, however, that the bunch, just before the first roband from the bottom, should be hanging down more and be less folded up and follow more gravity ... Perhaps it is helpful to do what painter would do in such a situation: they would take a broomstick and a bedcloth or something like that and make a nearly full-size prop-up to study the folds and draping.

... try also a fake splice on the strop with some serving using e.g. fly-tying thread. A worthwhile exercise. I don't know anything about these commercial blocks, but milling grooves for the strops would be a rather difficult and costly operation. Leaving the blocks without gives the purchaser also the option of using them for metal-stropped or internally stropped blocks. Filing a groove with a very thin (1 mm) jewellers needle file is not difficult.

OK, this is the notorious first planking (I wonder, why kit manufacturers still go for it, while there are better methods to create a solid foundation for the 'real' planking. However, It may have been better to begin planking prototype-fashion from the garboard up. This give you a better feeling for the run of the planking in general and how it is supposed to rund against the keel and the stem. I would consider this for the 2nd round of planking. It is also a good idea to have a look how the planking is/was done on the real thing. One of the places where traditional dhows were built until quite recently is Sur in Oman. Just 'google' with 'dhow sur oman' and lots of pictures and videos will pop up. You will have to search for images with a dhow under construction, as at completion the hull below the waterline was smeared with a concoction of quick-lime, coconut-oil and what not against the attack of Terredo navalis and you cannot see the run of the planking.

It doesn't need to be a structural thing. If you look carefully, not all the planks are the same width at all. Perhaps they just used what they had or the width worked out better with cut-out for the hatch - one tries to avoid to have to caulk around a notch for the hatch, when you can run the plank straight along the edge of the hatch.

Standard sailmaking practice calls for the boltrope being sewn on top of the sail (usually the port side), rather than the edge. Was this also the practice for these sails? that would give a larger contact surface, than just the edge. Fabric glue might be good solution, but when the boltrope become unstuck, you can also re-attach after furling the sail at places, where it visibly has come off. Done that myself.

I think you painted a quite convincing picture of the history (or of the lack of knowledge about it). Relating the lancha to the botter is bizarre, as neither the shape nor the construction bears any resemblance to it. A botter doesn't have a true keel, but rather a wide bottom plank, for instance. It has been observed in other regions of the world that local boatbuilders began to adapt their types, when European tools, materials, or ways of producing half-finished goods, such as sawn lumber became available, resulting in more efficient processes, albeit at higher capital cost. Local boatbuilders may have also copied features of European craft because they were either more efficient or more 'fashionable'. Examples are the Inuit that started to use European sawn planks in their kajak construction or the Arab dhows that adopted the high square stern of the European 16th galeons once they came into contact with the Portuguese. Around the European coasts boats and small trading or fishing craft often were built be part-time builders, whose main occupation may been farming for instance. They were often built for their own use, sometimes with the advice and help of a professional boatbuilder. So it is quite conceivable that locals would put together boats basec on whatever example they may have come across.

Thank you Pat ! ***************** Cutting out the bulkheads It took some time to figure out an efficient and precise way to cut out the bulkheads form the 1 mm thick acrylic glass. Unfortunately, the router table did not prove as useful as I thought, it was difficult to achieve smooth curves, as the cutter tended to bite into the material. So, I resorted to good old hand-filing. I also observed that when sawing and grinding/filing the stuck-on paper frayed and it became difficult to see the lines. Sticking the template with the printed face onto the clear acrylic glass instead the usual way solved that problem. The printed lines were protected to the end by the acrylic glass and one could work very precisely towards it. Initially, I also used a too narrow scroll-saw blade, which tended to wander. Using a slightly coarser and therefore wider blade sorted that. The process then was: cutting strips of acrylic glass just the height of the bulkheads on the circular saw; cutting out the paper templates with about a millimetre around them and sticking them onto the acrylic glass ‘face down’; the bulkhead then was roughly cut out on the scroll-saw. In the next step the part was transferred to the disc-sander and the outside of the bulkhead was shaped on it; the final step consisted of draw-filing the inside shape of the bulkhead with the part held in a small precision-vise. The bottom edge does not need any work, as the cut with the circular saw is smooth and exactly perpendicular. Rough cutting out the bulkhead on the scroll-saw Shaping the outside of the bulkhead on the disc-sander to the line Filing the inside of the bulkhead to the line in a precision-vise This process is slow and I only managed to eke out time for one bulkhead each evening between various pre-Christmas duties and more business travel. To be continued

I use neither, only safety goggles (with or without built-in magnification), but then I rarely use the chucks for model work, only for my tool-making. For really fine work, where you have to look at the work from different angles, face shields are impractical.

Nice re-purposing and probably quite in the spirit of these ships that presumably also were built with whatever was handy at the yard.

I have a basic workshop safety-rule: I keep my face/head out of the line-of-flight of spinning objects as much as possible. When working with the lathe, I am always with my body slightly to the right from a spinning chuck. They also sell round polycarbonate shields for lathes, but they are not very convenient for precision work on small parts.

Keep in mind that the DB250 is a small wood-lathe with only 40 mm centre-height. The Sherline-chucks are designed for much heavier metal-lathes ... The spindle-thread on the DB250 should be 16x1, not sure that Sherline would offer chucks with such a thread. There may be several aftermarket options of Chinese or Indian origin for centric or independent 4-jaw chucks at moderate prices, but they typically have either 12x1 or 14x1 threads, I think. PROXXON offers a plastic independent 4-jaw-chuck, which would be quite adequate for wood-work. As long as you work from stock, the run-out of a chuck is not really important. The part in itself will be true in all its diameters. Run-out only becomes relevant, when you want to perform so-called 2nd operations, i.e. when you inverse a piece and want to work on its unmachined side. Setting up an independent 4-jaw-chuck can be a real pain and is time-consuming. You normally would need a dial-indicator to check for concentricity (there are other approximative methods). However, this can be the most precise option for 2nd operations. Not really needed for most wood-working applications.