wefalck

Certainly. There is currently a project going on here: http://www.shipmodels.info/mws_forum/viewtopic.php?f=13&t=314249 Back in the 1960s at least the German model supplier Graupner offered styrofoam hulls and they offered a special primer (no water-based acrylics yet) that would not eat into it. They were discontinued after a few years in favour of vacuum-formed hulls made from ABS. Event with paint on, they would have dented relatively easily. My very first model had such hull. Some 35 years ago I devised a POB construction for an iron tug by which I cut the bulkheads from 0.25 mm thick brass sheet, the keel from 0.5 mm brass sheet and filled the spaces with a special hard foam, which is essentially foamed-up Plexiglas. Very good material to work with, but difficult to get - at that time I had easy access, as my father worked for one of the daughter companies of the Plexiglas-manufacturers. The hull then was plated with copper-foil to imitate the rivetted iron plating. The reason for choosing these somewhat unorthodox materials was, that I wanted to make the bulwark-stanchions of this flush-decked tug in one piece with the bulkheads and at scale-thickness. For my next project I will probably use a similar technique, but use 1 mm Plexiglass for the bulkheads and the keel-piece. The spaces will then be filled with this acrylic foam to prevent the thin styrene planking from sagging. The reasons is again, that this going to be a flush-decked sailing ship and I would like to make make the bulwark-stanchions in one piece with the bulkheads for easy definition of the hull shape.

I am very well aware of the storage space issue, but by not saving the RAW-image one looses a huge amount of prosessable information and effective resolution. In RAW the original sensor information is saved pixel by pixel, while in JPG more or less severe interpolation and averaging between pixels is used in order to compress the amount of information. This results in a loss of colour resolution, sharpness, and overall effective resolution of the image, even though the number of pixels has not changed. Watching myself, I noted that in many, if not most cases, the first shot of a series is the one I retain ...

Yes, but one can/has to convert them in to JPG at home, in the digital lab. So, I never clogged up the memory cards with these, even though all of my digital DSLRs had the possibility to save both formats at the same time.

You must have been a very observing child ! I remember that my father told me about the colours of shadows etc. and he also had various books, some of them dating back to the 1940s, on colour photography that I read in my teenage years and that I still have. I never had the possibility to set up a colour lab, so I never had the possibility to manipulate prints, but it was always on my mind how to change this or that on the image. When reasonably priced slide scanners came onto the market, this opened up this possibility and over the last 15 years or so, of course digital photography. And I agree, the function in Adobe Photoshop to manipulate 'highlights and shadow' is very useful and I use it frequently to make up for less than ideal lighting. This is a situation one frequently encounters during travelling, when there is no time to wait for different light/weather, or in museums, where one depends on what light is put there. I find Photoshop particularly useful to manipulate images taken in museums for information purposes, not to make 'nice' or technically 'correct' photographs. In these 'technical' photographs it is important (for me) to be able to identify details, even on the expense of 'white noise', when light levels are low. As I always shoot in RAW, I can also adjust the white balance, if needed. Again, using the RAW-format to save the primary image gives one the possibility to adjust e.g. the white balance or tonality of an image in order to achieve the desired effect. I often have a specific 'picture' in mind when taking a photograph, but not always the primary image comes out like that, so the image processing software provides the tool to create this 'picture' by post-processing: http://www.imago-orbis.org

... and LEDs don't give off kilowatts of heat, as the halogen studio lamps do - guess how I learned this already in my teenage years Another plus is that you can choose LEDs of your preferred light temperature range.

Pizza- or baking oven ?

What you are talking about is a too high contrast in the image. Like in the old days the film, today the camera sensors can only handle a certain contrast ratio. The consequence is that 'lights' 'burn out' and 'shadows' become 'blackened out'. With post-processing, e.g. Adobe Photoshop, you can increase the apparent dynamic range, but it will increase the white noise usually. However, the colour of white or black pixels cannot be changed. In the 'studio' you can reduce the contrast by illuminating dark areas and by using e.g. a less stark background, say grey or green instead of white or black. When I am photographing parts for my building logs, I use a sheet of medium green paper as background. The rationale is that it provides a medium contrast, green is a less frequent colour on (my) models, so there is a good colour contrast, and a medium green is perceived by most people a soothing to the eyes (which is why we have green leather desktops, writing mats, etc.). It is an old wisdom among photographers (knowledegeable hobbyist and professionals alike), that a a blue sky with nice white cumulus clouds is the the best light conditions, as it provides lots of lumens of diffuse white light. In consequence it is common mistake modellers make to drag their models out to the terrace or balcony on a bright sunny day without clouds. For the same reason professional photographers doing e.g. fashion shots have an army of assistants running around with diffusing reflectors on tripods - to reduce the contrast and light up dark areas.

Actually, for a change it is not the Pandemic that is to blame. It's a development that began 15, 20 years ago. One factor was that due to the decreasing amount of snailmail with the advent of email, the postal services had to look for other revenue and increased the parcel prices. The second, transatlantic issue is that about 15 years ago the US postal service decided to discontinue 'surface mail' as an option, offering only the much more expensive air-mail option. If you didn't mind to wait for a couple of months, the 'surface' mail was a quite cost-effective option to get stuff over from the USA. I gather it works both ways. In addition, the EU has tightened the rules for imports this year, basically now you pay import duties (equal to the EU VAT = 19% in most Member States) from the first Euro of value (sales price plus shipping costs!). Previously this was levvied only on values above 40€ ...

Remember you US guys that American machinery, unless it is imported here in bulk, is just too expensive for us Europeans with the huge shipping costs and the customs duties (around 20% I think) on top of it ... A tilting table is very useful I think for working on longer pieces and for sanding compound angles with the aid of the adjustable fence.

Lovely and very evocative of the time before fluorescent tube took over ! Talking about timing: did you guys already have pallets at that time ?

I seem to remember from my boyhood days when I was flicking through model suppliers catalogues that there were two weights of silk fabric and 'Japan' paper for covering airplane models. Another option (that I have not yet tried out myself) is serigraphy cloth that comes in many different weights/thread counts. You can get it on ebay.

I think your problem will be that a deck is actually curved in two directions, something that carbon-fibre sheets don't like too much I believe. Not sure, whether you actually would need the deck to add strength to the model, if the hull structure itself is already quite substantial as it seems. Maybe a sheet of 1 mm aluminium would be sufficient. It's relatively cheep and would not need a lot of surface preparation. In the old days aircraft models were built with a balsa-wood frame and silk-span (either silk fabric or 'Japan' paper) cover. It was attached with a fast-drying varnish that also shrunk during the drying process, thus producing a sort of 'pre-stressed' structure. It was also practice to not only cover the wings in this way, but the planked balsa-wood hull for added strength. However, such processes would require a lot of work to achieve a surface that can pass for sheet iron/steel.

I was also puzzled how difficult it was to read the purple '5' on the blue Ishihara-plate, but both my MacBook Air and my iPhone SE displays look the same. It puzzled me, because, as noted earlier, I passed the blue-purple test under the supervision of a university ophtalmic hospital.

Well, some people don't seem to have much of a colour vision, my father was one of them. I remember that he asked me once to fetch a particular blue book from his study, but I had to return with empty hands, as I could not find the book at the indicated location. When he finally fished himself the book from the shelf, it turned out to be green He never wore coloured ties only silver ones - just to be on the safe side.

In fiberglass reinforced resin, the fiberglass provides for tensile strength, not watertightness. The resin provides for compressive strength. The tensile strength is needed (probably) in RC models. Carbon fibre is probably going to be very expensive and likely to be an overkill for a static model, where the tensile strenght provided by carbon fibre is not needed. I would think carefully what you actually wanted to achieve with your layer of balsa-wood, what its intended function was. That then probably indicates what properties you are looking for in an alternative material. Is it supposed to be a structural material or just to provide a smooth surface.

Are you talking about the reefing points that dangle from the sails ? They would be on both sides. There are different ways of doing them in real life, but on a model they can be simulated by making a 'figure-of-eight' knot in the thread, pushing the rope through a pre-made hole and then making a second 'figure-of-eight' knot, which is pushed as close to the sail as you can. BTW, the holes in the sails for the reefing points and for lacing the sails to the mast and spars are protected by 'grommets'. These can be simulated by making dots with suitably tinted white glue that are pierced through after drying.

When building models of steel or iron ships, I would rather go for some man-made sheet material. It is much easier to produce a convincing surface with these. If one does not like styrene for some reason, there are various alternatives, such as acrylic glass (down to 1 mm thickness), bakelite paper (down to 0.2 mm thickness), ABS (similar to styrene ...), PVC, and others. At some stage in the 1980s it seems to have been fashionable among RC-boat builders, where top-weight is of concern, to reinforce balsa-wood by laminating on thin paper. This increases its impact resistance and the tensile strength. Also it seems to make it easier to cut clean edges on thin material.

Apart what Bob said about 'restoration', there are couple of (European) books around on pond-yachts. One late 19th century one would be: Walton, J.E. (1880): Model Yachts and Model Yacht Sailing: How to Build, Rig, and Sail a Self-acting Model Yacht.- 101 p. (Griffith and Farran), https://books.google.fr/books?id=qrQ3AQAAIAAJ&printsec=frontcover&hl=de&source=gbs_ge_summary_r&cad=0#v=onepage&q&f=false There has also been already a thread on this subject:

The power one excert with the chest would be greater than that with stretched-out arms. In the latter case the power would be limited by the muscular strength of the arms and the capability to keep them stretched out. In addition, when the men's arms would give in, the bars would have a chance to accelerate over a distance of half a metre or so, hitting the men's chest or head very hard. When you touch the bar and there is a kick-back, it would push you off your feet backward, but you can hang onto the bar without being injured.

Talking about spectroscopy: I didn't look into this, but it should be possible to calibrate the camera sensors against the visible spectrum using e.g. emitters with discrete spectral lines, such as Na. I am intrigued by this colour vision difference between the eyes and have to set up a test in which the illumination of the object is such that it is exactly the same for looking with one or the other eye. So far I did not notice a real difference ...

Black paint was quite cheap to make and basically consisted of soot mixed with lineseed oil and some turpentine to improve the flow. However, the quality of the paint depends very much on the quality of the soot. Lamp-black and that from charring bones makes the best qualities, I believe, but any other soot can be used. Hence, the war-time black paint could be quite rough and not so covering, particularly, if not soot, but rather charcoal was used. A common practice for walked-on surface was also to add some quartz sand to the paint to give a better foothold. Cheaply made black oil-paint or such paint with (coal-)tar added is likely to attain a colour after a few weeks/months akin to that of an asphalt road, so a (very) dark grey. The decks of my current project were treated as mentioned above and I painted them in 'Panzergrau RAL 7021' (Vallejo ModelAir 71.056). Still a bit light, but I will tone down the less walked-on areas with black pastels. You might lighten up your black armour etc. with some dark-grey pastels. Today, most white paints are based either on titanium or zinc oxide, while the traditional lead-white has been phased out due to the (eco)toxicity of lead compounds. The lead-white may have been inherently less brilliant white than the modern pigments. Some paint manufacturers offer off-white, bone-white, or parchment-white shades, but these may be actually too yellow or too beige for the purpose. You could tone down the white with a very light oil- or acrylic wash with yellow ochre. On the colourised historic films that pop-up on e.g. YouTube: while they sort of give an impression of how things might have looked like in the old days, they are often outright wrong, particularly, when the AI is not supported by research and intelligence on the subject matter. For instance, I watched some early 19th century footage taken in Vienna and the trams were colourised in blue, while they always had been painted red to my knowledge ...

To me it looks like what the navies called 'buff' or in French 'chamois'. This seems to have been a popular colour also in merchant shipping around the middle of the 19th century. It's easy to mix up with lead-white and some yellow ochre as pigment. However, everyone's perception of the hue will be different and even, if you have a recipe that says take so and so many pounds of this and so and so many pounds of that and mix with so many gallons of lineseed oil etc. Incidentically, there is an interesting article published in 2020 or 2019 in the Mariner's Mirror I think on the paints sampled from HMS VICTORY. They discovered that there was a surplus of red pigment in the ships' allocation after the Admiralty decided to switch from red internal painting to white that the ships used up their red ochre by mixing it into yellow ochre, which resulted in the pinkish colour in which the ships appeared apparently during the Battle of Trafalgar - so much for regulations vs. practicalities

Would you have any references for those "ante-bellum Navy specifications" ? I am actually wondering whether "Web-sites dealing with antique paint colours" would know what is meant by "straw colour" ? For another (German) project I have tried to establish what the 'yellow' could have been with which ships' masts, funnels, etc. where supposed to be painted and found that no reliable recipe for the composition could be established, given the variability of the main incredient, namely ochre. That is is likely to be the case for the 'straw' colour as well. "Lead" colour presumably refers to 'white lead' the most common good quality white pigment of the time.

Well, this is a challenge also experienced machinists face constantly. One could put together a whole thread on this subject, but this has little to do with the question of the original poster. Personally, I can resort to a wide range of workholding tooling for my watchmakers lathes/milling machines and in addition I used the machine tools to make more work-holding options.

Interesting observation that the two eyes see different colours. Somehow I would have thought that the brain kind of processes the physically different information into a homogeneous impression - as our brain processes optical impressions to conform with a certain expected reality (when you get new cylindrical or progressive glasses your brain has to adapt to the new optical signals, for instance ...). When I was 18 I intended to join the navy for a three-year course as trainee officer and as my father was severely colour blind, he sent me to take an exam, which I passed with flying colours so to speak. I remember one task was to put about twenty purples and blues into the right spectral order in addition to the classical Ishihara-plates. And, well, my wife asks me for my advice when it comes to mixing and matching colours Started photography in earnest in 1972 and actually read textbooks at the time on the 'technical' aspects of photography, but soon realised that I had a certain 'image' in my mind that I wanted to take - which is completely independent of any 'correct' colour. There were neutral grey cards and a colour meter in the parental household, but I never had a real need in practice to use them for my kind of photography.