wefalck

... at least they put wedges behind the rear wheel, to keep the car from rolling off.

Personally, I tend to leave painting to the very end in order to not damage the paintwork during the building process. Other people paint as they go along, which perhaps also has motivational aspects, as you see something that looks like the finished model for a long time. In my case, the model may not look like much for a long time and then suddenly it emerges almost complete. It also depends on the accessibility of areas to be painted and the possibility to mask-off areas to prevent paint (or a different colour) from getting to them.

Sailing ship often spent weeks or months in port, waiting for cargo or the right winds for their trips. After arriving and in suitable weather, the sails may be 'shaken out', hanging limp from the yards etc., which are not raised - in order to dry. According to old photographs, this was a rather common sight. And this is most difficult way of showing sails, as in this state the thickness of the material becomes really perceptible through the creases and pleats they form - most materials, even silkspan, are too thick to represent this convincingly.

I love those dioramas ! It is true, there is never a enough clutter to make - just look around your own workshop and compare One thing I was wondering about (even in those less safety-preoccupied times than today): shouldn't there be any stops at the end of the rails for the car to prevent it from overrunning ? Also some rails left and right might be helpful to keep it on track ...

My understanding of the term 'single' has been that no purchase, i.e. mechanical advantage was provided by the block(s) involved, only a change of direction. In this case only a block at the mast doubling would be provided. I realise that this does not explain the extra length of the rope specification ...

The bolt-rope diameter is proportionate to the size of the sail and the weight of the cloth used to make the sail. Check out the above references and work it out for your model. There is no off-the-shelf recipe.

I gather you refer to the anchor-cranes ?

You could check out CONSOLIN, B. (1863): Methode pratique de la coupe des voiles des navires et embarcations. Suivi des tables graphiques facilitant des operations diverses de la coupe avec ou sans calcul, ouvrage offrant aux capitaines des reseignements utiles à la mer.- 194 p., Paris (Mallet-Bachelier). MERLIN, J. (1865): Traité pratique de voilure ou exposé de méthodes simples et faciles pour calculer et couper toutes espèces de voiles.- 226 p., 7 pl., Paris (Arthus Bertrand). They are both available as eBooks and may have information on the proportionate size of bolt-ropes. To my knowledge, jibs would have bolt-ropes on all sides. Most of the sails of ocean-going ships from the 18th century onwards would have bolt-ropes all around, as they help to distribute the strain of the various attachment points.

The unused anchor-cable my be just lead underneath the spill and lashed at a convenient point. The diameter of the cable would beed to be calculated from the weight of the anchor. There are contemporary textbook sources for this, but I don't have them at the tip of my fingers. Perhaps someone else can chip in here.

BTW, the anchor cable is laid around the spill with about three turns only and it would need to come from above to clear the forecastle deck. Also, only one cable is taken around the spill at any one time ...

Try molybdenum and you will love piano wire However, the hard temper can be drawn out of piano wire by cautiously heating it up with a torch. The different oxidation colours will give you an indication of the hardness: Try on samples until you get the hardness/springiness you want and then always heat to that temperature.

Indeed, their naval books I have seen are colourful, but being tertiary references, of rather limited value. Just looked up MAGENTA in 'Conway's All the World's Fighting Ships 1860-1905' (secondary reference) and there MAGENTA is down 16 55 pounder smooth bores, 34 6.4 in (= 162 mm) breech-loaders M. 1860, and 2 8.8 in (= 224 mm) rifled muzzle-loaders. This sounds quite credible and I will have a look, what I can find about these guns in my primary references.

With all the detailed undercarriage work, you may consider displaying the coach on a mirror, as it is sometimes done in museums ...

nutricious 🤭

This kind of holder to fit into the toolpost can be bought at reasonable prices: For light knurling in brass a simple holder to feed straight into the part may be sufficient. Be aware, that knurling forms sort of triangular ridges - gear teeth look somewhat different, with sort of vertical flanges and a space at the bottom between the teeth.

I gather the tallow used in tanning is quite nutrious

The colour of the sail cloth, of course, depends on the material that was used. In Europe mostly flax and hemp were used, while in the US, I believe, early on cotton was used. Flax and hemp are a very light yellow-grey, if not bleached (which was only done for garmanents etc.), while the cotton fibre is already white. Tp preserve sails on small fishing craft that did have little time to dry their sails properly, the sails were impregnated - tanned. Various procedures and concoctions were used, but in typically contained tallow, lineseed oil and ochre. The ochre gives the distinctive colour that can range from a light yellow to a deep red. While in northern Europe painting sails went out of fashion around the 16th century or so, it persisted in the Mediterranean into the 20th century. Some Adriatic craft have rather colourful sails that serve to distinguish individual boats, but also may have 'protective' or 'votiv' functions (there may saints or their symbols being painted on, for instance).

From the middle of the 19th century on many navies carried out systematic experiments with mock-ups of wooden and iron 'walls' and different types of guns and projectiles. I have an original French naval artillery yearbook that shows images of the effects and discusses them. When in the mid 1850s rifling and ogival projectiles were introduced, this gave greater penetration power, but on the other hand, the projectiles went straight through wooden ships with causing less damage and less desired 'collateral' damage by splinters. Therefore, for a while ships carried both, old-style smoothbore muzzle-loaders and more modern rifled muzzle- and breech-loaders in order to have the right tools for the different jobs. The development of safe and reliable time-fuses in the 1860s for shells that could be fired from rifled guns solved that problem ...

That's probably true, Bedford, but only that way we improve ****************************************************** More Paintwork According to the 1874 ordinance on paintwork, the ships were to have a white boot-topping stripe and a somewhat narrower white stripe just below the main rail. This scheme is clearly visible on the old photograph shown in the previous post. At that time also all the scroll-work was to be painted in a sober white, rather than the ochre/gold of later paint-schemes. It occurred to me that the easiest way to apply the white stripes on such a small model would be to cut narrow strips of white decal sheet and to place them appropriately. However, the latter part resulted in a lot of stress, fumbling and cursing. These long, narrow strips needed a lot of coercing and touching up with white acrylic in places. As I do not work with decals very often these days, I did not have any decal-softener to hand, which might have made this operation somewhat easier. In the end, the strips had to fixed additionally by infiltrating dilute satin varnish underneath them with a brush. In order to blend everything together, the hull then was given a coat of satin varnish. Perhaps the Prince August Air varnish was too viscous still for the air-brush, but when sprayed on it turned out rather matt and made the hull grey! Brushing on another thin layer got me over the shock moment. Perhaps it would have been easier to air-brush everything in white and then cut a narrow strip of Tamiya masking tape to mask the area of the white stripes and also to mask strategically for painting the hull in red and black … The scroll-work at the bow and stern then was picked out in white acrylics using a spotter brush and a (reasonably) steady hand. Wooden decking for the barbette and the forecastle. I also painted the only two pieces of wood decking on this ship, namely that on the forecastle with the distinct radial plank pattern (to minimise blast damage from the heavy gun) and within the barbette. The planks had been engraved a long time ago already with a hand-graver. The pieces were given a base coat of Prince August 77 (bois-wood) with the air-brush. This was followed by a light wash of 834 (bois transparent), which has a slightly lighter tone, applied with a flat hair-brush. Some planks were given another light wash of Vallejo 71.074 (beige) with a small brush. The planks then were followed with 0.05 mm black pigmented ‘fine-liner’. The excess was immediately wiped off with a clean finger-tip. In this way a narrow to scale seam remains. Forecastle put into place temporarily. To be continued ....

Just a few additional thoughts: In principle alcohol (ethanol) is something dead cheap, but in many countries qualities fit for human consumption is heavily taxed. In Germany a litre of 96% was something like 50€, but the actual production costs are in the cent range. I seem to remember that in the US one could get it in a liquor store for a fraction of that price, but is information 30 years old. I am not sure what alcohol is used in them, but ready-made shellac solutions do not have an offensive smell (but I am actually quite tolerant towards the smell of organic solvents). Perhaps they use just plain ethanol, as the shellac solution would be unfit for human consumption, of course. So this could be solution to the problem, rather than mixing it up yourself. Sanding sealers used to be nitrocellulose lacquers in a mixture of organic solvents with pumice powder added. I gather these days they are acrylic emulsions in a mixture of water and alcohol(s). Water however, has less good wetting propoerties with respect to wood than organic solvents. Therefore, the modern sanding sealers do not penetrate wood as well, as did the old ones. The effect of such varnishes or lacquers, with or without pumice fillers, is that they fill the pores in the wood, obviously. Light then is not reflected from the surface of the wood, but sort of channelled into the pores from which it is not reflected anymore (or less). This makes the wood appear darker with 'depth' in the sheen. Beech-wood is very common over here in Europe and used for all sorts of purposes, where you need a harder wood than e.g. pine, but do not want (or cannot afford) to use tropical hardwood. However, as all woods growing in temperate climates, it has growth rings with different properties. When cut tangentially (which it normally is) the growth rings will take on dyes quite differently, so it may look patchy after dying. A tinted varnish (stain) over a clear sealer is probably a better option.

I gather it depends also on the direction with which the plank was cut from the tree, i.e. radial or tangential. I don't remember, whether I ever tried to stain beech, but for furniture-type applications I regularly apply solvent-based(!) sanding sealer, rub it down with 320 or 400 grit, apply another thin coat and then rub it down with steel-wool (or scrape it for flat surfaces), which results in a smooth satin finish with a light honey colour. Methylated spirit is only toxic, when you drink it !

Indeed, you need some surface roughness for the pastels to take a foothold.

A common way of doing that is indeed to drill a hole into one foot (in the heel, to give enough depth) and insert a short piece of wire. This wire then is inserted into a hole drilled into the deck, or wherever needed. The difficulty is to adjust the position so that it looks natural.

Painting on the sprue may sound attractive, but based on my plastic-kit experience from some 30 years ago, I would not do it, because it is difficult to remove flash satisfactorily, while the parts are still on the sprue. This applies particularly to round objects, such as cannon. The risk is that you flatten them. However, I appreciate that it may be difficult to hold 1/150 scale cannon for painting. Are the cannon attached at the muzzle ? Then I would perhaps cut off a small piece of sprue with the cannon still attached. This give you good access to the cannon for flash removal and a handle for painting. After painting you can slice the cannon off with a scalpel, clean up the fron of the muzzle, drill it open (if not representing tampions), and touch up the muzzle, if needed.

I think it is coming on nicely ! It enhances the 3D-impression and enlivens the surface.