wefalck

True, but modern cameras, or rather the software built into them, comes with so many bells and whistles that I tend to forget many of them. My philosophy has been, since I went digital, to shoot 'neutral' images as a starting point for post-processing. So, I am mostly not using any of those built-in exposure-correction programs. However, if there is a risk of underexposure in the shadows or overexposure in the highlights, I would try to adjust this with selective metering etc. As I said above, if the pixels don't have any other information but black or white, there is not much scope for post-processing. Talking about post-processing, a feature in Photoshop I am using frequently is the geometry correction. In the old days one would have called this Scheimpflug-correction of converging lines. Some studio cameras have the possibility to shift and tilt the lens and one can do this also in the darkroom. Now it is easy to correct distortions digitally, but one has to be aware that it degrades the image to some extent. However, pictures look so much more professional, if lines that are vertical also appear so on the image. I also use this e.g. in museum shots, when I have to take an oblique position to avoid reflections from surfaces of paintings or glass cases. I inherited from my father a Nikon lens in which the actual lens can be moved sideways by a few millimeters to give you a greater depth of field, when taking oblique shots. This is useful for table-top photography. However, I am not using it very often, as it pre-dates the digital age and does not transmit the lens data to the camera body. Much of this serves to work around sub-optimal photography situations. A professional, of course, would take the time and has the resources to make lighting and other arrangements. As amateurs we mostly cannot do this, unless we work in our own 'studio'. Another point of DSLR vs. iPhone: on the DSLR you can switch to manual focus and set the focal plane to where you really want it to be, tweaking the autofocus on a smartphone is difficult to impossible.

Not sure, how much of it actually is genuine 'tongue in the cheek'. There is a lot of tech-stuff that is likely to frighten off many people (or perhaps sends them to Wikipedia et al.) and he keeps telling people that you need the artistic vibrations, which kind of belittles other people's work. There is also 'advice' on his site that in principle is correct (say on shadows and highlights), but virtually impossible to put into practice unless you have a crew assistants around and a van full of equipment or work in your studio. Yes, I like the clarity and vibrance of his shots from the SW USA - but then unlike Scotland and here in Paris, the area is bloody dry with not that much haze in the air. But then luminance and vibrance and strong colours is not everything. He claims that the vibrance is due to film he used, but I am quite sure that some post-processing was done on the images on the Web-site or on the newer shots in the camera settings. Photoshop, even in the amateur edition as 'Elements', is quite powerful. The tweaking one did in the darkroom can be done now with visualising immediately the results - I had been waiting for that for decades. Of course, if a pixel is black (dead shadow) or white (burnt out high-light) there is not much room for tweaking. Anyway, we are veering off the subject, which is not the critising of a particular photographer, but getting better studio shots of our models. BTW, if you are interested, here are my own modest attempts: https://www.imago-orbis.org

Is there still a strake/wale to go on now ? I am wondering, because the transom stern-post seem to be above the level of the frames.

Yes, of course, I am shooting in RAW only. With post-processing a lot of the contrast problems can be compensated for, but even with the various program options and selective metering etc. I don't seem to able to shoot high-contrast images, such as a moon at night for instance. The iPhone seems to do this without tweaking ...

Just wondering, whether it wouldn't be easier to put the stanchions on first and then push them down into their holes one by one. Some stiff steel or molybdenum wire might help as well.

When I started my photography life in the early 1970s, I was lucky that my school organised a practical course with a local photography club, where we learned the basics of b/w processing and the basics of photography in general. I also read a couple of technical books back then, my father had. The school had a darkroom for the pupils' use and I got the equipment to process films at home. Never got into colour processing and printing, using only slide-film - for the last 25 years of analogue photography I used Fuji Sensia 100. Eventually got a slide scanner and Photoshop, but when camera sensors became big enough to allow A4-sized prints, I went fully digital in 2006. Digital image processing allowed me to do all the things I always wanted to do to my slides. Just looked over this Ken Rockwell's Web-site. The guy seems to have his nose pretty much up in the air and he prides himself being an 'artist', I feel. His pictures are colourful, but not that much more. I am currently using a Nikon D5100 DSLR, but find that it handles stark contrasts less well than my iPhone SE, in spite of all the buttons you can turn. That's one of the reasons, why I am using the iPhone for workshop pictures, where I don't have much options to control the illumination. Rockwell seems to use a lot long exposure shots, up to 1 min of exposure time or so. His films must be pretty good not to suffer from the Schwartzschild-effect. Nowadays you can ramp up the sensitivity, but then you end up with 'white noise'. Still, for workshop-shots I often go up to ISO 3600 - you can eliminate it in Photoshop sufficiently for posting work-in-progress pictures in fora.

There is a sort of feeling among many people, artists, museum conservators, modellers, that old methods are better and time proven, but time has proven that some of the practices used in the past are not as good as one might think. Today, our scientific understanding of materials and their interactions is much better than it was 50, 100 or even more years ago. We can have a more rational approach to materials use and don't need to do something simply because that it is how it was done always. Doing things the way they were always done never was a good reason for me. A reflection on why something is done and for what purpose is always helpful and helps also to better judge 'advice' from books or fora.

Synthetic rigging material suffers little, if at all from varying degrees of ambient humidity and, therefore, changes in length of the fibres ...

Shoemakers do it regularly, but they don't use real beeswax, but rather some sort of pitch with wax mixture. It comes in little blocks and thread is drawn between the finger and the block, the friction heat helping to impregnate the thread. However, when sewing shoes, some waterproofing makes sense. If I felt compelled to use wax for historic or other mystic reasons, I would use a hairdryer or a hot-air gun to melt the wax into the thread at least, before using it. It always amazes me, how certain age-old practices are perpetrated simply because they are age-old practices and therefore must be good ...

... and to keep the paper from slipping, when you put some small items for photographing there (how do I know this ).

The jury is still out on longevity, but even museums nowadays seem to prefer polyester threads, such as Gütermann's Mara (which is what Chuck Passaro seems to use for his ropes). There is little or no fuss on such ropes and no need anymore to mess around with dust-catching tacky bees wax.

My father had two lightweight microphone tripods for this kind of tasks, they had the camera thread at the head, so one could screw the lamps onto them. This gives you more freedom to move them around.

How do you want to tie the stiff, pre-soaked threads then ? Also, you may not be able to tighten the knots sufficiently with the stiff material. I would advice against pre-soaking.

A solid green or blue background, e.g. photoboard, is also useful, if you want to remove the background in Photoshop in order to place the image in front of something else (like the blue-screen technique used on TV). Most (historic) models do not have one or the other of these colours so it is easy to select and remove them. Below an early attempt using a blue background and then placing the image in front of a scanned photochrome postcard:

The problem of trying to take more sophisticate photographs with a smartphone is that it is difficult to judge the focus on the screen and due to the autofocus it can be difficult to impossible to coerce it to focus on a particular detail or focal plane. Therefore, taking the controlled focal plane images for focus stacking is difficult (at least on my iPhone). In my experience, a white background is problematic because most cameras have difficulties with the then high contrast ratios. A neutral grey or contrasting coloured background reduces the contrast between the object and the background. Of course, a strong (diffuse) light source from the direction of the camera also helps to reduce contrasts.

Thanks ... but 3D printing would have been probably better for this. As with all tools and methods, they have their specific areas of application and 'one size does not fit all'. 'Light' laser-cutting is probably best suited for flat and intricate parts that would be difficult to hold and manipulate. In this sense it can replace photo-etching to some degree

I don't have currently the space for it, but I would build myself a 'light-box' from LED-panel lights that are now available at a reasonable price, attaching the panels to a framework of aluminium profiles. Dimmable units might be a good choice, but tend to be more expensive. I also have a ring-light to attach to the camera lens, but don't use it very often due to the more involved manipulations. In fact, for quick work-bench pictures, I am now frequently using my iPhone, rather than getting out the DSLR camera. Of course there is less control on the plane of focus and the depth of field etc., but the iPhone gets into places you can't get into with the DSLR camera.

Watchmakers use resistance soldering units to solder 'feet' to the dials, so there is some advice out there in that community too.

It depends really on what you would like to do with it. Serious cutting of wood, above very thin veneer, requires already quite serious equipment with a 20W+ laser probably. As others noted before, it also requires quite a bit of infrastructure, such as for cooling and ventilation. About 15 months ago I got myself a cheapo little 3W cutter/engraver at around 100€. As I am working on miniatures, the working surface of 50 mm x 50 mm is largely sufficient. However, you are basically limited to cutting thin, dark cardstock. Have a look at my S.M.S. WESPE building log, where I wrote about my trials, troubles and tribulations with it. I did make quite a few delicate bits and pieces with it. The software is bit-image based, not vectorised, which makes it simple, but there are limitations. And it does not run on a Mac. I tried with a MS Windows emulator ('Parallels'), but somehow it did not work. I run it off an old little laptop with MS Windows XP on it instead. The amount of burned-away material is small, so one doesn't need to worry too much about ventilation (until the Admiral complains) unless you try to cut some nasty materials.

A ship's rigging is not like a WW1 aircraft rigging or stringing a musical instrument. Ropes would sag under their weight in a natural 'catena' curve. OK, to many beholders that might look like shoddy work, but gives you an indication of what to aim for. So the only tension you need is to make the rope run smoothly without bends. Don't glue, bad strategy. Use dilute shellac solution or dilute nitrocellulose varnish. With a drop of solvent, you can soften any belaying point should it need adjusting. Once done, put on another drop of varnish.

Personally, I prefer 'zapon varnish', rather than shellac, because it is less brittle. Zapon varnish is cellulose nitrate dissolved in a mixture of amylacetate, ethanol, and ethylacetate. It is the varnish that is commonly used to prevent the tarnishing of silver or brass objects. It is almost invisible, but can also easily dissolved with acetone. I would be cautious to varnish rigging wholesale. Varnishing with shellac could make it rather brittle. I gather some people did it to keep humidity out of rigging. At least in central and northern Europe we tend to have now proper central heating so this is not an issue anymore. In the UK and southern Europe it is probably still different Some very dilute shellac or zapon varnish can be used to coerce certain rigging elements into the 'natural' catena curves you would see on the prototype, but for which on a model the ropes are too stiff and lightweight.

Pat, you have all my sympathies. I can appreciate your struggle. Since Christmas I have tried to make blocks that fulfill my own expectations. Sometimes following more closely the prototype can actually be simpler. I could image that milling full slots into the bits might be simpler and then to insert turned or etched sheaves. People tend to be in awe of 'real' sheaves in blocks, but from a manufacturing point of view this can be a simpler option. Keep it coming !

OK, I am tool-junkie and have lots of tools, many of them have to be handy, but not all of them, of course (but then I forget that I had them). I am currently at the 5th incarnation of my workbench after so many moves around Europe, but I created a sort of desk-like structure that has on one side a chest of drawers and the work-surface made from a piece of beechwood kitchen-top rests on the other side on a shelve inside an IKEA Billy-bookcase. The other two sides are surrounded by frames that support panes of hardboard with holes for hooks etc. On these the most frequently tools are arranged in easy reach. There are also a couple of narrow shelves on which little tools, such as dental burrs, drills etc. etc. are stored on plinths. The chest of drawers also has a box built in that is subdivided into various shallow (1 cm or 3/8" deep) drawers in which scalpels, pin-vices, files, and other delicate tools are stored within easy reach.

Years ago, when I was contempleting to use printed plank layouts on a small-scale model, I did some research on archival ink-jet and laser print-outs. There was one Web-site, where they had investigated the various models of printers and inks available for them in controlled, accelerated ageing tests. I don't have the site on my finger tips and the results, being some 15 years old are certainly outdated, but an Internet search will probably turn up some more recent information. One strategy I have been contemplating, but not actually used yet, was to print the outlines of the artwork onto a decal film (if you have a colour laser-printer you can also put colour on, of course), complete the artwork in brush and acrylics, and then transfer the decal onto the model. If you don't like it, only the decal film and your time is wasted and you don't have to scrape off the paint from the model. If you want to paint directly on the model, make yourself an arm- or wrist-rest, along the lines of those porcelain-painters use and arrange for the area of the model to be painted on to be at a comfortable angle. When painting wales etc. I would do this only, once the wood of the wale itself and the surrounding strakes has been sealed in a way compatible with the paint you are going to use. In this way no ink/paint can infiltrate into unwanted areas. My choice would be a nitrocellulose-based sanding sealer and acrylics. I would use acrylics readily diluted for airbrushing, as they can be worked like inks, but contain pigments of course. If the wales run reasonably clean, one could also mask the off and spray-paint them. I still would give them a final wash with the brush, as this somehow gives an ever so slight surface texture that looks more appropriate than a spray-painted one.

Wouldn't it have been possible to cautiously lift off the assembly just a little bit after each strake ? In this way you deal with the problem strake by strake, rather than having multiple 'sticking points'.