wefalck

Not so difficult to build one oneself and it is always satisfying to make oneself the tools one needs. Some bits of wood, a steel rod as axle, four spur-wheels and some hardware - if you don't want for industrial production. There are some good examples here on MSW. There was even a thread on their construction a couple of years or so ago.

I think the knee-switches on home-sewing machines also contain a speed-control, as do many of the foot-switches. I used one for many years, but would not recommend it for most machines. It can be very tiring to hold the foot/knee at exactly the same position in order to keep a steady speed when drilling, milling or turning. I prefer a separate speed-control that allows me to pre-set the rpms.

Boat-davits – Part 2 The davits lock into the mounting plate on deck and are fixed to the rail of the bulwark with a bracket. This arrangement is entirely conjectural, as there is no suitable photographic evidence. The mounting plate is a simple piece of turned and drilled brass. The brackets started as thin discs with a slightly raised hub in the centre. From these discs three sides were milled off on the micro-mill to arrive at a rectangular plate with the raised hub at one end. Nothing spectacular either. The boat tackle is belayed on a clamp that is fastened to the davit. The clamps were milled from a piece of 3 mm x 3 mm square brass rod (because I didn’t have 2 mm x 2 mm in stock ...). They are so tiny, that it would have been difficult to take pictures of the process. Again this was really only made possible now that I have the stereo-microscope in working order. First, the profile of the clamps was milled along the whole length of the brass, while it was clamped horizontally in my micro-vice. Next the piece was mounted upside down and a groove milled to fit onto the davit. The vice then was clamped vertically in the dividing head of the mill and the clamps sawn off. The clamps and the bracket were soldered to the davit. For some reason I always struggle with soldering such parts whatever materials and tools I am using ... wanted to use soldering paste, but somehow mine didn’t work. In the end traditional solder did the job. The eye-bolts were bent from tinned 0.15 mm copper wire. Tinned wire was used to make soldering it into the pre-drilled holes. First I formed the eyes around the shaft of a 0.25 mm drill, but then found that I can form them just with a pair of fine tweezers equally well. The wire ends were cut off flush with a pair of cutting tweezers, but a scalpel on a glass plate would have worked also. Using a Novotex-clamp to hold the davits for re-drilling Soldering the eye-bolt didn’t quite work out first for the same reasons. I then tried to cement them in using shellac, but the joint wasn’t strong enough (I don’t have CA around and don’t like it anyway). It took a while until I developed the right strategy. Also, I didn’t dare to drill 0.2 mm right through the spheres, but with control under the binocular it can be safely done. It turned out that I had to re-drill various holes, because they became filled with solder. Holding the davits for re-drilling caused some head-scratching at first, but then I remembered that I had made clamps from fibre-reinforced bakelite (Novotex) for the third hand and took one into a 4 mm collet in the dividing head. This proved to be stiff holding arrangement and watching the drilling under the binocular, allowed the check for any dangerous deflection of the drill. The finished boat-davits So on the bottom line, the following strategy would have been best (and was put into practice for some of the davits): - drill the axial hole first on the lathe, bend the davit and the solder the eye into it; - then cross-drill horizontally; - insert an eye-bolt with a long leg and form the other eye with a pair of tweezers, so that both eyes are pulled tightly against the davit; - solder the pair of eyes; - cross-drill the vertical hole for the eye-bolt into which the boat-tackle will hook. - insert an eye-bolt with a long leg and squeeze the leg flat, so that it cannot slip out. - solder this last eye. When the soldering is done fast and the other eye are not touched by accident in the process they will stay put. Boat-davits temporarily installed To be continued ...

Looking at the hull, as it emerges, I slowly begin to understand the difficulties in planking it. The bottom is rather flat, particularly aft, which means that there is a sharp turn into the planked deadwood. I have seen other such hull forms, where the deadwood was not actually planked. I should think that from now on the planking should become somewhat easier to fit.

I am running all of my machines from foot-switches - they have momentary switches, not the ones that switch on and off with a 'click'. Lifting the foot immediately stops the electricity. I set one in front of the transformer from which I run all the low-voltage equipment.

Thanks to all. The tailstock-mounted steady, Keith, is a bit of a compromise, as it is difficult to put a travelling steady onto a watchmakers lathe. On them it's the top-slide that does the x-movement and a steady as whole would move with every movement in the y-axis. For work in confined spaces I made myself another steady that fits into the same tailstock holder: I am not entirely happy with the arrangement, as it is not so easy to precisely set the finger. One day I may make a micrometer feed mechanism.

Just realised, that I had made the same comment already earlier on. Apologies for the repetition ...

This is a thought that occurred to me as well earlier on, when you had problem fitting the garboard to the rabbet. I believe in real life boatbuilders let the planks cool down and dry before the final fitting, leaving them a tad longer and wider for the purpose.

Polyurethane varnish diluted, so that you can wipe it on with a rag. Very popular across the pond, but less so in Europe. I guess people here prefer either nitrocellulose varnish or shellac solution. When you say mast-colour, do you mean the colour of a mast after a certain treatment or the colour of paint that was/is used to give (metal) masts a sort of yellow colour ? I am asking this because I have the suspicion that you are looking for the right colour for your Imperial German yacht, right ? This paint was some sort of ochre. The problem is that ochre can have a wide range of colours, from almost blueish red to a pale yellow, depending on where it comes from and how it is processed. I did some research for the Imperial German Navy, but did not get very far. The German Navy refers to it as 'Mastenfarbe', i.e. mast-colour, but there were no standards at the time. I made some enquiries at the Chatham Dockyard Museum as to what they used during the restoration of HMS GANNET, which has the typical later 19th century yellow masts, but due to COVID, I didn't get very far. Photographs can be misleading, but according to the picture I took some years ago, this ochre has a light pinkish tint. Otherwise, masts treated with oil or pine tar will look somewhere between your samples 1 and 2, depending on the type of wood. I gather, if you used unbleached shellac, you would get about the right colour, which is slightly orangy. After applying the shellac, you can rub it down lightly with a humid cloth and some pumice dust or with very fine steel wool until you have the desired depth of colour. Rebuff to a light sheen with a cotton cloth or felt buffing wheel. This surface treatment doesn't add a visible layer of varnish, but gives a depth of colour.

Well, I used to run 20 turns around the shaft of a drill, not too tight, not too loose and then measured the distance. Divided by 20 gives you the thread diametre. We had the discussion recently in another thread: using the bulk density of the material, say polyester, the den or tex and a bit of geometry, one can also calculate the diameter. For instance, vor Veevus 16/0 fly-tying thread, which has 50 den, I calculated 0.04 mm and a colleague here measured 0.038 mm - so a pretty good match.

In fact, various details changed, for instance in later models (or only vor the 2CV6, i.e. the one with the bigger engine) the headlights became square. Also the metal radiator grille, which was chromed, was changed into light-grey plastic. I vaguely remember that other parts that were chromed were changed into plastic. There were also different colours of the roof. Mine was originally the colour of the car, but the replacement I got after it had been vandalised (someone thought it funny to cut it open ...) was grey. In addition, over the years they produced various 'special editions', e.g. the one with a two-colour paintwork in bordeaux/black was called 'Charleston'. These also had chromed wheel-cups on two-cloured rims. I don't remember the colour of the wheel-nuts (the paint seemed to wear off), but the the special washers were light grey as the wheels usually were.

He did it again !

The battery was sitting on a small shelf or bracket and retained by a couple of threaded rods. I remember this well, because one day I got it back from service and while I was checking the oil (it happened that they forgot to put oil back ...) I noticed that the rods were not fixed - a sharp braking and the battery would have slipped onto the drive-shafts and into the steering, which could have spellt disaster ...

Ah those bygone days in the late 1970s/early 1980s cruising open top around southern France ... At some stage I had to replace the front wings with a good pair from the breakers, but had to match the colour - was able to do quite a decent paint job with a mohair brush ... yes, car model builders spend quite a bit of effort on their paint jobs.

Sometimes such humble service vessels do make it into preservation. For instance, the Harbour Museum Hamburg does have a suction dredge and a floating crane, both pre-WWI, in its collection of vessels (to which recently the restored Flying-P-Liner PEKING was added).

Having all those nice photographs, videos and animations actually allow you to copy such tools for your own purposes - of course, if you have the right machinery and skills. I think the Chinese are in a transition, as the Japanese were in the 1970s and the Germans in the 1880s, away from entering the markets in industrialised countries by catering for the cheap end towards making quality products. 'Made in Japan' or 'Made in Germany' once was meant to serve as a stigma and warning and now has turned into a mark of quality. The same will happen with 'Made in China' eventually.

Fly-tying threads are usually measured in 'deniers', that is weight of 9000 metres of a yarn (see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Units_of_textile_measurement). In other words, the lower the of 'den' the finer the yarn. By using a rough bulk density of the material (nylon) of 1.1 g cm^3 and some simple calculations, one can estimate the diameter of the yarn. The finest thread (apart from monofilament) I have come is Veevus's (of Denmark) 16/0 which is equivalent to 50 den. The problem with fly-tying threads is that they are quite expensive, as a spool may cost you 2 to 3 €, but contains only 75 m. If I got my calculations right, it would have a diametre of around 0,04 mm. Again, if I got my calculations right, one spool of the 16/0 would allow you to serve a 1 mm diametre shroud of 1m length. I got my supply of Veevus through the well-know electronic bay, where you can find various other brands too.

Where these cross-Channel steamers ? Or, being in a Lancaster museum, they were crossing the Irish Sea ?

Would have frightened the wits out of me to cut into the impeccable previous work, but it has come out nicely - who dares, wins !

I think this is what boat-builders do, they cut the planks a tad wider than needed and then repeatedly offer them to the rabbet (or the previous plank) and mark the areas, where material has to taken off. A trick the old Inca etc. used when they fitted these amazing stone-walls without grout: they did not attempt to fit the whole surface fo the stones, but only the outer visible edge. So a minute inward leaning bevel of the planks should do the same trick. Another point would be to fit the planks only dry and not humid, as they would dilate and elongate, of course, when wet and then develop gaps when drying. Apologies, if you had already been through those loops - I must admit that I did not read all your text and only enjoyed the pictures.

Things never seem to be straightforward, there always seem to be a lot of set-backs caused by technology or materials limitations or, indeed my clumsiness. I seem to loose or destroy many parts during further production steps. Making the boat-davits in my mind seemed simple process, but became rather involved, so that I have to break the reporting on it into two installments. The process is not finished yet ... Boat-Davits Originally, the WESPE-Class was provided with four boats, later a small dinghy was added to the complemenent. The very first photograph shows the boats suspended outboard from the davits in the traditional way. A few years later ‘barrings’ or boat-racks were installed above the walk-ways along the deckhouse and the davits elongated accordingly. I gather the boats were prone to damage and prevented the boats from being alongside each other in a ‘parcel’ (as was common practice for flottillas of the same class of boats). For the same reasons at some stage sponsons were installed to protect the screws, which projected beyond the profile of the boats, from damage. However, as I will show SMS WESPE in her original configuration, I choose the shorter, fixed davits. Micro-Ball-turning on D-bed lathe with ‘right-angle tailstock’ as steady The davits presumably were hollow, but were not simply curved pipes, but changed their diameter and cross-section along the length. They apparently had a cross-section of a flattened oval in the curved part in order to resist the bending force of the suspended boat. This makes the construction of the davits a bit more involved. At the upper end there is a ball that holds four rings for the stays and the hook of the boat-tackle. Set-up for ball-turning on D-bed lathe They started out as 1 mm brass rod (steel would have been better, but is more difficult to drill and to solder ...). The machining steps required a bit of planning in order to keep unsupported areas to a minimum. First the ball was turned in my small 6 mm lathe, where I could use the so-called ‘right-angle tailstock’ as a steady, using my home-made ball-turning attachment. The turning bit was a broken 0.2 mm drill, the end of which was ground at a suitable angle. Davits after the ball-turning operation The pieces of brass-rod then were transferred to the dividing head in the micro-mill for 0.2 mm cross-drilling into the ball – four holes were needed in each. Aligning the drill and the ball is a bit tricky, as the drill might slip, bend and break. Cross-drilling of ball-ends with 0.2 mm drill in the dividing head on the micro-milling machine (view through binocular microscope) This task provided the incentive to finally commission the antique stereo microscope that I bought a while ago, but never got work properly. By close inspection I discovered that one of the two objectives was misaligned – some previous owner must have tinkered with the adjusting and setting screws. Playing around with the screws, I managed to get proper stereo vision which made the cross-drilling job rather easy and I managed to get the 24 holes without drill break. Axial 0.2 mm drilling on 6 mm D-bed lathe The remaining eight holes are axial and were drilled on the lathe. The next two steps in shaping the davits were also carried out on the lathe. The section behind the bulwark is cylindrical. In order to safely turn down the the relatively soft 1 mm brass to 0.7 mm a so-called ‘Jacot-tool’ was used as a steady. This is essentially a an excentrically mounted hardened drum with groves of known diameter along the perifery. These grooves can be aligned with the centre-line of the lathe. Normally this tailstock-tool is used as a steady to burnish axles and similar watch parts. After each pass, the drum was turned to a smaller groove in order to provide good support while turning down the shaft of the davit. Set-up for using a ‘Jacot-tool’ as steady for taper turning In the following step, turning the tapering upper end of the davit, deliberately a groove one size too small, forcing the rod off-centre. This resulted in a slight taper as desired. The procedure was repeated with inreasingly smaller grooves until the upper end reached a diameter of 0.6 mm. Using a ‘Jacot-tool’ as steady for taper turning I didn’t take pictures of the next steps - lots of work with handtools. The davits now were taken into a collet in a square collet-holder. Under the stereo microscope the cross-drilled holes at the top were aligned with the sides of the collet-holder. This allowed bending the davit in the corret direction. Bending was effected with bending pliers against a scale-drawing of the davit. That these slighly marred the back of the davit did not matter, as the shape had to be filed anyway. With various very fine files the shape of the curved section of the davit was developed. To be continued ...

You have to try for yourself. However, it is always good practice to provide locating pins for similar for items to be glued somewhere, particularly when the sufaces to be glued are small. This prevents shearing forces from being applied to glued joints, which may peel them off.

There is an old painters' rule: fat over lean. This means that you can apply oil-based paints (enamels, artists' oils, and the likes) over say nitrocellulose based primers/sanding sealers, gesso, acrylics, water colours and the likes. But not the other way around. This acrylics will not stick to any surface treated with oils. Not even sanding may help. Similarly, most cements and glues do not stick very well or at all to surfaces treated with oils. The 'sticking' of glue usually is either one of the following processes or a combination of both: - a physico-chemical interaction between polar surfaces (I am not doing a tutorial on chemistry here now, but it may be sufficient to say that oils results in non-polar surfaces - that's the effect of water forming droplets on a greasy surface); many contact cements and in particular also CA work like this. - a mechanical interlinking with the aid of the physical presence of a 'cement' that keys into the opposing surfaces; white glue typically does this. The reason that you can say cement copper plates to a wooden hull is that there is this physico-chemical interaction between the cement and the copper on side and the cement keying into the wood on the other side. If you make the wood oily, the cement doesn't have chance to hold onto the wood. Not sure, why 'tung oil' and similar 'hardening' plant-based oils (lineseed oil is a traditional European variant) have become so popular among many ship-modellers. It can create a lot of problems further down the road, when you need to make alterations etc. before the oil has fully polymerised, which can take months or years.

Well, personally I would not spend my precious time on something of which I know that it is historically incorrect, but this is my personal choice.

Then do as you please ...