wefalck

Yep, I used to do the same eyebolt-ring set up for strength and simplicity. In fact it was done in fullscale practice, where ring served to prevent the wood from splitting, rsther than to carry the ring.

Yep, I used to do the same eyebolt-ring set up for strength and simplicity. In fact it was done in fullscale practice, where ring served to prevent the wood from splitting, rsther than to carry the ring.

I think understanding patterns, such as bedding or fractures that determine weathering forms are important to make this realistic.

All the exhaust pipes are in place. The next big project will be getting coolant intake piping / etc. in place.
 
As a small diversion I have started building a case for the model. I've cut this trapezoidal piece of wood to serve as a base board / raise the model up a bit. For the final presentation, I am looking for something remininsent of the picture of the No 18 that was taken in Santos-Dumont's workshop:
 

Thanks for the encouragement! Definitely going to see this through - the finish is in sight.
 
Half of the remaining exhaust pipes formed and in place:

Now the coolant can make it into the radiators! The front half of exhaust pipes are made and attached as well. The remaining eight exhaust pipes have a slightly different shape; while the front eight point down, the rear eight have a bend and point aft. They will be a little harder to form.

In retrospect, I should have attached the exhaust pipes earlier as now there is a reduced amount of work space and it seems my depth perception has been reduced as well! 
 
By the way, I fell back on soldering a short piece of brass tubing to a piece of soft brass wire to form the basis for each exhaust pipe. The wire was bent and cut to shape and black shrink tube was put over the wire to finish.
 

If you have a table saw, you can also tape/glue the sheet-metal to a piece of thick cardboard or thin plywood and run them together through the saw. That prevents distortions.
 
And of course, that is lovely construction work in metal and plastics. Very crisp!
 

If you have a table saw, you can also tape/glue the sheet-metal to a piece of thick cardboard or thin plywood and run them together through the saw. That prevents distortions.
 
And of course, that is lovely construction work in metal and plastics. Very crisp!
 

If you have a table saw, you can also tape/glue the sheet-metal to a piece of thick cardboard or thin plywood and run them together through the saw. That prevents distortions.
 
And of course, that is lovely construction work in metal and plastics. Very crisp!
 

If you have a table saw, you can also tape/glue the sheet-metal to a piece of thick cardboard or thin plywood and run them together through the saw. That prevents distortions.
 
And of course, that is lovely construction work in metal and plastics. Very crisp!
 

Thank you, Keith A, Paul, Jacques, and Keith B, for your comments and support!  And thanks to all for the "thumbs up".
 
 
I’ve begun work on the Pelicans’ four gallows frames and this post describes some of the preliminary work.
 
The purpose of these frames is to hang the heavy tow blocks slightly over the side of the boat at about 4 to 5 feet above the main rail. The blocks function as tow points for the trawl and are also used to deploy and retrieve the gear with the main winch.
 
The screenshot below shows one of the frames outlined in blue. The green lines point out three braces that structurally secures the frame to the boat.
 

 
 
 
There are no details of these frames provided on the plans, so I drew up my own from a few basic dimensions I pulled from the plans and from photos of period boats.

 
 
I took the drawing apart to provide cutting templates for the individual components. The main legs are Evergreen styrene “H” columns, and the top plates were cut from .010”(.25mm) styrene sheet.

 
 
The pieces were arranged on the assembly templates and solvent cemented together.
 

 

 

 
 
There are several different types of brackets required for each frame and I made them all from brass. After drawing them in CAD, I began by slicing brass sheet into strips of the required widths. In the past I’ve made strips using shears (which curls and deforms them), or by scoring and bending until it fatigue breaks. I’ve even used a guillotine style paper cutter that in certain situations works fairly well. But these methods are not very precise and with some of these strips being quite narrow (.073”(1.8mm)), I wanted to try something a little different.
 
I used a stainless steel sheet (cutting surface), a carpet knife, a stout straight edge, and 2” wide double sided masking tape (sticky on both sides.)
 
The secret sauce is the heavy duty masking tape. One piece of tape holds the brass to the stainless and a second piece holds the straight edge to the brass. The tape holds everything very tightly in place to the extent that the straight edge is quite difficult to remove and reposition for the next cut. One could easily bend and ruin a thin metal straight edge doing this.
 
The setup below is ready for slicing off a quarter inch strip, and as you see from the score marks in the stainless, I’ve already cut several strips of various widths.
 

 
 
The carpet knife is sharp, hard and stands up to abuse like this far better than a hobby knife blade. And due to its geometry, the blade is less likely to chip off, but needless to say I wore proper eye protection. I found repeated light cuts produces a better edge than trying to blast through it with only a few. The brass here is .008” (.2mm) thick, so it only took about seven passes to free the strip from the sheet. The passes feel sticky until the stainless is reached at which time the blade glides easily through. This does leave a bur along the cut edge, but a few swipes with a fine flat diamond file licks them right off.
 

 
 
First to be made are the six bracket pairs (12 total) that secure the gallows frame bracing to the whaleback or pilothouse structures.

 
The strip is stuck to the template with two-sided cellophane tape and the fold and cut lines are scratched on.

 
 
The bracket is clipped from the strip with flush-cut diagonals and the edges are eased with a diamond file.

 
 
A bolt hole is drilled through with a pin vise.

 
 
The piece is placed into a photo etch bender.

 
 
Positioned and squared up.

 
 
Then bent.

 

 
 
The gallows have brackets at their feet to allow them to tilt out over the rail.

 
 
Eight pairs (16 total) of these will be needed.  Holes for the bolt shanks will be drilled later.

 
 
A pair of brace brackets on the back side of the frame.

 
 
A total of eight brackets are needed. 

 
 
Each frame gets two chain cleats.  Soldered phosphor bronze.

 
 
The rod that extends from the center of the cleat will be clipped to length once installed.

 
 
And the rod loop which the tow blocks will hang from.

 
More prep work to be done on these frames, but that's it for now.
 
Thanks for looking.  Stay well.
 
Gary
 
 
 

I have completed the crew quarters in the engine room.  The forward two rooms are set up as double bunk bed crew quarters.   The room to the right is set up as the engineer’s closet, and the one across is postal and regular storage. The panel on the back will eventually be used for the starboard engine room superstructure. I will leave the port side open for viewing. 

 

Another view but with the engine room work area & gauges.   The crew quarters do not reach the full height of the boiler room stringers.  This is by design.  The space above was used for numerous cables, pipes, &c.  
 
Now I would like to finish the engine room: place the machinery, finish the starboard superstructure, add in some pipes and detail.  
 
 

Found a bit more time this weekend for another round of scenery work. This time I used a patching plaster from the hardware store to spread a thin coating over the rock work, using my fingers and other tools to make a finer bedding-plane texture than the coarse plaster allowed. This smoothed out the surface a bit and gave it a more complex texture that I like, though I'm not sure it comes through well in the photo. It's meant to capture the finely bedded, pitted surface of this limestone. Once I start adding color I think this will really come alive.


 
I also filled in the creek bed and some of the flatter area to the right.
 


Once these areas are fully dry I'm going to go over them with a fine sanding block. Anything that isn't rock bluff will be covered by various scenic materials anyway.
 
And here's one more view of this scene.

Really looking forward to getting some color on this whiteout!

Skylight and companion at the back. Again acrylic, pear and brass.
























 
 

Something like that happened to me once: it was dark in the centre of Copenhagen and I reversed my 2CV into an empty slot of a car-park, when my progress was abruptly stopped. I looked into the rear and wing mirrors and couldn't see anything offending, either were there any walls or bollards. I got out of the car and bumped into a huge black candelabre - just couldn't see the thing in the dark.
 

I think one needs to use one's imagination and also walk around with open eyes in order to see what materials or hardware or tools can be adapted to our needs. I am not familiar with the markets and the accessibility of shops in the USA, but hardware and DIY stores are places of interest, as are shops selling art and architectural model-making supplies, watchmaking and jewel-making suppliers, nail-'art' suppliers, chirurgical/ medical/ dental/ biological instrument suppliers, woodworking and luthier suppliers, antiques dealers, etc.
 
When I am looking for something, I am plugging the respective keywords into ebay and see what somes up and in which trades. I then might browse also the respective stores to get ideas for what is on the market. I then look, whether I can get an item of interest closer to home and at what price.
 

Keeping fingers crossed ...

Perhaps, rather than asking how 'should' I prepare sails, a better question to ask is 'what kind of effect do I envisage to achieve' and then think what would need to be done to achieve it, such as stiffening, change in colour, hiding a too course weave, etc. Then try out various materials at your disposal or that you can obtain.
 
Perhaps a fundamental question to ask is also, whether the kit-supplied fabric is really suitable. For all but the largest scales the fabric usually supplied is too thick and has a too coarse weave.
 
Perhaps you also want to look through the several threads here on this forum related to 'silk-span', where there is a quite extensive discussion and references to more realistic and to-scale sails.
 

... or door- or furniture-knobs. You can file the slot to suit your keel and can work them over, if needed, by chucking them up in a drill - I assume you don't have lathe, otherwise it would be easy to make them yourself.

Thank you, everyone, for your thoughts on this matter.  So, Henry, should the linstock barrel be depicted with simply a hole in its narrower diameter top, for where the linstock would be placed during battle?
 
I see some builders detail these tubs with coopered staves engraved, barrel bands applied, the linstock stick removed, and the centers bored out to look more like liquid carrying vessels.  They even attach ears to the rim, to accept a rope lanyard.
 
What you are suggesting, I think, is that this tapered cone barrel is wider at its base precisely to be a more stable support for the lit match.  In that case, the hole at the top should only be big enough for the linstock to be inserted.  I suppose that for the sake of expedient clearing of the decks, it still makes sense for the lanyard to be attached.
 
The more conventional buckets (narrow at bottom and flaring at top) are really the swab buckets for swabbing the bore between shots.  Heller only provides 10 of these and they instruct you to place them in non-sensical places along the decks, rather than as equipment specific to the battle stations.
 
Do I have this right, Henry?

... or door- or furniture-knobs. You can file the slot to suit your keel and can work them over, if needed, by chucking them up in a drill - I assume you don't have lathe, otherwise it would be easy to make them yourself.

The entire propeller-rudder system is pre-installed on the cruisers hull.
The blades will be twisted and the propellers will be fully polished later, before final installation.

After this I do a preliminary polishing of the screws.

The four propellers are soldered together using a silver-based solder.
These photos show the propellers after soldering and cleaning them from carbon deposits using a citric acid solution.

Oops, missed the continuation of this new project ... have been travelling too much the last few weeks.
 
When I used very thin copper-sheet to simulate hull plating and pouncing the rivets, I found that rubbing them down from the front with a cork (Champagne corks work best, because of their round lower edges and sort of integrated handle) reduces the distortion of the sheet and gives a more realistic look. I have not tried the same with styrene sheet. Not sure that it would work, because it is less malleable than copper, but it may be worth a try.
 
Another material that I have used is this self-adhesive aluminium tape that is used to cover up the seams in dry-walling. However, I have used it only only represent rivetted reenforcement strips, not larger surfaces, as I am a bit weary of self-adhesive materials - the adhesive film might dry out and become brittle with time.