wefalck

It's been a little while since my last post. During that time, I was pretty busy with work and travel. In fact, I'm still traveling! But, this model is small enough that I was able to pack it with me to advance a bit on the planking.

 
The curves around the stern make clamping difficult, and as I'm going around the turn of the bilge, I've often needed to take care to make sure the bottom edge and not just the top edge of the plank is properly in contact. As can be seen, I've ended up using rubber bands and shims to hold things down.

 
I had a bit of trouble with this bow plank, too, which I accidentally glued too low at its aft end. Fortunately I was able to unglue it and place it properly.

 
At this point, I've finished the second of three bands. I now need to mark out the final band. I'll have to keep in mind that the sheer plank needs to extend 1/32-inch above the bulkhead tops (as I'll be planking the deck), and that I shouldn't glue anything to the bulkhead in the cockpit that will be removed later.

 

Brass tends to have a sligthly 'waxy' surface, an oxidation film that forms very fast and can really only be removed mechanically. Therefore, brush-painting it with water-based paints, such as acrylics can be a pain. One basically pushes the paint around the surface and it doesn't want to form a continuous film. However, when applied by airbrush, this is not normally a problem. There are also special primers for brass or you may try a very dilute solution of shellac as primer.

Brass tends to have a sligthly 'waxy' surface, an oxidation film that forms very fast and can really only be removed mechanically. Therefore, brush-painting it with water-based paints, such as acrylics can be a pain. One basically pushes the paint around the surface and it doesn't want to form a continuous film. However, when applied by airbrush, this is not normally a problem. There are also special primers for brass or you may try a very dilute solution of shellac as primer.

Brass tends to have a sligthly 'waxy' surface, an oxidation film that forms very fast and can really only be removed mechanically. Therefore, brush-painting it with water-based paints, such as acrylics can be a pain. One basically pushes the paint around the surface and it doesn't want to form a continuous film. However, when applied by airbrush, this is not normally a problem. There are also special primers for brass or you may try a very dilute solution of shellac as primer.

It would be useful to know in what part of the world the originator of the question lives in ...

Thanks to everyone for the likes and comments.
 
Keith, we had a great Christmas. Seven great grandkids from 1 year to 14 years, and none was sick!
 
I am finishing up the smoke stack. I made the conical cap for the boiler vent from a brass rod, turning it on my hand drill.
 
The hinges for the diesel exhaust pipe caps were made from 0.010 inch (0.25 mm) styrene strips. First the lower pieces were glued to the brass pipes with CA gel. After the CA set the two hinge strips were glued to the lower piece with plastic model cement. I used a bit of clear acrylic sealer to "glue" the styrene hinge strips to the top of the cap. It probably isn't the most robust assembly, but they are protected by the stack cap.
 
I painted it with the grey paint I am using for the decks. It is Tamiya XF-63 German Grey. I have found that the Tamiya paints do not cover well on brass. This was all washed with water to remove the liquid flux, and then acetone to remove any resin flux and oils. There are three coats of paint on this assembly, each allowed to dry over night, and still there are places the paint just "rolls back" leaving exposed brass.
 
The platform jutting from the side of the stack is a support for a radio antenna. I suppose I could have glued it in place with CA, but the solder will make a stronger attachment. Now I need to make the complex insulators for this antenna and two more. I have the Navy electronics data sheets for the antennas and some photos taken on the ships to show me what they look like and how large they are. It will be an interesting project. But the antennas will be some of the last pieces to go onto the model.
 
The last part of the stack assembly is the life jacket locker that was attached to the lower rear of the stack below the air intake grills. The box is a bit wider than long (about 32" wide x 31" long x 26" high full scale). I folded the box from a single piece of 0.005 inch (0.13 mm) brass sheet and then soldered the edges. A separate 0.010 inch (0.25 mm) thick top plate was soldered on - this hides the folded edges that were a bit rounded. A 0.010 inch brass wire serves as the handle that released the bottom of the locker to dump the life jackets.
 
 

 

 
Here are some photos of the stack in place on the aft end of the O1 level.
 

 

 
Now I need to prime the funnel and paint it to hide all of the solder stains in the brass! I probably won't get around to that until next year.
 
HAPPY NEW YEAR!

In another thread we got a bit side-tracked and started talking about when books on shipmodelling came onto the market. The oldest I am currently aware of is this one:
 
Chapman, C. (1869): All About Ships and the Way to Make Models of Them.- 2 Vols.: 68+68 p., 3 pl., London (Wilson).
 
Vol. 1: https://books.googleusercontent.com/books/content?req=AKW5QafQYVIVxto10ATpCWcm3H87dEieZEqj9nbUmRVHXSIBrfcXvQx4GNaH5t1_3hHMYOMl3_XWvJWCfpEMzmdEwJLOSZjgpNKg_FbtZHlnd_hfxXRZGD8ybJ23859QgUQQBchREPQMkk39UUPsXVIYWMr-iM0wdmke3v0yXJe__ltCYBs7e8aOdRw4UpotZw5n5WHQzuNwY-S3aMxJRO8I0FrdjwL7_AreC8CTCjNIcTb3EkVIZNKf2KMm0yb-qa4-bgFwAQxwOqfQ82OkFpWRX8wutnEn0g
Vol. 2: https://books.googleusercontent.com/books/content?req=AKW5Qafw6gLcfJm9KhfH4itZesC_Yl6tANR0m_E8ZFGspk9DGOUe68Ck2tCvV7OyYRh9T_YnfPxTkrX045kW_l1EO7pbqd3onk5cC6XMB38zN4bfW8mHPfcg8EkePtBEOB_4uLJZs0Poa3nO9_EPnsdDhRGuw9xY3PkgdA7WRsXrw9r-zIf2zah_0aHFMj8XxOcLIGUTfen6SRH6gpXlR1Z2t8iaC0t2Vw9a2A9UACZjTpG6njr0dKHPG-Y2uGgitCpP7IvRzooXDFbOUQ7nKvxKwTt-Zkm8GxFg7FVqtpl6qKGk_pKUHrY
 
The scan of the 2nd volume contains the properly scanned plates!
 
Who can beat me ?

Thank you John and Andy and all for their "likes".
 
So, just a couple-three pictures to show what we all are so familiar with.
Here I'm closing up the deck between the main hatch and the forward hatch/companionway.
First try.

Doesn't look all that bad, right?
 
Well, here is the evidense that I can do better 😉
"50" stands for half a millimeter, (1/32").

2nd try, a little while later and no gauge fits in between.

Well, that was the easy part of the deck... next up I will close the foredeck. But that's a chore for another day.
 
Cheers!

As for most of us, our collaboration was required for various Christmas-related preparations, such as grocery shopping, decoration, cleaning the silver, but also kitchen-work, which ate into the workshop time. But it is a good and enjoyable time of the year. Workshop activities resumed with
 
Fitting the deck
 
Or rather cutting out the openings for the deckhouses etc. When I prepared for the layout and put the previously prepared deck onto the drawing, I realised suddenly that the engravings of the planks at stern were not symmetrical to the middle line and very noticeably so now. So, it was kind of back to square one with cutting a new deck and fitting it to the model. Using the old one has template sped up things, but there was still an evening of sanding and fitting and sanding again, etc. lost. Then also the planks had to be engraved again, this time taking utmost care not to get it wrong again. This has now been the fourth incarnation of the deck …
Then I started to tackle a job that literally has zero tolerance for error, meaning that the cut-outs for the deckhouses had to be a snug fit and there is no way to correct any inaccuracies. If there was any gap, it would have been again back to square one, with lots of possibilities to get something wrong again.
 After some rough layout, holes were drilled into the square, where there will be an opening and cuts were made with a scalpel and sufficient margin around the edges. Two diagonal cuts allowed to break out the waste in form of triangles. The openings then were cautiously widened by filing and frequent test-fitting until a snug-fit all around was achieved. By taking time, this went smoothly and without further incidents.
 The deck and the deckhouses are only temporarily installed and will be carefully adjusted during the final installation. I now need to make a temporary mast to determine the exact location and shape for it deck opening. This allows me also to determine the position the pump and drill a hole for it.
 
To be continued …
 

As for most of us, our collaboration was required for various Christmas-related preparations, such as grocery shopping, decoration, cleaning the silver, but also kitchen-work, which ate into the workshop time. But it is a good and enjoyable time of the year. Workshop activities resumed with
 
Fitting the deck
 
Or rather cutting out the openings for the deckhouses etc. When I prepared for the layout and put the previously prepared deck onto the drawing, I realised suddenly that the engravings of the planks at stern were not symmetrical to the middle line and very noticeably so now. So, it was kind of back to square one with cutting a new deck and fitting it to the model. Using the old one has template sped up things, but there was still an evening of sanding and fitting and sanding again, etc. lost. Then also the planks had to be engraved again, this time taking utmost care not to get it wrong again. This has now been the fourth incarnation of the deck …
Then I started to tackle a job that literally has zero tolerance for error, meaning that the cut-outs for the deckhouses had to be a snug fit and there is no way to correct any inaccuracies. If there was any gap, it would have been again back to square one, with lots of possibilities to get something wrong again.
 After some rough layout, holes were drilled into the square, where there will be an opening and cuts were made with a scalpel and sufficient margin around the edges. Two diagonal cuts allowed to break out the waste in form of triangles. The openings then were cautiously widened by filing and frequent test-fitting until a snug-fit all around was achieved. By taking time, this went smoothly and without further incidents.
 The deck and the deckhouses are only temporarily installed and will be carefully adjusted during the final installation. I now need to make a temporary mast to determine the exact location and shape for it deck opening. This allows me also to determine the position the pump and drill a hole for it.
 
To be continued …
 

I wish all followers of this building log a peaceful Christmas and a good start into the New Year 2026!

Hopefully not too many, Pat !
 
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Another small toolmaking digression
 
One of the great advantages of watchmaker’s lathes is the multitude of work-holding options/spindle tooling. There are collets and chucks of many different sizes and types. One type, however, never seems to have been made and this is collets with square holes. In a way it is understandable, as making exactly centric square holes with the technology available 50+ years ago, would have been quite a challenge and expensive. Today with EDM that would not be a problem anymore. It seems that watchmakers actually had little need for them and when they needed to chuck up a winding stem at the square end, they would have used a so-called 8-screw chuck, which however, is worse to set up than a four-jaw independent chuck.
 
I expect to have to work at the ends of some square section materials soon. While I have also a centric four-jaw chuck for the lathe, it does not fit onto micro-mill and for parts of less than 2 mm edge length it is not very precise. Working on such small parts in a chuck does not feel very safe either. Therefore, I decided to finally implement and idea that I have been tossing about for years: square insert collets. A standard fitting for watchmaker’s lathes is a set of brass insert collets that are used to hold delicate objects, such as small screws by their threads. They fit into a 5.0 mm collet and have three slots to ensure concentricity. The idea was to make collets with two cross-wise slots (like the cheapo brass collets you can buy for handheld drills) and a bore in the centre. By combining an appropriate slot width with an appropriate bore, you can make square stock fit diagonally into the collet and centre it exactly.
 
I worked out the geometry needed for 1 mm, 1.5 mm and 2 mm square stock/parts respectively. The other dimensions were taken from the existing insert collets, i.e. the diameter of 5 mm and the length of 20 mm. Blanks were turned up from some quality old brass rod, bored from the back with 2.5 mm and threaded M3 for depth stops to made at some later stage, if needed. The blanks then were turned around and drilled 1.1, 1.7 and 2.4 mm respectively for the three collet sizes. A shallow groove turned in facilitates the extraction from the main collet. The parts then were transferred to the mill and set up in a vice with a square collet block for slotting exactly across the centre. They were all slotted 0.5 mm.
 
A test turn with a 1 mm square polystyrene rod shows that this works very well.

Size 1 mm, 1.5 mm and 2 mm square insert collets for 5 mm watchmaker’s lathe collet.
 
Back to the Rahschlup now.

Thanks again for your moral support, verbal and via the buttons !
 
******************************************************************
 

A Mystery Resolved
 
When constructing the hull of the Rahschlup, it bugged me that there was no obvious way to free the deck quickly from larger amounts of water taken over in bad weather. The Jacht/Jagt-type vessels often have a gap between the covering board and lowest bulwark plank, but on all illustrations of Rahschlup-type vessels no such gap was visible. Freeing ports, as on modern ships came into use only later and the lead-lined gutters would not be sufficient.
 
Then I scanned through the images of the restoration project (https://www.jensine.dk, but the link does not seem to work at the moment) for the Danish Jagt JENSINE (1852) for a different reason and two images caught my eye:

 They show that sections of the lowest bulwark plank are actually hinged and can swing out. In calm weather they are secured with latches. Subsequently, I noticed similar features on other restored vessels.
I am not sure that this is an ideal solution for securing, as the wedges would need to be removed individually and kept for re-use. Also, the latch is attached to the plank section and could get caught between the plank and the covering board. I think a solution with a hook fastened to the stanchion that engages a staple in the plank would be a better solution.
 
How to represent such parts now in 1/160? Producing the hinges will be relatively simple, although they will be tiny, but the hooks is another matter.
 
For the hinges I took 2 mm long lengths of 0.1 mm tinned copper wire that was squeezed flat on my repurposed watchmaker jewelling tool to a predetermined thickness. These jewelling tools have a micro-meter stop that allows to very precisely set the distance between the anvil and the stamp. By squeezing, the ends of the flattened wire become rounded, which suited well the purpose. There was also a slight dimple in the anvil from the turning, which resulted in a slight boss in the middle of the strip to simulate the actual hinging mechanism. The ‘hinges’ were glued on with varnish.
 
The latches are another matter and had to be much simplified. A double L-shape was bent into a short length of 0.1 mm tinned copper wire to simulate the hook and then one end was squeezed flat to represent the part that would have been screwed to the bulwark. These tiny pieces were then glued with varnish to the lowest bulwark planks and to the bulwark stanchion.
 
I decided to make only every second space between the bulwarks ‘swinging out’ and scored the lowest plank on the outside lightly to mark these sections.

Unfortunately, these parts are so tiny, that they are almost impossible to photograph, unless I use my macro-photography set-up and then they would probably look discouragingly crude …
 
To be continued …

Thanks again to all for their encouragement !
 
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Some small progress in the true and literary sense of the word:

Bilge-pump
 
Although not drawn in the original drawings, the ship must have had at least one bilge-pump. Such pumps would be logically located at the lowest part of the hull, usually somewhere close to the mast. As its location is not marked on the drawings, this is a bit of guess-work.
While Downton-pumps or similar existed already, when the Rahschlup was designed, they were comparatively expensive items. As the ship was built in a rather economically marginal context, it is more likely that a traditional wooden pump was installed, that could also be built and maintained with local materials and by local craftsmen, such as a blacksmith. Nicely rendered drawings for such pumps can be found, for instance, in the Danish naval yard archive.

Example for a bilge-pump from the former Danish naval yard (extract from G-2357-09)
 
The trunk would have been fashioned from a single tree, typically elm, that was bored out with the aid of spoon- or canon-drills in a sort of primitive boring-lathe. Iron bands kept it together and served as attachment points for the lever. 
 
https://youtu.be/pj-XKqW29XE?si=9Q8RTsXOMxMuPPVN 
Example for drilling of wooden pipes.
 
I made a rough sketch to fix the dimensions and settled on a height of 4 mm and a diameter of 1 mm, which would be 64 cm and 16 cm on the original respectively. The body was turned from a short length of acrylic rod, leaving the future bands as proud rings.
The mechanism is composed of four lengths of 0.2 mm tinned copper wire. The wire was first bent to shape and flattened at the appropriate places with a special kind of flattening pliers. Initially, I intended to solder the parts together, but they were just too small and flimsy, so I settled on cementing them together with lacquer. The procedure is a bit difficult to document photographically while doing it, so there are only pictures of the finished product.

The completed bilge-pump
 
I am afraid the translucent pump does not show very well in the photograph, but I generally only paint everything at the very end to avoid damage during repeated handling.
 
To be continued …

Hawse-pipes
 
Hawse-Pipes
 
As I was dealing with fairleads through the bulwark, I decided to continue with the hawse-pipes as well. After some deliberation, I also decided to go fully ‘plastic’. In the past I fashioned the hawse-pipes and the entry-/exit-reinforcements from brass tubes with rings soldered on. 

Set-up in the horizontal milling machine for drilling the hawse-pipes
 
Here the actual pipes are very short and go through a massive layer of polystyrene. So, a separate pipe is not really needed. For drilling the 1 mm holes, the model was set up on the horizontal milling machine. The reinforcement rings were cut from 0.5 mm diameter polystyrene rod (or perhaps rather wire). To this end, the polystyrene wire was wound around a 0.9 mm drill-shaft, which was easier than expected, and then the springiness was taken out by slightly tempering it at 100°C with my hot-air soldering gun. From this spiral, the rings were cut.
 
The rings then were sanded flat on one side and cemented to the bulwark outside and inside. A first try with polystyrene cement was not very successful, as the ring began to spread open upon contact with the solvent. I then used the artificial-nail cement, composed of acrylic solution and cyanoacrylate.
 
After the cement had cured, the hole needed to be bored out again and smoothed.

Outboard view of the hawse-pipes

Inoard view of the hawse-pipes
 
As sobering these close-ups are with respect to cleanliness and crispness of the execution of the work are, they also show strikingly, where touching-up is really needed – not something that one sees very easily even using magnifying glasses.
 
To be continued …

Cleats and Bollards
 
In addition to belaying pins, also various types of cleats are distributed around the ship. Their type and location had to be reconstructed from various sources, such as models and early photographs. On paintings of such vessels, they are generally not visible.
 
The first type concerns very large cleats that stretch across two bulwark stanchions. They are used for belaying heavy ropes, such as the main sheet. If they have a fairlead in middle, they also serve as mooring cleats.

Mooring cleat (old photograph from unidentified book)
 
The photograph was imported into my 2D CAD program (EazyDraw) and the outline traced and scaled to size. This served as the basis for the laser-cutting file. Material for two cleats was cut. The cleats are laminated from four layers of Canson-paper (if I had a more powerful laser, of course, they could have been cut from some 0.6 mm thick material in one go). The resulting part was finally filed to shape. The fairlead is a copper rivet.

The completed mooring cleats
 
I am not sure, whether the pipe of the fairlead is in some way supported in the space between the cleat and the bulwark planking. I have not been able to find any photographs that show this detail. However, for practical reason I inserted a square piece of polystyrene with an appropriate hole drilled through. This allows me to insert a shortened hollow rivet from each side and hide the seam conveniently. As the cleats will be represented in varnished wood, as can be seen on the above photograph and various models, it allows me to locate the cleats after all the painting is done.

Fairleads from the outside
 
Looking at the close-up photographs, I think the fairleads should have been turned a bit smaller on the outside diameter, but I am going to leave them like this. I also realised that my planking looks pretty awful and needs to be worked over …
 
There are also several heavy cleats needed to belay for instance the backstays or the ropes used to secure the anchors. They are of a type that seems to have fallen out of modern use, namely half-cleats combined with a bollard

Combination of bollard and half-cleat (old photograph from unidentified book)
 
The shape was developed in the 2D CAD program and measurements for the machining derived from this. The rough shape was milled out of some 1 mm x 3 mm polystyrene profile. In fact the enveloppe is only 1 x 1.5 mm, but the additional material is needed initially to be able to hold the part in the vice. 

Milling the rough shape of the bollard/half-cleat combination

Milling the rough shape of the bollard/half-cleat combination – close-up
 
The final shape was given with the aid of various metal- and diamond-files and scraping to remove the fuzz from filing. I am using for this a ‘French’ type of pin-vise, on which I replaced the brass jaws with ones made from wood.
One should note that, as they will attach to bulwark stanchions, their back has to be slightly curved.

Filing a cleat to shape

Roughed-out cleat (top) and finished cleat (bottom)
 
To be continued …

Pin-rails post-script
 
When trying to fit the pin-rail with the consoles attached, I realised that I had overlooked a point: the tumble-home of the bulwark. This means that the angle between the pin-rails and the bulwark-stanchions is not 90°, but is a slightly obtuse angle of about 100°.
In consequence, I had to remake the consoles with this angle. As the process is essentially the same as described in the previous post, I am only showing a picture of the final result.

Pin-rail on consoles affixed temporarily
 
 
Another small tool-making digression
 
Milling the above profile required that the stock is oriented perfectly parallel to the X-axis of the micro-milling machine. While orienting the little vice is quite easy with the help of squares, orienting the stock on the face-plate would normally require tramming it in with a lever-gauge. The problem is that the lever gauges are far too big for the little milling machine. So far, I have eye-balled it with a pointed cutter in the spindle and some light test-cut to verify. This has been somewhat time-consuming and unsatisfactory.
Thinking about the problem, I remembered the so-called ‘wiggler’ (https://www.instructables.com/Wiggler-Center-Finder-for-the-Lathe/) and designed a tool based on the same principle. It is basically a stick that is pivoted at some point along its length, so that it can move freely at an angle. There is longer and a shorter end. The latter is brought into touch with the workpiece and any movement is amplified by the longer end.
I miniaturised this to a total length of 33 mm so that it fits easily between the milling spindle and the cross-slide. It consists of a piece of 6 mm diameter aluminium rod, that is turned down at one end to 2.4 mm to fit into a collet of that size. The diameter was chosen, because it is the shank diameter of the common burrs that I often use as milling cutters. That saves changing the collet after tramming.

Mini-lever-gauge and its ‘mechanism’ (right)
 
The rod is bored out 3 mm along most of its length and a 4 mm recess of 1.5 mm depth is turned in. This recess takes up a disc that has been punched out of a section of some polyethylene tubing. The feeler lever is an ordinary clothes pin, the head of which has been turned concentric (the stamping process of the pin production does not lead to completely concentric heads). At the upper end of the bore, a section of the aluminium rod is milled down to half the diameter, allowing to observe the movement the pin in this window.
The polyethylene disc is secured in the recess with a drop of general-purpose glue and the pin pushed through it concentrically until the pointed end arrives at the milled-out section. The flat has a few lines engraved to be able to better judge the movement of the point. With this the little tool is complete
In use the pin-head is brought into contact with the workpiece and the slide moved a tad in until the point coincides with one of the lines. When running up and down the workpiece edge, one observes the movement of the point and adjusts the angle of the workpiece until the point remains steady.

Tramming the mini-vice with the aid of the lever-gauge
 
The tool is perhaps a bit crude and not as sensitive as a commercial lever gauge, but it serves the purpose.
 
To be continued … 

Thank you very much for the kind words and the many 'likes' 👍🏻
 
****************************************************************
 

Pin-rails 2
 
As can be seen on drawings and old photographs, the pin-rails often rested on consoles attached to the bulwark stanchions for added strength. As about a dozen were needed, they were ‘mass-produced’ from a shaped styrene profile.

Milling the profile for the consoles to support the pin-rails

The shaped profile for the consoles
 
A 1.5 mm x 1 mm rod was stuck to a small ‘wax-chuck’ on the micro-milling machine with doubled-sided mounting tape. The rod was then oriented exactly parallel to the axis of the cross-slide and a hollow milled with a 1.5 mm ball-end burr.

Slicing off consoles with the micro-guillotine
 
The edges were rounded with a fine file. This profiled rod was then transferred to the newly built micro-guillotine and slices of 0.7 mm thickness cut off. These miniature consoles then were stuck to the underside of the pin-rails. Once painted, they will be attached as units to the bulwarks.

Collection of consoles

Consoles cemented to a pin-rail
 
Micro-Guillotine
 
The micro-guillotine was constructed around a part-machined cast-iron blank for a staking tool I found on ebay. Originally, I intended to fabricate all parts from steel, but I could not obtain a suitable blank for the rotating table and neither had the right steel bars in stock. So, for the time being at least, the parts were fabricated from 3 mm ABS sheet that I happened to have. 

 
The cutting blade is a shortened chisel-shaped scalpel-blade. It is set into an exactly fitting slot in the 6 mm steel runner and secured with a steel ring. The knob on the runner is an old bakelite instrument knob. The 6 mm wide blade restricts the cutting capacity to 3 mm for 90° cuts and correspondingly less for cuts at an angle. This is a conscient restriction, as this tool is really meant to only cut parts up to 2 mm by 2 mm cross-section. 

 
To cut at an angle, the plate is turned, rather than the cutter as in other designs. The narrow gap between the guides ensures that also very small parts can be cut. Their length can be set by the adjustable brass stop.

 
To be continued …

Work was been interrupted again, this time by some business travel to Tallinn for a few days, where I had also the opportunity to visit the Estonian Maritime Museum. Unfortunately, I came back from there with a sort of bronchitis that bogged me down for a couple of weeks ...
 
Pin-rails
 
Another delay in actual shop-work was caused that I first had to work out were the pin-rails would go and how many pins they have to have to provide the necessary belaying points.

Drilling the pin-rails using the micro-mill as a coordinate drilling machine
 
The pin-rails are 2.2 mm wide strips cut from 0.8 mm thick acrylic sheet. The holes were drilled using the micro-milling machine as a coordinate drill to get the distances right. The outer edges of the pin-rails were rounded as can be seen on many prototype photographs. The inner edges were notched for the bulwark stanchions on the filing-machine.

Cutting the notches for the stanchions on the filing-machine

Cutting the notches for the stanchions on the filing-machine

Collection of pin-rails

Pin-rails loosely attached at their designated location
 
To be continued …

In another thread we got a bit side-tracked and started talking about when books on shipmodelling came onto the market. The oldest I am currently aware of is this one:
 
Chapman, C. (1869): All About Ships and the Way to Make Models of Them.- 2 Vols.: 68+68 p., 3 pl., London (Wilson).
 
Vol. 1: https://books.googleusercontent.com/books/content?req=AKW5QafQYVIVxto10ATpCWcm3H87dEieZEqj9nbUmRVHXSIBrfcXvQx4GNaH5t1_3hHMYOMl3_XWvJWCfpEMzmdEwJLOSZjgpNKg_FbtZHlnd_hfxXRZGD8ybJ23859QgUQQBchREPQMkk39UUPsXVIYWMr-iM0wdmke3v0yXJe__ltCYBs7e8aOdRw4UpotZw5n5WHQzuNwY-S3aMxJRO8I0FrdjwL7_AreC8CTCjNIcTb3EkVIZNKf2KMm0yb-qa4-bgFwAQxwOqfQ82OkFpWRX8wutnEn0g
Vol. 2: https://books.googleusercontent.com/books/content?req=AKW5Qafw6gLcfJm9KhfH4itZesC_Yl6tANR0m_E8ZFGspk9DGOUe68Ck2tCvV7OyYRh9T_YnfPxTkrX045kW_l1EO7pbqd3onk5cC6XMB38zN4bfW8mHPfcg8EkePtBEOB_4uLJZs0Poa3nO9_EPnsdDhRGuw9xY3PkgdA7WRsXrw9r-zIf2zah_0aHFMj8XxOcLIGUTfen6SRH6gpXlR1Z2t8iaC0t2Vw9a2A9UACZjTpG6njr0dKHPG-Y2uGgitCpP7IvRzooXDFbOUQ7nKvxKwTt-Zkm8GxFg7FVqtpl6qKGk_pKUHrY
 
The scan of the 2nd volume contains the properly scanned plates!
 
Who can beat me ?

As for most of us, our collaboration was required for various Christmas-related preparations, such as grocery shopping, decoration, cleaning the silver, but also kitchen-work, which ate into the workshop time. But it is a good and enjoyable time of the year. Workshop activities resumed with
 
Fitting the deck
 
Or rather cutting out the openings for the deckhouses etc. When I prepared for the layout and put the previously prepared deck onto the drawing, I realised suddenly that the engravings of the planks at stern were not symmetrical to the middle line and very noticeably so now. So, it was kind of back to square one with cutting a new deck and fitting it to the model. Using the old one has template sped up things, but there was still an evening of sanding and fitting and sanding again, etc. lost. Then also the planks had to be engraved again, this time taking utmost care not to get it wrong again. This has now been the fourth incarnation of the deck …
Then I started to tackle a job that literally has zero tolerance for error, meaning that the cut-outs for the deckhouses had to be a snug fit and there is no way to correct any inaccuracies. If there was any gap, it would have been again back to square one, with lots of possibilities to get something wrong again.
 After some rough layout, holes were drilled into the square, where there will be an opening and cuts were made with a scalpel and sufficient margin around the edges. Two diagonal cuts allowed to break out the waste in form of triangles. The openings then were cautiously widened by filing and frequent test-fitting until a snug-fit all around was achieved. By taking time, this went smoothly and without further incidents.
 The deck and the deckhouses are only temporarily installed and will be carefully adjusted during the final installation. I now need to make a temporary mast to determine the exact location and shape for it deck opening. This allows me also to determine the position the pump and drill a hole for it.
 
To be continued …
 

I wish all followers of this building log a peaceful Christmas and a good start into the New Year 2026!

Hopefully not too many, Pat !
 
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Another small toolmaking digression
 
One of the great advantages of watchmaker’s lathes is the multitude of work-holding options/spindle tooling. There are collets and chucks of many different sizes and types. One type, however, never seems to have been made and this is collets with square holes. In a way it is understandable, as making exactly centric square holes with the technology available 50+ years ago, would have been quite a challenge and expensive. Today with EDM that would not be a problem anymore. It seems that watchmakers actually had little need for them and when they needed to chuck up a winding stem at the square end, they would have used a so-called 8-screw chuck, which however, is worse to set up than a four-jaw independent chuck.
 
I expect to have to work at the ends of some square section materials soon. While I have also a centric four-jaw chuck for the lathe, it does not fit onto micro-mill and for parts of less than 2 mm edge length it is not very precise. Working on such small parts in a chuck does not feel very safe either. Therefore, I decided to finally implement and idea that I have been tossing about for years: square insert collets. A standard fitting for watchmaker’s lathes is a set of brass insert collets that are used to hold delicate objects, such as small screws by their threads. They fit into a 5.0 mm collet and have three slots to ensure concentricity. The idea was to make collets with two cross-wise slots (like the cheapo brass collets you can buy for handheld drills) and a bore in the centre. By combining an appropriate slot width with an appropriate bore, you can make square stock fit diagonally into the collet and centre it exactly.
 
I worked out the geometry needed for 1 mm, 1.5 mm and 2 mm square stock/parts respectively. The other dimensions were taken from the existing insert collets, i.e. the diameter of 5 mm and the length of 20 mm. Blanks were turned up from some quality old brass rod, bored from the back with 2.5 mm and threaded M3 for depth stops to made at some later stage, if needed. The blanks then were turned around and drilled 1.1, 1.7 and 2.4 mm respectively for the three collet sizes. A shallow groove turned in facilitates the extraction from the main collet. The parts then were transferred to the mill and set up in a vice with a square collet block for slotting exactly across the centre. They were all slotted 0.5 mm.
 
A test turn with a 1 mm square polystyrene rod shows that this works very well.

Size 1 mm, 1.5 mm and 2 mm square insert collets for 5 mm watchmaker’s lathe collet.
 
Back to the Rahschlup now.

Thanks again for your moral support, verbal and via the buttons !
 
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A Mystery Resolved
 
When constructing the hull of the Rahschlup, it bugged me that there was no obvious way to free the deck quickly from larger amounts of water taken over in bad weather. The Jacht/Jagt-type vessels often have a gap between the covering board and lowest bulwark plank, but on all illustrations of Rahschlup-type vessels no such gap was visible. Freeing ports, as on modern ships came into use only later and the lead-lined gutters would not be sufficient.
 
Then I scanned through the images of the restoration project (https://www.jensine.dk, but the link does not seem to work at the moment) for the Danish Jagt JENSINE (1852) for a different reason and two images caught my eye:

 They show that sections of the lowest bulwark plank are actually hinged and can swing out. In calm weather they are secured with latches. Subsequently, I noticed similar features on other restored vessels.
I am not sure that this is an ideal solution for securing, as the wedges would need to be removed individually and kept for re-use. Also, the latch is attached to the plank section and could get caught between the plank and the covering board. I think a solution with a hook fastened to the stanchion that engages a staple in the plank would be a better solution.
 
How to represent such parts now in 1/160? Producing the hinges will be relatively simple, although they will be tiny, but the hooks is another matter.
 
For the hinges I took 2 mm long lengths of 0.1 mm tinned copper wire that was squeezed flat on my repurposed watchmaker jewelling tool to a predetermined thickness. These jewelling tools have a micro-meter stop that allows to very precisely set the distance between the anvil and the stamp. By squeezing, the ends of the flattened wire become rounded, which suited well the purpose. There was also a slight dimple in the anvil from the turning, which resulted in a slight boss in the middle of the strip to simulate the actual hinging mechanism. The ‘hinges’ were glued on with varnish.
 
The latches are another matter and had to be much simplified. A double L-shape was bent into a short length of 0.1 mm tinned copper wire to simulate the hook and then one end was squeezed flat to represent the part that would have been screwed to the bulwark. These tiny pieces were then glued with varnish to the lowest bulwark planks and to the bulwark stanchion.
 
I decided to make only every second space between the bulwarks ‘swinging out’ and scored the lowest plank on the outside lightly to mark these sections.

Unfortunately, these parts are so tiny, that they are almost impossible to photograph, unless I use my macro-photography set-up and then they would probably look discouragingly crude …
 
To be continued …

In another thread we got a bit side-tracked and started talking about when books on shipmodelling came onto the market. The oldest I am currently aware of is this one:
 
Chapman, C. (1869): All About Ships and the Way to Make Models of Them.- 2 Vols.: 68+68 p., 3 pl., London (Wilson).
 
Vol. 1: https://books.googleusercontent.com/books/content?req=AKW5QafQYVIVxto10ATpCWcm3H87dEieZEqj9nbUmRVHXSIBrfcXvQx4GNaH5t1_3hHMYOMl3_XWvJWCfpEMzmdEwJLOSZjgpNKg_FbtZHlnd_hfxXRZGD8ybJ23859QgUQQBchREPQMkk39UUPsXVIYWMr-iM0wdmke3v0yXJe__ltCYBs7e8aOdRw4UpotZw5n5WHQzuNwY-S3aMxJRO8I0FrdjwL7_AreC8CTCjNIcTb3EkVIZNKf2KMm0yb-qa4-bgFwAQxwOqfQ82OkFpWRX8wutnEn0g
Vol. 2: https://books.googleusercontent.com/books/content?req=AKW5Qafw6gLcfJm9KhfH4itZesC_Yl6tANR0m_E8ZFGspk9DGOUe68Ck2tCvV7OyYRh9T_YnfPxTkrX045kW_l1EO7pbqd3onk5cC6XMB38zN4bfW8mHPfcg8EkePtBEOB_4uLJZs0Poa3nO9_EPnsdDhRGuw9xY3PkgdA7WRsXrw9r-zIf2zah_0aHFMj8XxOcLIGUTfen6SRH6gpXlR1Z2t8iaC0t2Vw9a2A9UACZjTpG6njr0dKHPG-Y2uGgitCpP7IvRzooXDFbOUQ7nKvxKwTt-Zkm8GxFg7FVqtpl6qKGk_pKUHrY
 
The scan of the 2nd volume contains the properly scanned plates!
 
Who can beat me ?