wefalck

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 …

Continuing on, belt ls done 

The base has been developing slowly in concept & the base itself. AS per previous posts, the plan is to replicate section of boatyard hardstand concrete, & concrete always has seams for expansion & contraction, with black flexible stuff in it. I replicated the seams by cutting a shallow V from both sides with a knife, with a separation at the bottom if around 0.5 -1mm (x12 for actual size). As the concrete work would have been a bit rough, I allowed variation & one of them isn't straight.
 
The paint is mineral paint, very flat finish & slightly rough. I adjusted the colour, as the concrete would probably have been poured in different batches, & at different times possibly - so the colour isn't the same. The grooves defining the joints were painted with some diluted dark grey paint, & the same dark grey was used to highlight the cracks in the concrete. Then a dusting from some col galvanising spray paint I had sitting there...
 
Below is painted with grey, but before the dark grey highlights.

Highlighted & dusted, 3 photos below.

 

 

 
There will be some spilled paint, oversprays of antifoam, topsides paint, rust stains....all yet to come. But for now I think it's looking ok, certainly it's looking somewhat like concrete. The dark speckles look a bit like the gravel in concrete & help to unify the effect, it was looking a bit patchwork until then.
 
 
 

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 …

Tempering plastics is a common technique, say when hot bending shapes in acrylics, they are put into an oven at 70°C together with the template over which they are bent in order to settle and remove internal tensions and thus prevent the formation of tension-cracks. 

Brilliant to see you back at this work 👍🏻  One is always a bit apprehensive, when there is a long period of silence.
 
I forgot about your home-improvement trials and tribulations. Having gone through a couple of home renovations myself, I know what the challenges are and that one has to constantly keep the contractors on their toes. Luckily, our constractor very early on understood, that his client knows a bit about the business 😈

Tempering plastics is a common technique, say when hot bending shapes in acrylics, they are put into an oven at 70°C together with the template over which they are bent in order to settle and remove internal tensions and thus prevent the formation of tension-cracks. 

Brilliant to see you back at this work 👍🏻  One is always a bit apprehensive, when there is a long period of silence.
 
I forgot about your home-improvement trials and tribulations. Having gone through a couple of home renovations myself, I know what the challenges are and that one has to constantly keep the contractors on their toes. Luckily, our constractor very early on understood, that his client knows a bit about the business 😈

Brilliant to see you back at this work 👍🏻  One is always a bit apprehensive, when there is a long period of silence.
 
I forgot about your home-improvement trials and tribulations. Having gone through a couple of home renovations myself, I know what the challenges are and that one has to constantly keep the contractors on their toes. Luckily, our constractor very early on understood, that his client knows a bit about the business 😈

Brilliant to see you back at this work 👍🏻  One is always a bit apprehensive, when there is a long period of silence.
 
I forgot about your home-improvement trials and tribulations. Having gone through a couple of home renovations myself, I know what the challenges are and that one has to constantly keep the contractors on their toes. Luckily, our constractor very early on understood, that his client knows a bit about the business 😈

We do the same in automotive display production. In classical LCD displays (I know, two times "displays") there was that effect we call "Mura". That are visible "clouds" of grey in intended black areas caused by stress in the display's plastic housings. To get rid of that stress and to get the assembly settled they are placed in an oven of also about 70° C for enough time so that the plastic adjusts to the stress.. and Mura dissapears.

Brilliant to see you back at this work 👍🏻  One is always a bit apprehensive, when there is a long period of silence.
 
I forgot about your home-improvement trials and tribulations. Having gone through a couple of home renovations myself, I know what the challenges are and that one has to constantly keep the contractors on their toes. Luckily, our constractor very early on understood, that his client knows a bit about the business 😈

Tempering plastics is a common technique, say when hot bending shapes in acrylics, they are put into an oven at 70°C together with the template over which they are bent in order to settle and remove internal tensions and thus prevent the formation of tension-cracks. 

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 …

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 …

Tempering plastics is a common technique, say when hot bending shapes in acrylics, they are put into an oven at 70°C together with the template over which they are bent in order to settle and remove internal tensions and thus prevent the formation of tension-cracks. 

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 …

I have been working on the walls for the staterooms, saloons, &c.  
This is what the walls look like for the boat interior.

And the reverse side for the exterior.
 

 
I continue to use mica to simulate the glass in the windows.  This really works well compared to the clear plastic that I used in Thistle.  Again, thanks for the suggestion.  

I need to create the furnishings before I can assemble the superstructure.  I will use a modified description of what was used on the sister boats, Leander Choate (II) and Paul L.  This means a women’s saloon, a men’s smoker (these were both 15 by 15 feet), a galley/kitchen, three staterooms for the Captain, Cook and Engineer, and lastly a multipurpose office used by the purser, captain and small mail and package storage.
 

Brilliant to see you back at this work 👍🏻  One is always a bit apprehensive, when there is a long period of silence.
 
I forgot about your home-improvement trials and tribulations. Having gone through a couple of home renovations myself, I know what the challenges are and that one has to constantly keep the contractors on their toes. Luckily, our constractor very early on understood, that his client knows a bit about the business 😈

That would be the subject of a book that I wanted to write for a long time (being a geochemist by training).
 
You are absolutely right, that certain pigments were too expensive for rough shipboard use and others would not have been sufficiently lightfast. So, Boudriots list is a good starting point, as it mainly contains natural earth pigments that meet both requirements, beeing cheap and being stable.
 
One would need to precise which decades of the 19th century we are talking about, as the pigment industry rapidly evolved in the course of the century. The evolving (industrial) chemistry led to the capability of synthesing certain pigments and thus becoming independent from the varying quality of natural mineral pigments. The increasing availability of by-products from coal-gasification from the 1840s on, lead also to the development of tar- and phenol-based artificial pigments towards the end of the 19th century.
 
Interestingly, while the range and availability of pigments increased, from the 1860s on, ships became more sombre in livery, with black and white dominating, with the exception of spars and funnels that were ochre. Between the 1820 and the 1860s, ships were often quite colourful, with inside bulwarks, deckhouses, and the tips of spars painted in pastel ochre, green, or blue. With these pastel colours, a small amount of pigment could go a long way, when mixed with a white base pigment.
 
BTW, the off- or dirty white mentioned in the literature is due to cheap and not very well refined lineseed oil and resins that yellows upon oxidation. This also makes coloured pigments dull.
 
And from the mid-1860s on commercial antifouling paints in a variety of colours became available, not only in red ochre, but also in greens, blues, and browns.
 
 
 

Tempering plastics is a common technique, say when hot bending shapes in acrylics, they are put into an oven at 70°C together with the template over which they are bent in order to settle and remove internal tensions and thus prevent the formation of tension-cracks. 

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 …

Firstly apologies for my prolonged absence and thank you for your concerns and encouragement re my renovations. Needless to say the building work went on much longer than first estimated. In the words of the site foreman "jobs always over run". The last part of the job (the replacement of a couple of french doors) is planned for next week ------ Hopefully! This will be the second attempt, the first doors were perfect apart from being the wrong colour, the wrong glass and the wrong size.
Needless to say getting builders to follow the schedule and do what they were contracted to do was somewhat of a time consuming battle. I think their company motto is "What the eye cant see the client cant criticise". We moved back in 2 months ago and I have spent much of my time since then improving on their efforts. In the end it proved easier and less time consuming to "just do it myself".
 
Ship construction restarted 2 weeks ago. Probably as a reaction to recent events I though I would spend some time modelling things that no one is ever going to see. 
 
I thought it would be nice to model all internal spaces where they are below sky lights or other points of access. It might amuse some future nanobot.  I am starting with the owners quarters.
 
The first job however was to do a little internal preparation.
 
All the internal surfaces where the balsa backing had been installed were sanded to the profile of the  frames using my improvised sanding stick.

The owners quarters sit amidships with white panelled walls mahogany cupboards, lockers and a double berth. The arrangement is broadly detailed on one of the available plans. The plan isn't exactly correct but with the available photographs this isn't a problem. 


From earlier some of you might recall that I installed every second frame (actually all the odd numbered ones). The foremost bulkhed of the owners cabin actually starts at frame 44 so this had to be retrospectively installed. A lack of planning created unnecessarily rework. The rule and elastic band are holding the half frame in place while gluing. It wasn't possible to install the whole frame as on piece (I tried and failed).

I needed to put the floor in (made from 1/32" ply). The dimensions were taken from the installed frames and drawn on a paper template. Installation through the deck frames was checked.

A block of balsa was was cut to size to form the core of the double berth. To be clad in mahogany later.

A template for the forward wall was shaped to fit at frame 44 with cut outs for the fitted cupboards on the starboard beam and shelf on the port beam. The template will enable me to make the white panneled walls.

Pieces were cut from MDF to act as the cores of the cupboard and shelf (starboard and port beams respectively.

When finished it should look something like this. The chairs are a bit worrying, I'll come back to those at a future date. if not succesful i can always leave them out.

Hopefully I will be able to catch up with all your wonderful builds over the next week or two.
 
Its good to be back.
 
 

... It says 18 cubic feet of records.

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 …