wefalck

Although I recently constructed a micro-grinder and –sander (http://www.maritima-et-mechanika.org/tools/microgrinder/microgrinder.html), I found that some hand-sanding device would be desirable for very delicate operations. Sometimes just a few strokes would be sufficient and the process would be difficult to control with a motor-driven machine. A guided sanding block allows to achieve flat and square edges.
 

 
After some rummaging in my collected stocks I found a piece of aluminium rail with a T-slot at one end (I don't remember its original purpose), a piece of thick aluminium sheet, some square aluminium stock, and a well-seasoned piece of pinewood of just the right dimensions (5 cm x 8 cm x 2 cm).
 

 
Holes were marked out, drilled and countersunk for the pieces to be screwed down onto the wooden block. The four sides of the wooden block were squared off in the milling machine with the aluminium pieces in place. The wooden block then was carefully levelled in the machine-vise and a slot milled into the aluminium as a guide for the sanding block. Finally the surface was evened with some light cuts with a fly-cutter.
 

 
A mitre-guide was fashioned from a piece of flat steel. It can be mounted left or right and in different configurations.
 

 
The sanding block is fashioned from some 8 mm x 8 mm square aluminium stock. It has shallow recesses milled into both sides to allow for the thickness of the sanding paper. A knurled screw M3 serves as handle. to begin with a glued a strip of 600 grit wet-'n'-dry paper onto one side and a strip of plastic coated with abrasives as used by dentists for grinding and polishing teeth onto the other side.
 

Dear all
 
Paint has been splashed onto wood, so time for another update.
Also, as this boat is approaching completion (in my time, this means less than a year), I ve been thinking about the next one. I have some thoughts involving multiple masts, we ll see...
 
In any case, I decided to do some caulking on the deck. I do not think it needs it and almost certainly it is historically inaccurate but this boat from the beginning was about having fun and cutting (some) corners for speed. I ll use Osmo filler mixed with black acrylic paint. This needs Tung oil to shine black but maple does not take well to Tung oil, needs to be sealed first or will come out very blotchy.
 
So floors came out again and were sealed with my favorite Americana Decoart water based sealer (I dislike Shellac)

Of course the hull needed some more attention again.


The floors were covered with masking tape.

Then put back in place, all screws replaced with wood nails, sanded smooth

Then the mixture was slapped on!

Wait until dry

Then sanded off

Tape off, Tung oil on - done! 

It is not perfect by any stretch but it is done! 
And now it is time to paint the hull! Lots of masking done (which immediately failed)
 

Then I sprayed some Humbrol grey primer. The photo really did not get the color well!


Then the waterline was marked and the hull masked further

I used grey primer because I intended to use Humbrol enamels. At the last moment I decided to use acrylics, completely different colors. This is why enamels are dead.
 
So first coat of Valejo Ivory is brushed on. It looks dreadful:

And yes as expected, the hull is moving again! 


And after 5 more coats, still looks terrible!


It will get better. Maybe I should have used enamels!
 
I am almost certain the waterline will mess up the whole paint job. I will try and tuck the masking tape down well but I am sure the red paint will find a way underneath. We ll see
 
Till next time, take care all
 
Vaddoc

Everything you need to know about gondole and other Venetian boats: https://www.veniceboats.com. Gilberto Penzo also has a little shop in Venice, where he sells his books, the plans and the kits he has designed.
 

I am a great fan of Fowler traction engines, because of their looks and perhaps also because of their German connection: a young German engineer in search for better opportunities than on the continent ended up with Fowler in the 1860s. He made some important inventions/improvements to their ploughing engines, reorganised the Egyptian cotton industry with the help of Fowler engines and eventually became their agent for the German states and Eastern Europe with a seat in Magdeburg. 
Some 35 years ago, I built a Fowler Z7-type ploughing engine from a 1:76 Keil-Kraft kit (which at that time were readily available in model shops) with a lot of 'scratch'-building, as I had just acquired a watchmakers' lathe. The actual engine was virtually absent from the kit and various other aspects of the kit had to be corrected:

Before painting showing the amount of detail added to the Keil-Kraft kit.

Finished and painted Fowler class Z7 ploughing engine in 1:76 scale.
 
I was lucky to live in the UK at the time, so I could visit various steam-fairs to take pictures of originals and there was also a local museum that owned a class BB ploughing engine.
 
I didn't know that there was an 1:35 scale kit of a class B6 traction engine. I always wanted to build a model of those. The kit looks good, but it is a pity that the whole engine-block has been cast in one piece. I would want to make the metal parts from real metal ... does the kit come also with wheels with rubber tyres? This is the configuration as agricultural engine. Not sure what the army would have used. The agricultural wheels would give more traction 'off-road', but are rather uncomfortable to ride on paved roads.
 
Incidentally, the German army experimented with traction engines as artillery tractors in the 1870/71 Franco-German War. I believe they were Fowler engines. There are not many accounts of their performance in the published literature - military writers of the time mostly were no techno-freaks and quite conservative. While their pulling capacity was judged favourably, the logistics of supplying them with fuel and water became too difficult as they moved away from railway lines. One should read up how the British did this during the Boer Wars, where armoured traction engines were used.
 
Looking forward to the progress in this building log  😃

I am still pondering the kit. I wouldn't build in WD-finish, but rather as a normal road-locomotive. The WD specifications (for good reasons) seems to have included unusual combinations of features, such a dished fly-wheel (as for road-locomotives, to not frighten horses on the roads) and wheels as for agricultural engines. 

Already put together ... I had hoped for step-by-step assembly pictures ... 🥲

OK, we are in serious thread-drift now ... the phenomenon we are discussing is called 'planned obsolescence'. It's something industry has been using for decades to keep up their sales. Perfectly useable hardware is made unserviceable by designing electronic components too flimsy so that they fail prematurely, well before the actual hardware is worn out. Or making software on purpose not backward compatible anymore, claiming that otherwise performance cannot be improved (even if objectively no improvement may be needed). The component concerned are often trivial, such as capacitors, but one has to replace the whole electronics and replacements are either not sold or made uneconomically expensive. In fact, the European Commission has been working for some years now on legislation to curb such practices, because they are wasteful of mineral resources and energy. I gather, as long as our economic philosophy is built on 'growth', it is difficult to combat such practices.
Another dimension of the problem is, that industry faced with this 'threat' is switching to renting out 'services', rather than selling goods. To some degree this is also supported by environmentalists, as they claim that there is too much 'unused stock' in our society.
Gone are the days (well into the 1990s) that Apple prided themselves that all their operating systems were backward compatible with existing software (their own). You could run ten-year old versions of wordprocessors on the latest version of the operating system. But even back in the 1990s already there were complaints that 'productivity' software had too many bells and whistles that very few people actually use in practice. Perhaps I am not such a sophisticated user, but there are very few functions that I constantly use in my wordprocessor, spreadsheet or drawing programs that were not available already 30 years ago ...

Sounds (almost) familiar. My iPod is of 2006 or thereabouts. It was jumping tracks (I thought). So when I (unfortunately) dropped my trusted iPhone SE onto a tiled floor and the screen cracked, I decided to get an iPhone 14 pro - because of the telephoto lens and got one with 256 GB. With the old SE I had the same problem, that there was not enough memory to update the OS - but you can hook it up to the MacBook as virtual memory to go around the problem. Anyway, I managed to push across all the music including most of my CDs onto the iPhone 14, so that I now don't need to carry two devices.
The same CDs still jump tracks, but this must be a problem when uploading them into iTunes. So it wasn't a problem with the hardrive of the iPod. Must do this again ... 
My wife tells me that I am IT-challenged, but I am simply not running after the latest things, if there is no need. Well, things have changed a bit since the days, when I did (scientific) coding on VAXes and the likes ..., but coding is still the basics.

Just a little bit of further progress before the Easter-weekend …
 
Stern anchor-crane
 
There are drawings as well as the photograph below that show the anchor-crane in some detail.
 
 Basically, the dimensions are the same as that of the boat-davits, so that I was able to use a spare one that was left over. The ball at the end was drilled for the ring into which during service the anchor-tackle would be hooked. When not in service, the davit was steadied with two chain-stays.

 
The set-up is very similar to that of the boat davits and the same processes were used.
 
Gun-sights
 
Gun-aiming technology didn’t significantly progress until towards the end of the 19th century. Just very basic front sights were used that sat on the trunnions, while the rear sights were adjustable in height for different distances and laterally for lead-angles. The rear sights used on the 30,5 cm gun a clearly visible on photograph below. Galster (1885) gives a detailed description. Basically, it is brass-tube of about 4 cm diameter that is set into a whole drilled vertically through the rear of the gun. In this tube runs a graduated brass-rod for setting the elevation as a function of the type of projectile used and the size of the powder charge. Firing tables were provided with the gun. On top of the rod is a cross-piece that runs in a dovetail-slot and allows to pre-set the lead-angle. The lead-angle was calculated inter alia on the basis of the estimated relative speed of the target and its distance. There was the usual V-notch on the top of cross-piece. 
 
It took several tries to produce these tiny pieces. In the end their dimensions are slightly over-scale due to the limitations of machining brass. Starting from 0.8 mm brass-nails, which are slightly harder than the usual brass wire due to the forging process, a 1.5 mm length of 0.2 mm diameter was step-turned over short lengths successively. Then a 0.2 mm long length was turned down to 0.7 mm diameter and this ‘rod’ with a disc at the end parted off. Luckily, I have a 0.2 mm collet for the lathe, so that the part could be inverted and the parted-off end cleaned up. With a pair of cutting-tweezers the disc was clipped down to the size of the cross-piece. Burrs were removed with a fine file.
This part fits into a 2 mm long section of 0.3 mm OD brass-tube (from Albion metals).
 
When I made the gun-barrel in about 2008, I did not have really the technology to safely drill to any depths the 0.3 mm holes for the sights, I was glad to be able to mill the flats with a broken drill that I had ground flat at the end. With my micro-milling machine and the dividing head this would not be a real issue anymore. Unfortunately, I forgot to do that before painting the barrel. Therefore, the sights had to be simply cemented onto the flats with a tiny drop of shellac.
Before doing that I also added the protective frames over the sights using some 0.007 mm diameter silver-wire.
 
Also installed were the last two of the ventilators for the officers’ mess.
 
What remains now is the flagstaff and the ensign. I have already found a suitable technique for the complex ensign of the Imperial German Navy, but have to still get the right red for it.
 
And then on to the crew …
 
 
To be continued ....

Today, I test fitted the engine nacelles with their struts to the fuselage/wings, not for vanity, instead for good reason, as it proved impossible to add the cabane struts to their fuselage holes, which they share with the nacelle´s struts. I will have to shave a bit off the lugs, despite, there is no color onto the lugs and holes in the fuselage. While testing, I broke one strut, because these are very fragile, close to the connection points. As this is the area, where some rigging lines lead, later, there is no way drilling through the strut and to weaken it further. I have to find another way and may rigg the nacelles with elastic thread.

Speaking of cabane struts. If you ever build a WNW AEG, watch out closely, when to add them. They skipped my attention in the manual completely, until I inspected the rigging diagram and asked myself, where do these struts come from. I found them relatively hidden in the manual then.

I then drilled out all the holes in the wings, where attachment points for the rigging will be with a 0,4 mm drill bit and then added Gaspatch metal cast eyelets, glued in with CA, orientated that the struts won´t interfere with rigging too much. 
Before airbrushing and decaling the wings,  made photos to show, where the holes for the eyelets lay, which proved to be helpful now, when I probed them with a needle.

With my kit, one side of the cabane struts where completely bent on the sprue. I tried to righten them, but that proved extremely difficult, as I didn´t want to break them. I used a hairdryer and bent them little by little. You can see one of the struts still bent on the picture. 
 

 

 
Cheers Rob

I am still pondering the kit. I wouldn't build in WD-finish, but rather as a normal road-locomotive. The WD specifications (for good reasons) seems to have included unusual combinations of features, such a dished fly-wheel (as for road-locomotives, to not frighten horses on the roads) and wheels as for agricultural engines. 

Already put together ... I had hoped for step-by-step assembly pictures ... 🥲

I am still pondering the kit. I wouldn't build in WD-finish, but rather as a normal road-locomotive. The WD specifications (for good reasons) seems to have included unusual combinations of features, such a dished fly-wheel (as for road-locomotives, to not frighten horses on the roads) and wheels as for agricultural engines. 

Already put together ... I had hoped for step-by-step assembly pictures ... 🥲

I am still pondering the kit. I wouldn't build in WD-finish, but rather as a normal road-locomotive. The WD specifications (for good reasons) seems to have included unusual combinations of features, such a dished fly-wheel (as for road-locomotives, to not frighten horses on the roads) and wheels as for agricultural engines. 

Already put together ... I had hoped for step-by-step assembly pictures ... 🥲

I am still pondering the kit. I wouldn't build in WD-finish, but rather as a normal road-locomotive. The WD specifications (for good reasons) seems to have included unusual combinations of features, such a dished fly-wheel (as for road-locomotives, to not frighten horses on the roads) and wheels as for agricultural engines. 

Already put together ... I had hoped for step-by-step assembly pictures ... 🥲

I am a great fan of Fowler traction engines, because of their looks and perhaps also because of their German connection: a young German engineer in search for better opportunities than on the continent ended up with Fowler in the 1860s. He made some important inventions/improvements to their ploughing engines, reorganised the Egyptian cotton industry with the help of Fowler engines and eventually became their agent for the German states and Eastern Europe with a seat in Magdeburg. 
Some 35 years ago, I built a Fowler Z7-type ploughing engine from a 1:76 Keil-Kraft kit (which at that time were readily available in model shops) with a lot of 'scratch'-building, as I had just acquired a watchmakers' lathe. The actual engine was virtually absent from the kit and various other aspects of the kit had to be corrected:

Before painting showing the amount of detail added to the Keil-Kraft kit.

Finished and painted Fowler class Z7 ploughing engine in 1:76 scale.
 
I was lucky to live in the UK at the time, so I could visit various steam-fairs to take pictures of originals and there was also a local museum that owned a class BB ploughing engine.
 
I didn't know that there was an 1:35 scale kit of a class B6 traction engine. I always wanted to build a model of those. The kit looks good, but it is a pity that the whole engine-block has been cast in one piece. I would want to make the metal parts from real metal ... does the kit come also with wheels with rubber tyres? This is the configuration as agricultural engine. Not sure what the army would have used. The agricultural wheels would give more traction 'off-road', but are rather uncomfortable to ride on paved roads.
 
Incidentally, the German army experimented with traction engines as artillery tractors in the 1870/71 Franco-German War. I believe they were Fowler engines. There are not many accounts of their performance in the published literature - military writers of the time mostly were no techno-freaks and quite conservative. While their pulling capacity was judged favourably, the logistics of supplying them with fuel and water became too difficult as they moved away from railway lines. One should read up how the British did this during the Boer Wars, where armoured traction engines were used.
 
Looking forward to the progress in this building log  😃

I finished decaling the wings and matte coated them. I´m happy to have finished the decal phase now, never in my builds, decals have covered nearly the whole kit like here. I also started to weather the fuselage and will prepare the wings now, with fitting in the eyelets for rigging.

The manual mentioned, that many AEG´s received a yellow / green tinted varnish over the lozenge cloth and I will see, If I replicate that too.
 
She is a big girl for sure.


 
Cheers Rob

Well that’s the base coat done. This goes together beautifully and tomorrow I’ll get a clear coat on before I start weathering 

Not much has happened on the cutter over the last few days.
I spent the time building a thickness sander out of the drum from a 3" hand planer on which the motor had burned out, I happened to have a motor from an old belt sander, some Ali. plate some bearings and a lot of inspiration from Jim Byrnes.
All I had to purchase was a GT2 belt. Everything else was scattered around the workshop, I get called a hoarder, but hey they did come in useful.
 

It works, so now I need to add a dust collection hood and a belt guard and off I go.
 
Tim
 
 

Well that’s the build of this done, there will be a fair bit more weathering yet but I want to get the tractor together so the colours of the dirt dust and mud are the same 

Well, it depends what you are doing with them on a ship model ...
 
Actually, I think there are four different topics here:
 
1) how to convert a 2D-paper drawing into a CAD-drawing
2) how to loft such drawings into a self-consistent data-set that produces a fair hull, and
3) how to convert the resulting CAD-drawing into instructions for the laser-cutter that produce the expected results.
4) is the laser-cutter available suitable for the task in hand
 
As Chuck suggested, it may save a lot of time, effort and money to verify point 4 first. If the available laser-cutter is not suitable, it may be simpler to work the traditional way.
 
On the other hand, as the envisaged model is planned to be only a foot and a half long, one may get away with quite thin (ply)wood or even cardstock. The bulkheads are only needed to define the shape of the hull, if the spaces in between are filled with a softer wood, e.g. balsa. The bulkhead do not need to be structural parts. One has to adapt the building technique to the available tools, in this case the laser-cutter.
 
Some people work from sets of copies of original builders' plans, but it may be worthwhile going through steps (1) and (2) in any case, as this allows you to verify the fairing of the hull before one cuts anything. Even going only through step (1) is useful: if it turns out that a bulkhead is wrong, one can easily correct it in the 2D-CAD and print it out again. 

Just a little bit of further progress before the Easter-weekend …
 
Stern anchor-crane
 
There are drawings as well as the photograph below that show the anchor-crane in some detail.
 
 Basically, the dimensions are the same as that of the boat-davits, so that I was able to use a spare one that was left over. The ball at the end was drilled for the ring into which during service the anchor-tackle would be hooked. When not in service, the davit was steadied with two chain-stays.

 
The set-up is very similar to that of the boat davits and the same processes were used.
 
Gun-sights
 
Gun-aiming technology didn’t significantly progress until towards the end of the 19th century. Just very basic front sights were used that sat on the trunnions, while the rear sights were adjustable in height for different distances and laterally for lead-angles. The rear sights used on the 30,5 cm gun a clearly visible on photograph below. Galster (1885) gives a detailed description. Basically, it is brass-tube of about 4 cm diameter that is set into a whole drilled vertically through the rear of the gun. In this tube runs a graduated brass-rod for setting the elevation as a function of the type of projectile used and the size of the powder charge. Firing tables were provided with the gun. On top of the rod is a cross-piece that runs in a dovetail-slot and allows to pre-set the lead-angle. The lead-angle was calculated inter alia on the basis of the estimated relative speed of the target and its distance. There was the usual V-notch on the top of cross-piece. 
 
It took several tries to produce these tiny pieces. In the end their dimensions are slightly over-scale due to the limitations of machining brass. Starting from 0.8 mm brass-nails, which are slightly harder than the usual brass wire due to the forging process, a 1.5 mm length of 0.2 mm diameter was step-turned over short lengths successively. Then a 0.2 mm long length was turned down to 0.7 mm diameter and this ‘rod’ with a disc at the end parted off. Luckily, I have a 0.2 mm collet for the lathe, so that the part could be inverted and the parted-off end cleaned up. With a pair of cutting-tweezers the disc was clipped down to the size of the cross-piece. Burrs were removed with a fine file.
This part fits into a 2 mm long section of 0.3 mm OD brass-tube (from Albion metals).
 
When I made the gun-barrel in about 2008, I did not have really the technology to safely drill to any depths the 0.3 mm holes for the sights, I was glad to be able to mill the flats with a broken drill that I had ground flat at the end. With my micro-milling machine and the dividing head this would not be a real issue anymore. Unfortunately, I forgot to do that before painting the barrel. Therefore, the sights had to be simply cemented onto the flats with a tiny drop of shellac.
Before doing that I also added the protective frames over the sights using some 0.007 mm diameter silver-wire.
 
Also installed were the last two of the ventilators for the officers’ mess.
 
What remains now is the flagstaff and the ensign. I have already found a suitable technique for the complex ensign of the Imperial German Navy, but have to still get the right red for it.
 
And then on to the crew …
 
 
To be continued ....