wefalck

There should be some 3D-printed studded-chains available in 12 links per inch ... 

Indeed, Vallejo's ranges of different paint formulations (for brushing or for air-brushing) do not have the same range of colours. It is, however, possible to thin their other paint formulations for air-brushing. In this case one should use their recommended thinner(s), as other thinners could break down the emulsions on which these paints are based.
 
I only have a very small air-brush with a 1 cc reservoir and found this sufficient for my relatively small projects. A small reservoir prevents you from wasting paint. As the paint ducts are simple and as I wash out the air-brush immediately after use under running water, I never had the need to use any special cleaning fluids or devices. I don't use it very often, so it had stayed with me now for nearly 40 years ...
 
On pre-thinned paints vs. paint-tubes: it is correct, that compared to the amount of pigment you get for your money, they are expensive. However, me personally, I prefer to pay a premium price and have something ready to use after some thorough shaking. I do not waste any paint in mixing vessels etc. as the bottles have nozzles or pipettes from which just a few drops of paint are transferred into the air-brush. The pre-thinned paints seem to have a suprisingly long shelf-life. Some bottles I had for more than 30 years and they still work.
 
 

Standing water leaves white spots on shellac finishes - as most owners of antique furniture know ... However, dampening a tampon to pick up rotten stone or pumice (which is what is used in traditional shellac finishes) does not do any harm.
 
Alternatively, one can use very fine steel-wool (0000), but has to take care to remove any 'swarf', as it may rust with time. This results in an almost matt finish that then can be polished with a dry cotton tampon to a nice satin sheen, if required.

'Vallejo model air' mostly these days, but also the German brand Schmincke for basic colours. Vallejo has a huge range of colours (https://acrylicosvallejo.com/en/category/model-air-en/). They have colour charts on their (national) Web-sites, but as usual they are not terribly faithful in the colour reproduction for technical reasons. Vallejo branched out into modeller supplies from being a reputable Spanish manufacturer of artists' paints.

OK, I see.
 
Perhaps, as a reality check, you could take the loftiest (relative to hull lenght) sail-plan in those archives and compare it to your reconstruction - this should give you the enveloppe in which to develop your sail-plan. If you work with average dimensions for each part and add these together, you may arrive at an overall too lofty plan.
 
Another cross-check would be to graphically determine the centre of gravity of your sail-plan and compare this with that of other sail-plans. This then can also be compared to the centres of gravity of the hulls. This is what designers such as af Chapman would have done in order to see, whether hull and sail-plan balance.
 

Didn't pop in here for quite a while ... I am always impressed by your cutting/carving of styrene! How did you cut out and carve those corbels? Using a fret-saw?
 
On the use of asphalt solutions etc.: I appreciate that the antique effect on wooden models is quite nice, because it penetrates well, but in the case of plastic models I think there are other ways to achieve a similar effect.
 
I have used washes of very dilute burnt umber acrylics to good effect.
 
Other people use oil paints, brushed on and then wiped off, so that it only stays in depressions. If the base is matt acrylics, this also partially penetrates into the acrylics, leaving a similar effect as on wood. Personally, I not so fond of oils because of their long setting times (which on the other hand facilitates their working - as long as you keep the model in the dark, you can continue working).
 
In general, the fewer paint systems one mixes, the better ...

For a sanding sealer I use a German brand, Clou Schnellschleifgrundierung G1 (https://www.clou-shop.eu/clou-heimwerker/holzlacke/g1-schnellschleif-grundierung.html), but I don't think it is marketed outside the country, so this information might not be very helpful.
 
For acrylics I mainly use Vallejo model color, Vallejo model air (for spray-painting), and again a German brand: Schmincke Aerocolor.

Yes.

Well, a good paint surface begins with the preparation of the surface you are painting. You are right, gloss paints are much less forgiving than flat paints. So sanding, filling, sanding, ... and finally fine steel-wool until you have an almost polished surface that is also geometrically correct.
 
Most acrylics dry up quite flat, which is due to the pigment-content and sometimes also fillers and matting agents. There are acrylic gloss varnishes that you can spray all over. Some manufacturers also have pure acrylic emulsions, without any pigment or filler, which dry up to a gloss.
 
Gloss surfaces, such as those on the gondola, are normally produced in a somewhat lengthy procedure of applying lacquer to the surface, rubbing it down and repeating this several times. This is something that is difficult to do with acrylic paints or varnishes, because they do not harden sufficiently to allow this rubbing down e.g. with steel-wool. It is, however, possible to apply say nitrocellulose-based varnishes to surfaces painted with acrylics. The varnish then can be rubbed down, more varnish applied, rubbed down with steel-wool and then polished with a polishing compound and a mop or polishing wool (automotive suppliers).
 
You may also want to have a look on the Internet at the processes used by those doing decorative painting on cars or motorbikes.
 

'Vallejo model air' mostly these days, but also the German brand Schmincke for basic colours. Vallejo has a huge range of colours (https://acrylicosvallejo.com/en/category/model-air-en/). They have colour charts on their (national) Web-sites, but as usual they are not terribly faithful in the colour reproduction for technical reasons. Vallejo branched out into modeller supplies from being a reputable Spanish manufacturer of artists' paints.

Beware that there is a difference between 'priming' and 'sealing wood'.
 
Primers are meant to increase the adhesion of paint to particular surfaces as a sort of physico-chemical go-in-between between the surface and the paint. Filled primers (as the Valejo Grey one is) also levels the surface, i.e. it covers up some of the surface roughness.
 
Wood sealers penetrate into the wood, filling (partially) the pores in the wood. They are essentially a kind of lacquer filled with say pumice dust. Thes normally dry quite hard in order to facilitate sanding. Aqueous sealers work best on dry and low-resin wood. For more resinous woods you better use an organic solvent-based sanding sealer.
 
Hence, I would prepare wooden surfaces with sanding sealers, rather than 'primers'.

Didn't pop in here for quite a while ... I am always impressed by your cutting/carving of styrene! How did you cut out and carve those corbels? Using a fret-saw?
 
On the use of asphalt solutions etc.: I appreciate that the antique effect on wooden models is quite nice, because it penetrates well, but in the case of plastic models I think there are other ways to achieve a similar effect.
 
I have used washes of very dilute burnt umber acrylics to good effect.
 
Other people use oil paints, brushed on and then wiped off, so that it only stays in depressions. If the base is matt acrylics, this also partially penetrates into the acrylics, leaving a similar effect as on wood. Personally, I not so fond of oils because of their long setting times (which on the other hand facilitates their working - as long as you keep the model in the dark, you can continue working).
 
In general, the fewer paint systems one mixes, the better ...

Mark, hand-brushing of acrylics is rather difficult (at least I am not good at it), because the medium (water or water/alcohol mixtures) has a low viscosity compared to the medium in e.g. enamels (oil/organic solvent mixtures). This means that it is very difficult to apply even and thin layers with sufficient coverage - you push away the newly applied paint too quickly. There is also no time to even out the layer, as you would do for enamels/oil paints, acrylics cure just too fast (I tried my hand at artistic painting with acrylics, but am too slow - the paint cures/dries on the brush). The away around it is to apply numerous very dilute and thin layers (Vaddoc talks about up to a dozen), which is tedious and time consuming. Then there still is the risk of paint accumulating in engraved details etc.
 
The power of acrylics is in air-brushing. Compressors and spray-guns have become so cheap and ubiquitous that the investment should not really be an obstacle. I found that two to three layers are in most cases sufficient. Being lazy and not trusting my mixing capabilities, I normally use paints pre-diluted for air-brushing. They are relatively expensive, but then we don't paint square-metres. Vallejo were originally manufacturers of artists paints and their products for modellers show that. Personally, I use also a German brand (Schmincke) with a similar pedigree. The colour ranges in these pre-diluted paints are more limited than that of their other acrylics, but for 'historic' shipmodelling subjects this should not be a problem - we normally do not have to reproduce 'standard' colours as used on aircraft or military vehicles etc. For an occasional user, like me, mixing one's own colours and keeping perhaps stocks of them is not really working. The pre-mixed and -diluted paints keep in the order of years or even decades, while home-mixed ones disintegrate in the matter of weeks.

The rag can be dipped in water and it works just as well without the mess of cleaning up the sticky linseed oil and rottenstone and/or pumice left after hand rubbing. I never use anything but water when hand rubbing finishes.

Canute/mtaylor, thanks for posting/pinning. It seems though that one needs to sign up to the Web-site in the first post ...
 
Personally, I prefer to use those bottle of paints pre-thinned for use in the air-brush. Much less hassle, albeit there is a somewhat narrower range of colours. However, as I am building only 19th century models, this has not really bothered me - no one knows exactly what colours on a particular ship looked like and normally colours would have been mixed on site/on board anyway
 
I use these pre-thinned paints also for washes applied with the brush.

Finally, I had time to check my German early 20th century textbook:
MIDDENDORF, F.L. (1903): Bemastung und Takelung der Schiffe.- 401 p., Kassel (reprint 1977 by Horst Hamecher).
On p. 268 he states explicitly that "Mast-caps are perpendicular to the masts and spars (unlike the tops that are either parallel do the sheer or the waterline) ..."
 
However,
STEINHAUS, C.F. (1869): Die Construction und Bemastung der Segelschiffe.- 137 p., Hamburg (L. Friedrichsen & Co., reprint 1977 Horst Hamecher, Kassel).
draws both variants, wooden and iron caps that are either perpendicular to the mast or very slightly inclinded, while tops are always at an angle to the mast.
 
I think at the bottom line, perpendicular caps are the most likely variant and the easiest to fabricate by forging, but  inclined ones would not be a problem either.
 

Didn't pop in here for quite a while ... I am always impressed by your cutting/carving of styrene! How did you cut out and carve those corbels? Using a fret-saw?
 
On the use of asphalt solutions etc.: I appreciate that the antique effect on wooden models is quite nice, because it penetrates well, but in the case of plastic models I think there are other ways to achieve a similar effect.
 
I have used washes of very dilute burnt umber acrylics to good effect.
 
Other people use oil paints, brushed on and then wiped off, so that it only stays in depressions. If the base is matt acrylics, this also partially penetrates into the acrylics, leaving a similar effect as on wood. Personally, I not so fond of oils because of their long setting times (which on the other hand facilitates their working - as long as you keep the model in the dark, you can continue working).
 
In general, the fewer paint systems one mixes, the better ...

Tongue in cheek, but the other ancient name for Bitumen of Judea was Asphaltum. So, next time you see the crew repairing the cracks in the road with liquid asphalt, have them give you a bit and dilute it with some mineral spirits.  😲😏
I'll crawl back into my hole now.
 
Regards,
Henry

I wouldn't have asked, as I am quite familiar with this techniqe from indigenous craft in Arabia, East Africa, the Pazific and various other regions around the world. It often apears in regions, where good pieces of wood are scarce. Here a boat from Niutao (Ellice Islands) built around 1960 and now preserved in the Ethnological Museum in Berlin:

One could also talk about skin-boats and I don't mean the kajaks of Greenland and Canada or the curraghs and corracles of the British isles. On some naval craft, such as torpedoboats, (deck-)space was at prime and hence foldable dinghies were used. 
 

It all boils down to period and nation ... from around the middle of the 19th century on it seems that navies pretty much standardised their boats and the terminology. In each class of boats there may have been two or three different sizes, i.e. lengths. The standardisation made it easier to contract out their building and getting exactly what was required to fit onto the ships e.g. with respect to the distance of davits.
 
Between the last quarter of the 19th century and the end of WWI both, the German and the Austrian navies used all three types of construction: clinker, carvel and diagonal-carvel. All three building methods have their respective merits. Larger boats typically were either carvel or diagonal-carvel. Clinker building makes for a heavier, but more sturdy boat.
 
I gather one can discuss for weeks the etymology and use of the different terminologies ...
 
 

Whether plastics melt during mechanically working them depends on how much energy you put into them over what interface - or in simple terms: when you run the cutting tool too fast, you are putting too much energy into the cut ...

A hand-held electrical drill with an abrasive cutting wheel might be another option.

Before reading all the others' comments, I thought immediately the idea was to ensure that both, keel and false-keel were properly wrapped in copper. The false-keel was a sort of expendable item, meant to protect the actual keel from damage. In case it was (partially) ripped off by grounding etc., the keel still needed to be properly protected from this nasty digging animal. 

Somehow this e-book had escaped my attention so far - unexcusable !
 
I really love those pictures that combine models with a digital seascape and atmospheric effects.

Somehow this e-book had escaped my attention so far - unexcusable !
 
I really love those pictures that combine models with a digital seascape and atmospheric effects.