wefalck

😲 I remember the excitement when around my 6th birthday this time 62 years ago Lego came up first with wheels. Several family members gave me wheel sets - a bit boring, but then you couldn’t have enough of them. I think Lego went down a contraproductive avenue educational wise, but perhaps not revenue wise …
looking forward to more progress on the Renault …
 

😲 I remember the excitement when around my 6th birthday this time 62 years ago Lego came up first with wheels. Several family members gave me wheel sets - a bit boring, but then you couldn’t have enough of them. I think Lego went down a contraproductive avenue educational wise, but perhaps not revenue wise …
looking forward to more progress on the Renault …
 

John, Roger, Ian, Veszett and Druxey thank you for commenting.
 
Just a brief update:- 
 
I got to the 3rd row of planks before the planks began to run out at the stern. This necessitated a wedge being inserted. Just visible between the second and third planks in the next photo.

I did however continue with parallel planks.
 
In the boiler room area I needed to start aligning the plank edges using stainless steel clothes pegs where alignment proved to be unsatisfactory.

Having included the wedge between the 2nd and 3rd planks the 4th plank went on as a parallel plank without a further wedge.


I am now on layer 7 and probably near the end of parallel planking. At maximum beam I am going to have to start adding more width (which in practice means narrowing the planks at stem and stern).

I am checking the symmetry of the planks (with callipers) on an ongoing basis. The green lines also help me judge the symmetry. As yet everything is looking good. 
 
 

A seldom seen subject here. As I have a soft spot for those boats from the Venice lagoon and I will follow the progress. That book has been sitting on my shelf also for some time now - I think I bought in the bookshop 'Carta di Mare' in Venice or from Gilberto Penzo.
 
The 'Padiglione delle Barche' of the Museo Storico Navale in Venice preserve a couple of Bragozzi from the late 19th/early 20th century: https://www.maritima-et-mechanika.org/maritime/venezia/museonavalevenezia-3.html. I took a few pictures in case one day I also want to build one.
 
 
 
 
 

Nice kit! 

Photo time

... second part....

Second planking .........

the laying of the deck, also in this case I use wood recovered from the packages of brie cheese that I will cover later ....

Someone over in Deven, England needed a pair of 2-banded Brooke rifls for a 1:48 scale model of the Confederate ironclad Neuse.
I hadn't printed either of the Brookes as yet, so I soon discovered some bits were missing, ie, I forgot to mirror a part to the other side of the gun, actually, just the slide. 
I fixed the STL on Thingiverse, but to fix the already printed models, I printed that part and a couple of eye-bolts separately, attached them to the models with resin zapped with UV light.
They're carefully packed and off to England, making me an International Arms Dealer    It's very expensive shipping a 95 gram box to the UK from the US, over $30 USD in fact, but he was adamant there was no one local to 3D print them for him.

I was going to make a Marsilly type carriage for the 110# Armstrong rifle, but found this drawing on the NMM site, which is basically the Warrior's pivots, so went with that.

So far this is what I have

In the mean-time, the XI inch Dahlgren on the iron pivot carriage is looking like this...

As mentioned, Constellation, as a training ship in the 1870's, was armed with the XI Dahlgren, and a 100# Parrott rifle on a wooden carriage on her gun-deck, with the corresponding gunports widened to 10 feet.
here's something to compare the two...

The X inch Dahlgren's and the deck tracks for them are practically done, but that's in my Constellation log.
The next WIP is the XI inch on an iron pivot.  I've found many images of iron carriages, but all of them are from the 1880's and 1890's when some new technology had been applied, and I'm doing an 1870's version that's basically a war-time wood carriage done in iron.

The drawing posted earlier is what I'm working from, but the person that drew it did it as an illustration for a sci-fi story, so I can't be sure of it's authenticity.
At any rate, I'm picking a way at it....

Next up I think I'll do Dalhgren's rifle from this image

Since I'm replacing the Constellation's pivot guns with this X inch Dahlgren, need to print three of them; 2 for the model, and one for the sampler of Constellation's guns.
Here's the second gun fresh off the printer.  The first one lost a roller, but that can be fixed.  The slide on these gun are shorter than the previous gun's slides, so new deck tracks had to be made to fit.  The third gun hasn't been printed yet.

The pair sitting on the model's main hatch.

The old tracks removed, the access hatches sanded, and refinished with the primed guns and tracks sitting in place.

2
 
The barrel was originally manufactured from long, flat hammered iron bars girded by hoops, the normal way to make gun barrels at the time.
The rather small embrasure with a diameter of 200 mm had to be able to allow the barrel with the forged rings to pass through. Existing barrels show that these rings were often only 20 mm thick. I applied this here and so the tube couldn't be much thicker than 110 mm.
This results in the internal diameter of the barrel, the caliber. I ended up with 70 mm, after comparing it with existing barrels.
All those measurements are approximate, and the barrel had to be made according them.
I made the barrel from two PVC sewer pipes, which had the required diameters, namely 115 mm and 75 mm (with an internal size of 68 mm)
Pushed together, the outer circumference and the inner diameter provided the required dimensions.
 
The two PVC pipes with spacers around the inner tube.

 
The two tubes pushed together

 
A total of 38 rings of MDF had to be cut out in thicknesses of 8 and 12 mm. I did that manually with the fret- saw. At least three rings glued together now formed a ring.


Those rings were slid around the tube in the right places and secured with superglue. The course between the rings was now much too slippery. We agreed that the barrel would have the appearance of an excavated barrel and would therefore be heavily rusted and rusted in here and there. So the slipperiness had to disappear.
 
Around the tube, between the rings, there was first double-sided tape. Very tight thin rope was wound over it, without gaps in between, on the left of the photo. I needed about 145 meter. Then a thin layer of liquid MDF was smeared on top of it, on the right side of the photo. After which it became a rough surface after drying. That surface was filed and trimmed again until a lumpy surface was created, which was then painted in a rust color.

The MDF rings were also smeared with liquid MDF at the same time as the gaps. In this way, it became a unity.
 
 

So I’ve done up a machine gun to add to the dio then I saw this; a Minenwerfer, it is a beautiful resin kit that I may or may not add…

Yep, nothing matches that old-time mahagony 👍🏻

Yep, nothing matches that old-time mahagony 👍🏻

Yep, nothing matches that old-time mahagony 👍🏻

Ships' boats where quite exposed to the elements and in bad weather at risk to be damaged or swept overboard. I think most loose items would have been only put into them when needed. Lowering the boats during the age of HMS BEAGLE was a fairly time-consuming procedure - enough time to bring the required items up from storage.
 
The exception was the 'life-boat' mentioned in an earlier post, which would have been kept with all the essential equipment on board. 

Yep, nothing matches that old-time mahagony 👍🏻

Never tried that and it depends on the chemistry of the solution. Some products may not work with certain metals.
 
I would get myself a small plastic beaker, big enough for the biggest part and pour just enough of the solution to cover the parts. Let it react and take it out, when ready. Process one piece by one piece, so that you can control the process better. If possible use plastic tweezers, not metal one. If you don't have/cannot get hold of plastic tweezers, two toothpicks will do the job as well. In this way, you minimise the amount of solution used.
 
BTW, never pour used solution back into the original container, that should only contain fresh, unused solution (that is standard good chemical lab practice to avoid contamination).

You will be using a few ml at a time only. Don't dunk your parts into the bottle! You probably won't even consume the chemistry in these few ml with your parts. So get a small chemicals bottle from the chemist, lable it properly and you are good for a few more parts.
 
Once the blackening process takes too long, this is an indication that the solutions is becoming spent. You can let it dry then (out of reach for children and pets, of course) and dispose of it in the general waste. The quantities of Se etc. from a fre ml of solution are minute and will not harm anyone. Even if there were rubbish scavengers on the tips of Mexico, the material will be dispersed in the general waste.
 
I know, certain people would throw their arms into the air about the above, but one has to be reasonable and practical. 

I would go for similar appearance of all blocks. Though on a real ship blocks may have been obtained from different sources over time and as need arose, on a model this may look a bit 'unprofessional'.
 
While on 'artisanal' style models wooden blocks certainly would be first choice, I think for 'realistic' style models, particularly those in smaller scales, 3d-printing is the future. Such blocks would need to be painted, as the resin is always somewhat translucent.
 
The minimum size of wooden blocks you can machine on a CNC-mill is limited by the size of drills and milling cutters that are practical. I gather on hobby-machines the limit would be somewhere around 0.5 mm diameter for milling cutters and 0.3 mm for drills - from this you can calculate the mimium size of block you can make. 

Ships' boats where quite exposed to the elements and in bad weather at risk to be damaged or swept overboard. I think most loose items would have been only put into them when needed. Lowering the boats during the age of HMS BEAGLE was a fairly time-consuming procedure - enough time to bring the required items up from storage.
 
The exception was the 'life-boat' mentioned in an earlier post, which would have been kept with all the essential equipment on board. 

BTW, I found building-logs very useful to record what one has done (for later reference) and also to get (constructive) feedback and useful ideas. Much more useful than any small-talk in model-shops (which I rarely went to, even in the days, when they still existed) or meetings.