Dziadeczek

I am in the middle of building my own version of a planetary ropewalk, (in addition to my old standard ropewalk I built about 30 years ago). I heard that this type of a ropewalk has several issues in terms of evenly twisting of ropes and tension of strands that have to be carefully adjusted. I'll let you know how my own behaves, after I finish it. Thomas

please read my two previous posts As I mentioned, when I twist a 4 stranded rope (with no core), sometimes the strands jump over others, sometimes the twists are a bit irregular, uneven, in places individual strands collapse into this empty space in the center of the rope - end result, the rope looks bad. I am trying to improve the overall results, and I am slowly inching toward my goal, but I think I have to fill this empty space with a core to make the rope even. I don't know if I will be able to use a thin wire for that, or just a thinner 5th strand mounted in the center. I will try both. In the meantime, I attach a pic with two ropes I made today from 4 strands each with no core. Their thickness is about 1 mm (1/64 inch). I used some cheap cotton I had handy at the moment. Back to the drawing board... 🤔

My ropewalk has the possibility to twist 4 stranded ropes (as well as 3 stranded ones) and I tried many times to twist 3 and/or 4 stranded ropes on it. The 3 stranded ones come perfect, but the 4 stranded not so - for the above mentioned reason. So, after drilling a center hole through the cone (where the grooves meet) and inserting a thin wire through it, I noticed that such a 4 str. rope comes very ugly - the strands get excessively twisted, form many small knots before they decide to twist around each other to form a rope. At the same time, the central core (wire) wants to rotate in the direction opposite to the direction of rotation of all strands, but because it is only loosely inserted in between the strands, this rotation gets uneven and in bursts. So, the whole rope comes out terrible. There has to be a different, perfect way of suspending the core wire which has to be very straight, like all thread strands, and only than the whole thing can form a rope. The reason I wanted to make such a rope (with a center wire) is, that the wire core would allow me to form more natural ways of sagging of certain ropes on my models rather than all of them stretched straight...

Did anyone try to twist a 4 strand rope with a central core (either out of a thinner thread or a thin wire)? I have an old ropewalk I build long time ago, similar in principles to a ropewalk by Phil Krol (see attachment), but my cone (traveller) is suspended on two fishing lines extended between centers, instead of a small cart on a rail, so I can extend the distance between both centers easier, depending on the max length of this line. Like in the design by Russ Long from Ship Modelers Association - Ship Modelers Association - Tip of the Month My ropewalk doesn't have a second rotating center that forms ropes in the direction opposite to the 3(4) twirls, instead it has a fishing twirly that spins freely, thus forming the rope. I am thinking about adopting my ropewalk to making a 3 or 4 strand ropes, BUT WITH A CENTRAL CORE (thread or wire). I had mixed results twisting a 4 strand ropes (some are better, other not so good), until I found out that the reason for this is the fact, that with 4 stranded ropes there is a slightly bigger empty space in the middle and the strands tend to collapse into it, - so to speak -, resulting in uneven twists. I want to fill that space with such a core. I already drilled a center hole through the cone and tried to insert there a length of thin wire, but the strands tend to twist around it excessively resulting in a very ugly rope. I also noticed that the central wire tends to rotate spontaneously on its own, opposite to the rotation of all strands and would have to be suspended absolutely perfectly to do it freely (which is impossible, I am afraid). I remember there was a discussion on this exact topic on the now defunct Seaways list, but I lost this topic, unfortunately... Is such a modification of my type of a ropewalk even possible? What do I have to do? ropewalk by Phil Krol.pdf

This is how these details look like on the bark "Star of India" in San Diego.

Here are my struggles with photoetching (that in the end, turned out successfully): Photo Etching - do it yourself - Metal Work, Soldering and Metal Fittings - Model Ship World™

I follow the method described once by Fr. Bill Romero. First prepare yourself the sides of your ladder, then prepare the steps. Assemble temporarily the sides like it's shown on the pic, in the shape of a letter "A" (at an angle that is twice the angle between your ladder and the side of your model), placing a drop of white glue at the tops of the sides. Place drops of glue at the bottoms of the sides and temporarily glue them to the horizontal piece, shown here as "scrap wood". Place your 'triangle' on the table of your miniature table saw (Preac, Proxxon, or like), the side with "scrap wood" facing the fence of your saw and make slits in the sides to the depth equaled half the thickness of your sides. Use an appropriate spacer to make subsequent slits to make sure your slits are equally distanced to each other. Now disassemble the sides from "scrap wood" and from each other. Glue all steps into the slits in one side of your ladder and after the glue dries, glue them to the other side. Alternatively, instead of cutting slits in the sides, glue to them equal size 'rhombs' (parallelograms) of the same piece of wood as your sides, making sure you keep spaces for your sides to be glued in later on. - drawing A. (Don't mind the numbers on the scan - they refer to his model only).

I always glue ONE plank interchangeably on each side of a hull at a time and proceed the same for the remainder of planks. I prebend the wet planks off the model so that they almost fit the shape of the hull, nothing forceful! I only place ONE layer of planks, no second coats necessary.

Amazon has several draw plates, their prices ranging from inexpensive to quite pricey. Notice that the holes in the plates are drilled not simply through, but their profile is conical. Which means that on one side of the plate each hole is bigger (base of the cone) and on the other side it is smaller (apex of the cone). The same plate can be used for pulling through a soft metal wire, as well as drawing wood. You insert a wire from the base side (larger hole) of the plate and pull it through the apex (smaller hole). With wood you do it from the opposite side. In other words, to make a thinner wire, you squeeze it through the plate, but with wood, you shave it (apex side has sharp edges). From my own practical experience with a draw plate, the best wood is prewetted bamboo (skewers from grocery stores), because bamboo has long and strong fibres that can withstand pulling with forceps. Other wood tends to break more easily. If you want to use something other than bamboo woods, like fruitwoods, or boxwood or similar for your treenails, use rather treenail cutters from Vanda Lay Ind. - he used to make them in 3 sizes, later on only 2 and finally, as far as I know, stopped making them altogether. Possibly you can still get this gadget on Ebay or similar sources.

Jewerly equipment suppliers have various draw plates.

Congratulations on such an impressive model! Tomasz

Parallel blade to the fence is critical, however long time ago I learnt a trick from someone from the defunct now forum, Seaways Ships in Scale, that even better is when you set the blade every slightly out of being parallel, in such a way, that the distal end (from the operator's point of view) of the blade - the one that comes out and up from the table, is a tiny bit further away from the fence than the proximal (closer to the operator's site) end of the blade - the one that goes down under the table. That way you'll avoid squeezing the wood between the blade and the fence, and hence - the burnt marks. How to do it simply and quickly? Place a strip of paper in between the proximal end of a blade and the fence and another strip between the distal end and the fence. Bring the fence close to the blade all the way, so that it touches the paper. If you set the blade as mentioned above, the proximal strip is now tightly wedged between the blade and the fence and if you forcibly try to remove it, it tears. However, the distal strip still can be removed easily without tearing. The blade is now ready for cutting the wood. Another thought - for ripping the wood, it is best not to use a slitting blade, but rather a blade with larger teeth, preferably with carbide tips (very sharp).

I don't think it is necessary to soak everything in machine oil, so that when the chuck spins in the lathe, droplets of oil sprinkle everywhere! Just light oiling will suffice.

Also, there is a drawing by Ben Lankford from Model Shipways, that shows this detail - he calls it "iron fitting", which is a kind of a metal fork that is attached to a rod bolted to this breasthook, the rod - looks like, it has a hole drilled through it with a pin holding everything together, so it pivots up and down - see attached diagram and the pic (greatly enlarged).

I found this video on the YouTube. Activate English subtitles, if you don't speak Russian.