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Bob Cleek

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  1. I missed this thread the first time around, as well. I'm glad to hear of your successful surgical adventure. I thought of you the other day when Stad Amsterdam came into San Francisco. She'll be here in port for two or three weeks. I haven't gotten down to the dock to check her out. Maybe this week. Your latest model is wonderful and so's the photoshopped photography. What you accomplish working with cardstock is amazing.
  2. The inherent ability of any artistic artifact to simply last is a question any artist or craftsperson who values their time eventually spends some time researching. No doubt there are those who can attest to their possessing plastic models that have lasted "over fifty years," but it would appear from the professional preservationists' literature that those items are flukes. Styrene plastics as we know them today have only been in routine production since the post-WWII period when the war-surplus polystyrene manufacturing plants were converted from their prior wartime production purposes. It was a short time thereafter than the term "plastic" became synonymous with "inferior" and "short-lived." Very roughly speaking, polystyrene plastic as an engineering material has a "shelf-life" of around twenty-five years. I don't know how old you are, but a lot of us "of a certain age" can attest with 20-20 hindsight that twenty-five years is a surprisingly short period of time! Regardless of how well "climate controlled" your acrylic case may be, you might want to reconsider an "acrylic case." If you want a maximum lifespan, you won't be using plain old "Plexiglass." Archival acrylic vitrine sheet display cases are custom fabricated (often using proprietary UV-curing adhesives) and are as much as four or five times the cost of a "clear acrylic" and for that you get a lifespan of ten to twenty-five years. Glass, while heavier and susceptible to impact breakage, is a lot less expensive and lasts virtually forever. This "cheat sheet" used by professional curators sets forth comparative archival strengths and weaknesses of various materials used in conservation and display of historic and artistic artifacts: Selecting Materials for Storage and Display | Conservation Center for Art & Historic Artifacts (ccaha.org) Most any paint is pretty tough stuff. As long as the pigments are high quality and not prone to fading, most all of the binders in use today, once they cure or polymerize, aren't going anywhere. The archival problems arise with the substrates upon which the paint is applied. They've made a lot of improvements in styrene plastics over the last half century or more since I was building plastic models in the late fifties and early sixties, but no matter how you cut it, plastic is polymerizing material that has a "half-life" as it were. Modern "polymerization inhibitors" can slow the process down, but they haven't found a way to stop it, as far as I know. The literature" suggests that if conserved under optimum conditions (which is a rather tricky thing to do) polystyrene plastic material can be expected to last as long as fifty or even sixty years, but this assumes proper conservation practices. There is a fair amount of information on the subject online. Under "average conditions," they say it's good for around ten years, although improper storage can accelerate deterioration to a "surprisingly short length of time." Paints and other coatings applied to plastic can negatively affect the longevity of the plastic through chemical interactions and this danger has to be assessed on a case-by-case basis. The general rule of thumb for plastics is that "If you can smell it, it will deteriorate." (Or, more accurately, "If you can smell it, it is deteriorating.") Many plastics and adhesive materials will release acidic gasses as they age, and these can wreak havoc with the lifespan of a model. Heat and UV light will usually accelerate a plastic's degradation. Unlike metal and wooden ship models, nobody expects a plastic ship model kit to last much longer than about fifty years at best. While everybody's own mileage will probably differ, I never could see the point of putting in the time to do a good job of rigging a complicated plastic square-rigger model that I knew was certain not to last any longer than that. These MSW articles lay out the basic considerations for maximizing the archival quality of a ship model: Nautical Research Guild - Article - Ephemeral Materials in Ship Models (thenrg.org) Nautical Research Guild - Article - Specifications for Construction of Exhibition Models of U.S. Naval Vessels (thenrg.org)
  3. Modeler Tom Lauria has an excellent series of YouTube videos on modeling techniques. I highly recommend all of his videos to beginning modelers. He covers the basics in great detail. Here is his two-part video series on rigging blocks. These should answer your questions. "Part Two" below addressed how to make the older style rope-stropped blocks.
  4. YouTube has a lot of videos on the subject, some better than others: (62) knot tying for ship models - YouTube Also check out YouTube under "surgical instrument tying" and "surgical knot tying with instruments." There are relatively few knots that are requred. Once you've mastered a simple reef or square knot, a half hitch, and a clove hitch, and how to secure a line to a horned cleat you should pretty much have all you need. None are complex knots. You can find all of them demonstrated on YouTube.
  5. I have three drawplates, one being the Byrnes Model machines one. All of them (except possibly the Byrnes... I'm not looking at it right now) have a chamfer on one side of the plate with a hole on the other side that is the indicated diameter. I believe that the "funnel" shape of the hole is for wire, with the wire going in the larger end. The wire is pulled through the "funnel" hole and is compressed as it goes through the "funnel" hole, gradually resulting in a narrower "extruded" length of wire. The "funnel" shape of the hole is for the purpose of "squeezing" the wire as it goes through, without regard for the wire being marred or cut. On the other hand, putting a piece of wood or bamboo through in the opposite direction, which causes the sharp edge of the narrow end of a hole to scrape the wood off, creating a narrower diameter as the process progresses through smaller and smaller holes, surely does easily cause the piece to break by any sharp flexion at the narrow end of the hole.
  6. I have long been aware of the difference between metal-working drawplates and wood-working drawplates, but I've never seen the two distinguished in a catalog offering them for sale. I have always worked the "narrow side" of the holes on my drawplate by rubbing the "narrow side" on a sharpening stone. I've always drawn wire from the "wide side" of the plate holes so that the wire will be compressed and extruded as it is pulled through from the "wide side" to the "narrow side" of the holes. With wood, I pull the wood through from the "narrow side" of the holes (after pointing the end of the workpiece by rolling it on a piece of sandpaper) to the "wide side" so that the narrow side edge of the holes scrapes the wood off as it goes through. It works well enough. I'm wondering if you or anybody else knows if there's really a purpose-made draw plate for wood, particularly since there's such a wide range of jewelers' drawplate cross-section shapes once you get deep enough into the jewelry supply house catalogs. E.g., see: Drawplates & Drawbenches — Otto Frei The professional quality ones are scary-expensive, though.
  7. These clamps look nice enough, but at five bucks apiece? Talk about inflation!
  8. I just noticed this thread, so I'm late to the party, but I saw your comment and thought it might be helpful to mention that the Byrnes saw's fence is intentionally not "straightedged." The back end angles off from the center at the point of the blade's cut to the end where it is, if memory serves, .005" off the centerline of the front end of the fence. The purpose of this feature is to prevent the workpiece from binding past the cut. (After the cutting point, there is no need for the workpiece to lay against the fence.) This has been previously discussed in other posts on this forum. For example, posts #41 and #42 at:
  9. No apologies needed. There was a lag between my posting and it being "reviewed by a moderator," before appearing. Your assesment is correct. I'm happy to have been able to offer the option that may work for you. I do want to clarify that the marking gauge will work on curved surfaces, but only to the degree that the user can control the tool so that the center of the flat, right angled "fence" remains in contact with the curved workpiece its referencing and the outer ends of the "fence" remain equidistant from the curved face of the workpiece. This tedious requirement is easily eliminated by fashioning a "shoe" for the fence that will do the job automatically. Such as shoe should be accurately rectangular in general shape and exactly as long as the greatest width of the fence. This rectangular "shoe" should have its face which will bear on the curved edge of the workpiece cut away to clear the closest edge of the curved workpiece edge so that the extreme ends of the shoe remain to present two "points" at the shoe's end which will bear on the curved surface of the workpiece. By preventing the fence from bearing only on the closest point on the curve, these points will keep the extended bar of the marking gauge at a right angle to the center of the curved piece without the fence "wobbling." The "shoe" can be temporarily secured to the face of the gauge with a dab of hot melt glue gun glue or a piece of tape... whatever works to suit the situation.
  10. I thought the Rockler digital model was cute, too, so I threw it in for grins and giggles, but the Luddite in me thinks its overkill. Some of the "analog" gauges have a scale on the shaft for setting measurements, but the Fine Woodworking article on marking gauges panned the scaled shaft marking gauges. Setting the center of a strip narrow enough to accommodate the length of the gauge's shaft makes eyeballing the centerline as I described a piece of cake. If the piece to be marked is too wide to permit that technique and the gauge must be set by measurement from a single side of the workpiece, it's easily set by a rule, a dimension bar, or a "fit piece" of the proper width. Alternately, if one has a caliper, the calipers can be set to indicate a "inside" diameter equivalent to the desired width of the marking gauge's mark and then the marking gauge can be set by physically comparing the outside jaw faces of the calipers to the fence and marking point (or "wheel") of the analog marking gauge. If one already has a digital caliper, the result will be every bit as accurate as the digital marking gauge at a lower price and without the issues attendant to the batteries and electronics of the digital model. An analog marking gauge promises to be a tool that will endure rough use for several lifetimes. The digital stuff... not so much. Everybody's mileage differs, of course. Yes, I agree that the larger marking gauges will be more cumbersome in use on small stuff. The smaller marking gauges I listed were chosen with that in mind. Without manually setting to the desired placement of the marked line using a rule or comparison "fit stick," none of the marking gauges I've ever seen will automatically center the resulting marked line. The "EZ Center Finder" you linked is a plastic version of the age-old method of finding a center boatbuilders make with a stick with a hole in it and a couple of nails driven equidistant from the center of the hole. They work fine on larger pieces of stock, but the results are dependent upon the user's ability to simultaneously hold the pencil in the hole, keep both guide posts firmly against the sides of the plank, and slide it down the workpiece, which is akin to patting your head, rubbing your stomach, and chewing gum at the same time. Both sides of the workpiece must be straight and equidistant from each other at any point on the line or the line won't be straight. They're great for working with round stock like full-size spars when boatbuilding because the "guide posts" can be extended down to run on the widest part of the rounded spar and even if the spar is tapered, as they often are, you will still get a straight midline mark, which is when the gadget really comes into its own. If one were to try to turn quarter-inch wide strip wood into eighth-inch wide strip wood, these widgets work a lot better in theory than in practice! Been there, done that, got the tee shirt. A set of proportional dividers would be great for determining the center point as well. That said, if the reason Stuntflyer wants "to draw center lines down half-inch to quarter-inch strip wood," is to cut strips in half, I think I'd avoid the trouble of marking the workpiece at all and just use the micrometer to set the fence on my Byrnes saw and just "let'er rip!"
  11. Fine Woodworking magazine's review and ratings of best marking gauges: Tool Test: Marking Gauges - FineWoodworking Marking gauges are one of those elusive "better mousetrap" sort of tools. They are very simple in concept, but there's a huge range of prices and styles and the fancy polished bronze ones often don't work any better than the hardware store rack specials. One of these should do the trick for you. You can search for "marking gauges" in your browser "images" setting and pick from a wide variety of marking gauges. If by "to draw a center line" you meant "drawing" with some sort of writing instrument like a pencil, I don't believe that there are marking gauges which are designed to hold common pencils as there compasses which are designed to do that. I once saw a manufactured marking gauge that had a hole and a set-screw to hold a common pencil, but I couldn't find one online now. That would not be a good design because the average pencil lead would not stand up well to being run down the length of a ten foot plank, for example. Most traditional wood marking tools are forms of scribers or knives which actually cut a fine line in the wood, rather than a pencil mark. If you wish, however, you can mount a compass lead (or section of 2mm drafting "lead clutch" mechanical pencil lead) in the scribing point hole of any marking gauge that features a collet-style clutch for holding a similarly sized scribing point, such as, I expect, the "3-in-1" Veritas model below does. For your purposes, none of these marking gauges will automatically find the exact center of anything for you, although it is a very easy matter to adjust a marking gauge to the dead center of a piece by trial and error, starting by eye and making a small mark, then turning the gauge to set against the opposite side of the workpiece and making another small mark adjacent to the first one. The halfway point between the two small marks is your centerline. It is then easy enough to "creep up on it" in the same fashion until, by progressively "eyeballing" the center between the marks made progressively, you reach a point where there's nothing left to divide, and you know you've reached the center setting on your gauge. When marking (or cutting) thin wood strips with any marking gauge I can think of off hand, you will have to use a straight edged "riser block" of wood, or the edge of the workbench, to provide clearance for the bottom of the gauge's fence (or "wheel") when scoring your mark. That's a bit of an inconvenience, perhaps, but it goes with the territory. The Lee Valley miniature marking gauges are advertised to work like the full-size tools they represent (besides being "collectables" or "toy's," depending how one feels about such high-priced things,) but I don't see any particular advantage to them in modeling, and certainly not where their tiny size makes setting and use possibly more tedious and likely to slip than a full-sized model. Perhaps a formumite who has a set of the Veritas miniatures can elaborate on this point. I thought this first "3-in-1" model below from Lee Valley was the best for modeling purposes because it will also hold a cutting blade! How cool is that for cutting strip wood to width? I've seen cutters alone that work on the same principle, but never a wheeled-style marking gauge with interchangeable marking scribers and a knife. If you aren't familiar with the wheeled-style marking gauges, they usually have a round shaped cutter with a sloped cutting edge which when in use naturally pulls the tool fence close against the face of the wood piece being marked. I like them a lot better than the old fashioned "block of wood with a stick through it" models. From Lee Valley. Marking gauge with two different interchangeable scribers and a cutting blade. $35.50 3-in-1 Brass Marking Gauge - Lee Valley Tools From Lee Valley: Pocket marking gauge. $29.50 Pocket Marking Gauge - Lee Valley Tools Veritas miniature marking gauges. (Set of two: single line and double line for tenon marking.) Lee Valley catalogue. $42.50. Veritas Miniature Marking Gauges - Lee Valley Tools Rockler digital wheel marking gauge. $39.99 Digital Wheel Marking Gauge - Rockler Woodworking Tools OTHER WHEEL GAUGES: Rockler wheel marking gauge. $19.99. Rockler Wheel Marking Gauge | Rockler Woodworking and Hardware Temu wheel marking gauge plus dovetail marker. $11.51 1/2pcs Wheel Marking Gauge Dovetail Jig Guide Marker Aluminium Alloy Scribing Tool - Wood Marking For Woodworking 1:5 1:8 , Bearing Wheel Cutter For Soft Wood ,inch & Mm Scale Ruler,temu
  12. Exactly so, and especially for the relatively limited amount of this sort of work that we see modeling ships. I use the Artesania Latina scrapers and they work fine. I clamp them in a jeweler's hand vise as close to the edge as possible to make them rigid. Amazon.com: Artesania Latina #27300 Micro Shapers, Set A, 3 Plates : Arts, Crafts & Sewing
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