Bob Cleek

As said, the answer to "How do I paint my model?" is far too complicated to answer comprehensively in just a single forum post. We haven't even gotten past whether you've chosen wisely in wanting to use water-based acrylics rather than oil-based enamels. (Each has its own pluses and minuses.) Painting is one of the more demanding skills a ship modeler must acquire and in as much as it is one of those things that people think they know all they need to about, it's one which frequently brings one to unexpected grief if not done properly. Perhaps the first thing one must realize is that any paint job on a scale model must itself also be to the same scale as the model. In the scales we encounter in ship modeling, this means that the paint jobs have to be as near to perfect as possible. I would urge you to get a copy of the second volume of the Nautical Research Guild's book, Ship Modeler's Shop Notes, which has a chapter on how to paint ship models that is as good a treatment of the subject as I've ever seen. The rest of the book is full of similarly excellent trick of the trade. While you are at it, you might as well buy Volume I of the same publication. Once you see one of them, you'll want the other for sure. Used copies can sometimes be found on eBay, but a new copy can easily be obtained for a reasonable price from the NRG directly. See: Ship Modeler's Shop Notes, and Vol. 2 – Nautical Research Guild (thenrgstore.org) and Ship Modeler's Shop Notes, Vol. I – Nautical Research Guild (thenrgstore.org)

But then again, imagine wintering on the coast of Maine.

"Drowning it in paint" isn't a solution. As Jaager explained, "use filler and then paint." There is a variety of fillers on the market. You want one that is "fine grained." Something less coarse than just dry-wall mud. I use epoxy resin and sanding additive ("micro-balloons") for filling heavy imperfections like you have at present. The epoxy is a strong adhesive that adds structural strength to the assembled parts, as well. The epoxy with the sanding additive works very well but takes an overnight to cure sufficiently to sand. At that point, it sands like butter. Follow the manufacturer's instructions and mix the additive to yield a texture like soft peanut butter. Apply sparingly to minimize the work of sanding fair. More can be added to the first coat to fill missed divots if need be. Sand carefully using a flexible batten with sandpaper attached to achieve the fairness of the hull shape. Start with 220 grit sandpaper and work it down to 320 grit. The hull must be perfectly fair and "smooth as a baby's bottom." Epoxy resin is an expensive material, although there is a range of prices which reflect the old adage that you get what you pay for. (I don't recommend using any polyester fairing compounds, such as Bondo. I realize many modelers do, but Bondo is intended for application on sheet metal, not wood, and Bondo is hygroscopic which may promote deterioration in the wood.) WEST System is the "industry standard" and probably the most expensive epoxy brand on the market, but like Jello-brand "jello," it's the original and still the best. I use WEST epoxy because I've used it for fifty years and I'm used to how it reacts. Epoxy resin is a very handy and adaptable modeling material, useful as both an adhesive and a casting resin, although its archival qualities are as yet not entirely proven. Notwithstanding the cost of a "kit" of resin and hardener, it has a very long shelf life and you may wish to add it to your stock of modeling materials. Buying a small "kit" of resin and hardener is, in any event, vastly more economical than buying small tubes of epoxy and hardener off the blister pack rack at the hardware store. WEST System has written the "Bible" on epoxy applications, and it is available in PDF format at: WS-User-Manual-2020.pdf (westsystem.com) (WEST's well-known book, The Gougeon Brothers on Boat Consturction is also available for free in PDF format at; Form (hsforms.com) Amazon.com: FILLER MICROLIGHT 2 OZ : Automotive If you want to avoid taking the leap to epoxy technology, you can also attempt to achieve the same result using other surfacing putty alternatives. If small imperfections remain you can also use a fine-grained surfacing putty. This putty uses acetone as its solvent and dries very quickly as long as it isn't applied to thickly. (Store can tightly closed and lid-side down. If it thickens in the can, add a tablespoon or two of acetone, close the can and turn over. After sitting overnight, the putty should have absorbed the acetone and thinned. Don't try to stir the acetone into the thickened putty as this will only create lumps in the putty. There's no substitute for leaving the acetone in the closed can overnight to reconstitute the consistency of the putty.) Surfacing putty can be "built up," but applications of more than around 1/16" thick should be allowed to dry well before adding more to avoid shrinkage and cracking of the material. This stuff also sands very easily, as it is intended to do. I use Interlux Surfacing Putty because I'm familiar with it from years of using it in full-size yacht restorations and it's a staple that's always at hand in my paint locker. Unfortunately, like any material "with a boat on the label," it's costly. I'm sure similar surfacing putties can be sourced in any well-stocked paint store. (Here again, I'd steer clear of the polyester resin based automotive body and fender repair putties intended for application to sheet metal.) Amazon.com: Interlux Y257/PT Surfacing Putty - White, Pint : Interlux/AkzoNobel: Tools & Home Improvement Once you've completely filled every surface imperfection on your hull, you can then clean it well, brushing off the sanding dust well and then using a tack cloth (from any paint store) to get all the dust specs off the surface. It is very important to achieve a dust-free surface as much as is possible before painting. You must apply a base coat over surfacing putty to yield a uniform colored surface that will not "print through" your finish coats. Enamel "sanding base coats" (sometimes called "sanding primer coats,") are available which permit a final fine sanding before finish coats are applied. When your base (primer) coat is done and sanded perfectly and all dust tacked off, then you can go ahead and apply your finish coats as per the manufacturer's instructions. An airbrush is the easiest method for obtaining a perfect result. It can be done with a brush, but that requires a bit of experience and skill. It won't hurt to try. If you mess up with a brush, you can always sand the surface fair and try again!

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.

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)

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.

Wow! An animated online "knot board." Very cool!

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.

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.

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.

Beautiful work!

These clamps look nice enough, but at five bucks apiece? Talk about inflation!

Exceptional! Thanks for sharing it with us.

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:

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.

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!"

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

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

Now that does look handy. It's like a miniature router table. It took me a while to find on line: Wolf Tools - WolfTools About $130.00, plus, you have to but a separate Foredom attachment to mount it to your workbench or other solid holding surface so you can use it with both hands free to handle the workpiece. Have you seen the similar rig from Vanda-Lay Industries? ROUTER TABLE (vanda-layindustries.com) It's all CNC'd aluminum and has a much larger table for about three quarters the price. The Vanda-Lay router table doesn't appear to permit swinging the bit, but if one wanted a beveled edge, all they'd have to do is use a cone-shaped burr. These two sort of compare in the same way Proxxon compares to Byrnes! It's advertised with a Dremel as the power source, but I spoke with them some time ago and they said they could supply a 1" Foredom handpiece holder instead of the Dremel holder on special order.

As you've asked for "any thoughts or tips," here are just a few: I am sure "Vallejo gloss" is simply more paint carrier (liquid) added to the "flattened" Vallejo paint to reduce the proportion of flattening agent added to their flat paint. It should work fine, although it will correspondingly reduce the proportion of pigment in the paint, as well, so the paint may not cover as well as without the gloss additive. As with all painting and varnishing exercises, experimentation is essential for every different type of coating (oil or water-based types) and every different brand of coating, because they all have their own chemistries, and they often don't play well together. When using the small quantities involved in testing various finish-adjusting recipes and in mixing modeling coatings themselves, measurements are extremely critical. I would recommend that you invest in a variously sized selection of disposable hypodermic syringes for use in mixing paint and conditioners so you can accurately measure and record the various proportions used when you do your test runs. I've found index cards useful for record keeping. The mixed coating is applied to the index card along with the "recipe" indicating how many "cc's" or whatever of each ingredient. This is also very handy for mixing paint colors, as well. Like a lot of modelers who've "gone over to the dark side" and scratch build, I use basic heavily-pigmented quality artists' oil paints packaged in a "toothpaste tube," so I measure basic paint and pigment mixture out of the tube by the length of oil paint extruded from the tube, and use the syringes for adding thinners and conditioners, but if you are working with bottled pre-mixed paint, the syringes will work best for measuring the amount of paint as well. Aside from the other advantages of oil-based paints over water-based paints, I particularly prefer the artists' oils because I mix my own colors, which I find easier to do with a pallet knife on a piece of glass. It's practically impossible to have a paint finish that is "too flat" (matte finish) on a scale model in scales smaller than 1:48. At that scale and larger, the "toy-ish-ness" of the model's appearance increases proportionate to the increase of the height of the finish's gloss. "Taste" is a certainly subjective both as to the artist and to their audience, but "good taste" is generally easy to distinguish from "bad taste" and the good is usually the safer standard if one has any interest in pleasing an audience. If you wish to maintain the illusion of reality from a scale viewing distance, glossy finishes must be avoided. One of the disadvantages of water-based acrylic paints is that when cured they remain somewhat soft and so are difficult to abrade. Oil based paints and varnishes "dry" (polymerize) to a harder finish which is much easier to rub or sand. Classically, oil-based paint was applied and allowed to dry to its natural gloss finish and was then rubbed with pumice and/or rottenstone to produce the level of finish desired. In this fashion, the entire spectrum from gloss to flat is available in any color one wishes to apply. Unfortunately, however, water-based paints may not respond to fine abrasives for flattening as easily as oil-based coatings do, I've never tried to hand rub a water-based finish, so you may wish to experiment and see if hand rubbing your acrylic paint finish will work for you. (On a test piece, of course. Never experiment on the model itself. The whole point of experimenting is to have your failures occur anywhere other than on the finished work! ) Alternately, "flattening agents" can be added to both oil and water-based coatings to produce a flat effect. These are basically just "dirt," mixed in a liquid carrier, oil or water respectively. (Diatomaceous earth, to be exact.) The carriers in these flattening agents are often specific to the chemistries of individual paint brands, so not only is using a flattening agent for water-based paints inadvisable for use in oil-based paints, and vice-versa, but using a different brand of flattening agent from the brand of the paint used, or even the type of paint used when made by the same manufacturer inadvisable. Additionally, if one wishes to determine the degree of flattening effect achieved, test "chips" must be made, and the flattened paint allowed to dry completely. From these, if very careful records are kept, recipes can be followed to replicate the same degree of flattening from batch to batch. The use of flattening agents requires very careful measurements to ensure uniformity in different batches and, as the quantities of the batches mixed tend to be small in modeling, the tolerances of fluctuations in the measurements becomes increasingly more critical. Professional painters generally agree that if anything other than a dead flat result is desired, using flattening agents to replicate various degrees of gloss should be avoided if anything more than a single batch is required. (Where architectural specifications demand a specific level of gloss, professionals will generally order a specified custom production run from the manufacturer to insure uniformity.) You can try the flattening agent from the manufacturer of your paint and see if you can work with it to your satisfaction. It may be helpful to understand how flattening agents work. Basically, the create a rougher surface on the dried paint surface from which light does not reflect as readily as from a smooth surface. When the flattening "dust" is added to the paint, when the paint dries, the flattening "dust" particles stand proud above the surface of the paint film. So, the amount of dust particles determines how "rough" the paint surface will be and how much reflection will come off of it. On balance, it is far, far easier on smaller pieces, of work, like models, to hand rub the surface to the level of gloss (or no gloss) desired than to mix flattened paint, because the flattening effect can be seen as the rubbing is being done.

What's a little thread drift among friends?

Don't kid yourself. He'll hock the family jewels the first chance he gets and use the money to buy more models to support his habit. Those kit junkies are all the same!

An excellent suggestion, Mary, but I have no intention of "crossing the bar" before she does! Doing exactly as you suggest has been on my "to do" list for some time now. I also have rescued more than a few books from the dumpsters over the years, to be sure. The same principles apply to tools. I do have a habit of keeping the sales receipt for books in the book itself, which could be helpful to some extent, but while I've never "lost money" on a book, I've seen a lot of them lose substantial value when someone came out with a reprint of a highly desireable reference volume, as seems to happen with a fair degree of regularity these days. I plan to at least put "post it" notes with the date and value in the ones I know ought to be particularly valuable. I have no idea how to deal with the tools. I've got a few that most wouldn't have any idea what they were for and others that, well, I wasn't particularly forthcoming with her about how much they cost when I purchased them...

Phil, I've got the same problem. In the days before the internet, I'd spend long lunch hours (an advantage of being self-employed) scouring the dusty, musty back stacks of used bookstores for maritime reference books and amassed quite a collection for what were at that time amazingly inexpensive acquisitions by today's standards. The pickings were good because I live in the San Francisco Bay Area and maritime books were far more common in this major seaport than elsewhere far from the sea. Now I spend the same amount of time online searching for used books, but it lacks the tactile enjoyment of the old brick and mortar used bookstores and the odds of finding a treasure the bookseller undervalued are practically nil because it only takes them a minute to Google a used title and see what it's selling for these days. The bookshelves which took up every available space in the house and then the piles of un-shelved books started exceeding the limits of my dearly beloved's patience. Fortunately, I have a large workshop and office building on the property and will be framing in an additional drafting room and library into which all the bookcases will be moved, I've got about 35 running feet of six-foot-tall bookcases that will be about three-quarters full of books when all is said and done. The "silver lining" is that there isn't a whole lot of "must have" old classic references that I haven't already found over the years. The "downside" is that there seem to be a lot more new ones coming out in recent years than there used to be and they are harder to find used at "bargain basement" prices. I, too, find myself now and again trying to remember whether I have a particular volume or not. I am sure, though, that I do have a first edition of Anderson's "Spritsail Topmast." It's a little dark blue or maybe black covered hardbound book that requires a magnifying glass to read the drawing notations. I've been collecting naval architecture, maritime-associated trades, and ship modeling books and periodicals for a bit over fifty years now. Friends marvel at how many I've amassed, but it's really not been difficult at all. Picking up just a book a week on average for fifty years totals 2,400 books and, in my case, I've been lucky enough to have a friend or two for various reasons passed their collections on to me along the way. The younger modelers today have it so much easier than we did in this respect. Before the internet, we were pretty much on our own when it came to research resources, and we had to have a shelf or three of books to provide access to the essential information that is now contained in one or two of the newer comprehensive reference works published in the last twenty or thirty years. Moreover, most of the "old classics" are now readily available to modelers in trade paperback reprints while we had to scrounge. long out-of-print used hardcover editions. You can never have too many books or too many tools. He who dies with the most toys wins!

You found it! I went looking for my copy of The Rigging of Ships: in the Days of the Spritsail Topmast, 1600-1720 and found my 1935 (first?) edition of Seventeenth Century Rigging and checked it first and found his reference there as well. My copy of "Spritsail Topmast" is somewhere in the piles of modeling books that I'm somewhere in the interrupted and long-delayed reorganization of my library. One of these days, I've got to get that job finished.