Bob Cleek

Boy, do I ! Actually, polyurethane has its uses and, for those, it's great stuff. (It's great for hardwood floors and table tops that are going to see hard use.) Thinned, it can be wiped on wood and will result in a fairly decent finish if done correctly. That said, if you ever had the pleasure of having to refinish anything to which it's been applied, well... I share your pain. Maybe it's the Luddite in me, but there's just something about coating fine wood grown in the glow of God's smile with plastic that bothers me to no end.

Your description, "a 1920's pond racer," serves only to put the knowledgeable reader on notice that it is possible, however remotely, that you may have in your possession an antique model, perhaps of some value. One hundred year old pond yachts have become desirable collectables in recent times. I would expect you may wish to request that a competent modeler who is familiar with the type send you a private message with their proposal for appraising the model and advising you as to whether or not it is worthy of a professional restoration. It would be a shame to cause further damage to a valuable restorable antique by mucking around with it yourself. Just remember what they say on Antiques Roadshow: "Well, it's worth about $10,000, but if you hadn't refinished it with wipe-on polyurethane, it would have been worth $250,000."

I've had a lot of experience with penetrating epoxies in full-scale boatbuilding applications. "Git Rot," a U.S. product that's been around a long time is quite outdated technology at this time. It continues to sell for some reason. I suspect it's its trade name, which promises much more than it can ever accomplish. The industry standard penetrating epoxy sealer for the last few decades is "Clear Penetrating Epoxy Sealer," ("CPES"tm) manufactured by Smith and Company. Clear Penetrating Epoxy Sealer (smithandcompany.org) "Git Rot" is the consistency of honey. "CPES" is the consistency of water. "CPES" is an epoxy product which saturates the wood fibers and then cures, producing an epoxy saturated wood. It doesn't simply sit on the surface of the wood, like "Git Rot." "CPES" isn't simply "thinned epoxy," which can be easily mixed up by thinning epoxy resin with acetone. It contains serious-business solvents which you don't want to spend a lot of time inhaling in a closed area. "CPES" doesn't penetrate wood much deeper than water would, so a lot depends on the grain orientation and wood species in how deep the penetration goes. On flat-sawn surfaces, it can be as little as a 34th of an inch. Into edge-grain surfaces, it can easily penetrate a quarter inch or more and in open-grain species like white oak, penetration to the length of the grain is possible in pressurized or vacuum applications. All of which is to say that there's really no benefit to be had by laying a "crust" of epoxy saturated wood over the surface of a piece. The epoxy will not provide any substantial increase in strength or impact resistance and will be quite difficult to sand smooth, as well. In fact, in terms of surface hardness and sealing ability, a coating of thinned shellac will produce much the same result as penetrating epoxy for much less trouble, mess, and expense. That said, I agree strongly with Roger Pellett's point that there is no reason not to use quality wood species suitable for the modeling purposes. In terms of cost, construction time, appearance, if that be an issue, and overall engineering suitability, there are any number of wood species anywhere one might be, short of Antarctica, that will serve the purpose better than balsa wood. Balsa is a very soft, light wood. It has very little strength compared to other species. It is difficult to work with because it does not hold a sharp, crisp edge when cut and it does not sand smooth without the use of a sanding sealer which adds additional steps to the finishing process. The quality of the materials that go into a ship model have a lot to do with how long that model survives. A quality model is more highly valued and appreciated than one made with inferior materials. Some modelers have expressed their belief that quality materials don't matter to them because they are only building for fun and that perspective has a certain commonsense appeal, to be sure. However, for the more anally inclined, I'd recommend Dan Wegner's classic article on "Ephemeral Materials in Ship Models" as the serious ship modeler's guide to modeling materials. Nautical Research Guild - Article - Ephemeral Materials in Ship Models (thenrg.org)

The way I think of it, kits are assembled, while scratch models are built. It's a subtle distinction, to be sure. However, at the end of the day, every model stands alone on its own merits. The same goes for every modeler. For me, "amateur" or "professional" are virtually meaningless terms, particularly because with the possible exception of a handful of impoverished "starving artists," very, very few people can seriously claim to earn a living building or repairing ship models. There are those, of course, who earn their livings selling modeling kits, materials, plans, books, and so on. That's the the "gold rush economy." The gold miners made little, while the guys who sold them the shovels got rich!

Yes, my mother was a "scrub nurse," what would now be called a "surgical assistant," I suppose. We had a fair amount of the same sort of things in everyday use around the house: bandage scissors, needle holders, hemostats, curved Kellys and the like. I still have a few pieces. Back in the old days, instruments were high quality and autoclaved and reused. Nowdays, a lot of them are disposable and correspondingly of lower quality because they are "single use" and don't have to last. A lot of the old-time basins and trays were monel metal, too. Now, if plastics will serve the purpose, that's what they use and then just throw them out. A doc I know explained that it was difficult to access used instruments these days because with the bodily fluid transmissible diseases like HIV and hepatitis everything is designated as "hazardous bio-waste" so it's disposed of following strict haz-mat protocols.

Amen to that! Do you have a recommendation for a reliable source of surgical instruments that aren't super expensive? The ones I see on eBay and elsewhere all seem to be the cheesy ones that are made in Pakistan.

Yes, you've correctly identified your problem. Pin, or brad, "pushers" are made in a variety of sizes to fit the brads and pins they are intended to push. Here's an example of a pin pusher made for small ("lil") pins often found in ship model kits: Model Craft PPU8174 Pen Grip Pin Pusher (activescalemodels.co.uk)\ and another: Pin Pusher & 100 pins | eBay The pusher you have purchased is designed for much larger brads or escutcheon pins. This size brad pusher is frequently employed by picture framers to push finishing nails into picture frames. These pushers are handy if you have a lot of pins to insert, but holes must always be drilled in wood when inserting pins. Attempting to push a brad or pin in wood without drilling a pilot hole will usually result in a bent pin, a cracked piece of wood, or both. I've acquired a few pin pushers of various sizes over the years at garage sales and the like and I occasionally use one, but a more versatile and more easily controlled solution, as Jaager sagely notes, is a pin insertion plier. Pin Insertion Plier - - Amazon.com

There are indeed many choices for clamps. I would steer clear of wasting money on the "planking clamps" sold by MicroMark and similar hobby outlets. They are of dubious value and extremely expensive. If one properly spiles and bends their planks, there should be little, if any, need to clamp them much, in any event. I'd suggest buying a box or two of standard binder clips in suitable sizes, large and small, at the stationery store. They are inexpensive and very handy. After that, buy a few clamps in styles that you find attractive and see how they work. If they do the trick for you, then invest in a few more. Most serious modelers end up with boxes full of assorted clamps. Once your clamp box reaches "critical mass," you'll find they breed quite successfully without any attention. Lay in a supply of push pins while you're at the stationery store. They also will be found useful. (Drill a hole for a plank fastening and secure the plank with a push pin. When the adhesive dries, remove the push pin and insert a treenail.) Binder clips can be disassembled and one of the bent wire "arms" inserted in the inside of the spring of another clip to produce a planking clamp as illustrated below: Or suitable pieces of wood can be inserted in the inside of the binder clip spring to achieve a similar result. I find pieces of "popsickle" (craft) sticks inserted in small size (1/4" - 1/2" capacity) binder clips work well for this application.

Seamanship in the Age of Sail will definitely provide an understanding of how sailing ships work. Understanding how ships operate is really one of the more important subjects any serious modeler must wrap their head around. It is extremely difficult, even with good instructions, to build a model if you don't know how the parts all work together. Most modelers starting out bite off more than they can chew and this is particularly so with the big fancy square-rigged men-o-war. Seamanship in the Age of Sail isn't necessarily a "cookbook" of diagrams of how to rig sailing ships. It's more a compendium of how sailing ships were sailed. I think you'll quickly find that once you know how they were sailed, you'll have no problem understanding how they were rigged and why.

Beat me to it while I was compiling my response after seeing nobody had responded. There ought to be a red button with a buzzer we could hit when we know the answer, that would block the other contestants from answering and determine who had the right answer first, like on the TV game shows.

Here in the US, a "Yankee screwdriver" (which will also hold proprietary drill bits) is a specific line of push drills made by Stanley. At present, I believe there is only one model still being manufactured and sold new. Yankee Push Drill with Extra Bits (garrettwade.com) The older, and larger models, made in three sizes, apparently are no longer made by Stanley, looked like this one: Somebody in Germany stepped into the breach and is now offering copies of the classic Stanley Yankee: Yankee Screwdriver | Garrett Wade The poster isn't looking for the spring-loaded Yankee type push drill, but rather the Archimedean drill which is operated with two hands, one sliding a piece up and down the shaft to turn the bit. The spring loaded Yankees operate one-handed, by simply pushing the handle against the workpiece. The Yankees are great for driving screws because they have the heft to put some force into the turning, but still permit the "feel" to "feedback" to the user, unlike powered drills with screwdriving bits, which have a tendency to break the screw when driven too forcefully. The Archimedean or fretwork drills are for much lighter and precise work than the Yankee types.

It's properly called an Archimedean drill, also known as a fretwork drill, is an old type of drill which works on the Archimedian principle; the drill rotates quickly as the barrel on the stem is worked up and down. This tool provides a quick and easy way to bore holes through fretwood. They are still made and available in various sizes on the new and used specialty tool market, some with springs and others without. Garrett Wade has a couple in their catalog: Archimedes Screw Drills | Small Hand Drills | Garrett Wade Garrett Wade also sells an "Essential" and an "Advanced" ship modeler's tool kit. The "Advanced Tool Kit" includes the Archimedean drill pictured above. All of the items in these ship modeling tool kits are available individually. Individual Specialist Tools For Ship Modelers (garrettwade.com) The smaller of the two offered by Garrett Wade can also be found on Amazon: Rolson Archimedean Drill - - Amazon.com A "modern" version is carried by many jewelry making supply houses: Amazon.com : archimedean drill Used models are offered on eBay and Etsy: Vintage English 10 Archimedes Drill | Etsy

I've been "lurking" from time to time to watch the development of this masterpiece. I have to confess, I had no idea the scale was so small! It's truly impressive. Thanks for sharing it with us.

Delightful model! It's always refreshing to see models of working watercraft which are so under-represented in the choice of subjects. Rest assured, the escaping blue lobster was noticed!

Use artist's oil paints, not acrylics. These can be thinned and applied as a wash to get the effects you are looking for. Check out YouTube for instructions on painting miniatures with artist's oil paints. The guys who paint war-gaming figures have the technique down pat. You'll find out how to do it there. However, the fact is that figureheads were always painted. Earlier periods in colors and later all white. The wood used for carving them would not have survived long in the marine environment without a protective coating.

Most interesting! Thanks for the review.

I want one! Of course, there is a catch... it costs between $1.85 million and $2.3 million. I'll have to wait until a Chinese clone is available on the internet for a couple of hundred bucks. In the meantime, I'll flag this to repost the next time somebody complains about the cost of a Jim saw.

Agreed. There are some "oldies but goodies" listed there, but I wouldn't advise anybody who's not familiar with scratch-building to tackle any of those old kits. They're all of the classic "plans and a box of sticks and string" type. Today's kit modeler familiar with today's state of the art kits would likely be quite shocked at the primitive nature of these kits.

Perhaps the term "Admiralty style" is the sort of uninformed lay misnomer that creeps into the lexicon, much like the silly term "tall ship." (Granted, the term, "Tall Ship" is now a registered trademark of Sail Training International.) If a model looks to the untrained eye like a contemporary Navy Board or "Admiralty" ship model, but isn't, it's "Admiralty style." Somebody with more knowledge of the English period models known as "Navy Board" or "Admiralty Board" ship models will be able to provide a more authoritative explanation, but the term "Navy (or Admiralty) Board ship models" generally refers to those models of British naval vessels built circa 1650 through 1750, primarily by the British Admiralty shipyards . John Franklin provides a detailed explanation of the "type" in his book Navy Board Ship Models 1650-1750. Here, we're talking about the "Faberge eggs" of ship models. I think "Navy Board" or "Admiralty" style models are simply plank on frame models which resemble the "unplanked below the waterline plank on frame" models of various framing and construction styles which mimic the dominant appearance of the true contemporary Navy Board models. In fact, as Franklin explains, the stylized framing of the true contemporary Navy Board models evolved over time with characteristic "early" and "late" period styles and there is actually a variety of "types" and 'styles" among the true Navy Board models. The Hahn Method is simply a modern day construction method and framing style that mimics the unplanked contemporary Navy Board models, a "faux Navy Board" style, if you will. What for want of a better term I'd call "scale scantling construction," where each piece is a scale version of full-size construction (nearly always a matter of pure conjecture, BTW) is a style made popular by present day French modelers. "Scale scantling" construction has nothing in common with true Navy Board models other than some stylistic conventions, such as the omission of decking and planking, which in this instance is required to expose the extremely complex workmanship of this style of model. At least, that's my story and I'm sticking to it.

For what it's worth, and without ever building a hull Hahn-style, but definitely studying it carefully and at length, my own conclusion is that building a hull as in full-size practice, with shortcuts permitted by scale, is less work by far. For those who haven't tried it, I can attest that the use of temporary battens to hold the frames in place creates a very stable hull framing structure in short order. Only a relatively small number of frames need be set up to establish the run of the battens and it is then easy to place the rest of the frames within the "basket" created by the battens, which can be fastened to the frames by lashing them with twisted wire, If memory serves, both Underhill and Davis describe this method in detail in their books. Once the battens are attached to a minimum of the frames, the battens spring a fair curve to the hull shape and the structure becomes very rigid. Once all the frames are in, the battens are removed as the planking progresses and the hull is free of external attachments that interfere with the planking process, making the planking task much easier. Or at least that's how it seems to me.

Further comment on the difference between plastic model kits and wooden ship model kits: Plastic kits are designed to be assembled. Wooden kits are designed to be built. Give some thought to this difference between the two. The plastic kit manufacturer begins with the assumption that their customers know little, if anything, about the prototype subject of their model, be it a car, a plane, a tank, or a ship. If the customer actually knows a little, or a lot, about the prototype, so much the better, but it doesn't take much to "insert peg A into hole A" to yield a satisfactory result. A beginning plastic kit modeler will find success if they pay attention to cleaning off the flash and gluing carefully. Beyond that, plastic modeling is all about finishing and this is where the skills of artistic painting and weathering really separate the beginners from the masters in the plastic modeling game. While not intending to denigrate the skills involved in plastic modeling in the least, they are a fairly limited skill set. Plastic model kits evolved to provide a way to create miniatures of complex metal objects: cars, planes, tanks, and ships, primarily. Building such a subject in miniature from scratch using metal demands a very high level of skill and craftsmanship that few possess. The creations of those who do so are impressive and, correspondingly, those with such skills have no need for kits to do so. Wooden ship model kits have an entirely different evolutionary history. Wooden ship models were built from scratch from the very beginning and kits, such as they are, only came centuries later. Wooden ship model kits have always been based upon a somewhat false premise: That by providing the raw materials, a set of plans, and perhaps some limited "instructions," anybody could do it. This premise overlooks the fact that building a wooden ship model requires a broad range of skills that cannot be packaged in a box. For openers, the builder's ability to work with wood and metal is a given and it is extremely difficult to write instructions which enable a novice without any fluency in nautical nomenclature to assemble parts the names of which are to the beginning builder a completely foreign language! Then, of course, there is the need to understand how the modeled vessel's rig actually works in real life if a realistic impression of it in miniature is to be achieved. Wooden ship models were, until relatively recent times, almost solely the province of experienced mariners with hands-on familiarity with the prototypes they were modeling. "If it looks right, it is right," was a reliable rule of thumb when the modeler's "vision" was based upon intimate experience with the subject. A seaman who'd spent any time aloft in the age of sail had no difficulty recognizing that a block was out of scale. No so the guy who grew up in Utah who, smitten with "the romance of the sea," drops a few hundred bucks for that big pirated Chinese Victory kit he saw online. (And trust me, the "number of parts" a kit contains is no measure of its quality or value!) Even today, very few ship model kits contain adequate instructions for a novice. (Many, if not most, kit instructions cause even experienced ship modelers to their personal research libraries, compiled for just such purposes, in order to confirm details of historical accuracy and scale.) So, what little I can add to the sage advice above, assuming you are not an experienced mariner, wooden boat and ship builder, rigger, painter, blacksmith, and sailmaker, is 1) Start simple and 2) read the instructions before you buy the kit! The second recommendation is more important than the first. As far as I know, only Syren Ship Models and Model Shipways offer online access to their kit instructions. The best of these are those written by Chuck Passaro (of this forum) for Syren and Model Shipways. If you read these instructions from cover to cover and at the end can say, "I think I can do that." you're good to go. If not, the discouraging effort probably saved you a few hundred dollars and a lot of frustration and failure. But, if you start small, and rely on resources like this forum and the wide spectrum of literature on ship modeling, you will develop the skills and experience as you go along and, given that, yes... anybody can do it. Read the "monograph chapters" of Chuck Passaro's Medway Longboat kit. If you're serious, you won't go far wrong with this one: Medway Longboat (1742) (syrenshipmodelcompany.com)

This is pure conjecture, but I believe there is a rational basis for which running rigging is left aloft and which is not when sails are "sent down," rather than an "up for grabs" "to each his own" decision. The "proper" arrangement of running rigging when sails are absent comes apparent, it seems, when we contemplate the operation of a full-sized vessel. Whatever is aloft has to be carried or hauled aloft and once aloft, isn't likely to be "sent down" if it doesn't need to be. Consider a square sail which which is to be repaired and reworked in port and so is "sent down." The sail is furled and tied off in stops and then lowered to the deck in the form of a "sausage." When it's returned from the sailmaker's loft, it's hauled aloft as a 'sausage" again and the head is secured to the yard. It makes sense that a sheet, for example, would be left aloft by tying a figure-eight knot in the bitter end and letting it stop in the block, running the fall to the belaying pin below. There would be no need to sending down the sheets, buntlines, brails, and so on when the sail was sent down. They all could be easily reattached when the sail was sent back up. Cordage, particularly wet cordage, can get heavy in a hurry, so it's going to be left aloft unless it has to be sent down for some particular reason. Similarly, for example, a headsail would be lowered and removed and it would make no sense at all to do anything with the halyard but to tie the hoisting end off at the foot of the stay and the fall at the pinrail. On the other hand, It wouldn't be shipshape to leave the jib sheets laying about the deck if the jib was gone. The sheets would be coiled up and stowed on the rail or wherever was convenient. It's all about reducing the work aloft to the minimum amount necessary. If one keeps this in mind, what running rigging stays aloft when there are no sails bent on becomes a fairly logical determination. No?

But, there's always a catch... in this case, it's for "local pickup only." In other words, if you buy it, you have to come and get it. $50 is the starting bid, but he says 80% of the books are nautical titles. You have to look closely at the pictures, but there's a lot of model-building stuff in there, it seems. lot 2000+ Nautical books Mostly HB Ships/Boats/Sail/Steam/War/Navy/Models &c | eBay If I were anywhere near Independence, MO, I'd be there with bells on right now.

That depends on what you are using it for. I don't wish to be argumentative, but your comment leaves me scratching my head, Jack.