Bob Cleek

Does counting the number of different sized rings and the number of different types of rings on the plans offer any clues? If you have the same number of (probably smaller) rings as you have gun tackle attachments, you'll know which ones to use on the gun tackles. Otherwise, I'd just give a call to Model Shipways and ask them. Somebody there can probably answer your question.

You are to be commended on your wise decision to start with models that will give you an opportunity to develop basic skills first. A small, simple model well done is always to be preferred over a huge, complex model that's never finished!

Try any hobby shop or craft store. Google is your friend: https://www.google.com/search?q=balsa+wood+for+sale+in+Centrral+Florida&oq=balsa+wood+for+sale+in+Centrral+Florida&aqs=chrome..69i57j33i10i299.55584j1j15&sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8

I've been digging rot out of wooden boats for over fifty years and I've never heard the term, either. I just happened to catch it as I scrolled through the glossary in the linked book.

Thanks for the link! It's a good one. I was able to look up the meaning of "druxey." Quite interesting. "White fuzz rot" we call it. "The most easily overlooked defect."

Cue flashing "APPLAUSE" sign!

This is also a really good way to permanently cement your thumb and index finger together. In short order, at best, your fingers will be coated with a tenacious film of cured CA adhesive (to which some become sensitized and react with severe contact dermatitis symptoms.) It will also tend to make a mess of your workspace and your model. Far better, if one must, to dip the end of thread into a bottle of thin (not "gel") CA, which the thread will readily absorb, and remove any excess drop at the end by rubbing it on the inside of the lip of the bottle, taking care not to . An alternative to CA, an occasionally useful adhesive otherwise best avoided at all costs, is to use acetone-based clear nail polish or, less noxious still, clear ("white") shellac. Both alternatives dry quickly and, if need be, can be removed easily by dilution with their respective solvents, acetone in the case of the former and alcohol in the case of the latter. I find the "wipe it off with your fingers" approach cringe-worthy because the earlier every beginning modeler develops the techniques of a surgeon, the better their modeling work will become. Maintaining a "sterile field," and learning the knot-tying skills of a surgeon are prerequisites for good model building. Unrelenting attention to detail and the highest level of cleanliness are essential. Fortunately, thanks to the magic of the internet, today anyone can learn all they may wish by searching YouTube for instructional videos. Surprisingly, many medical schools have reduced such basic skills instruction to videos which are readily available on YouTube. Tying most knots required for rigging is surprisingly easy once one learns to do it with a forceps as surgeons tie sutures and the proper technique will save one's spreading glue all over their work and themselves.

Just a guess, but it may be that adding a soldering process to the manufacturing process may have required a large investment in OSHA-mandated air quality protection equipment or something like that. The safety and environmental regulations have added large costs to many manufacturing processes that were taken for granted. For example, commercial spray painting requires a spray booth and "VOC scrubbing" exhaust systems these days and that has added a lot to the cost of a spray paint job. Given what are probably Sherline's profit margins and limited production, the wire nuts were a much less costly option. And to avoid any accusation of thread drift here, I'll mention that one of the advantages of a pure pulling boat is that one avoids registration fees, high "oil spill" insurance costs, and the like.

What Kurt, the air brush guru, said. It depends upon the level of your modeling skill. There's little point in putting lipstick on a pig. When you're ready for an air brush, you'll know it. If you aren't an accomplished brush painter, that will be sooner, rather than later, as your skill grows. Most of the masterpiece models displayed in museums were build before air brushes were invented, but they knew how to paint with brushes in the old days. The learning curve is much less steep with an air brush. That said, don't throw out your brushes just yet. A brush in the hand of an experienced painter can do just about anything an air brush can, and then some, while the same can be said about airbrushes. Each have their unique capabilities. I'd expect most serious modelers use both with equal ability.

I did some research for a model of Sand Pebbles. That led me to the prototype of the movie prop boat, USS Villalobos, (PG-42,) which I'll share briefly below. I believe the plans for USS Villalobos may be available from the U.S. Navy Museum. The USS San Pablo of Sand Pebbles movie fame is a fictional ship built for $250,000 as a set for the movie by Vaughan and Yung, Hong Kong, and now located on the Pearl River, PRC. (The triple-expansion engine used in the movie was, IIRC, an ex-Liberty ship engine located in a Seattle museum and not the engine which would have been on the patrol gunboat portrayed in the movie. The USS San Pablo was based on the USS Villalobos (PG-42) captured in the Philippines by the US Army in 1898 during the Spanish-American War. She was added to the Navy roll as a prize and operated thereafter, together with the former Spanish ships Elcano, Quiros, and Callao. USS Villalobos. Note "sampan" shallow draft launch alongside. (http://www.navsource.org/archives/12/09042.htm, see also: http://www.navsource.org/archives/12/120904203.jpgI) expect this small boat may have been a locally sourced auxilliary. In this era, captains had authority to acquire such non-standard vessels on the vessel's account. Here it would have made sense, given the shallow waters in which the Yangtse Squadron operated. There were no "standard" USN "sampans," or square-bowed small craft at that time, other than hard-chined flat-bottomed small work boats designated as "punts," which came in a 12' and 14' version. (See: Standard Designs for Boats of the United States Navy: Specifications, Schedule of Material, Weights and Cost, USN-GPO 1900) The photo is of a much longer, and perhaps more elegantly-shaped boat. Were one to want to model a sampan similar to the one in the photo above, the place to find detailed construction drawings would be The Junks and Sampans of the Yangtse, by G.R.G Woorcester (reprint - US Naval Institute https://www.usni.org/press/books/junks-and-sampans-yangtze) Note that the launch in the movie still is much smaller and would likely not have been used in USN service at that time. See: https://www.thesandpebbles.com/san_pablo/demise_sanpablo.html and https://industrialhistoryhk.org/j-h-vaughan-an-american-shipbuilder-in-hong-kong-by-york-lo/ (which has links to a youtube video of the construction of the movie vessel and a model of it) for further information on the movie prop boat.

Been there, done that, got the tee shirt. Do not use a buffing wheel chucked into a drill press! Odds are the drill press chuck is held in the quill with a Morse taper which is not designed for side loading. If the wheel is used with any significant pressure, which you will need, the Morse taper will probably come loose (unless it's rusted solid) and cause the chuck to drop out of the quill and possibly cause serious injury to the operator. (Din't ask me how I know this! ) Use a six inch or larger solid tightly spiral-sewn cotton or felt buffing wheel mounted on a proper horizontal shaft. Use emory compound (usually black or dark grey) or Tripoli (usually reddish brown) for aggressive buffing. There is also a compound made specifically for stainless, which is fine, as well. When done with the basic buffing, switch to a canton buffing wheel, which is made of a stack of cotton that is loosely sewn, or not sewn at all, and use white rouge compound. (Never use anything but white rouge on the wheel you use for final buffing.) It will take a long time to bring the shine up. If your buffing wheel gets too full of polishing compound, it can be renewed by gently applying the toothed edge of a hacksaw blade to the wheel's edge to scrape off old compound. Make sure the saw blade is held in a saw frame so it cannot cut you if it catches on the wheel.) Work on one small area at a time until it's done. (If you go all over the sheet, you'll give up long before the whole sheet comes up to a good shine. When it's all shined, wax the sheet with a quality non-yellowing wax. When working with metal sheet on the buffing wheel, wear leather gloves and exercise extreme caution never to present the edge of the metal plate to the wheel in such a way that the edge of the plate can be caught by when wheel and be knocked out of your hands. Serious injury can result. Always be aware of the wheel's direction of spin when presenting the piece to the lower edge of the wheel when it is spinning downward to be sure the edge will not catch on the wheel. A face mask is a must, and a shop smock is handy, because this is a dirty job. Again, it will take a long time, but you eventually will have a stainless plate with a mirror finish. This is not a job to attempt doing by hand or even with a Dremel tool. Stainless is hard stuff. Here's a good video how-to-do-it. The safety instructions are very good. Don't underestimate a buffing wheel. It can be a dangerous machine.

Actually, when it comes to butt joints, even with butt blocks, it's proper to install them in a spacing which keeps them all as far apart from each other as is possible. The butts are inherently weak points which are better spread as far apart as possible and there are various classic "butt shift schedules" which you will find in any wooden boat or ship building text. I have seen in many modeling books the practice of butting planks on a frame. However, in full size construction practice and its related literature, I've never seen planks butted on a frame to be a recommended practice. The butt block is a far stronger and better construction method. Modernly, of course, epoxy adhesives have made face-scarfing plank stock a viable alternative, eliminating the plank butt issue entirely. In all my years mucking about boatyards, I've only encountered one vessel, a 63' staysail schooner, which, oddly to everyone's eyes, had her planks butted on her frames. She was originally launched as the Mavoureen Mary and was renamed Landfall a few years later. She was designed by Edson Schock for the actress Maureen O'Hara and her husband. and launched in the early 'thirties. She's had a good long life and is still around, last I heard. When I last saw her in the mid-seventies, the was undergoing frame and planking repairs which were occasioned, according to the yard crew, by the fact that her planks were butted on her sawn frames. They attributed this oddity to the fact that, for some reason, she was built by the Boeing Aircraft Company! Boeing of Canada did build yachts early on, an offshoot of their seaplane manufacturing subsidiary. Gotcha! In fact, the Venetian gondolas are intentionally built with an asymmetrical hull. They do move to one side if left to their own devices. The purpose of this oddity is that it compensates for the opposite tendency when the gondolier sculls with his oar on only one side of the boat. This design feature is unique to gondolas.

Better safe than sorry! Did I ever tell you the story about the starting capacitor dying on the motor on my 1950's 8" Craftsman table saw? The capacitor was a special order item because it was shaped like a pack of cigarettes to fit in the base of the motor instead of the round "cans" used modernly. Until I could source another one, I had to start the motor by wrapping a length of Venetian blind cord around the motor spindle opposite the belt sheave and then flipping the switch and pulling the cord like an outboard motor to get the motor spinning up to speed so it would run. It worked fine, but that was back in the days when I believed I was invulnerable!

Over the course of many years, I've heard good things about PSME, but have never sprung for a catalog. Can you comment on their pricing, compared to MicroMark and others?

What you want are pin vises like those immediately above that will hold variously sized collets. A pin vise that will hold even down to 1/32 of an inch diameter, will be too big for the small bits in the Rogers drill index and drills. Tell your daughter to shop around. There are two apparently identical items, one by Rogers and the other by Gyros, another drill bit company. You will find them listed for fifty bucks at Fundemonium, a hobby store chain, to thirty bucks in the Micro-Mark catalog, to twenty bucks on Amazon. Buy the twenty buck one and wait until you break a bit, then buy a capsule of ten bits from a reputable bit retailer. (Model Expo sometimes has bits in packages of ten on sale at half price... stock up when you get the chance.) By waiting until a bit wears out or breaks, you'll discover which ones you use the most and need to keep in stock. You'll find other sizes are used much less frequently. Bits are also sold in packages of two. You'll end up in the poorhouse quickly buying them this way. It's far more economical to buy them in packages of ten.

True, but I've never had one break on me like surgical scalpel blades are won't to do. There is an advantage to the heavier gauge metal of hobby knife blades. By the way, surgeons will generally only make a couple of cuts with a scalpel before exchanging it for a new sharp one. Scalpels aren't designed to hold their really sharp edges for any more than about that. It's odd, but nobody's mentioned sharpening hobby knife blades. A fine sharpening stone, or a leather or MDF stropping wheel charged with green polishing abrasive, or even some fine sandpaper, will put a new razor-sharp edge on a hobby knife blade in seconds. I have a very old Arkansas sharpening stone which was designed for sharpening old fashioned straight razors. I use it to keep a sharp edge on my hobby knives. It works fine.

The sheave on deck permits a gang of seamen to haul on the line as it extends across the deck. Obviously, only one or two men at a time can pull a line down without a sheave because there isn't room for more to get a hold on the line. When the line is hauled through a deck sheave or turning block, the line is brought up to the front of pin rail and a half-twist is made in the line and cast over the pin and pulled tight. The remaining bitter end is coiled with the coil held in the left hand. When coiled, the right hand reaches through the middle of the coil and grasps the bitter end of the line where it comes off the pin and a a suitable length of line being made between the coil and the right hand, that length is pulled through the center of the coil and a half-twist made in it, which is thrown over the pin so that the coil is hung neatly from the pin. When line is let go, it is a simple matter to lift the hitch off the top of the pin and lay the coil on deck, then cast off the first half hitch on the pin, and the line will pay out neatly from the without kinking or fouling. Many books and manuals will depict a method of taking multiple turns around a belaying pin before hitching the line to the pin. While there is a method of taking an initial turn before hitching in cases where it is feared the weight of the load may make it difficult to cast off a single hitch on the pin, in practice, it's not a problem that's often encountered, as a horizontal pull of the fall, (called "sweating the line") will make losening the single hitch easy enough if the size of the line and the size of the pin are properly matched. Unnecessary turns around pins, cleat, cavels, and posts are the hallmarks of sloppy seamanship. All belaying should be done in a uniform fashion, as well, since one crewmember may tie off and another let go. In a blow and a heavy sea in the middle of the night is no place to be trying to untie "black" knots tied by some lubber!

Boy! Talk about a "the dog ate my homework" excuse! Just hot-wire the sucker until the switch arrives in the mail. Twist the switch wires together and wrap some electrical tape around the joint, then plug it into a switched outlet. You can't just ignore your fan club that easily!

Just a thought: Have you considered making the stanchions from "solid surface material" (e.g. "Corian"?) I've not tried this as yet, but my experience working with the material, which was formerly hard to come by unless you were an installer licensed by DuPont, is now more available as DuPont's patents have expired. It machines very easily with woodworking tools, easier than soft wood, in fact, yet is very tough. It produces a lot of annoying sawdust and swarf that is attracted by static electricity, but other than that the stuff is a delight to work with and from all indications is long lasting. It comes in all colors, but for modeling purposes it's easily painted. It's expensive in large sheets for making countertops and such, but there are lots of offcuts produced by the installers and I expect small odd-shaped pieces are probably "dumpster material" to them. I expect it could be machined to quite thin dimensions without crumbling being any problem at all. Bone is another material option that may machine more easily and shouldn't crumble so much like wood. It does stink from the heat generated in machining, which can be addressed somewhat by lubrication with a coolant. You can buy large sterilized and dried beef bones at pet stores. As for sharpening your tooling, have you considered taking perhaps a half-dozen or more, as anticipated would be needed, bandsaw or hacksaw blade pieces or the like and then clamping them all together with a common edge and shaping the entire end of the stack at the same time. This should yield however many identical scraper blades which can then be mounted in your lathe tool holder. When one wears out, just discard it and insert a new one.

It appears that the bearers which hold the stretchers were cleverly designed so the "tails" could be cut to the length best suited to the length of the particular rower's legs. By the simple adjustment of the "stick" with the notch for the bearer at the end, the position of the stretcher could be adjusted relative to the position of the thwart. Might this be so? Do we know how these notched sticks were fastened to the boat's structure, if at all? Are they devised so they can be adjusted and set in place with a wedge or something like that?

Care and pride certainly was more valued by tradesmen in the past, but I believe that more often than not what we see as embellishments mainly were intended to serve practical purposes. First and foremost, aboard any watercraft the occupants are continually subjected to the risk of trips and falls, particularly in heavy weather. and the rounding of corners serves to reduce the amount of injury caused by falling off balance against a sharp corner. A one inch half-round corner versus a sharp right angle can easily mean the difference between a lump on the head and a fractured skull. Coves routed beneath lips serve to channel water which otherwise would run down the flat face below an overhang and cause staining of the paintwork. Rowing thwarts are always beveled half round to prevent chafe to rowers' legs and bottoms. What may seem to us to be fancywork is really just form following function... the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Century carved gingerbread being something else again, of course. That was all about the king's pride, not the workmen's.

Certainly! That's how Van Gogh and Bob Ross did it. (Well, maybe Van Gogh still mulled his own paint. I'm not sure when it started being packaged in tubes like toothpaste. ) It's about the consistency of toothpaste, but as it dries slowly unless a dryer is added, it can be spread very thinly if desired. A FAQ, for sure. "Boiled linseed oil" is not boiled at all. It designates linseed oil which has been packaged with a drying agent added prior to packaging. This is usually Japan drier, which contains manganese in a linseed oil and mineral spirits base. This added drier makes "boiled linseed oil" dry (i.e. polymerize) much faster than "raw linseed oil, which is pure untreated linseed oil. If it is difficult to source linseed oil in your area (usually due to environmental regulations,) it can also be purchased in health food stores labeled as "flax seed oil," this being "food grade" linseed oil. Linseed oil and Japan drier can be purchased anywhere oil paints are sold (i.e. art and craft stores,) but it will be packaged in small amounts and priced at twice the cost of the very same product purchased in a paint or hardware store, so caveat emptor. Smaller quantities in "artists' packaging" are permitted where regulations prohibit sales of pints, quarts, and gallons in paint and hardware stores and the manufacturers are happy to accommodate the new regulations at twice the profit. Also, a paint conditioning product made by Flood called "Penetrol" is an excellent linseed oil based conditioner for achieving good leveling with oil paints. This is also readily available at paint and hardware stores, although in some areas environmental air quality regulations now also prohibit its sale. (Arrrgh! Sale is prohibited, but not possession. Sourcing now may involve travel across state lines.) As mentioned above, from any paint store or hardware store that sells paint. It's also sold in small size bottles anywhere artists' oil paints are sold, but at a greatly increased price over the same sold in pint or quart cans. It's used in relatively small amounts, compared to linseed oil or turpentine.

Ditto. And be aware that there are two types of drawplate, one for drawing wire, which has tapered holes which cause the metal wire when drawn through the plate holes to be compressed and lengthened, and one for wood, which does not have tapered holes, but rather holes with sharp edges which scrape wood off of the wooden piece as it is drawn through the hole, thereby reducing its diameter by subtraction of wood. The excellent Byrnes drawplate is made for wood. You may be surprised by how small the range of holes on the Byrnes drawplate is. If one wishes a larger range of holes, I am unaware of any presently available commercially manufactured drawplate for wood. You will have to make your own, one way or the other. One way is to take a suitable piece of steel and drill the range of sized holes you wish and then flatten and polish the faces of the steel plate so the hole edges are sharp. Alternately, and much more convenient, one can simply purchase a steel drill bit gauge with a suitably sized range of holes and flatten and polish the faces of the drill gauge. https://generaltools.com/drill-bit-gauge-1-16-to-by-64ths-fractional-size-with-decimal-equivalents-stainless-steel

As a passing comment for the anally-inclined, it might be noted that eyebolts were never installed through metal mast bands. Neither were rings ever welded to metal mast bands. The "eye bolt through the mast band" is a modeler's shortcut, In actual practice, the purpose for a mast band (or boom band) is to provide attachment points to the mast which do not require boring holes in the mast which provide a way for fresh (rain) water to soak into the end-grain of the mast and promote concealed rot that can ultimately cost the loss of a spar under load. The metal mast band is bedded and clamps tightly around the mast, and holds by that pressure. It is never screwed onto the mast. Attachment points are formed by welding the "feet" of "U"-shaped metal rod to the band itself, providing a strong two-point attachment to the band, or by welding triangular plates on edge with a hole or holes drilled through the face of the plates to accept shackle pins. Eyebolts anywhere on a mast are not considered good prototype rigging practice.

If you want a mill, by all means get one, but the best rules to follow with tools, and particularly expensive ones, is not to buy one until you have a job that you can't do without one and then buy the best tool you can afford. If you say you only do kit builds at this point, I really don't think the cost of even the Vanda-Lay AcraMill is justified. (And, within their understood performance parameters, the Vanda-Lay devices are quite good, although limited when coupled with a Dremel mototool. They really don't approach their full potential unless they are coupled with a Foredom flex-shaft and handpiece for reasons discussed several times over in this forum.) That said, with two models under your belt and no sense of taking it to the next level yet, I wouldn't recommend your spending big bucks on a lot of "heavy artillery." I'd suggest you concentrate on acquiring a good selection of top quality hand tools before anything else. Get a Dremel, if you must, but realize that its usefulness is limited. (I use mine all the time with cut-off wheels to saw through small tool steel parts and such, but for little else.) If you come to really enjoy the hobby, I expect you will soon become dissatisfied with all but the highest quality (and priced) latest generation of kits. If you stay at it for any amount of time, you will become dissatisfied with the quality of the materials in many kits and start replacing parts and wood, thereby commencing your slide into the depths of the "Dark Side," scratchbuilding. You will likely also become frustrated with the limited range of kit subjects to build and want to build something that hasn't been built in kit form many times over. In my opinion, I think a dedicated mill becomes necessary only if you find yourself needing to do a fair amount of milling of solid metal. Depending upon the era of your interest, you may never need one or find one essential. Before you buy a mill (and its attendant tooling, which will likely cost at least as much as the mill before you get done,) there are many other very useful tools that will improve the quality of your work and save a lot of time, energy, and in some cases, money. Considering your present level of modeling, as described, and assuming you are able to invest the money in quality tools and tooling, I'd suspect the following shopping list in progressive order of priority, anticipating that your modeling skill increases apace: 1. Foredom flex-shaft tool with a minimum of the collet and the chuck handpieces, plus a good selection of bits and other tooling. 2. A standard-sized bench-top drill press which, with a decent micro-chuck, will drill accurate holes of any size. (A Vanda-Lay drill press or AcraMill with the clamps to hold a Foredom handpiece will serve well, but, for the same cost, is limited in the size work it can handle.) 3. A decent X-Y table for the drill press. (Which will allow very limited lightweight milling of wood if judiciously done. Drill presses aren't designed to take the lateral stress imposed by milling processes. The X-Y table will ensure accurate placement of drilled holes, as well.) 4. The Byrnes Model Machines disk sander. (And a good shop vacuum to collect the dust.) 5. The Byrnes Model Machines table saw with sliding table attachment. (Which is essential for milling one's own strip wood, etc. Accept no substitutes!) 6. The Byrnes Model Machines thickness sander. (Which is essential for milling one's own sheet stock and strip wood.) 7. A quality scroll saw. *. At a minimum, A decent Sieg 7X lathe with milling attachment or a Sherline lathe with the necessary attachments and tooling. Note that there is much discussion of lathes in this forum. Keep in mind that a decent lathe will work on smaller pieces, but a small lathe will never be able to work on larger pieces. Some folks have space limitations or wish the particular features of watchmaker's lathes, which are another animal entirely. A used Atlas 12X or Myford 7 in good condition with extensive tooling, for example, can often be had for considerably less than a new micro-lathe such as the Sherline. The Sieg 7X lathes are Chinese-made and notorious for requiring a rebuild and extensive fetteling right out of the box, but by paying a bit more from one with a quality badge (e.g. Grizzly or Little Machine Shop,) one can be reasonably certain of avoiding a lot of grief in that respect. 8. Last, but certainly not least in expense, a quality small milling machine such as the Sherline or Sieg models. Keep in mind, however, that if you have a mid-sized bench top lathe (e.g. 12X,) and it's horizontal milling attachment, you may well find you've eliminated the need for a stand-alone milling machine entirely. Just my two cents worth. Others' mileage may vary.