Bob Cleek

I spoke on the phone with Cathy, one of the Seawatch husband and wife team, a couple of days ago after encountering a problem with their ordering software when ordering a book from them. She got back to me by phone quickly. She's got a wonderful sense of humor and we had a nice chat. To keep the forumites up to date, the problem with their ordering software is "being worked on," but as it turns out, their son did the coding on the website for them and he, who conincidentally lives in my neck of the woods, was one of the many who lost his home and all of its contents in one of the firestorms that we've been having on, it seems, an annual basis, here in Northern CA. All of his data on maintaining the Seawatch website was lost in the fire and this has seriously hampered their website maintenance, so they are limping along at the moment. Bob, her husband, is presently not ambulatory due to a non-life-threatening health issue which should resolve in time, but that has left Cathy to "hold the fort" and pretty much handle the Seawatch business on her own. Seawatch is a small family operation. Jeff Bezos has spoiled a lot of us who now expect everything ordered on line to arrive in a day or two. Amazon they ain't. Yet, they are a valuable resource to our hobby. So, let's cut them a bit of slack. The shipping of their books is outsourced and shipping is indiscriminately impacted by the pandemic these days. They have no more control over how fast things come through the mail as we do.

Best answer.

Or a lack of diligent research.

This is where the Byrnes saw and thickness sander start to look a lot like scratch-building essentials.

Looks perfect! First class!

It does appear that the sole planks in the prototype make provision for easy lifting. The two planks on either side of the saloon table appear to be screw-fastened as I described. The short planks in the galley, the butts of which are not staggered and align with the frames where sole beams or bearers would be fastened to the frames, clearly indicate that they are designed to lift easily. The absence of staggered butts on the sole planking definitely indicates that they are designed for lifting. The seams in the saloon sole may simply appear tight because of the lighting. The seams between the galley sole planks appear more loosely fit and their corners appear rounded a bit, as would be expected for removable sole planks. What caught my eye in your model's sole was its appearing like a finely finished hardwood floor. Constructing it of a single piece for modeling purposes makes perfect sense. You may want to consider cutting seams in your model sole to depict removable planks, though. The partial ceiling planking to port in the forward compartment is also curious. No question it's there, but I wonder why. It doesn't seem to serve any purpose and isn't run forward, so it doesn't seem to be a structural feature. It almost seems as though there may have been a berth or bench there at some point which has been removed. Who knows? Perhaps it just gave a more finished look to the compartment. From a design standpoint, it was always difficult to effectively transition between the formal Edwardian joinerwork of the high style classic yachts and the exposed structure of the vessel itself. Many ceiled and paneled the interiors of the "owners and guests" compartments and abandoned the formal joinerwork entirely in the forepeak where the galley and crews accommodations were located. Also in the forward compartment to port is a vintage copper Pascall Atkey "Pansy" charcoal cabin heater. (They are also available in stainless steel.) These are the coveted Rolls Royces of solid fuel cabin heaters manufactured by the storied Pascall Atkey chandlery (originally "ironmongers") on the Isle of Wight. They were, last I heard, still available from Pascall Atkey on bespoke order and at today's prices probably run $1,500 or more. If I might prey upon your passion for detail, I'd love to watch you solder up a model of it! Here's all you need to know to do so: https://theconstantgaragesale.wordpress.com/portfolio/pascall-atkey-pansy-charcoal-heater/ The photos on this website are of a fairly modern version. The copy of the advertisement is quite old, judging from the prices quoted! I have a mint condition stainless Pascall Atkey "Pansy" similar to the one pictured in the website stored in my workshop. It was to go in a boat I owned, but I sold the boat before installing the heater and held on to it. I'll get around to listing it on eBay one of these days, i suppose. I pity whoever is tasked with disposing of my "Alladin's Cave" of tools and yacht gear when I inevitably shuffle off this mortal coil!

It's really a matter of taste. To my eye, fancy detailed pedestals, posts, and cradles detract from modern models. They are, perhaps, more appropriate for Seventeenth Century ships with lots of "gingerbread." For more modern ships, the less attention that is drawn to the mounting, the better, I say. I often simply use a length of quarter inch bronze brazing rod polished up as a post to mount the model on a nice piece of finished hardwood. This approach seems to show off the underwater lines to the best advantage.

Have you ever tried leaving the wire coil on the drill bit and then sawing through the whole coil parallel with the drill bit shaft with a jeweler's saw while it's still on the bit, then sliding all the rings off at once? I prefer this method because it leaves the ends of the rings square, which makes joining them together for soldering much easier. I find using a nippers, which I do when I'm only making two or three rings, often leaves the ends of the rings "pinched" with a bevel instead of square. Cutting with a nipper also sometimes sends a ring sailing off into the ozone, as well.

Michael, I have to explain that I agonized about posting this comment. Your work on this model is nothing short of spectacular and a joy to behold. i realize the time it takes to maintain a log of this type and build a model at the same time. It probably nearly doubles the time involved, I'm sure. That said, because the level of your work is so high and your interest in accuracy so admirable, I dared post my thoughts, knowing that you may well have sound reasons for the subject of my comment. As lovely as the cabin sole you've glued up may be, in my not insignificant experience (I once worked for a yacht brokerage specializing in classic wooden vessels,) a cabin sole on a vessel such as yours would invariably be constructed of loose planks of perhaps six or eight inches in width, laid on top of the sole beams with their ends butting over a sole beam. The planks would usually have a finger hole drilled at each end and would be fitted loosely enough that they would not swell tightly and become difficult to lift. Sometimes, if there were a saloon table amidships, the plank or planks upon which the table rested were fastened to the sole beams with unplugged flush screws and the table screwed to those fastened planks. The purpose of leaving the sole planks loose was to afford easy access to the bilges below the sole to permit cleaning and to access the area for stowage. It was not uncommon, particularly in blue water cruising vessels, to take advantage of the bilge spaces to store canned provisions and other gear that didn't need to be immediately available. The unplugged screws fastening the planks upon which a table was fastened were to permit the easy removal of the screw fastened sole plank to permit repainting the bilge on occasion. Additionally, one maxim of naval architecture is that the interior of vessels should to the greatest extent possible provide for ready access to the inside of the planking. If a serious leak develops, it is essential that the leak can be located and accessed quickly to control the damage, if possible. Again, thanks for sharing your build. It's one of the real gems of this forum!

Not much at all. Probably about as much difference as there is between a good champagne and a good "sparkling wine." "Stockholm" was simply an appellation." "Stockholm tar" was recognized to be a high quality product. it got it's name because pine tar was a prized essential naval store and the best was thought to be that produced by the company that held the Swedish royal warrant for the monopoly on pine tar exported from Stockholm. There was apparently a lot of international politics involved in who got to buy tar from Stockholm. If a nation was on the outs with Sweden, they had a hard time sourcing good pine tar for their navies. When England ruled the American Colonies, it acquired a similar source of high quality pine tar from the North American pine forests and became independent of Sweden's monopoly on the product. Hence, the settlers in North Carolina came to be called "tar heels."

Actually, all rope was thinly tarred when manufactured. Repeated applications of supplemental tar for maintenance purposes made the cordage darker. I have never heard of bolt ropes being tarred after manufacture. To do so would get the tar all over the sails and handling them in the ordinary course would become rather messy, I'd expect. Bolt ropes were treated as was running rigging. Standing rigging, on the other hand, was routinely tarred to preserve it. Bolt ropes would be the same color as running rigging. As is the case, hemp cordage is darker, tending towards brown, than sisal ("Manila") cordage, which is lighter tending towards golden. I'm guessing hemp running rigging would have been in use in 1790, but there are many far more expert folks in this forum on the subject of Admiralty practices at that time.

Acetate can be "frosted" by an even sanding of the back side with fine sandpaper.

There are advantages to using silver solder. There's a quite a lot of difference between silver solder and the solder they sell for electronic soldering. Silver soldering takes more heat that the "rosin core" solder sold for electronic soldering. Silver solder provides a much stronger joint, for one thing, but is not 'gap filling." The parts to be silver soldered must be actually touching when soldered. Silver soldering is the province of jewelry makers and modelers. Anybody who does any amount of jewelry making or model soldering usually ends up with a Smith Little Torch or an equivalent. (Warning: There are counterfeit Smith Little Torches being sold on eBay and elsewhere that are indistinguishable from the real thing. They are sold for much less and are reportedly no different, although there are complaints about "fit and finish." Buy from Smith directly, or from a reputable jewelry supply house to get the real deal.) These torches can be run on oxygen and propane, acetylene, or mapp gas, as one wishes. The disposable gas bottles are cheap and widely available. They work best for modeling purposes unless you are doing a lot of soldering, at which point one might want to move up to a larger gas tank available from welding supply stores. This is the state of the art tool for the jobs we do on models. There's no need to pay extra for a large selection of tips. The basic tip is fine for modeling purposes. While the real Smith Torch kit is more expensive than butane brazing torches, it is far more capable in terms of heat output because it's running on oxygenated gas mixtures and the heat can be very precisely applied where you want it. The Smith Little Torch is one of the "industry standards." For my money, I'd go with the Smith torch rather than buy a lesser one that may prove a disappointment. There's lots of content on these torches on YouTube. Check it out. See: https://www.millerwelds.com/-/media/miller-electric/imported-mam-assets/spec-sheets/2/d/e/ge200-the-little-torch-kit.pdf

Here's another cheap tool: "Pizza savers." Yes, that's what they are called in the trade. They are those white plastic things that look like round tables with three legs that they put in pizza boxes to keep the top of the box from contacting the melted cheese on the pizza and making a mess when it's delivered. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pizza_saver These make great "painter's points." A painter's point, which are often pyramid-shaped, but can have other suitable shapes, are used to hold a piece of work that needs painting up above the level of a table so it's top and edges can be painted without coming into contact with the bench top that it's being painted on. These "pizza savers" work great for this purpose. Just turn them upside down so they are standing on the round part and you'll have three pegs sticking up to support whatever you need to paint. Use three or four or more to support your work, of course. So, grab 'em when the pizza comes. In short order you'll have a box of them in the shop to use whenever they're needed. Store-bought painter's points: No need to waste the money on them anymore.

Thousands of years from now, archaeologists will be dumbfounded by those wire springs on clothespins. They'll keep finding them with their metal detectors, but there will be a raging debate over what they were actually used for.

That, my friend, is what they call salesmanship!

And don't forget those mini bamboo skewers at the supermarket, good for all sorts of stuff including trunnels and the ever-present Starbucks skinny wooden stirring sticks.

Unfortunately, the knowledge of how to maintain a fine French polish on a piece of furniture is totally lost on the homeowners of today. The same is true of hand-rubbed finishes on varnish and oil-based paints.

So very true, however, all that hand rubbing can go to hell in an instant if somebody spills so much as a drop of an alcoholic beverage on it! I love shellac for all sorts of purposes, but the polyurethanes do have their advantages on furniture, particularly table tops.

In case you were asking what the modeler gets out of a more expensive kit, I'd say the answer is, "It depends." The very expensive kits generally contain better instructions, more historical accuracy, more detail, more complexity, more castings, and better quality materials. Mind you, though, that I have never bought a very expensive kit model. In my mind, it's something of a "Catch-22." I'm convinced that there are far more kits sold than are ever built. I really don't know why many modelers "build a stash" of un-built or half-built models. That said, buying a model you intend to build before you will have time to build it may make sense if the price is right, but, frankly, for some it appears to be something of a hoarding disorder. Few beginning or even intermediate modelers have the skill and experience to do justice to a $1,700 model. (And I'm sure somebody will say, "I do!" which is exactly why the manufacturers keep churning them out.) Those who have the skill and experience (not to mention the tools and machinery necessary to supplement "what comes in the box" of any kit to even begin to match the glossy colored picture on the kit box) will generally have long since abandoned assembling kits for building models, anyway. Kits have their place. They are ship modeling's "gateway drug" and some of the less challenging high quality kits (e.g. anything from Syren) are the very best way to gain skill and experience and at the same time end up with a beautiful model if it's done well, but it's generally the newer modelers who lust after a Victory or a Constitution and if ship models were restaurants, Victory and Constitution would be McDonald's and Starbucks. As for the value of the finished product of an expensive kit, I doubt there are many who would pay $1,700 for an assembled ship model kit under any circumstances unless they were really conned into paying that much. In any event, people who are not knowledgeable collectors don't pay $1,700 for anything to set on their mantles and people who are knowledgeable collectors have no interest in paying much of anything for a model that is not a scratch-built historically accurate unique one-off example made by a known top modeler to state of the art archival standards. (And more often than not such models are commissioned directly from the modeler.) Fine models are like fine art in terms of their value to those who might buy them. Kit models appeal to some who build for their own satisfaction alone, and that's fine, but unless they are done with a high level of skill, they are pretty much in the same category as paint-by-numbers oil paintings. They may look like the Mona Lisa if they are really done well, but most are just "Elvis" on black velvet in terms of monetary value. By these comments, I certainly don't intend to denigrate those who build kits. I've built many, as everyone has over the years, but given the limitations of selling ship model kits as a business model, particularly with the inroads made by foreign "pirates" who steal the kit designers' intellectual property, it appears to me at least that the way the ship modeling game is trending over the long haul, the momentary impetus provided by "pandemic boredom" notwithstanding, is increasingly towards scratch-building a far less numerous output of unique "fine art"-level models. Kit manufacturers are struggling to realize a profit and the "aftermarket" vendors of pre-milled wood and fittings have been dropping like flies in recent years. Maybe that's why the smart kit fans all have "stashes," come to think of it! P.S.: If you want to see what can be done with a relatively simple quality model that's not particularly expensive... if you add after-market blocks and rigging line, etc., check out this beautiful job:

Shellac works quite well, if, indeed, a primer is needed at all. I've never sprayed it because I've always assumed that the atomization of it coming out of an airbrush would cause too great an evaporation rate for it to work, but perhaps it does. I've never had a bit of problem with 'steaks from brushing on." That's assuming that one isn't using too heavy a cut. (I usually apply it out of the can, which, with Zinsser, at least, is two pound cut, I believe.) I often don't brush shellac at all, actually. I just dip the piece into the can, remove it and give it a shake to remove the excess and then, if necessary, us the point of a paper towel to soak up the remaining shellac in the nooks and crannies. With wood, I do the same, wiping off the excess with a piece of paper towel. Shellac is the most forgiving of all coatings. If you mess it up, just dip it in some denatured alcohol ("meths") and wipe it off, let dry, and re-coat. I've never noticed any adverse effects from alcohol vapors, although I don't spend a lot of time intentionally inhaling them and I always provide good ventilation out of concern for the hazards of combustion. In light of your comment and what I recall to be your background in chemistry, I looked it up and found that when alcohol vapors are inhaled, the alcohol is absorbed in your lungs and completely bypasses your digestive system. Alcohol molecules are then transported directly from your lungs into your bloodstream and brain. Inhaling alcohol can harm the brain, lungs, and intoxicate someone very quickly. Apparently, it can be abused. When people smoke alcohol, they heat it up to intensify the vapor, or they pour it over dry ice, according to the literature . This makes a strong vapor which they inhale into their lungs. I worked for nearly a decade in San Quentin Prison and I have a professional background in substance abuse issues spanning close to fifty years at this point, so I thought I'd seen it all, but I've never heard of anyone "smoking" alcohol or pouring it over dry ice. (Convicts are quite creative in finding ways to intoxicate themselves, as you might imagine! ) I suppose those are techniques employed to extract the alcohol from otherwise non-consumable sources such as hair tonic, mouthwash, or the like. Oddly enough, I've cooked a lot of meals aboard boats with alcohol stoves and never noticed any ill effects at all. I expect that while alcohol vapors are toxic, one needs to be exposed to a substantial amount of them in a high concentration to suffer any ill effects. As with all hazardous materials, commonsense is the user's first and most effective line of defense.

As fancy as you've gotten with that steam box, might I suggest that you cook up a good sour mash, let it ferment well, and put it in your steam generator. You'll be killing two birds with one stone that way.

Care has to be taken to keep dust from entering the enclosed space, and that will happen if care isn't taken. On the other hand, it is also good practice to allow some small amount of ventilation to allow air to circulate. This helps prevent acidic deterioration. Lastly, when providing for lighting, if any, take care to avoid heat buildup in the enclosed space. This is very important! a couple of forty watt bulbs can create a lot of heat and that can, over time, cause damage to a model. (I've restored a couple with significant deterioration from this mistake.) Also, in designing a "built in" cabinet, allow for easy access to the model from time to time. Don't be surprised if you have to remove a cobweb or three now and again if an enterprising spider finds your model a cozy home.

That's a very reasonable price for the lot! That's just about everything Domanoff makes. Nobody would go wrong paying as much for the PROSAK 3.0. I wish I got this opportunity when I bought my PROSAK 3.0, even though I got a very fair deal on it used.

I've found a staircase maker's rasp very handy for rough shaping solid hulls: https://www.mrmtool.com/10-Staircase-Makers-Rasp-•-Half-Round-Bent-Second-Cut_p_1142.html A similar "hoof rasp" used by farriers is also, and probably more widely available. https://www.evohoofcare.com/Bar-Sole-Rasp-1_p_16.html