Bob Cleek

If it were canvas covered, as it was, there would be no "scribing" to be seen. the surface would be perfectly flat. The coarse weave of the canvas would show through the paint, but at scale distance, would appear perfectly flat.

I don't know what they may have picked. I doubt they would have painted it anything other than white. White reflects the heat of the sun, which is a big consideration in the Tropics where she often sailed. This keeps the cabins cooler in the heat and also white paint last longer than colored paints because it doesn't fade or degrade like colors which are subject to heating and cooling cycles in the sun. It is also less expensive than yellow ochre, as its pigment at that time would have been simple white lead oxide.

There's a lot of incorrect speculation about the canvased cabin tops in the above posts. The cabin tops, as well as booby hatch overheads, would almost certainly have been canvased. This practice involved laying down Irish felt (similar to modern "tar paper") over tongue and groove or edge butted planking, and then canvas tacked at the edges over the felt. The canvas was then doused with boiling water to shrink it tight and painted with thinned paint. This produced a water-tight surface that was certainly strong enough to walk on, although less resistant to puncture and abrasion that a laid caulked wooden deck. It's a common practice for decks on small craft and cabin tops on all sizes of vessels and was only replaced by similar arrangements with fiberglass cloth, canvas, and modern synthetics, such as Dynel, soaked in fiberglass resin, and now preferably epoxy resin. Traditional wooden boatbuilders still often opt for the earlier practice of painted canvas over Irish felt, as it is easier to repair when the time comes. At model scales, a canvased deck or cabin top would appear as a perfectly smooth surface.

IMHO That guy in the video has his blade way too high for cutting 3/4" stock. Scary high. Don't go by me, though. "Your mileage may vary."

If the model is going to remain indoors and is plywood, you don't have to use a strand matrix for strength at all. No need for fiberglass cloth. WEST System epoxy, thickened with sanding filler, can simply be trowelled on the surface and then sanded fair, much like auto body filler. In that instance, it is used like drywall "mud," but it cures to an epoxy, rather than a plaster.

Far be it from me to rain on anybody's parade, but... There are a very few specialty suppliers that do sell finish-quality dimensioned scale lumber and they are becoming fewer every day. The economics of the business are such that the market really isn't sufficiently strong for anybody to be supplying dimensioned scale lumber in any species other than balsa or basswood and perhaps thin birch plywood, none of which are prime finish woods for modeling. Add to that problem the fact that there aren't a lot of straight lines on a ship and the reality becomes apparent: those who are working with fine woods aren't buying their wood pre-milled. If you're lucky, you may find some cherry stripwood, but that's about it. Everything you see used by the really good modelers on the forum is being milled from larger billets by the modelers themselves. The silver lining to this cloud is that there's a lot of very interesting and suitable wood out there that's going for amazingly inexpensive prices because nobody wants to mill it commercially. A modeler doesn't have to limit themselves to boxwood or pear, although it's very nice if one can afford caviar. The municipal dump piles are full of exotic species in sizes one can throw in the trunk of the car for free, if you mill it yourself. That does require an investment in power tools. Sometimes a local cabinet shop will oblige on a custom order basis. Other times the local trade school wood shop ma be open for adult school projects and tools are available there. Bottom line, though, if you are looking for fine woodworking species suitable for modeling, you will have to mill it yourself these days and that will require more than a drill.

WEST System has an extensive manual online. It contains all you need to know about their products. Be aware that epoxy is a material that demands close attention to the manufacturer's instructions for use, though. This is particularly so with measurements of resin and hardeners and application temperatures. Use in a well-ventilated area if indoors. Run fans to keep air circulating from inside to outside. Don't make yourself crazy about hazmat issues. Just follow the instructions. Wear nitrile gloves. Some folks are sensitive to contact with uncured resin and hardeners. Continued exposure can exacerbate sensitivity. WEST makes a selection of additives to control the properties of the resin mix. One you will find very useful is their sanding additive (essentially microballoons.) This will make a cured epoxy coat sand like butter for a perfectly smooth surface. (Don't let some dork talk you into using sawdust to save a few bucks!) If at all possible, I'd advise you find a professional boatbuilder or auto body and fender guy to do it for you. There is a learning curve and being in the middle of a glass layup isn't' the place to discover the curve is getting ahead of you!

All I can find are references to Kolbe's "forthcoming" book. I guess it hasn't come forth yet. His blog piece (link above) is widely cited, however, and I found it pretty comprehensive.

I'd tend to think it wouldn't work because, even if you ground up the hardened paint very finely, you'd have a bunch of dried binder mixed in with the pigment and when you tried to reconstitute that, you'd run into problems. Once an oil binder polymerizes, or an acrylic binder cures, I don't think that process can be reversed.

I have a copy of Steele's Elements and it's on line for free, as well. (It may even be on the MSW "more" section of the forum.) My copy is rather small, as I recall. (I haven't looked at it in a while and I've got a rather large library and an ever-smaller memory!) It's definitely worth buying. David's edition may be an "elephant folio" (large size pages), though. that would be nice for seeing the detail. I'm lusting after David's editions of C.P. Kunhardt and Dixon Kemp's classics. These are never around on the used market and when a rare one comes up, it's super expensive. There are several reprints that have been published, but all of these are only excerpts of the original, not the entire original volume. Only Shellback's Library has the "real deal." If you are inclined to scratch building and particularly building small craft and yachts, The Shellback's Library has lots and lots of books full of plans of such boats.

I'm glad to hear the news! David is a really great guy and his catalog is a real treasure. Now that I know he's up and running, I'll have to take a look at what I might want to treat myself to next. He has classic books that aren't obtainable anywhere else at extremely reasonable prices. These aren't cheapo photostatic copies. They are real books. Check it out: http://www.dngoodchild.com/

Free yourselves from the tyranny of "model paints." They are a huge rip-off when you consider what the paint costs to make, package, and ship. In most instances, I expect the manufacturer's cost of the bottle is more than the cost of the paint and, yes, those partially used little bottles dry out before you get around to using them up. There's a radical alternative. It takes a bit of a learning curve to master, but the basics are easily acquired and, for ship modeling purposes, the basics are pretty much all you need to know unless you want to get into really sophisticated weathering techniques which are, themselves, easier this "old fashioned" way. Do as the fine artists of old did. Mix your own paints. You will have complete flexibility in terms of consistency, flow, drying time, color and hue and save a considerable amount of money otherwise wasted on dried up little jars of what they pass off as paint these days. You won't have to grind your own pigments and mull them, though. That's done for us when commercially produced artists' oils, turpentine, and a bit of Japan drier are used. With the limited pallete we use in ship modeling, you won't need to buy a lot of different colors, either. Here's all you need to know: https://figurementors.com/limitted-palette/the-science-of-oil-paints-with-kyle-kolbe/

Ain't that the truth!

Ha! Being as nobody's making them anymore, as far as I know, I don't think it would hurt anybody's bottom line. (There was an outfit in Argentina that reportedly took over manufacturing them after Emco quit, but I don't think they ever did much of anything with them.) Besides, I doubt there's anything on the Unimat that is patented or copyrighted save, perhaps, the brand name. They haven't been built in going on fifty years. A lathe is a lathe is a lathe. What made the Unimat SL's such good machines were their accuracy and quality of construction. After WWII, there were a lot of unemployed German and Austrian machinists available to direct their energies to building things like Unimats instead of the Reich's war industries. They all started retiring right around the time Emco quit producing Unimats. (Coincidence?) The stuff I'm talking about is all generic, such as collet holders. The Unimat has a threaded spindle, but nobody makes a compression collet holder with the threading to match it. Hence, if you want a Unimat collect holder and a half dozen collets, you'll have to pay somewhere between $700 and $1,000 or more for them.

Nice collection! Now you can auction off your first-born child for money to buy tooling on eBay! Great machines. For all the crap the Chinese copy and sell cheap, I can't imagine why they haven't started selling Unimat SL clones. They haven't been in production since the 1970's and the attachments are getting so scarce now that they bring insane prices. Still, they are real gems if you can manage to put together a well-tooled one. Just a note on the off chance you weren't aware, the older U90 motors like you've got there on yours and which now run around $175.00 on US eBay, are not "continuous duty" motors. They are designed for intermittent service. You can look up the details in the Unimat manuals on line, but, as I recall, they are rated for something like a maximum eight minute run time at which point they should be turned off and allowed to cool for an equal amount of time. They don't have an overheating disconnect switch and if they are run too long, particularly under load, they will burn out. The newer U-100 motors (plastic case with orange colored slide switch) are "continuous duty" rated. They run about $235.00 and up on US eBay.

I believe that the Byrnes Saw fence has a very slight taper on the back half of the fence built into it already for exactly this purpose.

Micro-saws like the Byrnes saw, being smaller, are, I suppose, in theory at least, less dangerous than full sized table saws, but only by degrees of magnitude. Beyond that, I'd go so far as to say the smaller saws are even more likely to cause injury, albeit less massive injury, because they pose exactly the same risk of injury occurring as the full sized saws, but, being smaller, they invite operator error more readily. It's easy to pontificate about power tool safety and that tends to go in one ear and out the other. They say the table saw is the most dangerous power tool, but that's only because there are more of them and this leads completely inexperienced people to attempt to operate them relying solely upon their intuition. "You simply plug it in, turn it on, and feed the wood into the blade. What could be easier? What could possibly go wrong?" Ninety-nine percent of table saw injuries are caused by operator error. These machines don't just jump up and bite you. If you are "experiencing kick-back effects," it's not the saw's fault. It's your fault because you aren't using the tool correctly. (Don't ask me how I know this.) That's as close as I'll get to a safety lecture here, but I can't stifle myself when I hear comments like "I just bought my first table saw and..." followed by a description of a problem that is directly ascribable to extremely dangerous improper operation of the machine. Please don't mess with any power tool and especially a table saw of any size without getting proper training in its use and particularly in all safety procedures unique to that particular tool. We've all heard Norm Abrams go through his little "safety mantra" on TV ("... and remember this, always wear these: safety glasses.") and then watched him operate his table saw, reaching over the blade and sawing without using push sticks or guards in place. "Lucky Norm" still has all his fingers, but I've got at least four professional woodworker friends who don't. To answer the question,"Does anybody know where there's a good tutorial?" hey, YouTube is your friend. Just watch as many table saw safety and how-to-use videos as you can. You'll find something useful in every one of them. Follow the instructions and you will avoid injury and produce much better work, as well. https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=how+to+use+a+table+saw

I'm getting a sickening feeling in the pit of my stomach that these are the "Byrnes Saw" of chisels. I think I may have to start squirreling away the bucks to buy a set without the purser noticing! Are the figured wood handled ones a special order or does he have some sort of catalog?

She's certainly coming together nicely. Lovely model!

A "gun tackle" is any single-purchase tackle. Two single sheave blocks with the top one having a bail at the bottom. The line runs from the bail down to the lower block and back up and through the upper block with the fall coming down from there. So-called because they were commonly attached to each side of gun carriages. As the saying goes, "Different ships, different long splices." It's a matter of taste and there are no hard and fast rules. I suppose one could serve and tar the standing part of a topping life, but why would they want to? The tar would get all over the sails, for one thing, and it would just be an unnecessary job to keep up. The lines pictured in my post are definitely topping lifts. Lines are sometimes spliced into topping lifts, the line running down and around the boom and back up to the topping lift on the other side, allowing the topping lifts to serve double duty as support for lazy jacks. However, at least on the western side of the Pond, lazy jacks are rarely seen on gaff-headed sails because the gaff boom, being lowered between a pair of topping lifts, keeps the sail under control when being lowered. Lazy jacks are more often seen on jib-headed sails for this reason. On smaller jib-headed sails, the topping lift is often just one line run from the masthead to the end of the boom, in which case lazy jacks made up of lighter cordage are more commonly seen. I would expect that lazy jacks were less common on large naval vessels where there were "many hands to make light work" of handing the sail. The conventional wisdom favors less weight and windage aloft and, certainly, less chafe on the sails.

Standing rigging "stands." it doesn't move to operate the vessel. Running rigging "runs" or moves, often through blocks, to operate the vessel. A topping lift is running rigging and would likely not be served and tarred because it has to run through blocks to operate. It would be the same untarred color of the rest of the running rigging. Baggywrinkle is commonly found on topping lifts, though. The baggywrinkle prevents the topping lift from chafing the sail. I don't know for certain when baggywrinkle came into use, so if you are modeling an early vessel, you may want to do more research on that point. Here's all you need to know about it: http://www.scottmckittrick.com/2019/02/18/baggywrinkle-or-whats-that-fuzzy-stuff-on-the-ship/

That depends upon which way you want the grain to run: vertical grain or flat sawn. The planks should not crack if you use heat to bend them. If they do, it's likely that you are simply bending them beyond their limits of elasticity and cutting doesn't have a whole lot to do with it.

Beautiful work, as always. This is such an inspiring build log! Now you've got me going. I can't for the life of me understand how that half-bulkhead drops down to cover the stairwell in the deckhouse. I suppose it could easily be broken down and set in place, but what about the round newel post? How does that fit flush into the sole? And it's got to weigh plenty. That gas strut, if that be what it is, seems way too small. Stranger still, when it's down, the stairwell is closed. One would have to go forward to another hatch and then work their way aft. That steward bringing the coffee and cocktails certainly can't be happy about that folding stairwell hatch! Obviously, in a vessel as well-conceived as this one, they must have done it right, but how do they do it?

You might also want to investigate liver of sulphur gel, which is available from most all jewelry supply houses.

This may, or may not, be obvious, but in the off chance it isn't, do a bunch of tests to determine what effect you will get from any stain. Use decking scraps. You can always darken stains, but you can't lighten them. If you are going to get an effect you don't want, better to get it on a piece of scrap wood than on the deck of a model!