Bob Cleek

Birch tongue depressors and popsicle sticks are sold in bulk at craft stores and are often handy. Bamboo skewers are a supermarket item. I keep a stash on hand always.

Next time, try adding a bit of "retarder" to your paint. I expect Vallejo makes a proprietary one. "Retarder" is a type of paint conditioner that slows drying time. A slower drying time will give you more time to keep a "wet edge" when brushing and will give the paint more time to "lay down" and eliminate the brush strokes and overlaps. This is one of the things to look for when you are making your tests before final painting. If it's "drying" ("curing" with acrylics, actually,) too fast, you can condition your paint to suit the immediate environmental conditions. Ambient temperature, humidity, and things like that affect how paint behaves. The components of any paint are relative to each other. Thinning may, depending on the type of paint, affect gloss, drying time, and so on. Sometimes, when paint is thinned a lot, some of the other components, "retarder" or "accelerator" ("dryers") have to be added to compensate.

Painting and varnishing is a highly skilled craft, if it is to be done well. It takes practice and knowing how it's supposed to be done. There's no substitute for experience. Sometimes it's tricky to get a perfect finish, as is needed for models which are viewed "under a microscope," as it were. I can't stress enough the usefulness of experimenting with "test patches" before doing the final job. Not only will going through the process on a spare hunk of wood let you know if there's a problem that doesn't have to be corrected on your model, but it will give you confidence when doing it "for real." Don't forget the painter's maxim: "A good finish is 90% surface preparation." While we're at it, I should mention that several thin coats are always preferred over fewer thick coats. This avoids runs, drips, and brush strokes. The thinner the coating, the less detail is lost on a model. I don't know if you are committed enough to the hobby to make the investment (which isn't all that much,) but I'd suggest you consider getting and learning to use an airbrush. Brushes can produce great finishes, but, IMHO, one can learn to get a great finish from an airbrush more easily than from a brush. There's always a need for brushes for fine details, but there's nothing like an airbrush for "wide open spaces." Good luck with your project!

I don't use sanding sealers. I use shellac as a sealer and sanding base coat for covering imperfections, although those should be rare on a model. Many people apply a sanding sealer, thinking they are sealing the wood, and then sand it off, to bare wood in places, trying to get a fair surface. Sealer should go on thin and penetrate the wood. I use sanding base coat to fill imperfections after that. IMHO, wipe-on will not do as good as a sealer, but something is better than nothing. Wipe-on is wiped on and pretty much forms a film over the surface of the wood. It's just a thin surface coat of polyurethane varnish. It sells well because any idiot can wipe it on and won't make a dog's breakfast of it. Shellac is alcohol based and has the consistency of water. You brush it on generously. It soaks deep into the wood, particularly the end grain. When it dries, it's one of the best moisture barrier coatings known to man. You can sand it very smooth. Anything else sticks to it fine. It's compatible with everything. It can be easily sanded to a very fine degree of smoothness. It's easy to clean up. It washes off with alcohol. It's relatively inexpensive. I use Zinsser "Bulls Eye" clear shellac. Fifteen bucks a quart. (It doesn't skin over in the can like paint and varnish do, so you won't have to buy it too often. https://www.lowes.com/pd/Zinsser-Bulls-Eye-Clear-Shellac-Actual-Net-Contents-32-fl-oz/3449840?cm_mmc=shp-_-c-_-prd-_-pnt-_-google-_-lia-_-219-_-interiorstains-_-3449840-_-0&store_code=1901&placeholder=null&gclid=EAIaIQobChMIzqOgn6vD5wIVFq5kCh3ZawjTEAQYASABEgKoDfD_BwE&gclsrc=aw.ds On models, I don't ever really have a need to fill grain, but if I want to use a sanding base coat, I use Interlux Pre-Kote or whatever other sanding primer is on my paint locker shelf at the time. Pre-Kote runs around $35 a quart, which is way more than anybody'd ever need for a model. It's sold in chandleries and on line. Any sanding base coat (sometimes called "primer") compatible with whatever finish coat you are using should be fine. The products sold at professional auto body and paint supply outfits are quite good and more reasonably priced than the stuff "with a boat on the can." You just want one that will give you a uniform colored base and is easily sanded. It can be applied in multiple coats to fill grain and minor imperfections and then sanded smooth. https://www.jamestowndistributors.com/userportal/show_product.do?pid=120&engine=adwords&keyword=interlux_pre_kote&gclid=EAIaIQobChMIk5uU8bTD5wIVC8JkCh1jRAm7EAAYASAAEgIYM_D_BwE If I have serious nicks and dings, or for puttying generally, I use Interlux surfacing putty. It's $30 a pint, which is outrageous, in my opinion, but I guess it's all about the environmental regulations. It's thinned with acetone. It will last a long time after opening if you keep the lid edges clean and turn it upside down when you put it back on the shelf. If it starts to harden, adding a bit of acetone to the can and letting it sit over night will restore it. The stuff absorbs the acetone on its own over time. It drys very fast and sands very easily and will give a very smooth surface. https://www.jamestowndistributors.com/userportal/show_product.do?pid=4154 Any other surfacing putty or "fairing compound," as it's sometimes called, will work pretty much the same. I do not favor Bondo for any application on wood. It's for metal. Epoxy resin mixed with micro-balloons works well, too, but it's expensive and very messy to work with. Racing yachts do indeed have high gloss topside finishes. For a model, though, a high gloss finish would not be to scale. If you look at a high gloss finish up close, it's glossy, but at "scale viewing distance," a model would look like a shiny toy if painted with a high gloss finish. It needs to be toned down. If you look at a glossy example in real life and then back away from it until you can view the entire boat (or car) in your eye's "frame," you'll see that from thirty or fifty feet away, it doesn't appear super-glossy. A semi-gloss, "eggshell," or "satin" finish would be more appropriate. You can, of course, paint a model hull with high gloss paint and then, when the paint is well dried, hand-rub the finish with pumice and rottenstone to the degree of gloss you want. This is the best way to go about it, really. A hand-rubbed finish is "finestkind," but will take additional time and effort.

Shellac, applied to the back of the paper, should cause the paper to adhere well to just about any surface.

Priming filled surfaces is always recommended unless one is using a "filler stain" or sanding base coat that is specifically formulated to be used beneath a specific finish coating. (Some manufacturers will produce a compatible "system" for filling and finishing.) I always apply sealer (shellac,) to sanded bare wood. Shellac seals the wood well from moisture and inhibits movement with humidity changes. Only then do I apply sanding under coat and/or surfacing putty, then sand and tack, and, if any fillers have been used in addition to the sanding base coat, again apply a coat of sanding base coat, sand, and tack, and only then apply my build up of finish coats. Gloss paint has little or no application in modeling. (It's not to scale.) Generally, an "eggshell," "satin," or flat finish is desired, so applying a base coat over anything like undercoat or surfacing putty (AKA "fairing compound") isn't as critical in modeling as when applying a high gloss finish to something like a yacht's topsides, but that said, the "fillers" are all basically chalk dust added to a carrier to produce varying consistencies between "cream" and "peanut butter," and that chalk will soak up the finish coats differently than the surrounding primer coating when it's all sanded, depending on the micro-textures of the differing products. That difference will often be glaringly revealed once the finish coats are applied, on a gloss finish particularly, by "dull" spots wherever there has been un-primed filler remaining after sanding fair. Painting over the filler ("priming it") with sanding undercoat and lightly sanding fair and tacking before applying the finish coats ensures the final finish, be it gloss (especially) or satin or flat (less so,) will be uniform. This is more of a problem with gloss finish coats, which can end up with dull spots wherever un-primed filler material is present. If one is finishing wood "bright" (clear,) especially with the fine grained woods usually used in modeling, there shouldn't be any need for "filling" or "fairing" the surface. A sanding of the bare wood down to around 220 or 320 grit should yield a surface which needs no grain filling or fairing before sealing with shellac. The shellacked surface can then be further sanded (lightly, without removing the shellac sealer down to bare wood again) to 400, or rubbed with fine steel wool, and the clear finish coats applied directly over that. As always with all of the synthetic coatings on the market these days, it pays to do a test on a bit of scrap wood to make sure the various coatings and fillers used are compatible. Some incompatibilities produce some pretty horrendous results that are difficult and time consuming to correct.

I would suggest that you seal the bare wood with shellac. Let the shellac soak in as much as possible on the first coat. Additional coats shouldn't be necessary if the initial coat is applied thin enough to soak into the bare wood. The dried shellac can then be sanded easily to a very smooth surface. If you sand through the initial shellac coat to bare wood, apply more shellac to the bare spots. (Or add another coat of shellac to the entire piece.) If your wood has significant defects, (nicks, dings, etc.,) apply a filler coating or putty over the shellac. The filler coating used will depend on the degree of filling that's needed. For minor imperfections, a few coats of "sanding undercoat," paint formulated with chalk added which will sand easily, may be all you need. If there are imperfections that aren't filled by a coat or two of the thick undercoat, a surfacing putty will be required. (Sometimes called "glazing putty," although it should not be confused with putty used on window glass.) After final sanding to a perfectly smooth surface, paint of any type (oil or water based) can be applied directly to the surface. If you are using black or very dark brown paint to represent a tarred hull, you shouldn't require any undercoat or base coat. Once upon a time, "paint was paint" and the compatibility of coatings was not much of an issue. Today, while shellac is a suitable wood sealer that's compatible with most any finish coating, there are many "coating systems" which aren't compatible with coatings of other systems. (Often water-based acrylic paints won't do well applied over oil-based enamels, etc.) You should carefully check the manufacturer's recommendations before applying different brands and types of coatings on top of one another. Running a "test patch" on a piece of scrap wood replicating the entire paint job you envision and using the same paints you intend to use on the model is always advisable. If there is a problem, one need only toss the test piece in the trash and try another approach. One the paint is on the model, if there's a problem (such as a failure to "dry") removing it is often a huge task.

If it's Costello, that makes sense. I was thinking of real Boxwood. No question that you do need to be able to cut billets to size. If you don't have a full-size table saw and/or band saw, you'd probably be out of luck on that score. I suppose one could buy a lot of sheet stock it cut up on a mini-table saw before it would be worth their while to invest in full-size woodworking stationary tools, even if they had the room for them.

Very tasty! One question, who's going to keep all the brass polished on this model... Or are you going to gold electroplate it all like they used to do with the metalwork on the old builders' boardroom models?

Yes, I'm aware of that. It was this that caused my question, actually. "Why would anybody do that?" In a yard building traditional wooden vessels, a guy who the boss caught ripping narrow plank out of the precious, high-priced wide flitches reserved for getting out garboard planks (requiring the widest stock) would have his head handed to him. Boxwood trunks are only 4" to 6" in circumference. That means that a four inch sheet would have to come from select, perfectly clear stock and there'd only be a few 4" planks that could be gotten out of only the largest of the boxwood trees harvested. These planks would likely be very hard to keep from cupping when drying, as well, because they'd have to be slabbed with the center of the trunk being in the middle of the plank, rather than being sawed from heartwood on either side of the center, as is generally done. All things considered, these relatively wide planks would be the most desirable and most rare parts of a large box tree and so the most expensive. It wouldn't seem to make much sense to pay for prime wide stock, only to rip it up for strip wood. It would be much more economical to rip strip wood from narrower planks and billets that weren't anywhere near as dear. It ought to be a lot less expensive to rip strip wood from billets than from prime wide sheets, but perhaps it isn't. I guess I may be confusing Costello "Boxwood" with real Boxwood, though. Costello grows up to two feet in diameter, so 4" wide planks aren't as rare as true Boxwood. While still not cheap, Costello costs less than true Boxwood, I believe, so maybe that answers my question: "With Costello, it really doesn't matter as much as with true Boxwood." Maybe when folks talk about "Boxwood" these days, they are really talking about Costello.

Thanks. I can see that, perhaps. I suppose it may depend upon the scale one's working at. I've never had any problem getting futtocks and floors, and similar parts, out of an inch or two inch wide plank, though. It certainly might make a difference if one were laser-cutting multiple layouts for kit manufacture, however.

I definitely agree with that. What I don't get, aside from laser-cutting by kit manufacturers, is why folks are looking for sheet stock. Sheet stock's milling is hugely wasteful of scarce, prime wide plank pieces, especially when one is only going to cut it up anyway, as compared to cutting the small pieces needed off of billets, or so it would seem to me. What's with the fascination with sheet stock? The original ships were never built with sheet stock. Just wondering, is all.

Port Orford cedar is readily available, but probably a special order item outside of the Pacific Coast. As for model building, I'm sure it's entirely suitable, save for appearance. POC's rings are more pronounced than AYC's and it wouldn't be the best choice if one was intending to finish the model bright. The POC would appear out of scale. Best to go with AYC selected to have very light rings. If the model were to be painted, of course, I don't think there's a lot of difference, really. POC can tend to have a coarser grain than AYC, but a lot depends on particular piece of wood.

Nice jewelry!

Port Orford cedar is closely related to Alaska Yellow cedar. Both species are actually cypresses. POC is also known as Lawson's Cypress. POC is a light brown color which darkens some with age. AYC is, as one might expect, yellow. Their structural characteristics, straight grain, and good decay resistance are roughly comparable.

Given its limited availability and high cost, the fetish for boxwood sheets seems odd to me. I get it that boxwood is great for carving all that small "gingerbread" on period warships that are so popular these days and that select stock is undeniably attractive. I wouldn't dispute the assertion that boxwood is one of the best woods around for modeling, if you're willing to pay the price for it. I also get it that sheets are very convenient for kit manufacturers turning out production runs of little fiddly laser-cut boxwood bits, too. I can understand that in a production environment using very expensive wide plank stock may be justified by the savings in production costs. That said, I'm not sure I understand the demand for boxwood sheets by modelers who aren't manufacturing kits and parts for sale. A 4.5"X 14" sheet of boxwood is, at 1:48 scale, eighteen feet wide and fifty-six feet long. God never made trees that big, (except for the Sequoia Gigantea, whose brittle wood isn't much good for lumber.) Even if the technology existed in the Eighteenth Century to mill a plank that size, the plank would likely warp so much in the drying it'd be next to useless. There isn't anything in a period ship built with wood that size or anything near it. Paying the huge premium for wide stock just to rip strips off of it doesn't make a lot of sense to me. I guess others' mileage varies. What am I missing here?

She's coming along nicely under Our Blessed Mother's watchful eyes, Kevin. If I were you, I'd use paper plates of scale thickness applied to the hull unless the plates were all butted and backed, rather than overlapped. I'd wet the paper where it needed to follow any tight bends and glue it with PVA and then give it a coat of shellac, making sure it soaked in well. You shouldn't have an problems with the paper plates coming loose if they are shellac-impregnated. Once the shellac is dry, the surface can be sanded as may be needed and getting a good paint job should be no problem. It will take some experimenting, but you also might consider running a ponce wheel (which you'd have to make yourself to get the right spacing, I expect) over dampened paper laid on a slightly resilient surface. That might produce slight "bumps" that would simulate rivets well. I expect some types of paper would work better than others for this technique, but I have no idea which. The first consideration is how she was plated. There are several styles, e.g. butted edge to edge with backing strips, overlapping belts, bent lapped edges, and so on. That will dictate whether plate seams can be scribed into the hull or overlapping "plates" will have to be applied. See: https://images.search.yahoo.com/yhs/search;_ylt=AwrUi2jUQzlej3kAdFAPxQt.;_ylu=X3oDMTEycGpnZHQyBGNvbG8DZ3ExBHBvcwMxBHZ0aWQDQjg0OTJfMQRzZWMDc2M-?p=ship+hull+riveting+patterns&fr=yhs-elm-001&hspart=elm&hsimp=yhs-001#id=35&iurl=http%3A%2F%2Fmodelshipworld.com%2Fuploads%2Fmonthly_02_2015%2Fpost-246-0-52774900-1424910653.jpg&action=close ) There are also different styles of riveting. It was not uncommon to see outboard below the waterline rivet heads countersunk to produce a smooth surface to increase speed and fuel efficiency. And, of course, the rivet patterns have to be accurate, as well. That would require some idea of the framing layout. Having the plating plan is a huge help there. I'd offer the observation that, more often than not, rivets are overdone. If they are done, they really have to be to scale or the hull looks like it's got the pox. This thread might be helpful:

I was asking thibaultron, who mentioned he'd replaced his Atlas (Craftsman) with a mini-lathe.

For cutting copper strips, I've found that a standard office paper cutter works fine. The strips curl as they are cut, but taking each end in a pair of pliers and pulling them straightens them out perfectly.

Those are the steam engines, actually. Expanding live steam in these cylinders pushes the pistons which push the drive rods which turn the wheels. They call the whole locomotive a "steam engine," but really, the biggest part of it isn't the engine, but the boiler.

I'll give up my 12" Atlas lathe when they pry it from my cold dead fingers. How do you find the your mini-lathe measures up to the old Atlases you had, aside from the obvious size capacity difference? Is there anything you find the mini-lathe does better than the Atlas? Just wondering.

Lucky you! Your darling has the good sense to know her limitations. My culinary skills, which are not inconsiderable, were experienced by my dearly beloved as an existential challenge to her identity as a "great cook." (This being purely a matter of opinion, mind you, and, knowing the consequences, I've always kept mine to myself.) Over the last quarter century or so, we've negotiated a tenuous truce. The kitchen is "hers" and the workshop is "mine." We still bicker at each other about the messes we respectively leave on each other's turf. I keep my collection of razor-sharp high-carbon steel chef's knives in my shop these days, save for one or two. She banished them from "her" kitchen because "they are too sharp" and she's cut her fingers on them a time or two. (This by somebody who refuses to acknowledge that there is a proper way to dice an onion, which, of course, is not the way she does it.) Don't get me started on kitchen knives!

It's like heroin. It takes very little to get started, but before you know it, you'll be like the rest of us, totally strung out and looking for money to buy more.

That door latch is a great example of the joys of working at larger scales! Exquisite!

Archival construction "best practice" is to fasten all pieces with glued pegs. That doesn't mean, however, that the pegs are intended to be visible. Underhill's, and others', recommendation to fasten planking with pegs assumed the model would be painted. The current widely popular style of leaving modeling wood bright is a relatively recent thing based on certain Navy Board or "Admiralty style" models and, in many instances, is carried to extremes in present day models, which isn't to say to poor effect. The use of contrasting colors for trunnels and plugs, and, indeed, out-of-scale ones, is, IMHO, somewhat of an affectation.