Bob Cleek

Foredom models have changed over the years. They once had a model 320, I believe, but their current model line uses another system of identifying models. The operation and maintenance of the motors and handpieces haven't changed much at all though. Their present owner's manual should be helpful to you. If you haven't got it already, it's available online at TX_Manual.pdf (foredom.net)
 
 

Foredom models have changed over the years. They once had a model 320, I believe, but their current model line uses another system of identifying models. The operation and maintenance of the motors and handpieces haven't changed much at all though. Their present owner's manual should be helpful to you. If you haven't got it already, it's available online at TX_Manual.pdf (foredom.net)
 
 

While I'm sure there are sail drawings online, the odds of finding ones that match the sails you need for a particular model aren't good. Add to size and shape the the vagaries of period sailmaking and my guess is you'll spend more time looking than you would drawing the sails you need yourself and then copying your drawings onto your Silkspan as you contemplate. Of course, in that case, it would be easier still to draw the details you require directly onto the sails themselves. 
 
Tom Lauria has a fairly good Silkspan sailmaking tutorial on YouTube. Check it out if you haven't already.
 
 
 
 
 

Foredom models have changed over the years. They once had a model 320, I believe, but their current model line uses another system of identifying models. The operation and maintenance of the motors and handpieces haven't changed much at all though. Their present owner's manual should be helpful to you. If you haven't got it already, it's available online at TX_Manual.pdf (foredom.net)
 
 

While I'm sure there are sail drawings online, the odds of finding ones that match the sails you need for a particular model aren't good. Add to size and shape the the vagaries of period sailmaking and my guess is you'll spend more time looking than you would drawing the sails you need yourself and then copying your drawings onto your Silkspan as you contemplate. Of course, in that case, it would be easier still to draw the details you require directly onto the sails themselves. 
 
Tom Lauria has a fairly good Silkspan sailmaking tutorial on YouTube. Check it out if you haven't already.
 
 
 
 
 

While I'm sure there are sail drawings online, the odds of finding ones that match the sails you need for a particular model aren't good. Add to size and shape the the vagaries of period sailmaking and my guess is you'll spend more time looking than you would drawing the sails you need yourself and then copying your drawings onto your Silkspan as you contemplate. Of course, in that case, it would be easier still to draw the details you require directly onto the sails themselves. 
 
Tom Lauria has a fairly good Silkspan sailmaking tutorial on YouTube. Check it out if you haven't already.
 
 
 
 
 

While I'm sure there are sail drawings online, the odds of finding ones that match the sails you need for a particular model aren't good. Add to size and shape the the vagaries of period sailmaking and my guess is you'll spend more time looking than you would drawing the sails you need yourself and then copying your drawings onto your Silkspan as you contemplate. Of course, in that case, it would be easier still to draw the details you require directly onto the sails themselves. 
 
Tom Lauria has a fairly good Silkspan sailmaking tutorial on YouTube. Check it out if you haven't already.
 
 
 
 
 

Yes on both counts. Shellac is dissolved in alcohol. When the alcohol dissolves, the hardened shellac is left behind. Two-pound cut is perfect for our uses.  It soaks into fabric with the viscosity of water. It's invisible when it dries. However, remember also that repeated coats of shellac will build upon one another and create a glossy finish which isn't desirable for modeling.
 

Yes on both counts. Shellac is dissolved in alcohol. When the alcohol dissolves, the hardened shellac is left behind. Two-pound cut is perfect for our uses.  It soaks into fabric with the viscosity of water. It's invisible when it dries. However, remember also that repeated coats of shellac will build upon one another and create a glossy finish which isn't desirable for modeling.
 

One very handy accessory that I obtained for use with my Domanoff machine is a bobbin winder. These gizmos are sold in fabric and sewing machine stores and online. They are a stand-alone version of the bobbin winders incorporated in the design of sewing machines. They make it possible to vary the tightness of the thread wound on the bobbins and to wind the bobbins with the same amount of thread on each and all at the same tension. The tension of the thread on the bobbins is one of the determining factors in the quality of the rope made. 
 
Amazon.com: Simplicity 388175A Sidewinder Portable Automatic Bobbin Winder Machine, 120 Voltage, White
 

Yes on both counts. Shellac is dissolved in alcohol. When the alcohol dissolves, the hardened shellac is left behind. Two-pound cut is perfect for our uses.  It soaks into fabric with the viscosity of water. It's invisible when it dries. However, remember also that repeated coats of shellac will build upon one another and create a glossy finish which isn't desirable for modeling.
 

Just some opinionated general observations to add to the good advice above, offered for what it's worth. Others' mileage may vary:
 
Since the internet and especially the Covid pandemic, we've begun living in the age of mail order. That has opened up much wider and more easily accessible sourcing options than we ever had before. However, the catch, particularly for those living outside of major metropolitan centers where a few "brick and mortal" shops struggle to survive, is that the costs of shipping and handling are added to online purchases and these added costs have risen exponentially in recent times. That fact has to be factored into the equation. "Amazon Prime" and "free shipping and handling" are significant considerations in making online purchases these days. 
 
You can rely on any of this forum's sponsors for the best of whatever they sell. They've all been thoroughly vetted and their customer service is top notch. You won't go wrong looking to them for specialized ship modeling products and their prices are very reasonable. If I needed an airbrush, I wouldn't consider looking any further than USA Airbrush Supply or for after-market blocks any further than Syren Ship Models. This is a no-brainer for me.
 
If the online outfit advertises itself as a "hobby" anything, you are often better off going directly to an online supplier of professional supplies of the same type and see if you can do better. A "hobby shop" can get away selling lower quality tools and supplies at a higher price to a broader spectrum of customers, while a professional supply house will soon die on the vine if the professional customers aren't satisfied with product quality and service. Approach hobby outfits like Model Expo and Micro-Mark with caution. These two online retailers have an excellent selection of products for the modeler, but in many instances they are priced significantly higher than other sources catering to professional clients in allied fields. (It's a good idea to get on their mailing lists, though, because they often offer great discounts on clearance items.) This is particularly true with respect to tools. For example, Micro-Mark sells a pair of crudely scaled six-inch proportional dividers made by Tacro for $140.00, but you can find models of the finest rack-and-pinion adjustable, Verniier decimally-scaled ten-inch proportional dividers ever made, used and in good shape, for half that price or a higher-quality set of seven-inch dividers than the Tacro six-inchers for as little as $25 on eBay. The same goes for surgical and dental instruments. The "hobby shops" sell poor-quality tweezers, forceps, scissors, hemostats, scalpels and blades, and so on at higher prices than the mid-range quality stuff the medical and dental supply houses are offering on eBay or Amazon.
 
There is a wealth of model-building tools and materials that can be found in higher quality and lower prices from professional jewelers' supply houses. This is where to look for pliers, cutting tools, files, tweezers, rotary tools and burrs, soldering supplies, and such. A couple of the most popular are Rio Grande (https://www.riogrande.com/) and Otto Frei. (https://www.ottofrei.com/ ) Cheaper files can be had from hobby supply houses, but, for example, cheap files are a waste of money. The same goes for pliers and cutters. When buying tools, the cheapest quickly becomes the most expensive when you have to buy another to replace it.  
 
Medical and dental supply houses are also a great source for ship modeling tools, although many of these companies sell "to the trade only" or in large lots to institutional purchasers. eBay is a good place to find used medical instruments useful in ship modeling, but caution has to be exercised because there are a lot of Asian manufacturers unloading poor-quality instruments on eBay. The upside of this is that they are often so inexpensive that taking a chance is worth the gamble. Carnegie Surgical Co. sells a range of professional quality ear polypuses, a type of forceps for working in very confined spaces that I consider to be an invaluable rigging instrument) ranging in price from around $100 to $250. Micro-Mark sells a 12" ear polypus for fifty bucks. eBay, on the other hand, has tons of different versions ranging from ten to twenty-five bucks (and up) that are quite acceptable for modeling use because we aren't going to be using them deep inside a patient's ear canal. The same applies to tweezers. If you're looking for an 8" or 12" pair of tweezers to reach inside the shrouds on your square-rigger, eBay is the place to buy them.
 
As a footnote, there was once a time when you could get lots of used medical and dental instruments from friendly medical professionals. Forty years ago, I worked in a large state institution that had a big dental clinic and I was friends with the chief dentist there who was an avid HO train modeler. He kept me supplied with all sorts of worn-out instruments: probes, dental chisels, drill burrs, forceps, pliers, and the like. (I still have an oddly shaped pair of pliers designed to extract molars which comes in handy now and again.) Sadly, a combination of the trend to disposable instruments which are more cost effective because autoclave sterilizing and sterile repackaging labor is no longer needed and heightened "biohazard" prevention protocols now mandate the controlled disposal of used instruments. Few doctors and dentists consider it appropriate to deviate from the biohazard disposal protocols and save a "goody box" of used instruments for their modeling friends. If you are lucky enough to find one who will still provide you with some, go for it!  
 
Finally a word about paint.  Ship modeling very rarely requires exact color matches. What we do need is quality paint with good archival qualities and a high content of good pigment ground finely that will produce good opacity. Most all the pre-mixed modeling paints marketed as such will meet these requirements... at a very high price. Bottled modeling paints are very convenient if one needs to get an exact color match and for this reason they are the favorites of armor, aircraft, and railroad modelers who need the exact shade of field gray used by the Wehrmacht in early 1943 or the exact shade of boxcar blue Conrail paints its boxcars. Ship modelers don't have the problem of that level of color accuracy and I don't think we have to pay five bucks an ounce and another five bucks in shipping and handling for a bottle of generic black, white, or bottom paint brown (which is the same as "boxcar red.") So I'd urge anybody who doesn't want to go broke collecting a couple of hundred one ounce bottles of modeling paint to display on their shop shelf while the paint dries hard in the bottles to learn to mix, condition and use quality tubed artists' oils or acrylics. Tubed colors have a shelf-life measured in decades, come in as many pre-mixed colors as anybody could possibly want, and, if one learns to mix their own colors, can provide any color in the rainbow out of five or seven tubes. (Black, white, red, blue, yellow, and for convenience maybe a brown, and a green.) There are many YouTube videos on how to use artists' tubed colors in both oil and acrylic for brush and airbrush application in miniature work which are well worth a ship modeler's time to watch. (Many are by the guys who paint fantasy gaming figures and miniature soldiers.) There is also an excellent instructional chapter on mixing your own colors for painting ship models in volume two of Ship Modeler's Shop Notes which can be purchased from the NRG. Tubed colors, as well as varnishes, thinners, and flattening (matte) additives and coatings are available on line from artists' supply houses, or locally from arts and crafts stores much easier than modeling paint is locally available at local hobby shops if you can even find one anymore. Painting and finishing ship models seems to be an aspect of the craft which is often given short shrift yet it is one of the most important factors in the final appearance of a model. There's a lot more to it than just applying paint straight out of the bottle. Once the relatively simple skill of mixing your own paint is mastered, you're free from all the limitations and inconveniences of sourcing pre-mixed modeling paint and can enjoy the benefit of saving lots of money over the course of a modeling career. 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

I thought about the reason that shellac melted an original oil paint. I guess the shellac might not be a major reason for the unsuccessful varnishing.
 
Test condition : Without spraying or pouring, all my attempts to varnish over oil paint weren't successful. It includes rubbing the surface with cotton cloth. I rubbed oil paint with shellac or poured shellac when I applied it.
Reinterpretation of the failure :
  1) Physical contact :
     - Failed : Direct touch, such as rubbing or brushing.
     - Success : Indirect touch, such as spraying or pouring.
   2) Chemical reaction : I don't know enough about chemicals to make a judgement.
 
Shellac may not be a criminal. 😎

Shellac's solvent is alcohol. I'm living proof that alcohol fumes are not toxic.    

Ditto for refinishing pianos and other aged French-polished furniture.

As you probably know, artists' oil paints are formulated to provide the maximum drying time in order to provide the artist with a paint they can work with, moving it around on the canvas for as long as it might take them to complete a painting. Artists oils generally use raw linseed oil (also called "flax seed oil" under which name it can be found in any health food store.) ("Boiled" linseed oil is raw linseed oil to which driers have already been added to speed up the drying process.) The proprietary driers you are using, such as Liquin, do speed up drying time, but nowhere near as much as would be desired for regular painting rather than artists' oil paints. You want the more powerful stuff, generally sold in hardware and paint stores as "Japan drier." Follow the mixing instructions on the Japan drier container. Think of your artists' oils as "concentrated paint, just pigment and linseed oil, which should be considerably thinned with turpentine, mineral spirits, or acetone, (depending on the user's preference... like a barbecue sauce recipe) and Japan drier to speed the polymerization of the linseed oil base. By adding the correct amount of Japan drier, one can accelerate the drying time of an oil paint as much as is desired. It appears from the manufacturer's literature that Liquin is only intended to modify the artists' oil paints within in the much narrower spectrum of drying times required for classic artists' oil painting techniques, rather than for fast drying times appropriate for modeling.

At scale model viewing distances, wood grain isn't going to be apparent. 
 
I'd suggest you also try putting a coat of shellac over your oil paint wood color, let it dry well, and then hand-rub it for a very smooth surface. The tests will be the best proof, but I think that the alcohol solvent in shellac will have no effect on the oil paint beneath it, while the mineral spirits in even a traditional varnish may soften the oil paint beneath it unless the oil paint if well-cured.

Ah! My bad! I thought that was a wooden hull, not a card model. Take that as evidence of your great skill in creating a faux finish with oil paints!  Forget what I said about using stain. You've done a great job once and after you sand off the lacquer, you should be okay if you just reapply the oil paint faux wood finish (with a bit of drier added.) You can then wait for it to dry well (a few weeks should be enough since the coating will be thin) and then apply two or three coats of shellac and, when dry, hand-rub it to a nice perfectly smooth satin finish. At least, that's what I'd do. As before, be sure to do a test run first, but the shellac should be completely compatible with the oil paint and the alcohol shellac solvent shouldn't have any effect on the oil-based paint.
 
 

I think he wants to stain the wood and then put a high gloss lacquer over it. Not something I'd advise, but any stain would have to be applied before any shellac. No?

It's difficult to tell from the photo exactly what's happened to the finish, but from what I can see and you've described, it appears that the spray lacquer employed a very "hot" solvent which reacted with the oil paint, "skinning over" (drying quickly on the surface with greatest exposure to the air) and when the lower level of the lacquer dried, it "shrunk" and created the "crackle" finish on the drier top of the lacquer coat. Such problems are almost always the result of incompatible coatings with different drying or adhesion characteristics. 
 
It may also be a function of the incompatibility of the acrylic basecoat and the oil paint over it. Some reaction between the "hot" lacquer solvent and the oil paint causing the oil paint to soften may have resulted in the oil paint being pulled away from the acrylic base coat as the oil paint dissolved by the lacquer solvent shrunk when the solvent evaporated.
 
The different result you had when you tested the coatings on the "coating paper" may have been due to the paper's porosity or surface flexibility permitting the lacquer solvent to evaporate without creating tension between the lacquer and the lower coating layers.
 
Another possibility, and this is a wild guess, is that the drier you used on the oil paint reacted with the lacquer solvent, causing the lacquer to dry more quickly than it should have which caused the crackling in the lacquer.
 
This is all speculation, of course. It would take a chemist to evaluate the compatibility of the various coatings used. Generally speaking, "water and oil don't mix," and water-based acrylic paints and oil-based paints and lacquers shouldn't be considered compatible in any event.
 
You may be able to remove a fair amount of the lacquer and oil paint using lacquer thinner to soften it and wipe it off. Similarly, you may be able to remove the acrylic coating with alcohol or some proprietary acrylic stripper. In any event, a gentle scraping and careful sanding down to bare wood is in order. From there, it depends upon the finish you desire. High gloss finishes are usually avoided on models as the high gloss destroys the impression of reality and makes a model "look like a toy," as some have described it. If you wish to darken the wood, as you apparently tried to do, the proper coating schedule would be to apply an oil based wood stain to the bare wood. Thereafter, the wood could be coated with an oil based varnish and after that had dried well, hand rub the varnish with pumice and rottenstone until the desired level of low gloss was achieved. Alternately, a "wipe on" polyurethane finish containing stain might also be used, but only after testing this on the same wood species with which you used to plank the hull.
 
I'm sorry to see the problem you've encountered. Unfortunately, there's a certain degree of alchemy involved when dissimilar coatings are used, particularly when modern synthetic coatings are used. You just never know what you are going to get. Myself, I entirely avoid using "rattle can" spray coatings and water-based coatings on models because I've had similar difficulties to what you've experienced when I've done otherwise. Fortunately, the damage can be undone with a bit of work.
 
 

The trick with coils, etc. is to make them off the model and then glue them down on the model when they are finished. By running the bitter end of a line beneath the pre-made coil, it can be made to appear to be part of the separately attached coil.
 
In very small scales, for uniform coils, such as on pin rails, some will drive a couple of nails or pins a sufficient distance apart and wrap a suitable length of line around the pins to form the coil. For faking mooring lines, a similar approach is used.
 
What I generally do is to take a piece of scrap styrofoam packing sheet stock (always a good idea to keep a few pieces around) and I wrap it in kitchen plastic wrap. (If I want a number of uniform sized coils or fakes, draw a pattern and place the pattern on the piece of styrofoam beneath the plastic wrap.) The plastic wrap will make it easier to remove the finished shaped line from the block when it's dry. Following the pattern seen through the plastic wrap (or not if you don't use a pattern,) I use sewing pins pushed into the styrofoam block to hold the line in place as I want it to look when attached to the model. You can put pins on either side of the line or through the line, however best suits the occasion. 
 
After the line is pinned to the block, take a paintbrush and saturate the line with clear ("white") shellac. ("Orange" or "amber" shellac, which is also available, has an amber color and will work the same as "clear" shellac, but for most modeling applications, you don't want the color.) The shellac, right out of the can, is the consistency of water and will soak right into the fabric of the line. Only one application is required. Just a touch with a loaded small brush and the line will soak up the shellac. Let it soak in well but don't overdo it.  Now, let the shellac dry. As the shellac dries, the saturated line will gradually stiffen and you will be able to shape the line further as you may wish, using tweezers or the pins, whatever works for you. (Fingers aren't such a good idea because the shellacked lines will readily stick to your fingers and you may end up with a "tar baby" of string on your fingers.) If, after the shellac hardens, you want to further adjust the coil or fake, you need only apply some alcohol and shellac will soften again until the added alcohol evaporates. When the shellac is completely dry, which will be within a matter of minutes because its alcohol solvent evaporates very quickly, your line will appear as it did before, since the shellac becomes invisible, but it will be stiff and "cemented" into the position you shaped it to. (Blow on to speed up the process, if you want.) You can then remove the pins and carefully peel the line off the plastic wrap, which shouldn't stick too much to the line. and you can then attach the finished coil or fake to the model with glue or a bit more shellac..
 
This technique can also be used to secure the ends of rigging thread from unraveling and to shape catenaries in things like footropes, or to stiffen rows of reef points so they hang naturally against a sail. Somewhere along the way, many folks have come to use PVA adhesive for similar purposes, but I became familiar with using shellac in the days before PVA became popular and never found watered down PVA to be much use for anything as an alternative to shellac, mainly because I found shellac easier to handle, it has better adhesive properties, and the drying speed of its alcohol solvent is far greater than that of water. Shellac is a perfect sealer for model work. Its archival properties are well-proven, it is readily cleaned up  alcohol, and is is completely safe for man or beast in all respects. I buy white ("clear") shellac (de-waxed if I can get it) by the quart and denatured alcohol by the gallon can (from which I decant it into plastic squirt bottles,) at any paint or hardware store. It's relatively inexpensive, has a relatively infinite shelf-life and a myriad of uses in modeling. It is also completely compatible with all other oil or acrylic coatings which might be applied over it.
 

The trick with coils, etc. is to make them off the model and then glue them down on the model when they are finished. By running the bitter end of a line beneath the pre-made coil, it can be made to appear to be part of the separately attached coil.
 
In very small scales, for uniform coils, such as on pin rails, some will drive a couple of nails or pins a sufficient distance apart and wrap a suitable length of line around the pins to form the coil. For faking mooring lines, a similar approach is used.
 
What I generally do is to take a piece of scrap styrofoam packing sheet stock (always a good idea to keep a few pieces around) and I wrap it in kitchen plastic wrap. (If I want a number of uniform sized coils or fakes, draw a pattern and place the pattern on the piece of styrofoam beneath the plastic wrap.) The plastic wrap will make it easier to remove the finished shaped line from the block when it's dry. Following the pattern seen through the plastic wrap (or not if you don't use a pattern,) I use sewing pins pushed into the styrofoam block to hold the line in place as I want it to look when attached to the model. You can put pins on either side of the line or through the line, however best suits the occasion. 
 
After the line is pinned to the block, take a paintbrush and saturate the line with clear ("white") shellac. ("Orange" or "amber" shellac, which is also available, has an amber color and will work the same as "clear" shellac, but for most modeling applications, you don't want the color.) The shellac, right out of the can, is the consistency of water and will soak right into the fabric of the line. Only one application is required. Just a touch with a loaded small brush and the line will soak up the shellac. Let it soak in well but don't overdo it.  Now, let the shellac dry. As the shellac dries, the saturated line will gradually stiffen and you will be able to shape the line further as you may wish, using tweezers or the pins, whatever works for you. (Fingers aren't such a good idea because the shellacked lines will readily stick to your fingers and you may end up with a "tar baby" of string on your fingers.) If, after the shellac hardens, you want to further adjust the coil or fake, you need only apply some alcohol and shellac will soften again until the added alcohol evaporates. When the shellac is completely dry, which will be within a matter of minutes because its alcohol solvent evaporates very quickly, your line will appear as it did before, since the shellac becomes invisible, but it will be stiff and "cemented" into the position you shaped it to. (Blow on to speed up the process, if you want.) You can then remove the pins and carefully peel the line off the plastic wrap, which shouldn't stick too much to the line. and you can then attach the finished coil or fake to the model with glue or a bit more shellac..
 
This technique can also be used to secure the ends of rigging thread from unraveling and to shape catenaries in things like footropes, or to stiffen rows of reef points so they hang naturally against a sail. Somewhere along the way, many folks have come to use PVA adhesive for similar purposes, but I became familiar with using shellac in the days before PVA became popular and never found watered down PVA to be much use for anything as an alternative to shellac, mainly because I found shellac easier to handle, it has better adhesive properties, and the drying speed of its alcohol solvent is far greater than that of water. Shellac is a perfect sealer for model work. Its archival properties are well-proven, it is readily cleaned up  alcohol, and is is completely safe for man or beast in all respects. I buy white ("clear") shellac (de-waxed if I can get it) by the quart and denatured alcohol by the gallon can (from which I decant it into plastic squirt bottles,) at any paint or hardware store. It's relatively inexpensive, has a relatively infinite shelf-life and a myriad of uses in modeling. It is also completely compatible with all other oil or acrylic coatings which might be applied over it.
 

I wrote: "I find it hard to believe that shellac's solvent, alcohol, would "melt" oil paint." I was not as clear as I could have been. I'm no chemist by a long shot, but I do know that there's a somewhat significant difference between what is called "grain alcohol," which you can drink, "denatured alcohol," (sometimes called "methylated spirits,") which is used as the solvent in shellac (and which you can't drink,) and isopropyl alcohol, which you can't drink, isn't used for thinning shellac, and will dissolve oil paint.  I could be mistaken, but I believe it is the isopropyl which is added to the alcohol to form isopropyl alcohol (sometimes called "isopropanol") that dissolves many oils, alkaloids, and natural resins and not the alcohol itself. My bad for not being more specific. 
 
As for oil paint film "aging," or perhaps more accurately put, "polymerizing." tubed artists' oil paint is intentionally compounded so that it will remain "wet" for a protracted period (i.e. polymerize slowly) so that artists using it, particularly to paint pictures on stretched canvas and wooden panels, can easily work with the undried paint over a longer period of time using established techniques for applying and mixing colors directly on the painted surface. To accomplish this, artist's oils are made with raw linseed oil which polymerizes very slowly. When using artists' oil colors to paint models, heavy metal salts like cobalt and manganese which accelerate the polymerization of the linseed or other vegetable oil carrier in the artists' oil colors are added to speed up the "drying time." (Linseed oil with driers added is commonly sold as "boiled linseed oil, although it's not boiled at all.) This accelerator is called "Japan drier." * Adding the proper amount of Japan drier to a raw oil-based paint will speed up the "drying" of the paint to as little as an hour.  (There are corresponding "drying" conditioners sold for tubed acrylic artists' colors.) When using tubed artists' colors, be they oil-based or acrylic-based, they have to be thought of as simply pigment mixed with a carrier, oil or acrylic base. While classical oil painting artists use artists' colors straight out of the tube, modelers who use them for brush or airbrush application need to condition the tubed paint, which requires thinning and adding dryers to achieve the desired consistency and drying time. 
 
*   "Japan drier" is so called from the practice of "Japanning," an enamel paint finishing technique, especially for metal, which was popular in earlier times to mimic the Japanese finishing technique of building up a thick coating of high gloss lacquer coats. "Japanning" required applying multiple coats of oil-based high gloss paint which had to dry thoroughly between coats. That would have required a very long manufacturing process allowing for the drying time without the addition of "Japanning driers" to the enamel paint.

The trick with coils, etc. is to make them off the model and then glue them down on the model when they are finished. By running the bitter end of a line beneath the pre-made coil, it can be made to appear to be part of the separately attached coil.
 
In very small scales, for uniform coils, such as on pin rails, some will drive a couple of nails or pins a sufficient distance apart and wrap a suitable length of line around the pins to form the coil. For faking mooring lines, a similar approach is used.
 
What I generally do is to take a piece of scrap styrofoam packing sheet stock (always a good idea to keep a few pieces around) and I wrap it in kitchen plastic wrap. (If I want a number of uniform sized coils or fakes, draw a pattern and place the pattern on the piece of styrofoam beneath the plastic wrap.) The plastic wrap will make it easier to remove the finished shaped line from the block when it's dry. Following the pattern seen through the plastic wrap (or not if you don't use a pattern,) I use sewing pins pushed into the styrofoam block to hold the line in place as I want it to look when attached to the model. You can put pins on either side of the line or through the line, however best suits the occasion. 
 
After the line is pinned to the block, take a paintbrush and saturate the line with clear ("white") shellac. ("Orange" or "amber" shellac, which is also available, has an amber color and will work the same as "clear" shellac, but for most modeling applications, you don't want the color.) The shellac, right out of the can, is the consistency of water and will soak right into the fabric of the line. Only one application is required. Just a touch with a loaded small brush and the line will soak up the shellac. Let it soak in well but don't overdo it.  Now, let the shellac dry. As the shellac dries, the saturated line will gradually stiffen and you will be able to shape the line further as you may wish, using tweezers or the pins, whatever works for you. (Fingers aren't such a good idea because the shellacked lines will readily stick to your fingers and you may end up with a "tar baby" of string on your fingers.) If, after the shellac hardens, you want to further adjust the coil or fake, you need only apply some alcohol and shellac will soften again until the added alcohol evaporates. When the shellac is completely dry, which will be within a matter of minutes because its alcohol solvent evaporates very quickly, your line will appear as it did before, since the shellac becomes invisible, but it will be stiff and "cemented" into the position you shaped it to. (Blow on to speed up the process, if you want.) You can then remove the pins and carefully peel the line off the plastic wrap, which shouldn't stick too much to the line. and you can then attach the finished coil or fake to the model with glue or a bit more shellac..
 
This technique can also be used to secure the ends of rigging thread from unraveling and to shape catenaries in things like footropes, or to stiffen rows of reef points so they hang naturally against a sail. Somewhere along the way, many folks have come to use PVA adhesive for similar purposes, but I became familiar with using shellac in the days before PVA became popular and never found watered down PVA to be much use for anything as an alternative to shellac, mainly because I found shellac easier to handle, it has better adhesive properties, and the drying speed of its alcohol solvent is far greater than that of water. Shellac is a perfect sealer for model work. Its archival properties are well-proven, it is readily cleaned up  alcohol, and is is completely safe for man or beast in all respects. I buy white ("clear") shellac (de-waxed if I can get it) by the quart and denatured alcohol by the gallon can (from which I decant it into plastic squirt bottles,) at any paint or hardware store. It's relatively inexpensive, has a relatively infinite shelf-life and a myriad of uses in modeling. It is also completely compatible with all other oil or acrylic coatings which might be applied over it.
 

I don't know about anybody else, but I'm not sure what you mean by "as I bend them around the bow I MUST keep their width in the bend the same as the width of any planks I have not cut out ie the straight planks that came with the kit." Pictures would help.
 
The "straight planks that came with the kit" only are useful for slab-sided areas where you'd may as well be laying hardwood floor or clapboard siding. On the other hand, if you are spiling your planks from a flat sheet, you should get a plank that fits perfectly, bend or not, since you've spiled the exact shape required. Are you sure you are spiling correctly? Have you evenly divided every frame shape by the number of planks that should be required to plank the hull? If so, your plank shapes should be fine. If you are spiling from an elevation plan, the plank seams may all look parallell to the baseline of the drawing. There is no way you can accurately derive a plank shape from that because the elevation will only show the height between the plank seams as viewed orthographically. In the bows, the planks tend to be hung at a greater angle from plumb, farther away at the bottom and closer to the viewer at the top. The greater width in three dimensions rather than apparent height in two dimensions has to be taken into account. 
 
When spiling plank, the entire hull has to be "lined off." This can be done with thread or tape. The limitation as to width is only the scale width of available plank. When lining off, you have to judge the fairness of the plank seams by eye. There isn't any rule that every seam is going to be the same width, except perhaps amidships on a large vessel. When you have "lined off" all your plank seams, you can then measure the width of the plank at each seam intersection on a frame or bulkhead. This is how you account for the actual shape of a plank on a curved surface that has been drawn flat in two dimensions on the plans.
 
Hope this helps. If not... never mind. I had to guess at what the problem was.