Bob Cleek

This being my first exposure to the term "impact glue",  I did a quick search and it cross referenced contact cement.
Contact cement has no use in or on a wooden ship model.   I would use their factor of suggesting the use of contact cement to be an absolute indicator that the author is someone to avoid and totally ignore.
 
We have an on going disagreement between two camps on the use of CA - a sort of near instant quick grab.   A very rough distinction is  scratch/historian focus = CA-never   and kit centric = CA is the new sliced bread.   
A close approximation for something that is a sort of contact cement =    heat activated PVA.
Yellow PVA -  apply a wet coverage on both meeting surfaces-  100% wet but no blobs -  let both surfaces dry/polymerize  - when dry - joint and use an iron to reactivate to PVA for an instant grab.   The wood layer being ironed must be thin enough  for the heat to reach the PVA and the iron must be below the char the wood temp.
 
Old school - three bonding agents are enough:
PVA - yellow  - wood to wood  -  the smaller the gap, the stronger the bond - starving a joint with too much pressure is not possible
epoxy  -  metal to wood -  tooth on the metal in the join is a good practice.
PVA white bookbinder's pH7  neutral   for rigging that is natural fiber - linen and cotton - 
Someone else will have to supply the bonding agent for line made from man-made synthetic fibers -  a forbidden material for me.

Thanks everybody for responding!  Turns out I have a 10 inch Delta press in the shop that I never considered for this fine work. Given the recommendations (which I agree with) I'll avoid the Dremel solutions.  I ordered a Pin Vise attachment from Amazon, and bought a cross slide vise (X Y capability) from Northern Tool. I've already tested the cross slide vise and it works pretty well out of the box. I plan to clean it up and tighten it up as well. I was able to center drill a 10mm brass rod using a center punch and the cross slide vise to make a search light for my next project.  It worked out well.  When the pin vise arrives I try the ultimate test of micro drilling 3mm brass. I'm confident I can make it work.  This saves me the big bucks so I can save for the Byrnes table saw, and a mini lathe.
 
Bill

Five stars and two thumbs up! Beautiful work. Thanks for sharing it with us.

Five stars and two thumbs up! Beautiful work. Thanks for sharing it with us.

Five stars and two thumbs up! Beautiful work. Thanks for sharing it with us.

Five stars and two thumbs up! Beautiful work. Thanks for sharing it with us.

Beautiful model ! Great job ! Thanks for sharing it.

Five stars and two thumbs up! Beautiful work. Thanks for sharing it with us.

The Gyros set is also available at Micro Mark under the Rodgers name as well as many hobby shops and hardware stores under various names.  I used them in the past and found them to be OK for wood but dull or break very quickly on brass.   The big plus is they are cheap compared to good quality bits. 
Allan

As noted above, 220VAC 50hz European mains power is easily "stepped down" to 120VAC 60hz American mains power by the use of a readily available plug-in converter which are sold to the travelers from America. I expect the  50hz would result in a slower motor RPM than 60hz, but the machine's speed control should make that difference irrelevant. I doubt the minimal torque demand on the motor would occasion any overheating issues. I'd suggest you send an email to Jim Byrnes and confirm that with him. https://www.byrnesmodelmachines.com/contact5.html  It is certainly a beautiful machine.
 
If you find that the shipping to the UK negates the bargain price, you might consider Domanoff's near-identical machine now made in Poland at a similar price point. It is not machined from aluminum, but rather high quality acrylic, but it comes in either American or European powered versions and additionally has a powered, variable speed, take up spool for the finished line. The Byrnes machine has a manual crank-operated take up spool. https://www.shipworkshop.com/product-page/pl4-series-endless-rope-making-machines-with-traverse 

Vanda-Lay makes quality products for what they are. Their customer service is great because they are a small family-owned company. I have their drill press and it works fine for what it is, a small "micro" drill press. (I also have the same capability with my full-size 1950's Craftsman/King Seeley bench top drill press which has a quill adapter to mount quarter-inch  router and milling bits and an X-Y table and vise for drilling and milling, and my Unimat SL which has mico- drilling and milling capability.) The Vanda-Lay drill/mill set up looks quite nice. Their CNC machined tools are well made and I expect you'll find have tight tolerances right out of the box. (Most all Asian-made machine tools will require significant amounts of fettling (tuning) to get working to acceptable tolerances. This is what you are paying for in the price difference between, say, Little Machine Shop or Micro Mark and the lowest prices online for the same unit.)
 
I picked up my Vanda-Lay drill press and a top of the line Dremel slightly used for peanuts from a modeler who became disabled and quit the hobby. For the same money for a new Chinese small drill press, I would look for some "old 'arn" like the 1950's cast iron Craftsman bench top drill presses that are quite inexpensive used and well worth restoring if the price is right on a beat up one. Remember with machine tools that weight equals accuracy. I would not waste money on the cheap small Chinese-made drill presses. Particularly for drilling with very small bits, you want a press without runout in the quill. A wobbly tiny bit will quickly break. Also, it's always better to pay a bit more for a larger machine tool if you have the space for it because you will always have the workpiece capacity limitations of the machine to run up against. Buy a 7x12 Sieg Chinese lathe and it won't be long before you experience the frustration of it's not being able to handle a 14" workpiece!
 
The best maxim is to only buy a tool when you need it and then buy the best quality tool you can possibly afford. Cheap tools are a waste of money. They may be cheap the first time you buy one, but the cost adds up when you have to keep replacing them over and over again. A top of the line tool will last a lifetime and still have some meat on the bone when your widow sells your tools off or gives them to your buddies.  
 
Vanda-Lay is good quality stuff in terms of materials, fit and finish. The primary limitation with the Vanda-Lay tools is their Dremel power plant. Dremel mototools are handy gizmos but they were never intended to do hand-held work to fine tolerances or operate at slower speeds. (They rely on speed, not torque, to get the job done.) Dremels are big and clunky if you are trying to do fine work with them and, at high speeds, a slight slip of the hand can ruin a workpiece. I've spoken with Vanda-Lay and they've assured me that they'd be happy to provide a holder for a standard one-inch diameter Foredom Flex-shaft handpiece to replace their stock holder for the Dremel Mototool. While I haven't the need for one, I've not yet ordered one, but I think this would be a great improvement over the Dremel. The Foredom handpieces are much lighter and not so "top heavy," their foot pedal variable speed controls are more sensitive, and their large motors have far greater torque than the Dremels, particularly at low speeds. A decent used Foredom setup will probably run you a couple of hundred bucks, but once you use one, you'll never go back to the Dremel for modeling. You could easily spend five hundred bucks on a Foredom-equipped Vanda-Lay mill/drill set up, so you may be tempted to take the step up to a Sherline lathe and/or mill, or the equivalent, but remember that once you get into dedicated lathes and mills, you will easily have to spend as much again on the essential tooling and accessories for those machines before you can start doing any work with them.
 
As always with modeling tools, one can spend a lot of money on fancy machine tools, but a skilled craftsman can do the same with sharp hand tools with far less of an investment in money. The trade off, of course, is that with hand tools, you're trading your working time for those savings. There are many variables to consider and everybody has their own comfort level. It's easy to invest a lot of money in tools. "Choose wisely, Grasshopper!"  

with a converter 

Any tool that relies on a Dremel isn’t a good use of money. The best machines are by Byrnes modeling, though he doesn’t make a drill press. In my opinion a mini saw, sander, mill, and lathe all have greater value to modeling than a drill press. When I need one my Proxxon Mill serves to do the job.  I’d look at the Proxxon line, reasonably affordable and good quality. 
 
The first, and by far most used tool in my modeling is the Byrnes saw. 

I have a Vanda-Lay Acra-Mill Plus and the Drill Press. I did quite a bit using the setup when I was scratch building my Mary Taylor and Lively models. I set it up to scratch build my rigging blocks, to thickness sand a small number of small strips, and even used it cut planking strips.
 
Everything that's been said about it here sounds correct to me. I had older Dremels and they worked just fine – don't know about newer ones.
 
I think the best aspect of the Acra-Mill, etc., is that you can use them in a small space. So, if you're in an apartment, or just don't have workshop space, it's quite handy. Also, if you really don't need to do a lot of cutting, milling, etc., then it can be quite handy to have. However, after a while, it becomes a pain to have to take it apart to reconfigure it and put it back together every time you need a different set up. I still have mine, but haven't used it in years now. 

Myself, I never liked using a Dremel except for use as part of the Acra-Mill set up.
 
Personally, I think the most useful item would probably be a decent micro drill press and X-Y table. Or, even just any micro drill press. As Roger suggests, I got a cheap one that was made in China, and it works great and gets more use than 3/4 of my other power tools. However, I got one with electronic speed control. Has worked great for 4 or 5 years now.
 

If you want to upgrade your drilling equipment and at the same time not upset your wife by spending too much $$$ I would not spend $200-$500 on any drilling equipment powered by a rotary tool; Dremel or otherwise.
 
My first choice would be buying a used drill press as Bob suggests- Estate sales, Craig’s List, etc.  I bought a new drill press in 1972.  It is a Toolcraft made in Chicopee, Mass;  all cast and machined cast iron.  The only plastic is the knob on the quill handle.  It is the tool used most often in my workshop and after 50 years it still runs great.  The 3/8in capacity chuck will hold virtually any drill bit that I need to use.  Bits smaller than 3/32in are best chucked in a pin vice that is then mounted in the main chuck.
 
I realize that you might not want to bargain hunt for a used tool or be faced with the need to restore it.  In that case I would not dismiss the “no name” drill presses sold by big box home improvement stores or Harbor Freight.  These sell for a fraction of what you plan to spend to upgrade your Dremel and you will be getting a much more capable tool, even though it will probably be made in China and might not last 50 years.  I would avoid tools with electronic speed control in favor of the much more reliable belt and stepped pulley drive.
 
If you have problems with drill bits skating across the surface when drilling brass are you first center punching the hole?  A center punch is easily ground from any cylindrical piece of steel.  Even a nail can be used with the point properly ground.
 
Lathe and milling machine?  Start saving for a Sherline!
 
Roger
 
 

Vanda-Lay makes quality products for what they are. Their customer service is great because they are a small family-owned company. I have their drill press and it works fine for what it is, a small "micro" drill press. (I also have the same capability with my full-size 1950's Craftsman/King Seeley bench top drill press which has a quill adapter to mount quarter-inch  router and milling bits and an X-Y table and vise for drilling and milling, and my Unimat SL which has mico- drilling and milling capability.) The Vanda-Lay drill/mill set up looks quite nice. Their CNC machined tools are well made and I expect you'll find have tight tolerances right out of the box. (Most all Asian-made machine tools will require significant amounts of fettling (tuning) to get working to acceptable tolerances. This is what you are paying for in the price difference between, say, Little Machine Shop or Micro Mark and the lowest prices online for the same unit.)
 
I picked up my Vanda-Lay drill press and a top of the line Dremel slightly used for peanuts from a modeler who became disabled and quit the hobby. For the same money for a new Chinese small drill press, I would look for some "old 'arn" like the 1950's cast iron Craftsman bench top drill presses that are quite inexpensive used and well worth restoring if the price is right on a beat up one. Remember with machine tools that weight equals accuracy. I would not waste money on the cheap small Chinese-made drill presses. Particularly for drilling with very small bits, you want a press without runout in the quill. A wobbly tiny bit will quickly break. Also, it's always better to pay a bit more for a larger machine tool if you have the space for it because you will always have the workpiece capacity limitations of the machine to run up against. Buy a 7x12 Sieg Chinese lathe and it won't be long before you experience the frustration of it's not being able to handle a 14" workpiece!
 
The best maxim is to only buy a tool when you need it and then buy the best quality tool you can possibly afford. Cheap tools are a waste of money. They may be cheap the first time you buy one, but the cost adds up when you have to keep replacing them over and over again. A top of the line tool will last a lifetime and still have some meat on the bone when your widow sells your tools off or gives them to your buddies.  
 
Vanda-Lay is good quality stuff in terms of materials, fit and finish. The primary limitation with the Vanda-Lay tools is their Dremel power plant. Dremel mototools are handy gizmos but they were never intended to do hand-held work to fine tolerances or operate at slower speeds. (They rely on speed, not torque, to get the job done.) Dremels are big and clunky if you are trying to do fine work with them and, at high speeds, a slight slip of the hand can ruin a workpiece. I've spoken with Vanda-Lay and they've assured me that they'd be happy to provide a holder for a standard one-inch diameter Foredom Flex-shaft handpiece to replace their stock holder for the Dremel Mototool. While I haven't the need for one, I've not yet ordered one, but I think this would be a great improvement over the Dremel. The Foredom handpieces are much lighter and not so "top heavy," their foot pedal variable speed controls are more sensitive, and their large motors have far greater torque than the Dremels, particularly at low speeds. A decent used Foredom setup will probably run you a couple of hundred bucks, but once you use one, you'll never go back to the Dremel for modeling. You could easily spend five hundred bucks on a Foredom-equipped Vanda-Lay mill/drill set up, so you may be tempted to take the step up to a Sherline lathe and/or mill, or the equivalent, but remember that once you get into dedicated lathes and mills, you will easily have to spend as much again on the essential tooling and accessories for those machines before you can start doing any work with them.
 
As always with modeling tools, one can spend a lot of money on fancy machine tools, but a skilled craftsman can do the same with sharp hand tools with far less of an investment in money. The trade off, of course, is that with hand tools, you're trading your working time for those savings. There are many variables to consider and everybody has their own comfort level. It's easy to invest a lot of money in tools. "Choose wisely, Grasshopper!"  

The basic tool is what I have been using and it has done the job.  I got mine from Otto Frei.  I would suggest looking at brand name jeweler's supply sites because although all of the units may come from the same shop in China, the QA on the machines going to brand sites is probably better, with economy sites getting the just so units.
I added an XY table.  For a while, I kicked myself for paying MM for a table that cost about as much as the drill.  There are low cost ones at AliExpress, but there is the same QA issue and a low cost unit probably has loose tolerances.  I had to drill a hole in the base to mount the table.
I mostly use the XY table to hold a piece of 3/4" AA Birch ply as the work surface.
You also will want a momentary foot switch.
HSS bits.
I am fairly confident that my unit will serve as a wood mill - as long as the passes are light and the tools are SHARP.
For metal - especially steel, you will want an actual mill -  this becomes a factor if you make your own tools.
It has been as good a drill press as I have needed.
 
For wood or brass, you will want to use a sharp awl tip to make a starter hole so that the drill bit does not dance.  You want to pull the drill tip to the surface at the pilot hole before you engage the foot switch.  Sock foot for feel - switch fixed to a piece of scrap flooring.

Thanks Bob for the heads up about Midwest.  Contacted them and they sent me a PDF of the manual today.

If you haven't already, you might want to check with Midwest Products. I believe they discontinued their model kit line, but are still very much in business and may have a copy in their files.
 
Email: info@midwestproducts.com
Phone: 1-219-942-1134
Toll Free: 1-800-348-3497
Address: 400 S. Indiana St. Hobart, IN 46342
 
 
There's a copy of the plans you are looking for listed right now on eBay for $2,95:  https://www.ebay.com/sch/i.html?_nkw=midwest fantail launch ii&norover=1&mkevt=1&mkrid=711-34002-13078-0&mkcid=2&keyword=midwest fantail launch ii&crlp=_5057&MT_ID=&geo_id=&rlsatarget=kwd-77447026886641:loc-190&adpos=&device=c&mktype=&loc=43893&poi=&abcId=&cmpgn=395409860&sitelnk=&adgroupid=1239149811198381&network=o&matchtype=p&msclkid=8d8eceba2aa71eea1a68adb8976cb278
 
 
 

I think one thing to remember is that these days everything mailed seems to go by air. Air mail prices were always expensive. Back in the days of the transatlantic mail ships, the Queen Mary or Queen Elizabeth could carry hundreds of tons of mail across the Pond in four days time and we were used to waiting several weeks to get surface mail from Europe. Now, we expect the same in a few days. They can do it by air, but it comes at a much higher price.
 
Surface shipping has gone way up in price, as well. A good bit of the inflation we're experiencing is the result of price gouging by the shippers. Before the pandemic, the average rate for shipping from Shanghai to Los Angeles was stable at less than $1,800 per container from 2011 to March 2020. Since the pandemic, the rates to ship that same 40 foot container from Shanghai to Long Beach have gone up almost as high as $12,000 per container, although prices are coming down a bit at present. The pandemic gave rise to a big increase in "e-commerce" mail order business (think Amazon) which overwhelmed the shipping infrastructure. There weren't enough containers in existence to carry it all. Add to that the fact that China "locked down" to prevent Covid spread and their import traffic contracted, so, with much less to ship back from the US West Coast to China, a lot of empty containers piled up here, raising the price of empty containers in China. 

It seems that everything that we buy comes from China too!😁  At least you’re closer to the source.
 
One of the first things that you need in your ship modeling tool kit is a set of small drills and a fixture to hold them.  Here in the US, these are called Wire Sized Drills and are designated by numbers; #80 being the smallest.  Similar sized metric drills are also available in fractional millimeter sizes.  
 
Drills are made from either steel or carbide. I would avoid the carbide as they are very brittle and not necessary for drilling wood.  Look for drills offered as HSS (high speed steel).
 
To hold the drills you need a Pin Vice.  These come in sets and are fitted with interchangeable Collets.  Each collet fits a small range of drill sizes.  The pin Vice is turned by hand.  It is possible to use a powered rotary tool to hold the drills, provided that you have the correct sized collet and the rotary tool can be turned at low speed.  The high RPMs that rotary tools turn for polishing and grinding are too fast for drilling.
 
Roger

Last report I saw said there's still a huge amount of empty containers in west coast ports as well as scattered across the county.  Getting them back to the coast and then to China isn't cheap. Part of the issue is also the number of truckers on the road has decreased so they're only moving when full.  Fuel costs seem to still a factor in truck shipping.

Bitao, a master chef of ship building, adheres to the work clean ethic of clean tools and clean workspace.  🤣

I think one thing to remember is that these days everything mailed seems to go by air. Air mail prices were always expensive. Back in the days of the transatlantic mail ships, the Queen Mary or Queen Elizabeth could carry hundreds of tons of mail across the Pond in four days time and we were used to waiting several weeks to get surface mail from Europe. Now, we expect the same in a few days. They can do it by air, but it comes at a much higher price.
 
Surface shipping has gone way up in price, as well. A good bit of the inflation we're experiencing is the result of price gouging by the shippers. Before the pandemic, the average rate for shipping from Shanghai to Los Angeles was stable at less than $1,800 per container from 2011 to March 2020. Since the pandemic, the rates to ship that same 40 foot container from Shanghai to Long Beach have gone up almost as high as $12,000 per container, although prices are coming down a bit at present. The pandemic gave rise to a big increase in "e-commerce" mail order business (think Amazon) which overwhelmed the shipping infrastructure. There weren't enough containers in existence to carry it all. Add to that the fact that China "locked down" to prevent Covid spread and their import traffic contracted, so, with much less to ship back from the US West Coast to China, a lot of empty containers piled up here, raising the price of empty containers in China. 

I think one thing to remember is that these days everything mailed seems to go by air. Air mail prices were always expensive. Back in the days of the transatlantic mail ships, the Queen Mary or Queen Elizabeth could carry hundreds of tons of mail across the Pond in four days time and we were used to waiting several weeks to get surface mail from Europe. Now, we expect the same in a few days. They can do it by air, but it comes at a much higher price.
 
Surface shipping has gone way up in price, as well. A good bit of the inflation we're experiencing is the result of price gouging by the shippers. Before the pandemic, the average rate for shipping from Shanghai to Los Angeles was stable at less than $1,800 per container from 2011 to March 2020. Since the pandemic, the rates to ship that same 40 foot container from Shanghai to Long Beach have gone up almost as high as $12,000 per container, although prices are coming down a bit at present. The pandemic gave rise to a big increase in "e-commerce" mail order business (think Amazon) which overwhelmed the shipping infrastructure. There weren't enough containers in existence to carry it all. Add to that the fact that China "locked down" to prevent Covid spread and their import traffic contracted, so, with much less to ship back from the US West Coast to China, a lot of empty containers piled up here, raising the price of empty containers in China.