Bob Cleek

Thanks for posting this conversion chart program. It's one of the most extensive I've ever seen and a welcome addition to my "favorites" collection. I especially like the convenient feature of just clicking on the brand and then the color and getting the whole range of equivalents. It's more than just a "chart," it's a program. While the variation in computer screen color settings render these "online paint chips" less than perfect, they are an excellent start for those of us who mix our own colors, or run out of our "stash" of the old-time premixed "good stuff" in the middle of a build.
 
For those who may find it useful, here's an additional color conversion chart for the now out of production Floquil colors: Floquil Color Chart.pdf (microscale.com)
 
Here also is a link to a PDF copy of Floquil's instruction booklet on another website. It contains a lot of good painting tips for miniatures:  Floquil Painting Miniatures (paulbudzik.com)

Do you think the experienced guys turn them out all that much faster?   A half hour to make a deadeye and chainplates isn't all that bad at all.

... which was the most practical posture, given that they often put their chest into it to push the bar. Oddly, though, the  contemporary pictorial record frequently depicts seamen carelessly pushing the bars with their hands. Perhaps this was a casual approach used to take up a slack cable before the real work began. 
 
The guy on the right in the black cap is definitely a slacker, but then again, there's nothing on the drum!

 
The men to the left are doing it right. The men to the right aren't. Likely "artistic license" in this engraving.

 
It seems the Finnish Navy did things differently, but there doesn't appear to be anything on the drum in this apparently posed photo. I mean, really, who mans a capstan in their dress blues?

 
Doing it right, but again, everybody's in their Class A's and this steam screw vessel appears underway at sea with white-painted anchor chain secured, clean and Bristol fashion, so what are they hauling, anyway?

 
 
Germans, correctly putting their backs into it like they actually might be doing some real work.

 
 
 
 
 
 
 

We're talking about rooms in homes here, not dedicated workshops in outbuildings, etc. I'd have to say that the best course is to do all  major dust-producing operations and spray painting, if solvent aromas offend you, outdoors or in the garage. Simple as that. 
 
That said, I have the "Byrnes Trifecta" (saw, disk sander, and thickness sander) and any good "shop-vac" attached to their vacuum spuds will virtually eliminate any dust they produce. Beyond that, central shop dust collection systems get quite expensive rather quickly and are almost always quite noisy to operate, so not suitable for in-home use. (Living in a rural area, I have a large stand-alone workshop with sliding doors that permit my rolling any of my stationary power tools outside, or at least to the doorway in bad weather, where a large fan will blow the often-considerable amounts of dust and shavings out of the shop interior. They then usually turn into mulch before I get around to raking them up! )
 
While it's a matter of one's personal style, IMHO, there seems to be a lot of "sandpaper wood butchery" going on among the modeling fraternity. The parts are small and it may be convenient for some, but don't forget that in the days before electric sanding machines and other electric woodworking tools, dust in the workshop environment wasn't that big of a problem and much of the work of keeping the shop floor swept was assigned to an "idiot boy." (In those days, as in many "less-developed" countries today, the mentally handicapped weren't considered "disabled," but just "differently-abled.") "Wood butchers" in earlier times used hand saws, and other edged tools to shape wood. A scraper does as good, or better, a job of finishing a smooth surface than a lot of sandpaper and for a lot less money, while not filling the air with sanding dust. A chisel, carving knife, plane, spokeshave, or draw knife will shape wood by removing shavings that are easily swept up without turning your work area into a "dust bowl." Learning to use the right hand tool for the job can eliminate a huge amount of the microscopically fine (and hazardous) dust that high powered modern machines produce. Hand tools create shavings and scrapings, of course, but they are much easier to clean up that an equivalent volume of micro-particles hanging in the air over a large area.
 
How you choose to work has a lot to do with how much dust, and particularly unhealthy "micro-dust," that  you will produce.  Before worrying about how to clean it up, it's probably a lot more effective to think about how to produce less of it when working.
 
No Idea makes a very good point about shop cleanliness. (Do as he says, not as I do!  ) Keeping a work area clean and having a "place for all tools and all tools in their place" is the mark of a well-trained professional craftsman. It saves tons of time and exponentially increases your efficiency. (Which is why surgeons always have their instruments laid out in the operating room and auto mechanics spend thousands of bucks on those Snap-On rolling tool chests they use. We can get by with the much less expensive models, of course.)  As for solvents in adhesives and coatings, I would advise, not just because of the aromas which some may find offensive, but also as a matter of safety, that all volatile liquids be stored outside the living spaces of a home in a metal locker, if possible. Fire is an ever-present danger.

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/

Beyond what I said above, I've got no more information on David Goodchild. These days, I have to remind myself more and more frequently that people I've known for years are getting older, too. A lot of them were older than I in the first place. "Whatever happened to Charlie?... Oh, he died a couple of years ago." is sadly a common experience for me these days. The last time he "dropped off the radar" a few years ago, some of us who had done business with him over the years were hoping somebody would take over his business. I think it's pretty much a "one man show," but his catalog was amazing and from all indications was always thriving. 
 
Also, I believe he did not maintain any inventory of printed books, but rather produced each reprint on demand as it was ordered. I'm not sure how what technology he used, but his books were not photocopies of the original, but rather separately typeset bound volumes. The process was that an order would come in and he'd have the copy printed and bound and then sent out. I'm not positive, but I don't think he was doing the printing in house. It's also entirely possible that the local pandemic restrictions shut down his printing operation. He lives, or used to live, in the suburbs of Philadelphia, as I recall. I don't know what the pandemic situation is there right now. Like a lot of businesses, he may simply be shut down due to the pandemic. Your order would have been right around the time the "lock downs" started and it may have been stuck in the pipeline.
 
If it's any consolation, The David Goodchild I know would never take somebody's money and skip out. There's got to be an explanation there somewhere.

Absolutely!  A bit of thinner, turpentine or mineral spirits, or a bit of acetone if I'm spraying, which allows building up a coating without waiting so long for it to dry, a tiny dash of flattening paste, if needed, a tiny dash of Japan drier to speed up drying even more if needed, a bit of raw linseed oil to slow down drying if need be. pour it into an empty pill bottle with a half dozen bee-bees and shake her up good. Getting in touch with my inner mad scientist. Life is good!  
 
Big tubes of some high quality colors can seem a bit pricey, but I sure don't miss paying eight bucks for a third of an ounce of pre-mixed paint anymore, that's for sure. 

Hey, Roger, I can save you ten bucks. Check out this free interactive online color wheel:  https://www.rapidtables.com/web/color/color-wheel.html
 
You just click on the area of color you want on the color wheel or type in the Hex, RGB, or HSL code and you get a "chip" of the color in the large square to the right of the color wheel. The colors on either side of the color you pick are the colors that yield the color you picked when mixed together. Red and yellow make orange, yellow and blue make green, blue and red make purple, and so on.
 
 

What Jaager said. However, be sure to buy quality artists' oils, which have finer-ground pigments, not cheaper "student" or "hobbyist" grades. These will have "purer" colors which are more likely to blend as expected. Sometimes, non-primary colors are a combination of colors which don't behave exactly as expected when mixed with other colors. Given the usually limited palette of ship models, It only takes a few tubes of colors to give one the ability to pretty much everything they'll ever need. 
 
However, if you really want to stick with premixed paints, check out Tru-Color Paint. I've not used it myself.  It's a relatively new company and isn't as widely distributed as some of the other brands, but it is getting really good reviews from the railroad and armor modelers. They will mix custom colors, I believe. That said, their color selection is so broad that I don't think you will find it all that difficult to get a match. Check out their color charts. See: https://trucolorpaint.com/

While quality model kits, as Roger describes them, serve to inspire and educate beginning builders and those who, for whatever reason, want a model a particular kit yields, "going over to the dark side" of scratch modeling is the inevitable outcome of one's developing modeling confidence, if not skill. 
 
You don't need to be a Passaro or Tosti to build from scratch. As Roger sagely notes, there is an unlimited supply of plans for just about any type of boat and they can often be had for "beer money," if not for free. Freeing one's self from bondage to the kit manufacturers opens the entire world of nautical subjects to the modeler who is thereby no longer bound to building models of ships that have been built hundreds, if not thousands, of times before. Chapelle famously addressed this over fifty years ago (I think,): Nautical Research Guild - Article - Ship Models that Should Not be Built (thenrg.org)  and Nautical Research Guild - Article - Ship Models that Ought to be Built (thenrg.org).  
 
I think the question that should be asked by serious modelers more often than it seems to be is, "If, by some strange twist of fate, my model were to come to light two or three hundred years from now, would studying it tell people in that far distant future anything they didn't already know?" We don't have to build to the amazing levels of technical quality to which only a few are able to achieve, either. Some of the most academically valuable models we have today were actually quite crude, but they are all we have to see what ships of their times looked like. We are all capable of building "museum quality" models, if we just give them enough time!
 
 
 
Mataró – the oldest Museum Ship Model | Professional Model Making (wordpress.com)

1980's, 1880's, 1780's, 1680's?
 
In London, your best bet for any of the above would be the Royal Museums Greenwich - National Maritime Museum. 

The Veritas rabbet plane and fence look like an invitation to break the old tool buying rule, "don't buy it until you need it." Factory mass production of doors, among other things, spelled the eventual demise of the shoulder plane. It's only in recent times when artisanal woodworking has experienced something of a revival that the versatile shoulder (rabet) plane has been rediscovered and again appreciated. It's a handy tool to have if you have to work rabets or trim tenons across the grain for a perfect fit.  Stanley's #90 series rabet planes are again in production (now in a somewhat redesigned version from the original,) as are the pricey Veritas version and others from the new group of "jewelry hand tool" boutique manufacturers competing for the more well-heeled segment of the amateur market eager to pay three times the price and more for fancy stuff.  ("Our products won't make you a better woodworker, but we guarantee they'll make you look like one.") The Stanley #90 series and their clones have bodies that come apart so that they can serve double-duty as a bull-nosed and/or chisel plane for working into corners. They are one of those "you don't need it often, but when you do, it's the only thing that will do the job" sort of plane.
 
Of course, if you have a Byrnes table saw, you'll never have a need to be jointing quarter inch square stock with a plane, now will you?  
 
http://www.supertool.com/StanleyBG/stan11.htm
 
http://www.oldtooluser.com/TypeStudy/stanno93rptypestudy.htm
 
https://www.amazon.com/Stanley-12-140-No-92-Shoulder-Chisel/dp/B002B56CVS/ref=asc_df_B002B56CVS/?tag=bingshoppinga-20&linkCode=df0&hvadid={creative}&hvpos={adposition}&hvnetw=o&hvrand={random}&hvpone=&hvptwo=&hvqmt=e&hvdev=c&hvdvcmdl={devicemodel}&hvlocint=&hvlocphy=&hvtargid=pla-4584001418834016&psc=1
 
 
 

It appears to be simply a fence that permits jointing small stock. I'm not sure what advantage it offers over simply clamping a piece of wood or sheet metal to the side of the plane or sandwiching the sheet of wood or sheet metal and the plane in a vise to achieve the same at no cost to the user. Those are the old "tricks of the trade" for the same application.

I don't remember the source BJ uses offhand, but can find out for you.  Essentially, it is resin-infused paper.  When used with a properly set laser, it can produce extremely fine detail without burnout.  The thinnest I've seen so far is .011".  I normally use .015", .025", and .035", but think you can get it up to .060".  
 
This is the pilot house for OREGON.  It is two layers of .015" laserboard bent around a former that will be included in the kit.  When I tried it in 1/64" ply, many of the vertical pieces of the lower panels simply burned out.  With the laserboard, there's hardly even any scorching on the back side. 

Sometimes the materials supplied in a kit are not easy to use for one purpose or another. On my current build of the Pride of Baltimore II (modified into a more generic War of 1812 era Baltimore clipper) I was having a heck of a time cutting the 1/32" stock neatly for the trim around the transom and the "fancy pieces" on the sides of the stern. My blades are surgically sharp. In fact, they're actually real surgical blades, brand new. The wood kept splitting while I cut the pieces and trying to bend the fancy pieces on the sides of the stern also split them. Eventually I came up with the idea of using file folder material for these pieces. I don't know if the thickness is to scale, but the card stock cut neatly and easily, and didn't crack when I bent it. The cut edges had a bit of paper "fuzz" which was easily handled by using sanding sealer and then sanding it off.
 
Now I'm at the stage of building the bowsprit. There are some metal bands at the base of the jib boom but I  can foresee that bending them neatly wouldn't be easy, and getting the required holes drilled in the brass without having the drill bit wander off, even with a pilot dimple, would be tough.
I'm going to resort to my card stock again. It should bend and glue easily and I think the drill bit will stay in place better than in brass. Once painted I think they'll look just fine.
 
Anyone else here use alternative materials to make life easier? 

Absolutely!  A bit of thinner, turpentine or mineral spirits, or a bit of acetone if I'm spraying, which allows building up a coating without waiting so long for it to dry, a tiny dash of flattening paste, if needed, a tiny dash of Japan drier to speed up drying even more if needed, a bit of raw linseed oil to slow down drying if need be. pour it into an empty pill bottle with a half dozen bee-bees and shake her up good. Getting in touch with my inner mad scientist. Life is good!  
 
Big tubes of some high quality colors can seem a bit pricey, but I sure don't miss paying eight bucks for a third of an ounce of pre-mixed paint anymore, that's for sure. 

Hey, Roger, I can save you ten bucks. Check out this free interactive online color wheel:  https://www.rapidtables.com/web/color/color-wheel.html
 
You just click on the area of color you want on the color wheel or type in the Hex, RGB, or HSL code and you get a "chip" of the color in the large square to the right of the color wheel. The colors on either side of the color you pick are the colors that yield the color you picked when mixed together. Red and yellow make orange, yellow and blue make green, blue and red make purple, and so on.
 
 

The twisted wire method of making eyebolts pictured above works wonderfully for small eyebolts. I find, however, that as the wire size increases, the twisted shaft's diameter increases as well and can easily require a drilled hole much larger than you want on your model. (Sometimes too large to work on a slim spar, making them too weak and likely to break.) Really, what you will find easier, and useful for many purposes, is a jeweler's round-nosed pliers such as Allan pictured in his post above. They are not expensive at all, although I'd urge you to buy the best tools you can afford because they will last you a lifetime and these will get used a lot. They come in various sizes, some with very slim points.
 

 

 
They are also made with stepped points which will ensure that you easily make the same sized diameter loop at each step.
 

 
And, last but not least, there are pliers which have a round point and a concave anvil point for making perfectly half-round bends which are really handy for making hooks:
 

 
Having the right tools for metal work is pretty important. This last tool is really what you want for eyebolts that are open. Cutting the "twisties" may work, but you'll probably end up with twisted shanks that are too fat and you don't need them, anyhow.
 
Check out online jeweler's tool and orthodontic instrument retailers. You can get these various pliers for as little as five or six bucks apiece, on up to fifteen or twenty bucks in brushed stainless steel for the fancy ones. "He who dies with the most tools wins!"

Absolutely!  A bit of thinner, turpentine or mineral spirits, or a bit of acetone if I'm spraying, which allows building up a coating without waiting so long for it to dry, a tiny dash of flattening paste, if needed, a tiny dash of Japan drier to speed up drying even more if needed, a bit of raw linseed oil to slow down drying if need be. pour it into an empty pill bottle with a half dozen bee-bees and shake her up good. Getting in touch with my inner mad scientist. Life is good!  
 
Big tubes of some high quality colors can seem a bit pricey, but I sure don't miss paying eight bucks for a third of an ounce of pre-mixed paint anymore, that's for sure. 

Hey, Roger, I can save you ten bucks. Check out this free interactive online color wheel:  https://www.rapidtables.com/web/color/color-wheel.html
 
You just click on the area of color you want on the color wheel or type in the Hex, RGB, or HSL code and you get a "chip" of the color in the large square to the right of the color wheel. The colors on either side of the color you pick are the colors that yield the color you picked when mixed together. Red and yellow make orange, yellow and blue make green, blue and red make purple, and so on.
 
 

Absolutely!  A bit of thinner, turpentine or mineral spirits, or a bit of acetone if I'm spraying, which allows building up a coating without waiting so long for it to dry, a tiny dash of flattening paste, if needed, a tiny dash of Japan drier to speed up drying even more if needed, a bit of raw linseed oil to slow down drying if need be. pour it into an empty pill bottle with a half dozen bee-bees and shake her up good. Getting in touch with my inner mad scientist. Life is good!  
 
Big tubes of some high quality colors can seem a bit pricey, but I sure don't miss paying eight bucks for a third of an ounce of pre-mixed paint anymore, that's for sure. 

Jaager,
I certainly agree that close is good enough.  Especially in the day when painters mixed their own paints.  Eric also makes the point that these oxide paints were especially subject to variation because the natural pigments varied.
 
I have never tried to use a color wheel.  For my last model, I mixed artist’s acrylic pigments by eye.
 
Bob,
My reason for posting this was to encourage more modelers to push their limits a little; away from premixed paints.  This is an alternative.  
 
I have found that quality artist acrylics in tubes mix up and spray well.  For my last model, though, I bought  a huge tube of yellow ochre at WallMart for something less than $5.  The grains of pigment could have been used for aggregate to pave your driveway.
 
Actually, I found an unopened bottle of Floquil SantaFe orange in my stash.  I think a slight red tint and Eric Ronnberg’s system of adding grey to mute the intensity should do the trick.
 
Roger

What Jaager said. However, be sure to buy quality artists' oils, which have finer-ground pigments, not cheaper "student" or "hobbyist" grades. These will have "purer" colors which are more likely to blend as expected. Sometimes, non-primary colors are a combination of colors which don't behave exactly as expected when mixed with other colors. Given the usually limited palette of ship models, It only takes a few tubes of colors to give one the ability to pretty much everything they'll ever need. 
 
However, if you really want to stick with premixed paints, check out Tru-Color Paint. I've not used it myself.  It's a relatively new company and isn't as widely distributed as some of the other brands, but it is getting really good reviews from the railroad and armor modelers. They will mix custom colors, I believe. That said, their color selection is so broad that I don't think you will find it all that difficult to get a match. Check out their color charts. See: https://trucolorpaint.com/

Excellent question! I wondered the same thing the other day. Vossiewulf was a valuable member of the forum community. He's a very accomplished modeler. I've learned much from him over the years. Perhaps the Admin could give him a ping.
 
 

Absolutely. I've also considered dental wax sprue wire, an easily sourced product. I know it is available down to #20 gauge and if not finer, I expect it could be reduced using a draw plate. It's a hard wax sold on spools like wire that's used in dental labs and by jewelers for lost wax casting purposes. It would have the advantage of melting away when the oven-hardened FIMO was baked.
 
The concept of stamp-molding oven-hardening FIMO isn't limited to blocks, either. There's really no limit so long as the object is shaped in such a way that it can be removed from a split mold. Cannon, cleats, belaying pins, etc. could easily be done. Mold halves could be made of hard injection-molded plastic like LEGO bricks are made of. Stock mold halves that mounted on a plier-like hand tool could be manufactured and sold for all sorts of parts in various scales. The real question is whether the tooling costs and production costs to produce a range of molds would "pencil out." There would probably be a considerable investment to manufacture them and I'm not sure there would be a sufficient market for such a product to turn a profit. 
 
But wait! There's more!
 
I did a bit of research on line. It's even easier than what I had originally envisioned. It seems now that FIMO and Sculpey clays are made in a liquid form for poured castings that cure to hard FIMO or Sculpey shapes. (Sculpey is another polymer clay product sold in the US.) So, all we have to do is make a master pattern and then make a silicone mold for what we are wanting to reproduce in quantity. The silicone mold can be used over and over again. We're so busy building ship models that we aren't keeping up with the modeling technology in other fields, I suppose.