Bob Cleek

I second what Druxey posted.   
 
I have had the good fortune to have models shipped from the US to Europe on several  occasions and to various parts of the US with only two minor bumps that had to be fixed and were easily done by the buyer or a friend of the buyer.   Antiques and art shippers are definitely the way to go.  They are professionals at this and take full responsibility.  They carry insurance based on the value that you give them for the model just in case, and photograph everything as the process goes along.   UPS, FedEx, DHL et al are not always very good handlers of delicate items and should be avoided completely for this kind of shipment.    It is not a cheap proposition, but worth it in the end.    
 

I'm sorry to read of the damage to your model. For important and delicate models, the only reliable way to ship them is to use a professional art, museum and antique moving company. It is expensive, but far safer. Over many years, I've only ever had one model damaged. Insurance covered not only the cost of repair, but my travel and accommodation as well. The company I dealt with was professional and prompt in responding.

I always put the side that has the most errors closest to the wall.  

In at least one contemporary Navy Board model without sails, I've seen the sheets run from the belaying pin to their blocks aloft with a figure eight stopper knot in the bitter end. I believe this is how the running rigging would have been left aloft when the sails were sent down. In such fashion, the sheets, etc. would be left aloft and ready to bend to the sail when the sail was again sent aloft.

With the way real oil-based enamels are going the way of the dodo birds, mixing our own paint and colors from tubed artists' oils is going to become a valuable skill for those looking for a really fine finish.

I rigged Pegasus, as Bob describes, to include every rope including those for the sails based on the research I did at the time. It looks great and a model I’m proud of. It does take a lot of work managing the complexity of all those ropes in tight quarters, the end result is worth it. 
 
I had a nice build log here but it was lost in the 2013 crash, only the gallery photos survive.   I think it’s a great idea, go for it. 

I've recently come to realize how important it is that "Torque is good. Speed is not so good." It's not just the burning issue with sanding, but it applies in all things. High speed micro-motors have become very popular in recent years. Their small size offers advantages, particularly in terms of battery powered tools, as does their lower price in some instances, but high speed cutting tools are much more difficult to control and a slip that ruins a workpiece is much more likely to occur. There are lots of cute 12 VAC cutting tools on the market now that will easily stall out if you try to hog through hard wood. They're made for cutting balsa and basswood and that's about it. While manufacturers replace torque with speed, it's not an even trade. A lot is lost in the translation.
 
Another problem with high speed electric motors is that if you slow them down with a rheostat speed controller, you don't get any corresponding increase in torque. You pretty much have to get them spinning at high speed to get much done with them in any case.
 
This is most apparent if one compares steam engines with internal combustion engines. A 5 HP steam engine will drive a 25' displacement hull at hull speed turning a large propeller slowly with its high torque. It takes a 25 HP low torque gas or diesel engine to do the same spinning a small propeller at high speed. The steam engine will last virtually forever with far less maintenance. The gas or diesel engine will wear out in relatively short order and require far more maintenance until it does. There's no free lunch.

3M makes the right tool for that job: Feathering Disc Adhesive. The 3M stuff is relatively expensive. Less expensive abrasive disc adhesives are on the market. Disc adhesive permits the easier removal of worn out discs than rubber cement, although the two may appear the same. One application of the disc adhesive will permit removing a used disc and replacing it with another without adding more adhesive for a few discs before more adhesive needs to be added. It cleans off the surface easily with acetone, or by rolling it off by hand. Sold in auto body and fender repair supply stores or on line. Here, again, the Byrnes machine has the advantage in that  less expensive cut abrasive sheets in standard sizes can be used and no adhesive is required. The savings over purchasing proprietary abrasive belts is another advantage of the Byrnes thickness sander.
 

Probably a buyer's premium at auction or some sort of taxes in the mix.
 
Judging from the picture that brought in the highest price so far, I'd say yours ought to bring a higher price. It's much more interesting and complex a work. (IMHO...  )

With the way real oil-based enamels are going the way of the dodo birds, mixing our own paint and colors from tubed artists' oils is going to become a valuable skill for those looking for a really fine finish.

In at least one contemporary Navy Board model without sails, I've seen the sheets run from the belaying pin to their blocks aloft with a figure eight stopper knot in the bitter end. I believe this is how the running rigging would have been left aloft when the sails were sent down. In such fashion, the sheets, etc. would be left aloft and ready to bend to the sail when the sail was again sent aloft.

In light of what the OP wrote about some of his work, I have been holding this back, but I will just type it.
 
The wales and rails were major structural parts of a hull.  I can not conceive of a situation where one would be weakened in any way just to attach a channel.
A channel is a part of the rigging.  It does nothing to strengthen a hull,  If anything,a channel adds addition stress to the hull.  I would expect that it needed a sound attachment to the side of a ship.  An attachment not prone to racking, but it not digging into the hull structure. I see that any decorative molding on a rail or wale would be absent where the channel attached, but that would be about all.

I'm going out on a limb here because I haven't actually tried this. It's purely theory at this point, but it's something I anticipate attempting when I'm next faced with having to make a bunch of really small blocks.
 
I think it may be possible to make quite small blocks out of oven-hardening plasticine modeling clay, such as FIMO. A mold could be made to form the blocks to any shape desired. When the oven-hardening FIMO is "baked" at 230 degrees Fahrenheit  it hardens. (There's also an "air hardening" FIMO, but I believe the oven-hardening stuff is stronger. Through holes in the blocks could be formed using a suitable diameter needle or awl. Metal wire eyes and bails could be permanently inserted in the soft FIMO before hardening, if desired. Basically, we're talking about FIMO beads that are shaped like blocks. 
 
It's a slow Saturday morning, so my creative juices are overflowing, but this is one approach I've been playing around with for some time. Imagine a pliers with block shapes in its faces, sort of like an old-fashioned round ball bullet mold. Quite a few blocks could be molded in short order.
 
I don't have any idea of the archival qualities of oven-hardened FIMO, but we have a few pieces around the house that were done with it by friends and they seem to have held up very well over the years.
 
If anybody's tried this, I'd welcome hearing of their experiences.

Tinning and fluxing the untinned part may work with conventional heat alone. However, it sounds like you were using regular "soft solder" and too much of it. It's my guess you'd avoid the problem described by silver soldering the parts using flux, a speck of silver solder, (or silver solder paste) and a torch. The solder joint should be practically invisible if you're careful applying the flux (or silver solder paste.) This will also provide a much stronger joint. A resistance soldering unit can replace the torch if one prefers. They have their advantages. at a price. The "blob" was a "materials and technique" issue, I'd expect.

Good idea mounting the rod eccentrically to lower the sheave between the block faces.
 
While Wingrove's form tool reduces the number of cuts in half, if one sets a stop on their cross-slide, repetitive single cuts aren't that much more work. His form tool does permit exact repetitive spacing between the blocks on the rod, though. Perhaps it may be possible to mount two cutting tools side by side with a spacer shim between them and replicate Wingrove's cutting tool. Wingrove's book has a number of such cutting tools for things like cannon and belaying pins but those custom cutting tools are easier said than done, particularly in tiny sizes! It must be remembered that his forte was metal automobile models. He was a master miniature metal machinist.
 
It would seem internally stropped blocks can be made relatively easily by soldering a bent wire bail at the top and/or bottom of the block body. 

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.
 
 

Absolutely! I have a kit for attaching brass eyelets for canvas work. It has a pair of vise-grip pliers which accept a variety of different shaped "heads" that will set brass eyelets or "cringles" and snaps and such for canvas and sailmaking. I'm thinking I could fashion a "head" for it that would stamp out molded FIMO blocks. A groove between the two head faces would permit running a wire through to make the necessary holes for the line to run through.
 
"(c) 2021 Robert J. Cleek" just in case you see it for sale in the MicroMark catalog someday!  

Probably a buyer's premium at auction or some sort of taxes in the mix.
 
Judging from the picture that brought in the highest price so far, I'd say yours ought to bring a higher price. It's much more interesting and complex a work. (IMHO...  )

Actually, there's another ship modeling forum on the internet that's infamous for ignoring intellectual property rights. Let's not go there. Keep it real.  

Probably a buyer's premium at auction or some sort of taxes in the mix.
 
Judging from the picture that brought in the highest price so far, I'd say yours ought to bring a higher price. It's much more interesting and complex a work. (IMHO...  )

Absolutely! I have a kit for attaching brass eyelets for canvas work. It has a pair of vise-grip pliers which accept a variety of different shaped "heads" that will set brass eyelets or "cringles" and snaps and such for canvas and sailmaking. I'm thinking I could fashion a "head" for it that would stamp out molded FIMO blocks. A groove between the two head faces would permit running a wire through to make the necessary holes for the line to run through.
 
"(c) 2021 Robert J. Cleek" just in case you see it for sale in the MicroMark catalog someday!  

Ah, the voice of experience is always the most valuable. Scale is always the problem. I have a couple of models awaiting restoration and, for the life of me, I can't imagine how they made the blocks they did, smaller than a grain of rice and quite accurately convincing.

True. Silver solder won't fill gaps. If one wanted an externally metal-stropped modern block, they might have an easier go of it by rolling suitably-sized annealed copper wire into a flat ribbon section. 

Tinning and fluxing the untinned part may work with conventional heat alone. However, it sounds like you were using regular "soft solder" and too much of it. It's my guess you'd avoid the problem described by silver soldering the parts using flux, a speck of silver solder, (or silver solder paste) and a torch. The solder joint should be practically invisible if you're careful applying the flux (or silver solder paste.) This will also provide a much stronger joint. A resistance soldering unit can replace the torch if one prefers. They have their advantages. at a price. The "blob" was a "materials and technique" issue, I'd expect.

Been down that road, but it turned out to be a cul-de-sac ... when you are working on 1 to 1.5 mm long blocks, this means that the strop is 1/10 the diameter, i.e. 0.1 mm. If you flatten that not much of substance is left ...