Bob Cleek

There is nothing the Byrnes saw cannot do, and do better. If you want to keep two saws the reason shouldn’t be because some other saw can do it. (Short of a full size table saw I suppose) 
 
The addition of the Byrnes cross cut table accessory opens even more possibilities. I easily cut lap joint hatches for Cheerful using it. 

Sutherland Welles Ltd.  have products that are 3 grades of polymerized Tung oil.  They allow for a faster and more predictable gloss level and much less danger of getting a "never dries" finish.  There is an old post here where a pure Tung oil application - to a table if I remember it correctly.  I suspect that either the product was not as advertised, or too much was applied.  In the latter case, a 50% dilution primer coat was skipped and the coat was a too thick 100%.  I think it case hardened at the surface and blocked oxygen from getting to the oil where a primer should be and it stayed an oil. It was a sticky mess - especially on a table
Floors and tables are probably the one place where the otherwise awful plastic polyurethane finish is the proper choice.

Also beware the difference between “tung oil finish,” the stuff you find at the big box and hardware stores, and “pure tung oil,” the real stuff. I think the first is more like a polyurethane and just uses the words “tung oil” for marketing. Pure tung oil is harder to find and takes more effort and time to apply, but eventually hardens and oxidizes to a beautiful, natural, water resistant finish…for gun stocks, furniture, and other knick knacks.

You're correct. I misspoke. I meant to say "satin walnut," which is also known as redgum, sweetgum, and liquidambar. The sapwood can be quite nearly white.

The method of application isn't really the critical factor. There is much more to a successful finish than learning to use a paintbrush or an airbrush alone. What most of those who haven't been taught by professional painters don't understand is the art of conditioning their paint, as pros call it. "Thinning" is only one conditioning factor. Flow control is essential. Flow is basically "drying time." Drying time is a function of both simple evaporation of the water, alcohol, or hydrocarbon solvents that hold the pigment (solids) and binder (oil or acrylic) in suspension so they can be applied. Brush stokes can be minimized if the brushing is done well and if the paint is thinned, but it really takes conditioning the paint to eliminate brush strokes completely. Retarders slow the polymerization of the binder so that the binder and pigment "lay down" evenly on the painted surface. When your paint is properly conditioned, you don't have to worry about brush strokes because they will "lay down" and disappear of their own accord if you give the paint time enough to "lay down" before the carrier evaporates and the binder stiffens. Check out manufacturer's instructions (reading the labels on the bottles does help!) for conditioning and search YouTube for instructional videos. Once you get the hang of conditioning your paint, that is, balancing the amount of carrier and its evaporation rate to the speed of the binder's hardening using the materials for your type of coating, be it traditional oil paint or modern acrylics, you will be surprised how easy it is to get a great finish. I'm sorry, but it isn't something that lends itself to text instruction. You have to be shown, or experiment yourself until you get the hang of it. Part of that has to do with the other variable in the equation, the environmental factors. The ambient temperature and humidity will effect the drying and curing times, as well, so getting it right is an exercise in rubbing your stomach and patting your head at the same time.
 
I'm not a big fan of acrylics, although they do seem to be getting better over time. One tip I can share which may work for others is that  when I do use them, I use an acrylic coating that is soluble in alcohol, not water. There are two reasons for this. 1) Water will raise the grain on bare wood, while alcohol (and solvents when using oil based coatings) does not, and 2) alcohol evaporates much faster than water. A "hot" (fast evaporating) thinner will almost always produce a better finish. (This is why the old Floquil paints were so loved by those old enough to remember them. Their Dio-Sol proprietary solvent was extremely "hot.") So, if you feel the need to thin your acrylic and it's soluble in alcohol or water, try using alcohol and see how you like it. Similarly, when airbrushing oil paints, I will sometimes use acetone to thin oil paint because of its high rate of evaporation. 
 
 

You're correct. I misspoke. I meant to say "satin walnut," which is also known as redgum, sweetgum, and liquidambar. The sapwood can be quite nearly white.

The method of application isn't really the critical factor. There is much more to a successful finish than learning to use a paintbrush or an airbrush alone. What most of those who haven't been taught by professional painters don't understand is the art of conditioning their paint, as pros call it. "Thinning" is only one conditioning factor. Flow control is essential. Flow is basically "drying time." Drying time is a function of both simple evaporation of the water, alcohol, or hydrocarbon solvents that hold the pigment (solids) and binder (oil or acrylic) in suspension so they can be applied. Brush stokes can be minimized if the brushing is done well and if the paint is thinned, but it really takes conditioning the paint to eliminate brush strokes completely. Retarders slow the polymerization of the binder so that the binder and pigment "lay down" evenly on the painted surface. When your paint is properly conditioned, you don't have to worry about brush strokes because they will "lay down" and disappear of their own accord if you give the paint time enough to "lay down" before the carrier evaporates and the binder stiffens. Check out manufacturer's instructions (reading the labels on the bottles does help!) for conditioning and search YouTube for instructional videos. Once you get the hang of conditioning your paint, that is, balancing the amount of carrier and its evaporation rate to the speed of the binder's hardening using the materials for your type of coating, be it traditional oil paint or modern acrylics, you will be surprised how easy it is to get a great finish. I'm sorry, but it isn't something that lends itself to text instruction. You have to be shown, or experiment yourself until you get the hang of it. Part of that has to do with the other variable in the equation, the environmental factors. The ambient temperature and humidity will effect the drying and curing times, as well, so getting it right is an exercise in rubbing your stomach and patting your head at the same time.
 
I'm not a big fan of acrylics, although they do seem to be getting better over time. One tip I can share which may work for others is that  when I do use them, I use an acrylic coating that is soluble in alcohol, not water. There are two reasons for this. 1) Water will raise the grain on bare wood, while alcohol (and solvents when using oil based coatings) does not, and 2) alcohol evaporates much faster than water. A "hot" (fast evaporating) thinner will almost always produce a better finish. (This is why the old Floquil paints were so loved by those old enough to remember them. Their Dio-Sol proprietary solvent was extremely "hot.") So, if you feel the need to thin your acrylic and it's soluble in alcohol or water, try using alcohol and see how you like it. Similarly, when airbrushing oil paints, I will sometimes use acetone to thin oil paint because of its high rate of evaporation. 
 
 

But when you throw them in the trash, they just dump them in the landfill and then when it rains they leach into the groundwater too. They really should be preserved for all posterity and never discarded if one is really serious about being responsible for their environment.
 
Vegetable oils are nothing like petrochemical oils and are relatively benign in the ecosystem. They come out of trees and they decompose like trees. They don't dilute in water and won't cause any significant environmental harm. 
 
On the other hand, human feces can contain many seriously damaging chemicals, particularly the by-products of digested pharmaceuticals like antibiotics. For this reason, people who are taking any sort of medication should never flush the toilet under any circumstances because this can pollute the rivers and oceans and cause serious harm to aquatic species. In some cases, such chemicals can cause mutations than can disrupt entire ecosystems. 
 
(Sorry, but they don't seem to have an emoji for "extreme sarcasm.")  

Tung oil is just another vegetable oil, like linseed oil. It's use was primarily the result of marketing by the Homer Formby paint company and its use is something of a recurring fad. It dries very slowly, so I don't really see the point of  using tung oil instead of "boiled" linseed oil (which is raw linseed oil with driers added to speed its polymerization.) Tung oil is used in some varnishes, being thinned with turpentine or mineral spirits and with some Japan drier added. Tung, like any oil, will tend to produce a glossy finish if coats are built up. "Teak oil" is nothing more than any oil that some manufacturer puts the name "teak" on and sells for a higher price to uninformed consumers.
 
Any oil will bring out the figuring of a piece of wood if that is the desired result. It very rarely is in modeling because the grain of the wood, unless it is very, very tight, or practically invisible, will be so wildly out of scale that it detracts from the appearance of the model. This is particularly true of open grained woods like the walnuts and mahoganies that kit manufacturers provide to suggest their kit is "high quality." These woods are acceptable for models if their grain is filled and they are painted over, although there are many other species which are far more suitable, and at a much lower price. Walnut and mahogany are great for furniture and such. Not so much for ship models. The one exception would be half models, which portray the shape of a hull alone without significant detail and aren't intended to portray a detailed model of the entire prototype.
 
So, to answer your question, yes. Finishing walnut on a model hull bright destroys the reality of the model and does indeed make it look like a piece of furniture, cheap furniture at that. That said, people build kits for lots of reasons and if you like the look, nobody's stopping you. There are lots of decorative models with oiled and varnished hulls of all sorts of different woods which give their builders pleasure to look at. If you think it looks good, you can put anything you want on it.
 
For serious modelers who may be building in the style of many of the Admiralty Board models seen in museums, which frequently show a lot of unpainted wood, the species of choice are never walnut or mahogany. They will use woods like pearwood, cherry, boxwood, costello, ebony, Alaskan yellow cedar, maple, birch, blonde walnut sapwood (which is not a walnut at all) and the like. These species are far too expensive for any but the best kit manufacturers to provide and those kits are priced accordingly, but you get what you pay for and a lot more bang for your buck from those brands (e.g. Syren and Vanguard.)

The method of application isn't really the critical factor. There is much more to a successful finish than learning to use a paintbrush or an airbrush alone. What most of those who haven't been taught by professional painters don't understand is the art of conditioning their paint, as pros call it. "Thinning" is only one conditioning factor. Flow control is essential. Flow is basically "drying time." Drying time is a function of both simple evaporation of the water, alcohol, or hydrocarbon solvents that hold the pigment (solids) and binder (oil or acrylic) in suspension so they can be applied. Brush stokes can be minimized if the brushing is done well and if the paint is thinned, but it really takes conditioning the paint to eliminate brush strokes completely. Retarders slow the polymerization of the binder so that the binder and pigment "lay down" evenly on the painted surface. When your paint is properly conditioned, you don't have to worry about brush strokes because they will "lay down" and disappear of their own accord if you give the paint time enough to "lay down" before the carrier evaporates and the binder stiffens. Check out manufacturer's instructions (reading the labels on the bottles does help!) for conditioning and search YouTube for instructional videos. Once you get the hang of conditioning your paint, that is, balancing the amount of carrier and its evaporation rate to the speed of the binder's hardening using the materials for your type of coating, be it traditional oil paint or modern acrylics, you will be surprised how easy it is to get a great finish. I'm sorry, but it isn't something that lends itself to text instruction. You have to be shown, or experiment yourself until you get the hang of it. Part of that has to do with the other variable in the equation, the environmental factors. The ambient temperature and humidity will effect the drying and curing times, as well, so getting it right is an exercise in rubbing your stomach and patting your head at the same time.
 
I'm not a big fan of acrylics, although they do seem to be getting better over time. One tip I can share which may work for others is that  when I do use them, I use an acrylic coating that is soluble in alcohol, not water. There are two reasons for this. 1) Water will raise the grain on bare wood, while alcohol (and solvents when using oil based coatings) does not, and 2) alcohol evaporates much faster than water. A "hot" (fast evaporating) thinner will almost always produce a better finish. (This is why the old Floquil paints were so loved by those old enough to remember them. Their Dio-Sol proprietary solvent was extremely "hot.") So, if you feel the need to thin your acrylic and it's soluble in alcohol or water, try using alcohol and see how you like it. Similarly, when airbrushing oil paints, I will sometimes use acetone to thin oil paint because of its high rate of evaporation. 
 
 

This subject comes back again and  again. You can search.
In 1 line:
I apply 1 coat of tung oil and the  wipe the surplus. I tried many other but the best results are with  tung oil.
 
Example on the photo, the right part  has not yet  oil.
 

Thank you  for confirming what I already suspected after reading a fair bit on this forum. Nice to  hear it from your good self and thank you for what seems an alternative view. Best regards Dave

Tung oil is just another vegetable oil, like linseed oil. It's use was primarily the result of marketing by the Homer Formby paint company and its use is something of a recurring fad. It dries very slowly, so I don't really see the point of  using tung oil instead of "boiled" linseed oil (which is raw linseed oil with driers added to speed its polymerization.) Tung oil is used in some varnishes, being thinned with turpentine or mineral spirits and with some Japan drier added. Tung, like any oil, will tend to produce a glossy finish if coats are built up. "Teak oil" is nothing more than any oil that some manufacturer puts the name "teak" on and sells for a higher price to uninformed consumers.
 
Any oil will bring out the figuring of a piece of wood if that is the desired result. It very rarely is in modeling because the grain of the wood, unless it is very, very tight, or practically invisible, will be so wildly out of scale that it detracts from the appearance of the model. This is particularly true of open grained woods like the walnuts and mahoganies that kit manufacturers provide to suggest their kit is "high quality." These woods are acceptable for models if their grain is filled and they are painted over, although there are many other species which are far more suitable, and at a much lower price. Walnut and mahogany are great for furniture and such. Not so much for ship models. The one exception would be half models, which portray the shape of a hull alone without significant detail and aren't intended to portray a detailed model of the entire prototype.
 
So, to answer your question, yes. Finishing walnut on a model hull bright destroys the reality of the model and does indeed make it look like a piece of furniture, cheap furniture at that. That said, people build kits for lots of reasons and if you like the look, nobody's stopping you. There are lots of decorative models with oiled and varnished hulls of all sorts of different woods which give their builders pleasure to look at. If you think it looks good, you can put anything you want on it.
 
For serious modelers who may be building in the style of many of the Admiralty Board models seen in museums, which frequently show a lot of unpainted wood, the species of choice are never walnut or mahogany. They will use woods like pearwood, cherry, boxwood, costello, ebony, Alaskan yellow cedar, maple, birch, blonde walnut sapwood (which is not a walnut at all) and the like. These species are far too expensive for any but the best kit manufacturers to provide and those kits are priced accordingly, but you get what you pay for and a lot more bang for your buck from those brands (e.g. Syren and Vanguard.)

The method of application isn't really the critical factor. There is much more to a successful finish than learning to use a paintbrush or an airbrush alone. What most of those who haven't been taught by professional painters don't understand is the art of conditioning their paint, as pros call it. "Thinning" is only one conditioning factor. Flow control is essential. Flow is basically "drying time." Drying time is a function of both simple evaporation of the water, alcohol, or hydrocarbon solvents that hold the pigment (solids) and binder (oil or acrylic) in suspension so they can be applied. Brush stokes can be minimized if the brushing is done well and if the paint is thinned, but it really takes conditioning the paint to eliminate brush strokes completely. Retarders slow the polymerization of the binder so that the binder and pigment "lay down" evenly on the painted surface. When your paint is properly conditioned, you don't have to worry about brush strokes because they will "lay down" and disappear of their own accord if you give the paint time enough to "lay down" before the carrier evaporates and the binder stiffens. Check out manufacturer's instructions (reading the labels on the bottles does help!) for conditioning and search YouTube for instructional videos. Once you get the hang of conditioning your paint, that is, balancing the amount of carrier and its evaporation rate to the speed of the binder's hardening using the materials for your type of coating, be it traditional oil paint or modern acrylics, you will be surprised how easy it is to get a great finish. I'm sorry, but it isn't something that lends itself to text instruction. You have to be shown, or experiment yourself until you get the hang of it. Part of that has to do with the other variable in the equation, the environmental factors. The ambient temperature and humidity will effect the drying and curing times, as well, so getting it right is an exercise in rubbing your stomach and patting your head at the same time.
 
I'm not a big fan of acrylics, although they do seem to be getting better over time. One tip I can share which may work for others is that  when I do use them, I use an acrylic coating that is soluble in alcohol, not water. There are two reasons for this. 1) Water will raise the grain on bare wood, while alcohol (and solvents when using oil based coatings) does not, and 2) alcohol evaporates much faster than water. A "hot" (fast evaporating) thinner will almost always produce a better finish. (This is why the old Floquil paints were so loved by those old enough to remember them. Their Dio-Sol proprietary solvent was extremely "hot.") So, if you feel the need to thin your acrylic and it's soluble in alcohol or water, try using alcohol and see how you like it. Similarly, when airbrushing oil paints, I will sometimes use acetone to thin oil paint because of its high rate of evaporation. 
 
 

I am getting into this way too late but what about PegBoards.  I never seem to have enough pegboard space or wall to house them.

I want to thank everyone for their comments and suggestions. I've taken them to heart and bought a set of good water color brushes. I also started to use acrylic artist paint in the tubes and if the color is correct I used Winsor & Newton Crimson and a cup palette. Below is my first attempt on the Cheerful windlass mini-kit from Chuck. This is three coats and its looking like one or two more will do the trick.
 

 
Again a BIG THANK YOU this forum is fantastic.
 
 

To the extent space allows, a suitably flexible batten with sandpaper attached will permit sanding across a number of frame faces while maintaining a fair curve to the shape of the hull. 

To the extent space allows, a suitably flexible batten with sandpaper attached will permit sanding across a number of frame faces while maintaining a fair curve to the shape of the hull. 

Actually, the diagonally layered planking such as in this boat had a layer of muslin or calico set in thick shellac or white lead between the planking layers. This created a sort of early cold-molded hull which resisted opening up when stored above a ship better than standard carvel planking did. This reduced, if not eliminated the need to launch and tow ("stream") the ship's boats regularly to keep them from leaking when dried out. It was very common on ship's launches and lifeboats and lifesaving boats stored ashore in this period.

Actually, the diagonally layered planking such as in this boat had a layer of muslin or calico set in thick shellac or white lead between the planking layers. This created a sort of early cold-molded hull which resisted opening up when stored above a ship better than standard carvel planking did. This reduced, if not eliminated the need to launch and tow ("stream") the ship's boats regularly to keep them from leaking when dried out. It was very common on ship's launches and lifeboats and lifesaving boats stored ashore in this period.

Actually, the diagonally layered planking such as in this boat had a layer of muslin or calico set in thick shellac or white lead between the planking layers. This created a sort of early cold-molded hull which resisted opening up when stored above a ship better than standard carvel planking did. This reduced, if not eliminated the need to launch and tow ("stream") the ship's boats regularly to keep them from leaking when dried out. It was very common on ship's launches and lifeboats and lifesaving boats stored ashore in this period.

To the extent space allows, a suitably flexible batten with sandpaper attached will permit sanding across a number of frame faces while maintaining a fair curve to the shape of the hull. 

Just be careful not to over-bevel! If you cross over the bevel line the frames fore and aft of it will also be affected. Personally, I do no beveling until all the frames are installed. If you choose to pre-bevel then perhaps stay 1/16th inch shy of the bevel marks to allow for the inevitable errors that arise when gluing the frames in place.

Once the frame is cut out but not beveled, you can mark the bevel on the inside by measuring with a caliper from the paper plan and mark points along the inside of the frame every inch or so then draw a line to connect the dots.  I try to stay just outside the line then finish up once the frames are fixed in place.  Might be some easier way and I for one would love to hear about it! 
Allan

Congratulations on a very nice finish. I agree, the slightly rustic uneven shine looks much better than a true modern day mirror.
 
If you do it again, you may look at toothpaste. It is surprisingly abrasive in most cases.