Bob Cleek

I never could see the point of the Micro-Lux line of tools for ship modeling. Perhaps they have their place, but they've always seemed to me to be in the same category as the Loom-a-Line, but at a much higher price point. Maybe they are okay for cutting gourds or 1" scale dollhouse construction. Dunno.

As said, it's a matter of scale. You can get away with it, barely, at 3/4" to the foot, as below, if you use very fine thread and the closest stitch setting. but corners hand stitched with the same thread produces a bit cruder results and bolt roping is a real challenge. On this model, I didn't sew the panels together, but rather simply stitched through the single sheet of fine cloth. There's no seam overlap on the panels, but the line of stitching does produce an impression of reality.
 
I didn't have any better close-ups of machine-sewn sails, but these shots of a three-quarters inch scale catboat give some idea of as much as one might expect of a home sewing machine. Below that, I wouldn't recommend cloth sails at all. (The copper fittings were left to develop a natural "penny brown" patina on their own, thereby simulating bronze. The photos were taken before that process had taken place.)
 
 
 




 
 
 



 
 
 

As said, it's a matter of scale. You can get away with it, barely, at 3/4" to the foot, as below, if you use very fine thread and the closest stitch setting. but corners hand stitched with the same thread produces a bit cruder results and bolt roping is a real challenge. On this model, I didn't sew the panels together, but rather simply stitched through the single sheet of fine cloth. There's no seam overlap on the panels, but the line of stitching does produce an impression of reality.
 
I didn't have any better close-ups of machine-sewn sails, but these shots of a three-quarters inch scale catboat give some idea of as much as one might expect of a home sewing machine. Below that, I wouldn't recommend cloth sails at all. (The copper fittings were left to develop a natural "penny brown" patina on their own, thereby simulating bronze. The photos were taken before that process had taken place.)
 
 
 




 
 
 



 
 
 

One of these days, you might consider San Diego. They've good a great maritime museum with real sailing ships, the Miniature Engineering Craftsmanship Museum nearby, which is on my "bucket list," and the fleshpots of Tijuana, which are only 25 minutes away! Sailors just love San Diego!  
 
See: https://www.craftsmanshipmuseum.com/ (Affilliated with Sherline Co.)
 

 

 

 
 
These are fully operational working miniatures! The Duesenberg is 1:6 scale and made of over 6,000 parts. The engine is  true to scale and runs just as the original on gasoline hitting on all twelve cylinders!

I never could see the point of the Micro-Lux line of tools for ship modeling. Perhaps they have their place, but they've always seemed to me to be in the same category as the Loom-a-Line, but at a much higher price point. Maybe they are okay for cutting gourds or 1" scale dollhouse construction. Dunno.

As said, it's a matter of scale. You can get away with it, barely, at 3/4" to the foot, as below, if you use very fine thread and the closest stitch setting. but corners hand stitched with the same thread produces a bit cruder results and bolt roping is a real challenge. On this model, I didn't sew the panels together, but rather simply stitched through the single sheet of fine cloth. There's no seam overlap on the panels, but the line of stitching does produce an impression of reality.
 
I didn't have any better close-ups of machine-sewn sails, but these shots of a three-quarters inch scale catboat give some idea of as much as one might expect of a home sewing machine. Below that, I wouldn't recommend cloth sails at all. (The copper fittings were left to develop a natural "penny brown" patina on their own, thereby simulating bronze. The photos were taken before that process had taken place.)
 
 
 




 
 
 



 
 
 

Thank you for the advice. Looks like I am getting a Lie-Nielsen Model Maker's Block Plane for Christmas.

Unless you have some reason to need a power saw for the type of work this thing targets, I would say invest in a nice manual alternative.   There are some very good razor saws out there that will do the work this thing does in half the time,  half the clean up and twice the accuracy.

Lego works well as well.
 
John

I made several jigs for gluing parts together out of a cheap teflon cutting boards I purchased from a dollar store.
You can cut blocks or long panels that allow for clamping parts to and CA will not stick to it.
I purchased a few, one for a base and then the others to cut out the blocks or shapes needed. You can even thread holes in it for using threaded fasteners to make jigs that need to be set to the base.
 

One of these days, you might consider San Diego. They've good a great maritime museum with real sailing ships, the Miniature Engineering Craftsmanship Museum nearby, which is on my "bucket list," and the fleshpots of Tijuana, which are only 25 minutes away! Sailors just love San Diego!  
 
See: https://www.craftsmanshipmuseum.com/ (Affilliated with Sherline Co.)
 

 

 

 
 
These are fully operational working miniatures! The Duesenberg is 1:6 scale and made of over 6,000 parts. The engine is  true to scale and runs just as the original on gasoline hitting on all twelve cylinders!

One of these days, you might consider San Diego. They've good a great maritime museum with real sailing ships, the Miniature Engineering Craftsmanship Museum nearby, which is on my "bucket list," and the fleshpots of Tijuana, which are only 25 minutes away! Sailors just love San Diego!  
 
See: https://www.craftsmanshipmuseum.com/ (Affilliated with Sherline Co.)
 

 

 

 
 
These are fully operational working miniatures! The Duesenberg is 1:6 scale and made of over 6,000 parts. The engine is  true to scale and runs just as the original on gasoline hitting on all twelve cylinders!

One of these days, you might consider San Diego. They've good a great maritime museum with real sailing ships, the Miniature Engineering Craftsmanship Museum nearby, which is on my "bucket list," and the fleshpots of Tijuana, which are only 25 minutes away! Sailors just love San Diego!  
 
See: https://www.craftsmanshipmuseum.com/ (Affilliated with Sherline Co.)
 

 

 

 
 
These are fully operational working miniatures! The Duesenberg is 1:6 scale and made of over 6,000 parts. The engine is  true to scale and runs just as the original on gasoline hitting on all twelve cylinders!

One of these days, you might consider San Diego. They've good a great maritime museum with real sailing ships, the Miniature Engineering Craftsmanship Museum nearby, which is on my "bucket list," and the fleshpots of Tijuana, which are only 25 minutes away! Sailors just love San Diego!  
 
See: https://www.craftsmanshipmuseum.com/ (Affilliated with Sherline Co.)
 

 

 

 
 
These are fully operational working miniatures! The Duesenberg is 1:6 scale and made of over 6,000 parts. The engine is  true to scale and runs just as the original on gasoline hitting on all twelve cylinders!

On the California accessibility issue, I'd just like to point out that California has excellent train service from LA up the coast. Many trains a day with stops in small towns all along the way, essentially European-style commuter rail. The last time we visited the Channel Islands, that's what we did, arrived in LA but didn't rent a car until we got off the train in Ventura. It's not difficult and traffic becomes a non-issue; just expand your mind from assuming cars are the only way to get around. We were planning to do the same thing this year before 2020 did its best Vasa impression and tentatively hope to do so in 2021.
 
As as plains/midwestern resident, I'd like to suggest that the saltwater folks expand their horizons and be open to learning something new once a decade. A dark horse candidate would be Kansas City, much easier to get to than Toledo or Duluth (bigger airport), which has a world-class steamboat museum downtown (and another one a few hours upriver near Omaha, perfect for a day trip) and a lot of affordable convention/lodging options. There are plenty of us in the midwest and a lot of good models would show up at such a central location that's within a long day's drive of everything from Denver to MSP to Chicago to Memphis to Dallas. A special conference theme could be freshwater maritime history, not just of the interior US but all over the world. There's also a lot of access to less-well-known Civil War and American frontier history (including Lewis & Clark) that would complement the broader historical interests most of us have.

Clear nail polish thinned with acetone works, as well, and the bottles come with a handy built-in brush. Getting the acetone into the bottle can be a pain, though. I use a hypodermic syringe to fill the bottles through their narrow openings. Nail polish will dry glossy, but if you thin it enough, there's no gloss when it soaks into the line.. It's handy for its quick-drying characteristics and the built-in brush.

Some work in the bow section. Of course, all the elements are made of paper.
 

 

 

 

 
To be continued...

Yes, I found that approach very successful, too. I planed long shavings from the edge of a clear plank. I then took a dowel of the desired diameter to use as a mandrel, wrapped it in plastic wrap to prevent glue from sticking to it, applied PVA to one side of the shaving and wrapped it around the dowel a few times, fastening with a rubber band to dry. There was no need to wet the shavings, as they were already tightly curled as they came off the plane blade. I did this with several shavings next to each other on the dowel. When the glue was set, I mounted the mandrel on my lathe and then sanded the faces of the wrapped shavings until I achieved the thickness of the mast hoops I wanted, and then parted the mast hoops with a fine razor saw. I then removed all the finished mast hoops from the mandrel and hand-sanded them to round off the edges. (A "block sander" for rounding off block edges would probably do a good job rounding the edges, too.) The result were very realistic looking laminated mast hoops. They were also very strong. None broke in later handling, the "grain" running in a concentric circle, as it were.
 
Scale 3/4'=1':
 
 
 

Carpenter's and machinist's squares, plus clamps, rubber bands, and a lot of fancy jigs sold for the purpose. You may want to do some YouTube watching about basic carpentry and welding assembly skills to get familiar with the options. https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=corner+clamps+for+woodworking
 
Or you can buy store-bought ones: 
 

 
https://www.micromark.com/Magnetic-Gluing-Jig-10-1-4-Inch-Square
 
 

https://www.micromark.com/SET-OF-THREE-ANGLE-PLATES
 

 
https://www.micromark.com/Mini-4-Corner-Clamps-1-2-Inch-x-1-2-Inch-to-5-Inch-x-5-Inch-Capacity
 
While MicroMark has perfected the art of separating modelers from their money, I must say that one item they sell that two set-up tools I've found hugely helpful that they offer are their set of small machinist's squares and their thin-beam square, which makes striking square lines on thin sheet stock a breeze.
 

 
https://www.micromark.com/Thin-Beam-Square
 
https://www.micromark.com/Steel-Machinists-Squares-Set-of-3
 
These items sometimes come up on MicroMark's "loss leader discount" sales, too.
 
 

A close reading of the information supplied by the link indicates that this is a genus whose wood would not be all that useful for scale model work.
The required effort, I would spend on harvesting fruit wood.   The various citrus species possibly available should yield much better stock.  If the desert
allows for, any of the street side ornamental Pear species produce worthwhile wood stock.  If small parts such as blocks are a target,  Briar and Boxwood and Hawthorn
repay any effort spent on their harvest.

It's sure not very well known, but that doesn't mean it's not good for modeling. Backyard ornamentals can produce some great modeling wood, too small for commercial purposes, but still great for small stuff. 
 
It's basically a climbing fig and part of the large ficus family. It's not in the wood database online.  This may be of some interest::
 
https://uses.plantnet-project.org/en/Ficus_(PROSEA_Timbers)

I can't imagine why anyone would want to try to use a "power chisel" to shape a mast. The easiest way to shape a spar is to use a plane to turn the piece into an octogon and then chuck it in a drill press or hand drill motor held in a vise and sand the dowel while it's spinning. A lathe is another obvious option, but, considering the tooling costs for taper attachment and steady rest and the setup time, planing and sanding is a lot easier. Particularly with the planing, building a "planing sled" jig for your desired taper angle will make turning out a large number of spars a piece of cake.
 
I don't do a lot of wood carving, but it seems to me that there isn't a hundred bucks worth of advantage to a vibrating chisel over a good set of well-sharpened hand carving chisels and I suspect there are a lot more blade shapes available with manual carving tool lines than with the power chisels. (It seems there only five blade shapes for the Micro-Mark model.)
 
If i had a hundred bucks to spend on a tool for shaping spars, I'd go first cabin and spend $85 on a Lie-Nielsen Model Maker's Block Plane, a high-quality recreation of the old Stanley No. 100 squirel-tailed model maker's plane and the rest on a sleeve or two of sandpaper.
 
https://www.lie-nielsen.com/products/Model Maker's Block Plane
 

Indeed, that's true. If you've got the right dowel and have learned to do it with a sanding block while spinning the dowel, that's often the fastest way to get the job done. 

Well, you're doing it the hard way. Doweling is readily available, but often it's not of a suitable wood species. Also, dowels are often not perfectly straight, nor inclined to stay that way. That's not a big problem for short lengths for pegs and such, but for a long spar, not so much.
 
What you need is a spar gauge. You can then take any size square piece of straight grained wood without any grain runout and taper it on all four sides on your table saw, or with a plane, and then use the gauge to mark the lines to plane to yield a perfectly octagonal tapered stick. After that, sanding it round is a cinch. The only catch is that it's a lot easier on a full-size spar than on a scale-size one because of the dimensions, but a modeler shouldn't have too much problem making a miniature spar gauge to suit the task. full size spar gauges use pencils to mark the lines on tapered spar stock. A modeler's spar gauge does better with sharpened nails which scribe the lines instead of penciling them on.  This web page tells you everything you need to know about making perfectly tapered round spars using a plane and sandpaper: https://www.pettigrews.org.uk/lm/page030a.htm
 

So very, very true! The older we get, the more we realize how easily history, ours or the culture's, is lost.