Bob Cleek

When and what to paint really depends upon the progress of the build. Generally, apply finish coatings when it is easiest to do so. It's surely easier to paint separate parts and then secure them to the model if that avoids having to mask or carefully cut in edges. If a hull has a lot of "attachments," it's often much easier to finish the overall hull coatings first and then add the attachments because you'll be sanding "wide open spaces" and not having to sand around edges and corners (which you don't want to round off with sandpaper, anyhow.) Bottom line, "use your own judgment."
 
As for protecting finished work, here again, common sense prevails and discovering solutions is part of the joy of the hobby. I often find using those foam insulating split tubes they sell at the hardware store to keep pipes from freezing or to insulate hot water pipes under houses is a good way to protect finishes during construction. They can be cut up in sections and several sections taped together at the ends with duct tape to form a "cradle" that will hold a model hull upright and secure without marring the finish on the hull.
 
You will often read that parts should best not be glued to finish coated surfaces and that's generally sound advice. That said, however, many of us hew to the traditional US Navy contract ship model "mil-spec" requirements and always mechanically fasten parts on our models, most often with a peg glued into a drilled hole or similar. This practice renders the "don't glue to painted surfaces" advise irrelevant and also eliminates most all  problems with adhesives letting go.
 
Finish coatings are an essential feature of a well done model and developing the skills necessary to do a good job does present something of a learning curve, even for a somewhat experienced painter. You'd do well to try to find some instructional videos on the subject and study up on it before you start painting your model. YouTube is full of videos on painting models. Don't just look for ship models. Some of the best are done by the military equipment modelers and the fantasy gaming figure modelers. Painting any miniature is all pretty much the same, but it isn't the same as painting a house!
 
Finally, one bit of advice that few new painters learn out the easy way. Always try out every coating you are going to use on a similar surface other than your model and on the test piece determine if the paint's consistency, "leveling ability,"  and drying time, etc., are as you intend them to be. If we had a dime for every post that started, "I've waited a couple of days after painting my hull and it's still all sticky and not dry..." we'd be rich people today. Learn to condition your paint and always test it first on a scrap piece of material ! (And save those scraps in case you want to paint over it later, too. That's the way to make sure that a later coat is compatible with the earlier one ! )

When and what to paint really depends upon the progress of the build. Generally, apply finish coatings when it is easiest to do so. It's surely easier to paint separate parts and then secure them to the model if that avoids having to mask or carefully cut in edges. If a hull has a lot of "attachments," it's often much easier to finish the overall hull coatings first and then add the attachments because you'll be sanding "wide open spaces" and not having to sand around edges and corners (which you don't want to round off with sandpaper, anyhow.) Bottom line, "use your own judgment."
 
As for protecting finished work, here again, common sense prevails and discovering solutions is part of the joy of the hobby. I often find using those foam insulating split tubes they sell at the hardware store to keep pipes from freezing or to insulate hot water pipes under houses is a good way to protect finishes during construction. They can be cut up in sections and several sections taped together at the ends with duct tape to form a "cradle" that will hold a model hull upright and secure without marring the finish on the hull.
 
You will often read that parts should best not be glued to finish coated surfaces and that's generally sound advice. That said, however, many of us hew to the traditional US Navy contract ship model "mil-spec" requirements and always mechanically fasten parts on our models, most often with a peg glued into a drilled hole or similar. This practice renders the "don't glue to painted surfaces" advise irrelevant and also eliminates most all  problems with adhesives letting go.
 
Finish coatings are an essential feature of a well done model and developing the skills necessary to do a good job does present something of a learning curve, even for a somewhat experienced painter. You'd do well to try to find some instructional videos on the subject and study up on it before you start painting your model. YouTube is full of videos on painting models. Don't just look for ship models. Some of the best are done by the military equipment modelers and the fantasy gaming figure modelers. Painting any miniature is all pretty much the same, but it isn't the same as painting a house!
 
Finally, one bit of advice that few new painters learn out the easy way. Always try out every coating you are going to use on a similar surface other than your model and on the test piece determine if the paint's consistency, "leveling ability,"  and drying time, etc., are as you intend them to be. If we had a dime for every post that started, "I've waited a couple of days after painting my hull and it's still all sticky and not dry..." we'd be rich people today. Learn to condition your paint and always test it first on a scrap piece of material ! (And save those scraps in case you want to paint over it later, too. That's the way to make sure that a later coat is compatible with the earlier one ! )

The answer probably is that almost everything inside a ship at that time was moveable, except perhaps for some deck pillars. So stairs could be moved out of the way and hatches covered with gratings.

Two last shots of Arabia in her display location in my model/nautical corner of the house. We might move her somewhere else once I get a full case figured out, but this is good for now. I like that the bookcase opens on both sides so it's easy to view the open and closed sides of the model. Out of shot on a lower shelf is my model of Bertrand, another open/closed sided steamboat, so the two go well together here. Note that the Arabia and the revenue cutter behind her are the same scale (1:64); I think it's a fun visual comparison.
 


 
Some of you asked about my next project. Having bought a Byrnes table saw over the winter, I had been planning to shift to scratch-building full-time using wood harvested on my farm. I have billets of maple, cherry, and various fruitwoods that have been drying for up to two years and will provide all the modelling wood I could possibly use. My goal was for the cost of the saw to replace the cost of kits and wood in our budget, which it should. There are a variety of interesting Missouri River craft on the agenda, including the boats used by the Lewis & Clark expedition and some smaller steamboats used on tributaries of the Missouri River.
 
However, the last few months have been extremely stressful for reasons from personal to global, and my brain is a bit fried with trying to keep track of this complicated build. Moreoever, the libraries and historical societies I might otherwise visit to do primary research in Missouri craft are closed or restricted. So I bought one last kit as a simpler relaxation project: the Dusek Viking longship in 1:35 scale (note that the scale of my builds keeps going up, from 1:87 Bertrand to 1:64 Arabia to 1:35 Viking ship; this could be a problem down the road). I am of Norse descent (my beloved grandfather was extremely proud of his heritage), my father-in-law was a scholar of Old English and the Saxon period, and I'm a huge fan of Bernard Cornwell's long "Saxon Tales" series of historical novels (better known as "The Last Kingdom" once a TV show based on it was launched). So this will have some meaning for me while at least letting me follow someone else's instructions. I do plan to make some modifications for authenticity/uniqueness and to replace some of the kit wood with my own home-cut-and-milled; I may also use the plans to build several versions using my own wood.
 
I'll launch a build log eventually, but will likely be dormant for a while. The next few weeks will involve helping my elderly in-laws move closer to us, which would be a massive enough undertaking if there wasn't an ongoing pandemic, so I don't think I'll have a lot of free time until sometime in July. I'll post a build log link here once I start it, for anyone who wants to follow along. Thanks once more for your support and interest.

Thanks for allowing me to introduce myself to the MSW family.  My name is Thomas, and my Wife and I reside in Chino Hills, California.  I have taken a few days to familiarize myself with the quality, model ship building tutorials, howto and build logs on MSW, allowing me to become more confident, as I begin my journey on model ship building.  My first build will be the FIFIE Lady Eleanor (Vanguard), as my Wife loved the picture of it with the dyed, red'ish/pink'ish sails.  For educational purposes, I am studying: Ship Modeling  Simplified, by Mastini, Planking Techniques For Model Ship Builders,  by Dressel, Period Ship Kit Builder's Manual, by Julier, and Ship Modeling From Stem To Stern, by Roth.  I would like to acknowledge Jason at Ages of Sail, San Lorenzo, California, for his care, patience, know how and how to, provided to me, as I begin the journey of model ship building.  Thank you for taking the time to ready my member introduction.

Hi John,
 
If the sheer is normal and the rounding normal, you should be able to hold the section of plank down with your finger for a minute, or less, and it will hold.  I assume you glued the false deck in place first.   Both white and yellow (carpenter's or wood glue) are PVAs.   The yellow polyvinyl acetate has a higher instant tack and does not like to be moved once the pieces are joined, a plus for us,  I think.   Don't know what scale you are working with, but keep in mind that the planks should be no more than 25 feet to 30 feet long so about 3 3/4" at 1:98 and 7 1/2" at 1/48.   You can always add a few weight pieces, but be sure there is something between the weights and the wood.   I got a half dozen chunks of steel of various sizes from a scrap bin at a local machine shop years ago that gave them to me for free as they were going into the scrap bin anyway.    
Allan
 

If I understood correctly, you are not actually lloking for a highly accurate triangle/engineer's square, but rather a way to set cutting tools (e.g. saw blade, sanding disk, etc.) square to the table with sufficient accuracy. It would be helpful to think about how much accuracy you actually need. Something with test certificates seems to be completely over the top for setting woodworking tools. In normal workshop practice standard engineer's square should be perfectly adequate. Their squareness is easily qualitatively tested as described by someone above.

Shellac is a decent enough adhesive for such purposes, but I'd opt for a dot or two of Duco or CA adhesive. I would not "drill and pin them." While barrel and bucket hoops were sometimes riveted and then driven on, I believe most were forge-welded hoops. They are driven down onto the barrel or bucket with a mallet and a "hoop driver." If they were nailed into the barrel, the barrel would likely leak in time, or at least have weak spot in the stave.
 
Hoop driver:
 

 
See: https://cooperstoolmuseum.com/coopers-tool/
 
While others' mileage may vary, I'm of the opinion that models are better off left with as little coating as possible. Paints and varnishes are necessary, of course, but I prefer a light rubbing with a 50/50 mixture of boiled linseed oil and turpentine or a coating of thin shellac for unpainted wood and a coating of thin shellac and paint for painted areas. Frankly, I think the plethora of proprietary varnishes, clear coats, and other gunk on the market today is really just a lot of marketing hype. At the end of the day, the first thing that seems to "weather" on a model is the paint and varnish and the thicker it's applied, the faster and worse it goes to pot, not to mention that the thicker the coatings applied, the more fine detail is lost. Scale is important in paints and varnishes as much as in anything else, and perhaps even more so. In judging model quality, poor painting and varnishing is perhaps the most frequent demerit.

Give the wood a coat of Z-poxy finishing resin and once dry lightly sand it down. It will give you a glass like finish that’s ready for painting. You will definitely not see any grain at all 

I certainly hope your decision to sell your modeling books and other items isn't the consequence of some personal misfortune!  
 
If you are selling it all, please do post what you've got and what you hope to get for it. Many of us are interested in adding to our own collections. The opportunity to purchase used books at reasonable prices is always welcome!

I certainly hope your decision to sell your modeling books and other items isn't the consequence of some personal misfortune!  
 
If you are selling it all, please do post what you've got and what you hope to get for it. Many of us are interested in adding to our own collections. The opportunity to purchase used books at reasonable prices is always welcome!

My mid Eighteenth Century longboat model was painted entirely with “homemade” acrylic paints, and I was pleased with the results.
I needed five colors:
 
Dark red
Dark Brown 
Creamy White
Black
Drab
 
I started by buying tubes of quality artist’s acrylic pigments at a local crafts store:
Burnt Umber
Black 
Titanuim White
Bright Red.
yellow ochre
I also bought a bottle of matt media fluid.
 
It pays to buy high quality pigments.  I bought a large tube of yellow ochre at a well known discount department store at a bargain price and found it to be unusable due to the large granules of pigment. You could have paved my driveway with this stuff.
 
I also bought a number of small glass bottles with screw top lids from Amazon, a battery operated Micro Mark propeller type paint mixer, and a palate  knife.
 
My understanding of scientific color technology is negligible.  All colors were mixed by Mark 1 eyeball.  The Drab color was a mystery.  A contemporary specification required the the hull interior be painted drab.  I found an old paint formula on the web that explained that drab was mixed by adding white lead pigment to burnt umber.
 
I started by mixing pigments on a small glass palate using the palate knife.  When I got the right color I scooped the mixed pigment into one of the small jars and added matt media, again by eye.  The paint mixer worked perfectly to blend the resulting mixture.  Thinned by adding water, it sprayed perfectly in my airbrush.  When I was finally convinced that my paint job was complete I protected the finish with a light coat of Dulcote.
 
The mixed paint kept in the small jars stayed fresh over the several months spent completing the model.
 
I can understand the need for modelers of modern military vessels to paint them with the “right” color matched to official color charts, but for ships built prior to the late 1800’s for which color standards are minimal my eyeball method worked well.
 
Roger
 
 

Some purists reportedly still use dry pigments, but preparing them for use is a time-consuming laborious process. The pigments must be mixed with the oil binder in suspension in a process called "mulling." (From whence the phrase, "mull it over" is derived.) (See: https://www.scribalworkshop.com/blog/2019/6/5/mulling-paint-a-beginner-ish-guidef ) Pigments are often minerals as well as organic materials. The difference between oils and acrylics is in the binder, not the pigment, as far as I know. Colorfastness is a sought after quality in good paints and the "chemical dyes" can suffer in this regard. (Here's an interesting site about pigments: http://www.webexhibits.org/pigments/intro/pigments.html)
 

Currently, it seems the "fantasy figure" modeling and gaming community seem to have discovered artists' oils and are using them more widely than any of the other modelers. In times past, the top professional ship modelers always used artists' oils. As a painter, I'm sure you know that the model scale paint industry has long made good money selling the convenience of pre-thinned and pre-mixed paint colors at high prices, but quality artists' oils are still about as good as it gets for archival quality pigments. 
 
You may want to leach out some of the oil in your tubed oil paint by putting it on a piece of brown paper bag paper and letting the oil soak out for a bit. That will reduce the gloss, which you don't want for a miniature. Thin your oils with a bit of turpentine and perhaps a bit of acetone if spraying. Add a dash of Japan drier to speed up drying. To improve leveling and flow, a bit of linseed oil. Thinning should flatten the gloss finish. If not, add a bit of Grumbacher flattening solution. You know the drill, I'm sure.
 
There shouldn't be any difference in durability between tubed and bottled paint, as far as I can see. The major difference between the two is in the thickness of the material, bottled paint containing large amounts of thinner and tubed paint not, and, importantly, the Japan dryer which speeds up drying in oil paint. Without that, the tubed paint will take longer to for its raw linseed oil binder to polymerize. (Raw linseed oil is also sold as food-grade "flaxseed oil" in health food stores. "Boiled" linseed oil, which isn't boiled at all, has dryers added to speed up polymerization.)
 
Thin your acrylics with some alcohol, if that's compatible with your brand of acrylics. I prefer oils over acrylics, myself, probably because I'm more familiar with them and the results are more predictable for me. I don't like the acrylics that use water as a solvent for spraying because the water takes longer to dry than a more volatile solvent such as alcohol. 

In this day and age of CNC manufacturing, I'm amazed! It's easy enough to check the accuracy of a square by laying it on a T-square or other straight edge and drawing a perpendicular line, then flipping the square over and lining up the edge with the perpendicular line. If the edge perfectly aligns with the drawn perpendicular line, it's accurate. Darn it! Now your report is going to get me checking all my squares as I have occasion to use each of them, just to make sure their true!  

I'd be curious to see the bad reviews on Amazon. I've been using squares for sixty years or so now and in all that time I've never seen or heard of anyone complaining about a commercially made square of any material being out of square or otherwise "inaccurate." (The rivets in a machinist's square can sometimes be loosened and the blade be out of true if the square has been dropped, but that's another matter entirely.) 

Some purists reportedly still use dry pigments, but preparing them for use is a time-consuming laborious process. The pigments must be mixed with the oil binder in suspension in a process called "mulling." (From whence the phrase, "mull it over" is derived.) (See: https://www.scribalworkshop.com/blog/2019/6/5/mulling-paint-a-beginner-ish-guidef ) Pigments are often minerals as well as organic materials. The difference between oils and acrylics is in the binder, not the pigment, as far as I know. Colorfastness is a sought after quality in good paints and the "chemical dyes" can suffer in this regard. (Here's an interesting site about pigments: http://www.webexhibits.org/pigments/intro/pigments.html)
 

Some of the old books about how-to model ships suggest dry pigments (Japan?)
I wonder if the dry or oils are minerals and the acrylics are organic? 
The chemical industry started with the synthesis of organic pigments.  But complex organic molecules are much more subject oxidation than minerals, some of which may already be oxides.
As a practical matter on the subject of the desirability of using archival materials, although I completely agree with you, I suspect that the issue will soon prove to be a moot one.  We have already passed an inflection point and show no indications of having the will to do what is necessary to avoid generating one or two more.

Currently, it seems the "fantasy figure" modeling and gaming community seem to have discovered artists' oils and are using them more widely than any of the other modelers. In times past, the top professional ship modelers always used artists' oils. As a painter, I'm sure you know that the model scale paint industry has long made good money selling the convenience of pre-thinned and pre-mixed paint colors at high prices, but quality artists' oils are still about as good as it gets for archival quality pigments. 
 
You may want to leach out some of the oil in your tubed oil paint by putting it on a piece of brown paper bag paper and letting the oil soak out for a bit. That will reduce the gloss, which you don't want for a miniature. Thin your oils with a bit of turpentine and perhaps a bit of acetone if spraying. Add a dash of Japan drier to speed up drying. To improve leveling and flow, a bit of linseed oil. Thinning should flatten the gloss finish. If not, add a bit of Grumbacher flattening solution. You know the drill, I'm sure.
 
There shouldn't be any difference in durability between tubed and bottled paint, as far as I can see. The major difference between the two is in the thickness of the material, bottled paint containing large amounts of thinner and tubed paint not, and, importantly, the Japan dryer which speeds up drying in oil paint. Without that, the tubed paint will take longer to for its raw linseed oil binder to polymerize. (Raw linseed oil is also sold as food-grade "flaxseed oil" in health food stores. "Boiled" linseed oil, which isn't boiled at all, has dryers added to speed up polymerization.)
 
Thin your acrylics with some alcohol, if that's compatible with your brand of acrylics. I prefer oils over acrylics, myself, probably because I'm more familiar with them and the results are more predictable for me. I don't like the acrylics that use water as a solvent for spraying because the water takes longer to dry than a more volatile solvent such as alcohol. 

Currently, it seems the "fantasy figure" modeling and gaming community seem to have discovered artists' oils and are using them more widely than any of the other modelers. In times past, the top professional ship modelers always used artists' oils. As a painter, I'm sure you know that the model scale paint industry has long made good money selling the convenience of pre-thinned and pre-mixed paint colors at high prices, but quality artists' oils are still about as good as it gets for archival quality pigments. 
 
You may want to leach out some of the oil in your tubed oil paint by putting it on a piece of brown paper bag paper and letting the oil soak out for a bit. That will reduce the gloss, which you don't want for a miniature. Thin your oils with a bit of turpentine and perhaps a bit of acetone if spraying. Add a dash of Japan drier to speed up drying. To improve leveling and flow, a bit of linseed oil. Thinning should flatten the gloss finish. If not, add a bit of Grumbacher flattening solution. You know the drill, I'm sure.
 
There shouldn't be any difference in durability between tubed and bottled paint, as far as I can see. The major difference between the two is in the thickness of the material, bottled paint containing large amounts of thinner and tubed paint not, and, importantly, the Japan dryer which speeds up drying in oil paint. Without that, the tubed paint will take longer to for its raw linseed oil binder to polymerize. (Raw linseed oil is also sold as food-grade "flaxseed oil" in health food stores. "Boiled" linseed oil, which isn't boiled at all, has dryers added to speed up polymerization.)
 
Thin your acrylics with some alcohol, if that's compatible with your brand of acrylics. I prefer oils over acrylics, myself, probably because I'm more familiar with them and the results are more predictable for me. I don't like the acrylics that use water as a solvent for spraying because the water takes longer to dry than a more volatile solvent such as alcohol. 

Well actually Bob, painting in oils and acrylics is one of my hobbies! So colour-mixing is something I've been doing for a long time and needless to say, I have scores of paint tubes in both mediums (professional quality). I just didn't know if how durable they would be on models. Hmmm, you've planted a seed. 👍

One could try to apply acrylic paint pre-diluted for air-brushing with a good old drawing pen or with one of those funnel-like 'pens' that was used in the old days for technical drawings and lettering (some time ago there was a thread here on MSW on these drawing instruments). Both tools would require frequent cleaning, as the acrylics dry very fast, of course.
 
The problem of diffusion into the white paint may remain, but is likely to be less grave for acrylics than for the much finer pigment particles in India ink or let alone dye-based inks. The white acrylic paint layer remains slighly porous, sucking in some of the black ink due to capillary effects. One should let the white paint dry for several weeks to give the acrylics molecules time to cross-link properly and for the residual water to diffuse out (it becomes trapped in the acrylics to some degree, which is why acrylics stay relatively soft for quite a while).

I strongly suspect that the British Admiralty dockyard models were shellacked, not varnished. Shellac will outlast varnish by orders of magnitude. "Orange" shellac (natural colored,) will darken, and its gloss increase, with each successive coat. It's easily thinned with denatured alcohol. It's also easily removed with denatured alcohol. The darkening and gloss rate of increase will depend on how thick it is. This is referred to as the "cut," expressed in pounds, e.g. "two pound cut," which would be two pounds of shellac flakes to a gallon of alcohol. Most prepared canned shellac ("Bullseye" is a good brand found nearly everywhere) is sold in "two pound cut." Thinning it 50-50 yields "one pound cut," and so on. Multiple thinned coats are the best approach. Applied to thickly will fill in detail, as might paint.  It dries quickly, about as fast as the alcohol evaporates. Shellac on ship models has lasted for somewhere around 5,500 years, so far, if models found in the Egyptian tombs are any indication.
 
Some top end woodworking catalogs sell shellac in "flake" form, which is the crushed excretions of the female lac bug. You have to add your own alcohol. Mixed shellac supposedly has a "shelf life," and hence the sale of the crushed flakes alone. I've never had any problem with the premixed canned shellac going bad on the shelf over a period of years, though. Other's mileage may vary, but I've never found the higher price, shipping cost, and hassle of ordering flakes by mail and mixing my own worth the trouble and I've used a lot of it over the years. It's a stock item in my paint locker.
 
Varnish is more difficult to work with, primarily because of extended drying time and the need to resort to chemical strippers, heat guns, or scrapers and sandpaper to remove "goofs." Thinned shellac has the consistency of water and will penetrate bare wood easily. Not so much so varnish. If too much shellac is applied, it won't have brush strokes, runs, and sags ("curtains" in the trade). it tends to soak into the wood and dries quickly. Too much varnish and you end up with brush strokes, runs and sags, much like enamel paint. This is less of a problem with thinned varnish for "model scales," but varnish is finicky. Sometimes the gloss is dulled when it's thinned too much, especially if mineral spirits are mistakenly used instead of pure spirits of gum turpentine, and other times, it can refuse to dry and remains sticky. A capful of Flood's "Penetrol" in a quart of varnish will improve its ability to "lay down" and a teaspoon of Japan drier will improve drying ability. Like oil paint, varnish does require something of a "learning curve" to master the art of conditioning it as required to get a perfect "Steinway piano" finish. (Steinways are actually French polished, I believe... with shellac!) Most quality marine varnishes are adequate, Z-Spar brand "Captain's" varnish is a good one, as is the European and pricier Epiphanes brand (which requires the use of their proprietary thinner.)

In this day and age of CNC manufacturing, I'm amazed! It's easy enough to check the accuracy of a square by laying it on a T-square or other straight edge and drawing a perpendicular line, then flipping the square over and lining up the edge with the perpendicular line. If the edge perfectly aligns with the drawn perpendicular line, it's accurate. Darn it! Now your report is going to get me checking all my squares as I have occasion to use each of them, just to make sure their true!  

I'd be curious to see the bad reviews on Amazon. I've been using squares for sixty years or so now and in all that time I've never seen or heard of anyone complaining about a commercially made square of any material being out of square or otherwise "inaccurate." (The rivets in a machinist's square can sometimes be loosened and the blade be out of true if the square has been dropped, but that's another matter entirely.)