Bob Cleek

Lots of interesting options that look nice, but think I still want to wait on a Byrnes! 
 
I was just at our local ship modelers' club meeting today, and I asked around the room what the guys were using, as most of them are scratch builders, and I heard a series of "Byrnes, Byrnes, Byrnes....." responses. 👍

Sounds like you're a heavy coffee drinker. I've broken a lot of mugs over the years, but I've yet to wear one out!  

The "search" thingy is our friend!  See: 
 

This kit is less complicated than than my previous Book Nook projects from Robotime. Kits from CuteBee will be good presents for elementary school kids. 😎
 
 

I imagine many of the members have already seen the videos and know the story how she was sunk by the British in 1708,  but for those who have not, this is an incredible find, worth billions of Euros/dollars in gold, silver, gems and relics.   In looking at the video, there looks to be some interesting things regarding Spanish ships of the San Jose era.   One that jumped out at me is the cannon.  There is no cascabel but rather an ornate loop.  Time mark 1:08, 1:46, and 2:20  show these very clearly.
Allan
https://www.mensjournal.com/news/colombia-holy-grail-of-shipwrecks-20-billion-treasure

Dear Valeriy,
 
My interpretation of the drawing is as follows: 
 
The hull plates are overlapping for riveting purposes (lap joints, no butt joints).
 
On the port side of the vessel and as strengthening, the underlaying plate is extending more forward to serve as a doubler for the installation of the sea chest. 
 
As a result, the extra extension of the overlap is not visible from outside.
 
It is also correct that on large, modern ships usually two sea chests are installed. One is fitted to the bottom of the ship (in German „Tiefsauger“) whilst the second one is located above the turn of the bilge at the side of the ship (in German „Hochsauger“).
 
The deeper sea chest is used in open waters, so that the flow of the cooling water suction is not effected by the state of the sea. 
When the ship is approaching port and is entering shallow waters, the engineers switch over from the lower to the upper sea chest to minimize the vessel picking up sediments through the lower sea chest.
 
Sea chests are usually used for sea cooling water inlets. Inside the chest, a filter system is installed. You are correct that a sea chest is usually protected by a steel grill fitted to the hull. (I would assume that the bars of such a grill were made from flat iron bars, mounted vertically and perhaps with a spacing not exceeding 4“ or approx 10 cm.)
 
Sea Chest are centralized locations to collect cooling water from the sea, serving various consumers of the vessel. Condensers are large consumers amongst them, as mentioned above. Sea chests are usually fitted in the vicinity of the „pump station“ in the engine room, where the main seawater cooling and fire fighting pumps are installed.
 
Cooling water outlets are usually not combined in sea chests and are located in various places in the ship, often passing the hull shell above the waterline to minimize backpressure.
 
I was also wondering when sea chests have been introduced. Prior to the introduction of sea chests, cooling water was picked through various inlets in the shell, which was not ideal from a maintenance and a safety point of view.
 
I have been dealing with two medium size vessels built approx. 1930 which were not fitted-out with sea chests, which I found rather strange as sea chests are a effective whilst relatively simple concept.
 
Regards,
 
Daniel

Gol-durn! You've really got some luck. You've got all the really good ones full of the best plans right there. From what I've seen over the years, that's pretty much as many as anybody's ever likely to find. They are numbererd and there are supposedly at least that many, but those are the only ones it seems anybody ever bought, or at least the only ones that show up in circulation these days. 
 
The Hathi Trust has digitized the first five volumes of MoToRboaTinG Magazine's Ideal series and has them available on line at http://catalog.hathitrust.org/Record/011692724. The first four volumes look to be mainly how-to-build Hand designs, all from 1920 to about 1922, both sail and power. There are also excellent sections on general traditional boatbuilding methods from start to finish. The fifth volume appears to be the first edition of "Chapman's Piloting and Seamanship. (Chapman was the editor of MoToRboaTinG (why the weird spelling, I have no idea.) This was originally the manual for a mail order course in piloting and seamanship which the magazine offered in the early Twenties. There's a lot to learn from the stuff in these books. The later editions were full of Atkin designs into the Forties and Fifties and are treasured additions to the wooden boat afficianado's library, but I've never seen the early volumes from the twenties before. (Used copies go for as much as $150 these days.) Juicy stuff! Knock yourself out!
 
The William and John Atkins estate has now provided a link to a full index and PDF copies of every design in the Ideal Series. It may be found at: An Index of Plans and Articles in the MoToR BoatinG Ideal Series (boat-links.com) Click first on the links to the various volumes in the Ideal Series, then on the names of the designs in the chosen volume, and keep clicking on links within linked pages to "drill down." You will find the full "study plans" and comments for most every plan set. From there, copies of the full-sized plan drawings and table of offsets for each design are available, as indicated, from the Atkin design firm and/or Mystic Seaport plans outlet.
 

 
 

Oh yeah! A well-known drawback was the "intermittent service" motor. As I recall, it was rated at something like 8 minutes. Beyond eight minutes of running, you had to stop it and let it cool down for a minimum of four minutes or it would burn out. Late in the production span, Emco came out with a "continuous duty" motor that solved the problem. I retrofitted one to my Unimat SL. There are now a number of aftermarket continuous duty motor work-arounds using converted DC motors from applications such as sewing machines, electric scooters, and exercise treadmills. All require some machining of the motor housing to permit mounting the motor to the drive pulley frame. 
 
I completely agree. "multi-machines" (e.g. the "ShopSmith" system) always perform a number of operations, none of which as well as a machine dedicated to performing a single one of those tasks alone. But, as you note, in its time, the Unimat had no competition in terms of cost and function. For me, its greatest shortcoming in terms of functions is the set-up time when changing from one process to another. Another serious drawback more now than even when it was in production, is that its tooling is generally proprietary, this being a result of its small size as much as anything else. There are lots of options for tooling that is sized to fit any number of small machines made today, but finding tooling that fits the Unimat means finding used Unimat tooling on the second-hand market because almost everything "Unimat" is some odd-ball threading size or style or otherwise "just doesn't fit."
 
BTW, since we've drifted this far afield, if anybody is presently interested in a modeling lathe, aside from a Sherline or Taig, which, to be honest, are rather limited in what they can accommodate in terms of size and strength, one very good, and perhaps superior, alternative to any of the presently-manufactured small lathes today, are the "old 'arn" Craftsman 6" modelers' lathes, sometimes referred to by their Craftsman catalog model numbers as "109's." Mass equals accuracy in machine tools and old manual lathes in decent condition (or rebuildable) often offer the best value for the money by a large margin, particularly over the present-day products made by the "Chinese People's Patriotic Machine Tool Collective." Check the link below by a fellow who recently sold his to upgrade to an Atlas/Craftsman 12"X42" like mine. These are sometimes in need of a rebuild, but parts and tooling are far more available than for the Unimat lathes and much less expensive. A lot of the tooling for the old Craftsman metal lathes (which were standard models by leading lathe manufacturers that were labeled as "Craftsman" for sale by Sears and Roebuck) is "generic" and readily available from aftermarket suppliers. See: Craftsman 6" Lathe for Sale - Sold (shdesigns.org) and Scott's Atlas / Craftsman 12x36 (12x54) 101.07403 Lathe, Stone Mountain, GA (shdesigns.org)
 
Full disclosure: I was given my Unimat SL for free by the son of the original owner who didn't know what to do with it when cleaning out his father's garage. Having read Gerald Wingrove's The Techniques of Ship Modeling, which showed all the things Wingrove did with his Unimat SL, I'd long lusted after one, but didn't want to buy one for the reasons stated above, deciding on a Taig or Sherline and those were too rich for my blood at the time. I took the Unimat with much gratitude and then realized that it required a rebuild. I set about doing that and to acquiring sufficient tooling to do general turning and milling operations on it, scavenging eBay for the parts needed. It was like getting hooked on drugs... I got going with "just a taste" and the next thing I knew, I had perhaps $1,200 or $1,500 into it. So now I have a very well-tuned and capable Unimat SL. That said, I always had and still have a fully-tooled 12"X42" Atlas (Craftsman) lathe than will do whatever turning, or even milling with its milling attachment, that the Unimat will and a whole lot more beyond the Unimat's capabilities. I also have a restored 1950 King Seely drill press that is factory-equipped with a collet holder that screws onto the quill (solving the side-loading issues involved with trying to mill with a Morse taper connection to the quill) and an XY table for that which can do all the milling operations the Unimat will, and then a lot more. So, in the final analysis, I should probably have put the money and effort into a decent used Sherline lathe and perhaps a mini-mill. That would have cost more in the aggregate and wouldn't have been the surprisingly appreciating asset that the Unimat SL is, but I would have had dedicated mini-tools rather than the collection of compromises that the Unimat is.  Still and all, I don't know anybody who has been lucky enough to have acquired a Unimat in good shape who is unhappy with it, so?  
 
I never was enamored with turning spars on a lathe. They are of such a size and strength that you have to get into following back rests and for those you need to use a proper taper jig and by the time setup is done I end up realizing that it probably would have taken less time to just cut the taper into a square blank on my Byrnes saw and then plane the corners down and sand it round by hand with it mounted it in a spinning chuck in the drill press or on one of my lathes.

Excellent advice... to which I will add that any wood one intends to paint with water-based acrylics should be first sealed with shellac or thinned varnish or the equivalent and sanded lightly (so as not to remove the sealer down to bare wood again.) Application of water-based coatings onto bare wood is likely to cause the wood grain to raise. For a "model quality" finish, the surface must be perfectly smooth, and the paint applied in a thin coat, or preferably several thin coats, to obtain a proper finish. 

Yes, Birchwood-Casey Tru-Oil should work fine mixed with oil paints, although it's a quite expensive way to make paint. Tru-Oil is made for the shooting sports market as one of a large range of such niche market products marketed by Birchwood-Casey. (Many modelers may be familiar with Birchwood-Caseys "Brass Black" metal finishing product modelers use for blackening brass model parts.) Tru-Oil is simply linseed oil cut with a solvent with a little bit of a siccative added, the exact formulation of which is undisclosed on their MSDS because they deem it "proprietary." A siccative is an oil-based drying agent that accelerates (catalyzes) the hardening of drying oils.  These catalysts were traditionally hydrocarbon carboxylate chelates of lead, but due to lead's toxicity, cobalt and other elements, such as zirconium, zinc, calcium, and iron, have replaced the lead in more popular products. Most driers are colorless but cobalt driers are a deep blue purple color and iron driers are reddish orange. These colored driers are therefore compatible only with certain darker pigmented paints where their color will be unseen. 
 
Separate drying additives for paints became necessary as zinc oxide-based paints were developed as an alternative to the lead oxide paints ("white lead") that had been previously used. Zinc oxide paints were developed in parallel with the introduction of "oil soluble driers" or "terebines" around 1885. These were lead and manganese soaps of linseed fatty acids or resin, also termed linoleates or resinates. Terebines had poor shelf life in mixed paints, as they auto oxidized and lost their effectiveness. As a result, early factory-mixed paints, unless fresh, were a poor substitute for fresh paint mixed by a painter on site from raw ingredients. This situation lasted until the late 1940s; by then further drier developments had superseded the terebines. In 1925, stable naphthenate driers were developed in Germany and commercialized in the US in the early 1930s, in parallel with the development of durable and fast-drying alkyd resin enamels. In the 1950s, metallo-organics based on synthetic acids were introduced as driers.
 
Japan drier is a common lay term and generic product name for any oil drying agent that can be mixed with drying oils such as boiled or raw linseed oil and alkyd resin paints to speed up "drying". The name refers to "japanning", a term for the use of drying oils as an imitation or substitution for urushiol-based Japanese lacquer. 
 
(Full disclosure: I didn't know all of the above chemistry off the top of my head. I looked it up.  )
 
The question whether Tru-Oil can be colored with artists' oil paint is a good one that is becoming increasingly important to many "thrifty" modelers. While there is a tremendous range of quality modeling paint colors available to modelers today, they are extremely expensive in terms of the amount of paint we get for our money. To be sure, most can afford six or eight dollars for a one-ounce bottle of "store bought" paint, but when the number of bottles on our paint shelf start to mount up and however many are found to have dried up since we last opened them, the savings, flexibility, and convenience of mixing an infinite range of paint colors and gloss levels from readily-available and substantially less costly components without the inconvenience of sourcing them from the internet or searching in a "brick and mortar" hobby store you hope has what you are looking for, starts to become a lot more attractive. Mixing your own model paint can certainly can be done using Tru-Oil as a base, but Tru-Oil is fairly expensive for what it is at around US$35.00 a quart. However, even considering the additional cost of several bucks for a tube of artists' oil paint, it's a bargain compared to the equivalent quart of seven buck an ounce hobby paint totaling US $224 ! Now, if you shop around, both boiled linseed oil and gum turpentine each cost about a US $10.00 a quart, so a quart of "half and half" mixed is going to run about US $10.00 from the big chain hardware stores, which makes Tru-Oil will cost you about three and a half times what its "homebrewed" equivalent will. By using boiled linseed oil and turpentine to make your own modeling paint, exclusive of the relatively negligible expense of the artists' oil paint which goes a long, long way, and other conditional additives that are used in very small amounts, if at all, you've avoided paying almost twenty-two and a half times the cost of commercially premixed model paint! Also, Tru-Oil cannot be shipped to or sold in California, USA, presumably due to California's restrictions on VOC content. (It may also be unobtainable in the E.U., given their often more stringent environmental regulations.) If one can't get Tru-Oil in their area, or simply wants to save some money, boiled linseed oil (which contains driers as packaged) thinned with natural gum turpentine, or raw linseed oil, natural gum turpentine and a dash of Japan drier "to taste," should perform as well at a huge savings. I've long used boiled linseed oil and gum turpentine mixed 50-50 as an "all purpose" furniture and rifle stock finish as well as a furniture finish "restorer" with results comparable to what Dr PR describes from Tru-Oil. Wiping it on and into scratched surfaces such as varnished kitchen cabinets, baseboards, stair bannisters, and case goods, etc. will usually cover the scratches well. (Used just like "wipe-on poly.") I routinely keep linseed oil and turpentine in half-gallon or at least quart quantities in my shop paint locker for mixing all sorts of painter's concoctions. 
 
Quality artists' oil paints (look for finely ground pigment in high concentrations) packaged in tubes can be mixed with boiled linseed oil (or raw linseed oil with a suitable amount of drier) and thinned with turpentine for use as excellent model paint for brushing, spraying, or airbrushing. Raw linseed oil (no driers) and turpentine with a suitable small amount of artists' oil paint can also be used as a stain. If the resulting dried finish's level of gloss is too high, the gloss of the dried finish can be knocked down from high all the way to flat matte by hand-rubbing with rottenstone and pumice, or Scotch-brite abrasive pads made for this purpose, or by mixing into the paint a "flattening agent" which is sold in small, over-priced quantities in art supply stores and in larger, much less expensive, quantities in paint stores. "Flattening agent" is generally just finely ground "whiting" (which is calcium carbonate powder, AKA "chalk" or agricultural lime.) sold in a suspension of solvent to expedite mixing it into paint or otherwise sold as a "bagged" powder like baking flour. Follow the instructions on the container. (Note that if the flattening agent is sold mixed in a solvent, the type of solvent has to match the type of paint. Alkyd enamels take one type, polyurethanes take another type, and so on.) A bag of "painter's whiting" is always good to have on hand for many uses including mixing up your own old-fashioned glazier's putty (and wooden boat plank seam stopping) which is why it is sometimes sold as "glazier's whiting." (When used as putty, it is mixed with raw linseed oil alone so it won't harden as quickly.)  If an old-timer tells you that adding gasoline to your paint will work as a flattening agent, don't risk your life finding out. It used to be true. In the '50's and '60's we kids would use it on our plastic car models and it worked great, but that was then. Now, the lead derivative once used to make high-octane "ethyl" or "leaded" gasoline which were responsible for the flattening effect when we'd mix gasoline in our model paint or apply it directly to styrene plastic has been outlawed for public health reasons. (Back then, a kid's life was an adventure! We'd drink out of garden hoses, ride bikes without helmets, eat unpackaged Halloween candy, and all sorts of other really dangerous stuff. If your mother said you might put somebody's eye out doing it, you just knew it had to be fun. No wonder the younger generation today are such a bunch of wusses!  ) 
 
There are lots of formulas online for mixing your own clear varnish that basically the same as the paint formula above, save for the addition of resins or differing oils, but for many applications an epoxy or urethane clear coating is to be much preferred over a low-tech traditional varnish and for any application where the finish will be exposed to direct sunlight, UV inhibitors are a must. At that point you get into more complex modern-day coatings technology and the traditional "DIY paint-making process" becomes more trouble, if not more dangerous, than it's worth and you are better off buying it mixed in the can from the paint store.

Yes, Birchwood-Casey Tru-Oil should work fine mixed with oil paints, although it's a quite expensive way to make paint. Tru-Oil is made for the shooting sports market as one of a large range of such niche market products marketed by Birchwood-Casey. (Many modelers may be familiar with Birchwood-Caseys "Brass Black" metal finishing product modelers use for blackening brass model parts.) Tru-Oil is simply linseed oil cut with a solvent with a little bit of a siccative added, the exact formulation of which is undisclosed on their MSDS because they deem it "proprietary." A siccative is an oil-based drying agent that accelerates (catalyzes) the hardening of drying oils.  These catalysts were traditionally hydrocarbon carboxylate chelates of lead, but due to lead's toxicity, cobalt and other elements, such as zirconium, zinc, calcium, and iron, have replaced the lead in more popular products. Most driers are colorless but cobalt driers are a deep blue purple color and iron driers are reddish orange. These colored driers are therefore compatible only with certain darker pigmented paints where their color will be unseen. 
 
Separate drying additives for paints became necessary as zinc oxide-based paints were developed as an alternative to the lead oxide paints ("white lead") that had been previously used. Zinc oxide paints were developed in parallel with the introduction of "oil soluble driers" or "terebines" around 1885. These were lead and manganese soaps of linseed fatty acids or resin, also termed linoleates or resinates. Terebines had poor shelf life in mixed paints, as they auto oxidized and lost their effectiveness. As a result, early factory-mixed paints, unless fresh, were a poor substitute for fresh paint mixed by a painter on site from raw ingredients. This situation lasted until the late 1940s; by then further drier developments had superseded the terebines. In 1925, stable naphthenate driers were developed in Germany and commercialized in the US in the early 1930s, in parallel with the development of durable and fast-drying alkyd resin enamels. In the 1950s, metallo-organics based on synthetic acids were introduced as driers.
 
Japan drier is a common lay term and generic product name for any oil drying agent that can be mixed with drying oils such as boiled or raw linseed oil and alkyd resin paints to speed up "drying". The name refers to "japanning", a term for the use of drying oils as an imitation or substitution for urushiol-based Japanese lacquer. 
 
(Full disclosure: I didn't know all of the above chemistry off the top of my head. I looked it up.  )
 
The question whether Tru-Oil can be colored with artists' oil paint is a good one that is becoming increasingly important to many "thrifty" modelers. While there is a tremendous range of quality modeling paint colors available to modelers today, they are extremely expensive in terms of the amount of paint we get for our money. To be sure, most can afford six or eight dollars for a one-ounce bottle of "store bought" paint, but when the number of bottles on our paint shelf start to mount up and however many are found to have dried up since we last opened them, the savings, flexibility, and convenience of mixing an infinite range of paint colors and gloss levels from readily-available and substantially less costly components without the inconvenience of sourcing them from the internet or searching in a "brick and mortar" hobby store you hope has what you are looking for, starts to become a lot more attractive. Mixing your own model paint can certainly can be done using Tru-Oil as a base, but Tru-Oil is fairly expensive for what it is at around US$35.00 a quart. However, even considering the additional cost of several bucks for a tube of artists' oil paint, it's a bargain compared to the equivalent quart of seven buck an ounce hobby paint totaling US $224 ! Now, if you shop around, both boiled linseed oil and gum turpentine each cost about a US $10.00 a quart, so a quart of "half and half" mixed is going to run about US $10.00 from the big chain hardware stores, which makes Tru-Oil will cost you about three and a half times what its "homebrewed" equivalent will. By using boiled linseed oil and turpentine to make your own modeling paint, exclusive of the relatively negligible expense of the artists' oil paint which goes a long, long way, and other conditional additives that are used in very small amounts, if at all, you've avoided paying almost twenty-two and a half times the cost of commercially premixed model paint! Also, Tru-Oil cannot be shipped to or sold in California, USA, presumably due to California's restrictions on VOC content. (It may also be unobtainable in the E.U., given their often more stringent environmental regulations.) If one can't get Tru-Oil in their area, or simply wants to save some money, boiled linseed oil (which contains driers as packaged) thinned with natural gum turpentine, or raw linseed oil, natural gum turpentine and a dash of Japan drier "to taste," should perform as well at a huge savings. I've long used boiled linseed oil and gum turpentine mixed 50-50 as an "all purpose" furniture and rifle stock finish as well as a furniture finish "restorer" with results comparable to what Dr PR describes from Tru-Oil. Wiping it on and into scratched surfaces such as varnished kitchen cabinets, baseboards, stair bannisters, and case goods, etc. will usually cover the scratches well. (Used just like "wipe-on poly.") I routinely keep linseed oil and turpentine in half-gallon or at least quart quantities in my shop paint locker for mixing all sorts of painter's concoctions. 
 
Quality artists' oil paints (look for finely ground pigment in high concentrations) packaged in tubes can be mixed with boiled linseed oil (or raw linseed oil with a suitable amount of drier) and thinned with turpentine for use as excellent model paint for brushing, spraying, or airbrushing. Raw linseed oil (no driers) and turpentine with a suitable small amount of artists' oil paint can also be used as a stain. If the resulting dried finish's level of gloss is too high, the gloss of the dried finish can be knocked down from high all the way to flat matte by hand-rubbing with rottenstone and pumice, or Scotch-brite abrasive pads made for this purpose, or by mixing into the paint a "flattening agent" which is sold in small, over-priced quantities in art supply stores and in larger, much less expensive, quantities in paint stores. "Flattening agent" is generally just finely ground "whiting" (which is calcium carbonate powder, AKA "chalk" or agricultural lime.) sold in a suspension of solvent to expedite mixing it into paint or otherwise sold as a "bagged" powder like baking flour. Follow the instructions on the container. (Note that if the flattening agent is sold mixed in a solvent, the type of solvent has to match the type of paint. Alkyd enamels take one type, polyurethanes take another type, and so on.) A bag of "painter's whiting" is always good to have on hand for many uses including mixing up your own old-fashioned glazier's putty (and wooden boat plank seam stopping) which is why it is sometimes sold as "glazier's whiting." (When used as putty, it is mixed with raw linseed oil alone so it won't harden as quickly.)  If an old-timer tells you that adding gasoline to your paint will work as a flattening agent, don't risk your life finding out. It used to be true. In the '50's and '60's we kids would use it on our plastic car models and it worked great, but that was then. Now, the lead derivative once used to make high-octane "ethyl" or "leaded" gasoline which were responsible for the flattening effect when we'd mix gasoline in our model paint or apply it directly to styrene plastic has been outlawed for public health reasons. (Back then, a kid's life was an adventure! We'd drink out of garden hoses, ride bikes without helmets, eat unpackaged Halloween candy, and all sorts of other really dangerous stuff. If your mother said you might put somebody's eye out doing it, you just knew it had to be fun. No wonder the younger generation today are such a bunch of wusses!  ) 
 
There are lots of formulas online for mixing your own clear varnish that basically the same as the paint formula above, save for the addition of resins or differing oils, but for many applications an epoxy or urethane clear coating is to be much preferred over a low-tech traditional varnish and for any application where the finish will be exposed to direct sunlight, UV inhibitors are a must. At that point you get into more complex modern-day coatings technology and the traditional "DIY paint-making process" becomes more trouble, if not more dangerous, than it's worth and you are better off buying it mixed in the can from the paint store.

Gol-durn! You've really got some luck. You've got all the really good ones full of the best plans right there. From what I've seen over the years, that's pretty much as many as anybody's ever likely to find. They are numbererd and there are supposedly at least that many, but those are the only ones it seems anybody ever bought, or at least the only ones that show up in circulation these days. 
 
The Hathi Trust has digitized the first five volumes of MoToRboaTinG Magazine's Ideal series and has them available on line at http://catalog.hathitrust.org/Record/011692724. The first four volumes look to be mainly how-to-build Hand designs, all from 1920 to about 1922, both sail and power. There are also excellent sections on general traditional boatbuilding methods from start to finish. The fifth volume appears to be the first edition of "Chapman's Piloting and Seamanship. (Chapman was the editor of MoToRboaTinG (why the weird spelling, I have no idea.) This was originally the manual for a mail order course in piloting and seamanship which the magazine offered in the early Twenties. There's a lot to learn from the stuff in these books. The later editions were full of Atkin designs into the Forties and Fifties and are treasured additions to the wooden boat afficianado's library, but I've never seen the early volumes from the twenties before. (Used copies go for as much as $150 these days.) Juicy stuff! Knock yourself out!
 
The William and John Atkins estate has now provided a link to a full index and PDF copies of every design in the Ideal Series. It may be found at: An Index of Plans and Articles in the MoToR BoatinG Ideal Series (boat-links.com) Click first on the links to the various volumes in the Ideal Series, then on the names of the designs in the chosen volume, and keep clicking on links within linked pages to "drill down." You will find the full "study plans" and comments for most every plan set. From there, copies of the full-sized plan drawings and table of offsets for each design are available, as indicated, from the Atkin design firm and/or Mystic Seaport plans outlet.
 

 
 

Yes, Birchwood-Casey Tru-Oil should work fine mixed with oil paints, although it's a quite expensive way to make paint. Tru-Oil is made for the shooting sports market as one of a large range of such niche market products marketed by Birchwood-Casey. (Many modelers may be familiar with Birchwood-Caseys "Brass Black" metal finishing product modelers use for blackening brass model parts.) Tru-Oil is simply linseed oil cut with a solvent with a little bit of a siccative added, the exact formulation of which is undisclosed on their MSDS because they deem it "proprietary." A siccative is an oil-based drying agent that accelerates (catalyzes) the hardening of drying oils.  These catalysts were traditionally hydrocarbon carboxylate chelates of lead, but due to lead's toxicity, cobalt and other elements, such as zirconium, zinc, calcium, and iron, have replaced the lead in more popular products. Most driers are colorless but cobalt driers are a deep blue purple color and iron driers are reddish orange. These colored driers are therefore compatible only with certain darker pigmented paints where their color will be unseen. 
 
Separate drying additives for paints became necessary as zinc oxide-based paints were developed as an alternative to the lead oxide paints ("white lead") that had been previously used. Zinc oxide paints were developed in parallel with the introduction of "oil soluble driers" or "terebines" around 1885. These were lead and manganese soaps of linseed fatty acids or resin, also termed linoleates or resinates. Terebines had poor shelf life in mixed paints, as they auto oxidized and lost their effectiveness. As a result, early factory-mixed paints, unless fresh, were a poor substitute for fresh paint mixed by a painter on site from raw ingredients. This situation lasted until the late 1940s; by then further drier developments had superseded the terebines. In 1925, stable naphthenate driers were developed in Germany and commercialized in the US in the early 1930s, in parallel with the development of durable and fast-drying alkyd resin enamels. In the 1950s, metallo-organics based on synthetic acids were introduced as driers.
 
Japan drier is a common lay term and generic product name for any oil drying agent that can be mixed with drying oils such as boiled or raw linseed oil and alkyd resin paints to speed up "drying". The name refers to "japanning", a term for the use of drying oils as an imitation or substitution for urushiol-based Japanese lacquer. 
 
(Full disclosure: I didn't know all of the above chemistry off the top of my head. I looked it up.  )
 
The question whether Tru-Oil can be colored with artists' oil paint is a good one that is becoming increasingly important to many "thrifty" modelers. While there is a tremendous range of quality modeling paint colors available to modelers today, they are extremely expensive in terms of the amount of paint we get for our money. To be sure, most can afford six or eight dollars for a one-ounce bottle of "store bought" paint, but when the number of bottles on our paint shelf start to mount up and however many are found to have dried up since we last opened them, the savings, flexibility, and convenience of mixing an infinite range of paint colors and gloss levels from readily-available and substantially less costly components without the inconvenience of sourcing them from the internet or searching in a "brick and mortar" hobby store you hope has what you are looking for, starts to become a lot more attractive. Mixing your own model paint can certainly can be done using Tru-Oil as a base, but Tru-Oil is fairly expensive for what it is at around US$35.00 a quart. However, even considering the additional cost of several bucks for a tube of artists' oil paint, it's a bargain compared to the equivalent quart of seven buck an ounce hobby paint totaling US $224 ! Now, if you shop around, both boiled linseed oil and gum turpentine each cost about a US $10.00 a quart, so a quart of "half and half" mixed is going to run about US $10.00 from the big chain hardware stores, which makes Tru-Oil will cost you about three and a half times what its "homebrewed" equivalent will. By using boiled linseed oil and turpentine to make your own modeling paint, exclusive of the relatively negligible expense of the artists' oil paint which goes a long, long way, and other conditional additives that are used in very small amounts, if at all, you've avoided paying almost twenty-two and a half times the cost of commercially premixed model paint! Also, Tru-Oil cannot be shipped to or sold in California, USA, presumably due to California's restrictions on VOC content. (It may also be unobtainable in the E.U., given their often more stringent environmental regulations.) If one can't get Tru-Oil in their area, or simply wants to save some money, boiled linseed oil (which contains driers as packaged) thinned with natural gum turpentine, or raw linseed oil, natural gum turpentine and a dash of Japan drier "to taste," should perform as well at a huge savings. I've long used boiled linseed oil and gum turpentine mixed 50-50 as an "all purpose" furniture and rifle stock finish as well as a furniture finish "restorer" with results comparable to what Dr PR describes from Tru-Oil. Wiping it on and into scratched surfaces such as varnished kitchen cabinets, baseboards, stair bannisters, and case goods, etc. will usually cover the scratches well. (Used just like "wipe-on poly.") I routinely keep linseed oil and turpentine in half-gallon or at least quart quantities in my shop paint locker for mixing all sorts of painter's concoctions. 
 
Quality artists' oil paints (look for finely ground pigment in high concentrations) packaged in tubes can be mixed with boiled linseed oil (or raw linseed oil with a suitable amount of drier) and thinned with turpentine for use as excellent model paint for brushing, spraying, or airbrushing. Raw linseed oil (no driers) and turpentine with a suitable small amount of artists' oil paint can also be used as a stain. If the resulting dried finish's level of gloss is too high, the gloss of the dried finish can be knocked down from high all the way to flat matte by hand-rubbing with rottenstone and pumice, or Scotch-brite abrasive pads made for this purpose, or by mixing into the paint a "flattening agent" which is sold in small, over-priced quantities in art supply stores and in larger, much less expensive, quantities in paint stores. "Flattening agent" is generally just finely ground "whiting" (which is calcium carbonate powder, AKA "chalk" or agricultural lime.) sold in a suspension of solvent to expedite mixing it into paint or otherwise sold as a "bagged" powder like baking flour. Follow the instructions on the container. (Note that if the flattening agent is sold mixed in a solvent, the type of solvent has to match the type of paint. Alkyd enamels take one type, polyurethanes take another type, and so on.) A bag of "painter's whiting" is always good to have on hand for many uses including mixing up your own old-fashioned glazier's putty (and wooden boat plank seam stopping) which is why it is sometimes sold as "glazier's whiting." (When used as putty, it is mixed with raw linseed oil alone so it won't harden as quickly.)  If an old-timer tells you that adding gasoline to your paint will work as a flattening agent, don't risk your life finding out. It used to be true. In the '50's and '60's we kids would use it on our plastic car models and it worked great, but that was then. Now, the lead derivative once used to make high-octane "ethyl" or "leaded" gasoline which were responsible for the flattening effect when we'd mix gasoline in our model paint or apply it directly to styrene plastic has been outlawed for public health reasons. (Back then, a kid's life was an adventure! We'd drink out of garden hoses, ride bikes without helmets, eat unpackaged Halloween candy, and all sorts of other really dangerous stuff. If your mother said you might put somebody's eye out doing it, you just knew it had to be fun. No wonder the younger generation today are such a bunch of wusses!  ) 
 
There are lots of formulas online for mixing your own clear varnish that basically the same as the paint formula above, save for the addition of resins or differing oils, but for many applications an epoxy or urethane clear coating is to be much preferred over a low-tech traditional varnish and for any application where the finish will be exposed to direct sunlight, UV inhibitors are a must. At that point you get into more complex modern-day coatings technology and the traditional "DIY paint-making process" becomes more trouble, if not more dangerous, than it's worth and you are better off buying it mixed in the can from the paint store.

I don't know if it is the same in Sweden, but in the U.S., "raw linseed oil" is as it says, linseed oil with nothing in it. What is also sold as "boiled linseed oil" isn't boiled at all, but is rather linseed oil with some Japan dryer added to speed the oil's polymerization (drying.) Additionally, "food grade" (meaning "you can eat it") linseed oil and "flax seed oil" often sold in health food stores are essentially the same product, although sometimes produced by slightly different processes. Food grade flax seed oil is also produced according to safe food-processing protocols while non-"food grade" products are not and may be unsafe to eat. 

Have you ever tried running a circular saw down the length of a log to cut as deep a kerf as possible and then splitting the log with wedges and a maul? I've found success with the method. The flat side of a split can then be run through a jointer (or planed) and that will produce a flat surface to start milling billets on a bandsaw. It also has the advantage of yielding a flat side that runs parallel to the grain without runout.
 
I second the recommendation of an Alaskan mill. The do very good work for the use intended, although a suitably powered chainsaw is highly advised, as is the use of a proper ripping chain. The Granberg "Alaskan" chainsaw mill was invented by the late Elof Granberg, a friend and sailing buddy of mine. It's a very well-made tool that's stood the test of time and, for what it can accomplish, very reasonably priced. Elof's son now runs the family-owned Grandberg International company.  Interestingly, Elof started Grandberg International to manufacture and market hospital bed equipment such as the metal framing used to mount IV bottles, elevate leg casts and hang "pull up" bars. He was an avid sailor and woodworker and he figured there had to be a "better mouse trap" for sharpening his chainsaw. He came up with a small 12 VDC rotary tool that spun a small carbide grinding drum sized to fit the chain tooth's gullet and could be plugged into a pickup truck cigarette lighter for use in the field. As the saying goes, "The rest was history." The Granberg chain sharpener took off and soon afterwards he invented the Alaskan(tm) Sawmill that really put Granberg into the chainsaw accessory business for good. 
 

Yes, Birchwood-Casey Tru-Oil should work fine mixed with oil paints, although it's a quite expensive way to make paint. Tru-Oil is made for the shooting sports market as one of a large range of such niche market products marketed by Birchwood-Casey. (Many modelers may be familiar with Birchwood-Caseys "Brass Black" metal finishing product modelers use for blackening brass model parts.) Tru-Oil is simply linseed oil cut with a solvent with a little bit of a siccative added, the exact formulation of which is undisclosed on their MSDS because they deem it "proprietary." A siccative is an oil-based drying agent that accelerates (catalyzes) the hardening of drying oils.  These catalysts were traditionally hydrocarbon carboxylate chelates of lead, but due to lead's toxicity, cobalt and other elements, such as zirconium, zinc, calcium, and iron, have replaced the lead in more popular products. Most driers are colorless but cobalt driers are a deep blue purple color and iron driers are reddish orange. These colored driers are therefore compatible only with certain darker pigmented paints where their color will be unseen. 
 
Separate drying additives for paints became necessary as zinc oxide-based paints were developed as an alternative to the lead oxide paints ("white lead") that had been previously used. Zinc oxide paints were developed in parallel with the introduction of "oil soluble driers" or "terebines" around 1885. These were lead and manganese soaps of linseed fatty acids or resin, also termed linoleates or resinates. Terebines had poor shelf life in mixed paints, as they auto oxidized and lost their effectiveness. As a result, early factory-mixed paints, unless fresh, were a poor substitute for fresh paint mixed by a painter on site from raw ingredients. This situation lasted until the late 1940s; by then further drier developments had superseded the terebines. In 1925, stable naphthenate driers were developed in Germany and commercialized in the US in the early 1930s, in parallel with the development of durable and fast-drying alkyd resin enamels. In the 1950s, metallo-organics based on synthetic acids were introduced as driers.
 
Japan drier is a common lay term and generic product name for any oil drying agent that can be mixed with drying oils such as boiled or raw linseed oil and alkyd resin paints to speed up "drying". The name refers to "japanning", a term for the use of drying oils as an imitation or substitution for urushiol-based Japanese lacquer. 
 
(Full disclosure: I didn't know all of the above chemistry off the top of my head. I looked it up.  )
 
The question whether Tru-Oil can be colored with artists' oil paint is a good one that is becoming increasingly important to many "thrifty" modelers. While there is a tremendous range of quality modeling paint colors available to modelers today, they are extremely expensive in terms of the amount of paint we get for our money. To be sure, most can afford six or eight dollars for a one-ounce bottle of "store bought" paint, but when the number of bottles on our paint shelf start to mount up and however many are found to have dried up since we last opened them, the savings, flexibility, and convenience of mixing an infinite range of paint colors and gloss levels from readily-available and substantially less costly components without the inconvenience of sourcing them from the internet or searching in a "brick and mortar" hobby store you hope has what you are looking for, starts to become a lot more attractive. Mixing your own model paint can certainly can be done using Tru-Oil as a base, but Tru-Oil is fairly expensive for what it is at around US$35.00 a quart. However, even considering the additional cost of several bucks for a tube of artists' oil paint, it's a bargain compared to the equivalent quart of seven buck an ounce hobby paint totaling US $224 ! Now, if you shop around, both boiled linseed oil and gum turpentine each cost about a US $10.00 a quart, so a quart of "half and half" mixed is going to run about US $10.00 from the big chain hardware stores, which makes Tru-Oil will cost you about three and a half times what its "homebrewed" equivalent will. By using boiled linseed oil and turpentine to make your own modeling paint, exclusive of the relatively negligible expense of the artists' oil paint which goes a long, long way, and other conditional additives that are used in very small amounts, if at all, you've avoided paying almost twenty-two and a half times the cost of commercially premixed model paint! Also, Tru-Oil cannot be shipped to or sold in California, USA, presumably due to California's restrictions on VOC content. (It may also be unobtainable in the E.U., given their often more stringent environmental regulations.) If one can't get Tru-Oil in their area, or simply wants to save some money, boiled linseed oil (which contains driers as packaged) thinned with natural gum turpentine, or raw linseed oil, natural gum turpentine and a dash of Japan drier "to taste," should perform as well at a huge savings. I've long used boiled linseed oil and gum turpentine mixed 50-50 as an "all purpose" furniture and rifle stock finish as well as a furniture finish "restorer" with results comparable to what Dr PR describes from Tru-Oil. Wiping it on and into scratched surfaces such as varnished kitchen cabinets, baseboards, stair bannisters, and case goods, etc. will usually cover the scratches well. (Used just like "wipe-on poly.") I routinely keep linseed oil and turpentine in half-gallon or at least quart quantities in my shop paint locker for mixing all sorts of painter's concoctions. 
 
Quality artists' oil paints (look for finely ground pigment in high concentrations) packaged in tubes can be mixed with boiled linseed oil (or raw linseed oil with a suitable amount of drier) and thinned with turpentine for use as excellent model paint for brushing, spraying, or airbrushing. Raw linseed oil (no driers) and turpentine with a suitable small amount of artists' oil paint can also be used as a stain. If the resulting dried finish's level of gloss is too high, the gloss of the dried finish can be knocked down from high all the way to flat matte by hand-rubbing with rottenstone and pumice, or Scotch-brite abrasive pads made for this purpose, or by mixing into the paint a "flattening agent" which is sold in small, over-priced quantities in art supply stores and in larger, much less expensive, quantities in paint stores. "Flattening agent" is generally just finely ground "whiting" (which is calcium carbonate powder, AKA "chalk" or agricultural lime.) sold in a suspension of solvent to expedite mixing it into paint or otherwise sold as a "bagged" powder like baking flour. Follow the instructions on the container. (Note that if the flattening agent is sold mixed in a solvent, the type of solvent has to match the type of paint. Alkyd enamels take one type, polyurethanes take another type, and so on.) A bag of "painter's whiting" is always good to have on hand for many uses including mixing up your own old-fashioned glazier's putty (and wooden boat plank seam stopping) which is why it is sometimes sold as "glazier's whiting." (When used as putty, it is mixed with raw linseed oil alone so it won't harden as quickly.)  If an old-timer tells you that adding gasoline to your paint will work as a flattening agent, don't risk your life finding out. It used to be true. In the '50's and '60's we kids would use it on our plastic car models and it worked great, but that was then. Now, the lead derivative once used to make high-octane "ethyl" or "leaded" gasoline which were responsible for the flattening effect when we'd mix gasoline in our model paint or apply it directly to styrene plastic has been outlawed for public health reasons. (Back then, a kid's life was an adventure! We'd drink out of garden hoses, ride bikes without helmets, eat unpackaged Halloween candy, and all sorts of other really dangerous stuff. If your mother said you might put somebody's eye out doing it, you just knew it had to be fun. No wonder the younger generation today are such a bunch of wusses!  ) 
 
There are lots of formulas online for mixing your own clear varnish that basically the same as the paint formula above, save for the addition of resins or differing oils, but for many applications an epoxy or urethane clear coating is to be much preferred over a low-tech traditional varnish and for any application where the finish will be exposed to direct sunlight, UV inhibitors are a must. At that point you get into more complex modern-day coatings technology and the traditional "DIY paint-making process" becomes more trouble, if not more dangerous, than it's worth and you are better off buying it mixed in the can from the paint store.

True Oil is a "purified" linseed oil that is used on gun stocks. It has no color and dries into a hard clear finish that does not yellow with time. I think it may also have some other oil additives. I have used it and the finish is as good today as when I applied it over 60 years ago.
 
It might be a good oil to mix with oil paints. I haven't tried it.

Gol-durn! You've really got some luck. You've got all the really good ones full of the best plans right there. From what I've seen over the years, that's pretty much as many as anybody's ever likely to find. They are numbererd and there are supposedly at least that many, but those are the only ones it seems anybody ever bought, or at least the only ones that show up in circulation these days. 
 
The Hathi Trust has digitized the first five volumes of MoToRboaTinG Magazine's Ideal series and has them available on line at http://catalog.hathitrust.org/Record/011692724. The first four volumes look to be mainly how-to-build Hand designs, all from 1920 to about 1922, both sail and power. There are also excellent sections on general traditional boatbuilding methods from start to finish. The fifth volume appears to be the first edition of "Chapman's Piloting and Seamanship. (Chapman was the editor of MoToRboaTinG (why the weird spelling, I have no idea.) This was originally the manual for a mail order course in piloting and seamanship which the magazine offered in the early Twenties. There's a lot to learn from the stuff in these books. The later editions were full of Atkin designs into the Forties and Fifties and are treasured additions to the wooden boat afficianado's library, but I've never seen the early volumes from the twenties before. (Used copies go for as much as $150 these days.) Juicy stuff! Knock yourself out!
 
The William and John Atkins estate has now provided a link to a full index and PDF copies of every design in the Ideal Series. It may be found at: An Index of Plans and Articles in the MoToR BoatinG Ideal Series (boat-links.com) Click first on the links to the various volumes in the Ideal Series, then on the names of the designs in the chosen volume, and keep clicking on links within linked pages to "drill down." You will find the full "study plans" and comments for most every plan set. From there, copies of the full-sized plan drawings and table of offsets for each design are available, as indicated, from the Atkin design firm and/or Mystic Seaport plans outlet.
 

 
 

I don't know if it is the same in Sweden, but in the U.S., "raw linseed oil" is as it says, linseed oil with nothing in it. What is also sold as "boiled linseed oil" isn't boiled at all, but is rather linseed oil with some Japan dryer added to speed the oil's polymerization (drying.) Additionally, "food grade" (meaning "you can eat it") linseed oil and "flax seed oil" often sold in health food stores are essentially the same product, although sometimes produced by slightly different processes. Food grade flax seed oil is also produced according to safe food-processing protocols while non-"food grade" products are not and may be unsafe to eat. 

And of course, you can make up your own custom color by mixing artist oils, the kind sold in tubes, with linseed oil.

I don't know if it is the same in Sweden, but in the U.S., "raw linseed oil" is as it says, linseed oil with nothing in it. What is also sold as "boiled linseed oil" isn't boiled at all, but is rather linseed oil with some Japan dryer added to speed the oil's polymerization (drying.) Additionally, "food grade" (meaning "you can eat it") linseed oil and "flax seed oil" often sold in health food stores are essentially the same product, although sometimes produced by slightly different processes. Food grade flax seed oil is also produced according to safe food-processing protocols while non-"food grade" products are not and may be unsafe to eat. 

I don't know if it is the same in Sweden, but in the U.S., "raw linseed oil" is as it says, linseed oil with nothing in it. What is also sold as "boiled linseed oil" isn't boiled at all, but is rather linseed oil with some Japan dryer added to speed the oil's polymerization (drying.) Additionally, "food grade" (meaning "you can eat it") linseed oil and "flax seed oil" often sold in health food stores are essentially the same product, although sometimes produced by slightly different processes. Food grade flax seed oil is also produced according to safe food-processing protocols while non-"food grade" products are not and may be unsafe to eat. 

I’m Assuming that your Tar Colored Wash is what Americans would call an “oil based wood stain”.  This is nothing more than artist oil colors mixed in linseed oil so diluting the stain with more linseed oil should work fine.  I agree with Druxey that stains don’t cure rapidly as they are intended to be top coated with varnish.  There is a product called “Japan Dryer” that when added to linseed oil based coatings speeds up curing.  It should be available wherever you buy paints.
 
Roger
 

I hope you continue to post.  I have had similar thoughts of discontinuing posting after the kit I am building was criticized in a non-constructive manor when I posted about successfully bending African walnut on a topic about bending African walnut.  The vast majority of the users on the forum are 100% positive.  There are a small minority that will occasionally make a comment that I feel is outside the guidelines of the forum.  I know many would love to see build logs of your Cutty Sark project and I hope we have that opportunity.  

Bob, unfortunately, Google translator distorted my thought a little, but oh well - it doesn’t matter anymore.  
I am grateful to you for your warm feedback about my efforts, thank you!