Bob Cleek

It's always been my impression that the current practice of coppering model ship hulls was the result of nothing more than some European kit manufacturers taking the opportunity to throw a little bit of copper foil into their boxes so they could advertise "Real copper included!" and add substantially to the "number of parts included" by counting each copper plate.  

Thanks for all this detailed information, really appreciated!
 
Overnight in thinking about how I was using this, I realized I was often going back and forth between 2 or 3 different sized bits and having to constantly change. Therefore, the set if four vises actually makes good sense. So for the price, I'll probably just order both of the items Ryland linked in post #2.
 
This is still around 6x cheaper than the Starrett 4-piece set, which I'm sure is fabulous, but I don't think my skill level and usage warrants it.
 
Thanks again.

I purchassed the 4 piece Starrett set some time ago and never looked back. 

Looking at two photos of actual metal plated hulls (as seen from a few yards away ... which might represent someone taking a relatively 'close' look at a model), the appearance is quite smooth.  Seriously, the outlines of the individual plates are barely perceptible - and the tiny nails are all but invisible.  Sure, if one can get right next to a plated ship in dry dock - close enough to reach out and touch the plates - you can see and feel the overlaps and nail heads ... but for a model, one would have to go through 'Wonka Vision' and be shrunk down to HO scale to get that close.
 
  A miniaturized person examining a model plated with individual copper plates would remark how thick the plates are and how large the divots (representing nails) are.  On actual ships the copper (or Muntz metal) is, what, 0.032" ?  At 1:96 you'd need 0.00033" (that's 1/3 of a thousandth - less than the thickness of a human hair ! ) material to be in scale - and 1/8" nail heads would shrink to only 1.3 thousandth of an inch - about 1.7 times an average hair thickness.  (I'm not going to convert to millimeters.)
 
  Of course, there are many scale compromises that often are made in many scales - meaning that dead eyes, blocks and belaying pins often are are a bit 'out of scale' (sometimes more than a bit), so I suppose that plates and copper tape are no exception.  'Seems that on a solid-hull model (or a completely 'filled' plank-on-frame below the waterline, one could merely use a fine stylus (with a straight edge as a guide to follow very fine layout lines) to scribe rows of plating and then add vertical division.  An X-Acto knife would also work.  Spray painting a brownish base coat followed by green overtones would be perfectly acceptable for the bottom of a hull - which is not where most observers are looking. 

A lot of the Indian tools and tool parts are, or were, produced as piecework in home shops. You can find them in some number on eBay. That said, he Chinese can't hold a candle to the Indians when it comes to knock-offs. As with anything else, you get what you pay for. The Indians do seem to honestly state whether a piece is for decoration, not use, and that a copy of the real deal is just that and not what it's supposed to look like. 
 
While you are in the neighborhood, don't overlook Pakistan's large surgical instrument industry. The Pakistani tweezers, foreceps, hemostats and so on aren't the highest quality for medical purposes, most of it apparently destined for Third World clinics, but most all of it is of a quality more than suitable for modeler's purposes. Like the Indian stuff, a lot of it is on eBay.

I've found that using PVA glue is tedious because it takes the glue a while to dry and you have to hold the reef point in place until it does. That can be a problem when you have to hold the entire length of the reef line against the sail to get it to hold its proper shape while drying.
 
I use white (clear) shellac instead of water-based PVA glue. I thread the reef point through the sail with needle and thread long enough to allow me some thread to work with (e.g. two or three times the length of the reef line.) I remove the needle and tie an overhand, figure-eight, or surgeon's knot tight up against each side of the sail to hold the reef point line in place on each side of the sail. Then I place a strip of masking tape on the sail face with its upper edge the same distance from the line of reef points as I want the length of my reef lines to be. (The reason for this is explained below.) Remember to determine the scale length of your reefing lines. There's no precise rule that I know of, except "not too long and not too short, but definitely not the same length from row to row." Reefing lines need to be long enough to encircle the reefed portion of the sail and be tied off with a reef knot, leaving a bitter end sufficient for holding and untying the reef knot. The length of the reefing lines must be sufficient for the amount of canvas that will have to be secured by the reefing lines at each line of reef points. This depends on the size of the sail and the placement of the lines of reef points. Each line of reef points must secure all the canvas below it so if a sail were divided into three equal areas by two lines of reef points, the upper line of reefing lines would have to be approximately twice the length of the reefing lines through the lower line of reef points.  If the lines of reef points don't equally divide the sail into separate segments, the length of the reefing lines required to secure the resulting roll of canvas will have to be individually determined.  If there are sail gaskets on the head of the sail or fastened to the yard, they would correspondingly have to be approximately three times the length of the reefing lines in the first row of reef points in this example, or, in other words, sufficiently long to encircule and secure the entire furled sail.
 
I then take a paint brush loaded with white shellac and, holding the long end of the thread out away from the sail, and taking care not to flood the knot and send the shellac soaking into the sail material itself, I place a drop of shellac onto the knot and reef line on one side, spreading it down a bit farther than the intended length of the reef line. (i.e., the shellac should end on the masking tape itself when the reefing line is pulled down where it's supposed to end up.) The thin shellac will immediately wick into the knot but, if done carefully, should not wick into the sail itself. Hold the free excess end of the shellac-soaked reef line away from the sail and gently blow on it for a few seconds. (The dry free end of the excess reef line keeps the alcohol from getting all over your fingers which when they get sticky will make a mess of it all.) The alcohol in the shellac will quickly evaporate and the shellacked reef line will become increasingly tacky as the drying shellac thickens. Gently pulling the un-shellacked free end of the reef line downward and perpendicular to the head of the sail (or to whatever other angle you desire) and against the sail, use tweezers, a hemostat, or a similar tool to gently press and hold the sticky reef line against the sail into the final position that you want it to take. It's best to use some sort of pointed metal "positioning tool" to place and hold the sticky reef lines because such a tool will only contact the sticky shellacked reef line in a small area and can be easily be pulled free and rinsed off in a small container of alcohol and wiped clean as you go, preventing a sticky buildup of drying shellac on the tool tips. Try to resist the temptation to use a finger to push the sticky reefing line against the sail. You want the reefing line to stick to the sail, not your dirty finger and the small area of a metal tool point will pull free of the stuck reefing line leaving it attached to the sail much easier than the far greater area of adhesion that occurs when your whole finger tip has become glued to it as it dries. The "finger tip method" causes the reefing line to pull free of the sailcloth because more of it will be stuck to your finger than to the sail. The sticky shellac should cause the reefing line to stick well to the sail in short order. Blowing on the shellac speeds the evaporation of its alcohol solvent. If adhesion proves insufficient, apply a bit more shellac to the underside of the reef point line, blow on it for a few seconds until it gets tacky, and try sticking it again. Let the shellacked reef point dry, adhering firmly to the sail. When it is dry, cut the reef lines to the desired final length with a sharp pointed iris (medical) or embroidery scissors using the upper edge of the strip of masking tape you placed on the sail to mark the desired uniform scale length of your reefing lines across the face of the sail in a neat straight line. After all the reefing lines are cut to length, all the trimmed off-cuts, which will likely be shellacked to the masking tape, can easily and neatly be lifted off of the sail along with the masking tape without leaving any shellac on the sail below the ends of the trimmed reefing lines. 
 
This job can be done in any order you prefer. I've found the most efficient method for me is to tie in all the reef lines on one line of reef points on each side of the sail and then shellac, position, and cut to length all the points on one side of the sail and then turn the sail over and do the same on the other side. I install one row of reef points at a time.  Keep in mind that there is a technique involved. The reef point stopper knots are most efficiently tied into the reef lines on both sides of the sail using an overhand or surgeon's "instrument knot" tied around a needle holder or hemostat. This permits the two knots on each side of the sail at each reef point to be tied tightly against the sail without any free space between them. Search for "tying surgeon's instrument knots" or "tying sutures with instruments" on YouTube to watch tutorials on tying knots with surgical instruments. (If you haven't learned these skills, they will change your life as a ship modeler. Their training in the use of medical instruments is one of several reasons why doctors and dentists are generally such good ship modelers.) Once the length of the reefing lines is determined and you've placed your masking tape strip across the sail to mark this length and you are ready to start shellacking, remember to keep your hands out of the shellac. Otherwise, you can fall victim to the "tar baby effect" and end up with fingers to which everything sticks but which are useless for getting anything done. To this end, take the long end of the reef line in your nondominant hand and do not let go until the shellacked reef line is stuck to the sail and masking tape right where you want it. Better yet, if you have a suitable instrument such as a needle holder or hemostat, grasp the end of the long reef line at a point just below where the reef line crosses the lower end of your masking tape length marker and use that instrument to control the line instead of your fingers. In that way, you can leave the line to be held by the instrument if you must let go of the instrument. Use your dominant hand to apply shellac from a small cup or jar and to manipulate the tool you will be using to put the sticky reefing line where you want it to be. Use your dominant hand to rinse your shellac brush and positioning tool in a small cup or jar of denatured alcohol as need be.  You might want to imagine yourself a surgeon as you install your reefing lines. You want to "keep a sterile surgical field" within which to work and you want to use your instruments to do what your fingers are too large to do. Once you get in a rhythm installing reefing lines, you'll find that it's a task that can be performed rather quickly and precisely without a lot of practice.
 
The shellac will seal the knot in the reef point, secure the reefing line in the proper position on the face of the sail, and prevent the free end of the reef point from unraveling. If you are careful to work neatly, there should not be any visual evidence of the shellac on the reef point lines or the sail when you are done. The advantage of using shellac for this purpose is that it dries very fast and, should the need arise, more shellac can be added if greater adhesion is required. Sticky shellac has excellent archival qualities. While the method may seem involved, it's really a lot easier to do than it is to describe. The shellac allows the reef points to be stuck flat against the sail for the entire length of the reef line, providing a proper scale appearance. Shellac is very forgiving to work with. It cleans up very easily with denatured alcohol, which instantly dissolves it.

I think a lot of it is just an optical illusion because he has such big hands. His hands make the pieces look smaller is all. 
 

 
    Just kidding. Johann is my secret hero. His work is incomparable. I've studied a lot of models in a lot of museums around the world and I"ve never seen anything to approach the quality of his work. His build log photography too is some of the best ship modeling porn I've ever seen.

In my experience, once a yellow metal develops a patina, i.e. oxidizes, the oxidation on the exterior, i.e. the patina, becomes a sealer itself and further oxidation apparently ceases or at least slows way down. In other words, the patina is the sealer. There's no need to seal the patina at all. Now, perhaps some of the chemists and metalurgists in this forum can explain this phenomenon, or expose it as pure bunk, but I've handled a lot of patinated copper and bronze over the years and if it's a patina you want, the best was to get one and keep it is to just leave the piece alone. Surely exposure to salt air, for example, can accelerate the oxidation and keeping it indoors will avoid the green verdigris affect, yielding a "brown penny" look instead, but it all oxidizes the same. Nobody's painted a clear sealer on the Statue of Liberty as far as I know and she's doing just fine.
 
Brass horn players will probably disagree with me, but I wouldn't advise lacquering or otherwise coating polished yellow metal at all. For one thing, bare brass or bronze, lightly polished regularly, will take on a beautiful character owing to those few areas which aren't accessible to the polishing cloth. Hinges, screw slots, and deep corners all develop their own contrasting character to yield a "well used and well cared for" look. The "perfect" bright lacquered finishes that are often applied by manufacturers quickly degrade to a blotchy visual horror because of microscopic scratches and other porosity occurring in the coatings applied. I expect most mariners are familiar with a shiny brass clock or barometer case that after a few years looks like it has "the pox." Because of the coating, it is near impossible to polish these spots away. There's nothing for it but to strip off the coating entirely. This is also often an extremely difficult and time consuming process. Some lacquers wipe off easily with a liberal application of lacquer remover, but others cling to the surface like it was life itself.
 
Every lamp, barometer, ship's clock and other brass or bronze item I own is, or eventually will be, stripped of their factory clear coatings and reduced to their natural bare state and then lovingly (but perhaps too infrequently) hand polished. The satisfaction of polishing a nice piece of brass to a mirror gloss is hard to beat.
 
The moral of the story being that if you coat patina, that coating isn't likely to be accomplishing anything in the short term and probably will cause a whole lot of work for your or some subsequent owner in the years to come.
 
If it's a weathered copper bottom you are seeking, you may also wish to consider applying scale-thickness paper "plates" and painting these with an airbrush and standard model weathering products rather than trying to achieve that look on a model hull with real copper plates. Most of the commercially available "real copper" plates produced for ship modeling are eggregiously out of scale in the first place. Patina itself has its own scale as well. Study your model's bottom and determine what a weathered coppered bottom of your model's scale actually looks like when viewed from scale model viewing distances. When it comes to depicting coppered bottoms, subtlety is the name of the game.
 

 
See: 
 

I have  the swivel head pin vise shown above and use it a lot. But it has several issues:
 
1. It will not hold the very small drill buts - nothing smaller than about 0.025 inch (0.6 mm).
2. If I am using several drill bits it is a nuisance to have to be switching collets back and forth.
3. It does not allow the use of long drill bits (no opening in the swivel part). This is a problem only if you are drilling very deep holes and I have done that only a few times in the last four decades.
4. Similarly, it cannot be used to hold long rods with just the end protruding from the collet. I modified my other pin vise (with a fixed wooden knob) to allow long rods and drill bits to be used.
 
Not long ago I purchased the four piece set also mentioned above. These have turned out to be invaluable! I may use them more than the first pin vise. The smallest size will hold the tiniest drill bits (#80, 0.0135 inch/0.34 mm) firmly. They do allow the use of long bits or rods, and they can be chucked into a milling machine, drill press or lathe (however, I doubt they are made with enough precision to use with the smallest bits in a milling machine).
 
Having said this, hand drilling with the very small bits is just asking for a broken bit! Chuck the bit all the way into the pin vise with just enough extending necessary to drill the depth needed!

I think a lot of it is just an optical illusion because he has such big hands. His hands make the pieces look smaller is all. 
 

 
    Just kidding. Johann is my secret hero. His work is incomparable. I've studied a lot of models in a lot of museums around the world and I"ve never seen anything to approach the quality of his work. His build log photography too is some of the best ship modeling porn I've ever seen.

I think a lot of it is just an optical illusion because he has such big hands. His hands make the pieces look smaller is all. 
 

 
    Just kidding. Johann is my secret hero. His work is incomparable. I've studied a lot of models in a lot of museums around the world and I"ve never seen anything to approach the quality of his work. His build log photography too is some of the best ship modeling porn I've ever seen.

Believe it or not, I still on occasion find my collection of LEROY templates and lettering instruments useful. The ASCII-standard letters are utilitarian and boring, but some of the old odd-ball fonts produce some amazing work. While I'm often a laser printer font cut-and-paster, there's still nothing like an India inked old style font from the turn of the last century to give a drawing a real period feel.  

Thanks, Roger! That's always been my layman's understanding of it as well.

Believe it or not, I still on occasion find my collection of LEROY templates and lettering instruments useful. The ASCII-standard letters are utilitarian and boring, but some of the old odd-ball fonts produce some amazing work. While I'm often a laser printer font cut-and-paster, there's still nothing like an India inked old style font from the turn of the last century to give a drawing a real period feel.  

Thanks, Roger! That's always been my layman's understanding of it as well.

In my experience, once a yellow metal develops a patina, i.e. oxidizes, the oxidation on the exterior, i.e. the patina, becomes a sealer itself and further oxidation apparently ceases or at least slows way down. In other words, the patina is the sealer. There's no need to seal the patina at all. Now, perhaps some of the chemists and metalurgists in this forum can explain this phenomenon, or expose it as pure bunk, but I've handled a lot of patinated copper and bronze over the years and if it's a patina you want, the best was to get one and keep it is to just leave the piece alone. Surely exposure to salt air, for example, can accelerate the oxidation and keeping it indoors will avoid the green verdigris affect, yielding a "brown penny" look instead, but it all oxidizes the same. Nobody's painted a clear sealer on the Statue of Liberty as far as I know and she's doing just fine.
 
Brass horn players will probably disagree with me, but I wouldn't advise lacquering or otherwise coating polished yellow metal at all. For one thing, bare brass or bronze, lightly polished regularly, will take on a beautiful character owing to those few areas which aren't accessible to the polishing cloth. Hinges, screw slots, and deep corners all develop their own contrasting character to yield a "well used and well cared for" look. The "perfect" bright lacquered finishes that are often applied by manufacturers quickly degrade to a blotchy visual horror because of microscopic scratches and other porosity occurring in the coatings applied. I expect most mariners are familiar with a shiny brass clock or barometer case that after a few years looks like it has "the pox." Because of the coating, it is near impossible to polish these spots away. There's nothing for it but to strip off the coating entirely. This is also often an extremely difficult and time consuming process. Some lacquers wipe off easily with a liberal application of lacquer remover, but others cling to the surface like it was life itself.
 
Every lamp, barometer, ship's clock and other brass or bronze item I own is, or eventually will be, stripped of their factory clear coatings and reduced to their natural bare state and then lovingly (but perhaps too infrequently) hand polished. The satisfaction of polishing a nice piece of brass to a mirror gloss is hard to beat.
 
The moral of the story being that if you coat patina, that coating isn't likely to be accomplishing anything in the short term and probably will cause a whole lot of work for your or some subsequent owner in the years to come.
 
If it's a weathered copper bottom you are seeking, you may also wish to consider applying scale-thickness paper "plates" and painting these with an airbrush and standard model weathering products rather than trying to achieve that look on a model hull with real copper plates. Most of the commercially available "real copper" plates produced for ship modeling are eggregiously out of scale in the first place. Patina itself has its own scale as well. Study your model's bottom and determine what a weathered coppered bottom of your model's scale actually looks like when viewed from scale model viewing distances. When it comes to depicting coppered bottoms, subtlety is the name of the game.
 

 
See: 
 

And all th is time I thought I was the only one who was frustrated by the original paperback volume one binding with the pages that fall out. When I got the second volume with the spiral binding that allows you to lay the book flat on your workbench when using it as a reference, I seriously entertained taking my volume one down to the local chain stationary store and having it spiral-bound, as well. One of those things on my list of "probably-never-will-get-around-tuits," though.  

There's an excellent instructional piece on preparing your own grown wood for modeling use in the NRG's Ship Modeler's Shop Notes, Volume II, I believe, but if you don't have it, buy both volumes and it will be in one of them. A couple of invaluable modeling books and, in terms of bang for your buck, a very good investment. Get them from the NRG online store or used off eBay.

A lot of the Indian tools and tool parts are, or were, produced as piecework in home shops. You can find them in some number on eBay. That said, he Chinese can't hold a candle to the Indians when it comes to knock-offs. As with anything else, you get what you pay for. The Indians do seem to honestly state whether a piece is for decoration, not use, and that a copy of the real deal is just that and not what it's supposed to look like. 
 
While you are in the neighborhood, don't overlook Pakistan's large surgical instrument industry. The Pakistani tweezers, foreceps, hemostats and so on aren't the highest quality for medical purposes, most of it apparently destined for Third World clinics, but most all of it is of a quality more than suitable for modeler's purposes. Like the Indian stuff, a lot of it is on eBay.

Damn! You're absolutely right. I'd forgotten about that for a while.  

I second Bob’s recommendation.  The books are well worth the price and contain the collective knowledge of NRG members in the years before MSW.  The original volume I was bound like a paperback book and after a while the pages fall out.  More recently the Guild republished Volume I using the spiral bound system.  If you buy the book on eBay make sure that it’s the spiral bound version.  Volume II was originally published using the spiral wound system.
 
Roger

Not a metallurgist but an experienced industrial metal fabricator.
 
The mechanism is oxidation caused by exposure to oxygen ions (air, water, etc).  Corrosion resistant materials “work” by forming an oxide film bonded to the substrate that isolates it from the corrosive source.
 
Metal fabricators take advantage of this property to finish surfaces.  For example, specifications for stainless steel nuclear service piping often require that the pipe be “pickled and passivated.”  This is a two step operation.  The pipe is first cleaned in  tank of hydrofluoric acid.  This is followed by passivation in Nitric acid.  The dull grey color of stainless steel is this corrosion film.  Unfortunately, when this film is damaged accelerated corrosion exists between the protected and unprotected surfaces.
 
I am less familiar with copper and brass alloys but suspect that they form similar  protective corrosion films.
 
Roger

Given the time when that standard was created, I have little doubt they were referring to "genuine" mahogany which is also known as "Honduran mahogany.". Honduran Mahogany | The Wood Database (Hardwood) (wood-database.com) Honduran or "genuine" mahogany refers collectively to the larger Swietenia macrophylla which grows in Central and South America and is also now plantation-farmed in parts of India, the smaller Swietenia humilis which grows from southern Mexico to northern Central America, and Swietania mahagoni which is native to Florida and there listed as "threatened" and the greater Caribbean where it is listed as "near threatened" but with some very limited commercial availability from transplanted plantation stands in Palau and Fiji. [Interesting trivia fact: Swietania mahagoni or "Cuban mahogany" was cut to near extinction in the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries by Spanish shipbuilders. Many capital ships of the Spanish Armada were built exclusively of West Indies mahogany. This species was favored because it was believed to be impervious to decay and "buried" shot in battle, rather than splintering, which was the greatest cause of battle casualties.  When these large ships were broken up, their timbers were recycled to produce the fine furniture of those periods. Just imagine how much of the finest mahogany ever known to man was cut to build Spain's ships!)
 
The problem is that mahogany is graded not by number ("first grade") but by letters: ("Grade A" through "Grade F.") Guide to Mahogany Grades: Understanding the Differences in Quality - Hardwood Insider (hardwood-insider.com) Mahogany is also graded as a hardwood under the "firsts and seconds" (FAS) system which doesn't bear any relationship to a "first grade" at all.
 
The mahogany grades are basically based on the visual quality of the wood. "Grade A" mahogany is the highest furniture grade. "Grade F" is the least visually attractive grade. So the question remains: What is "first grade" mahogany. It would appear to me that Grade F mahogany would be completely suitable for solid hull model construction of models that were to be painted. Nobody should care about the figuring of a piece of mahogany that is going to be painted. Who knows? The "Mil-spec" world is full of mysteries like thousand dollar hammers and toilet seats!  

Damn! You're absolutely right. I'd forgotten about that for a while.  

Especially when they permit basswood along with mahogany! Maybe they need to update their specifications. Maybe they have and we're just relying on some old data. Nothing ever dies on the internet!