Bob Cleek

Here in the Northern California Wine Country, there are lots of micro-breweries and if you go into a big chain drug store and ask for IPA, they're likely to send you to the liquor department where the various boutique brands of IPA, India pale ale, are stocked!  As far as my "gentleman's C" in chemistry gets me. I understand that ethyl alcohol, which is distilled from plant starches, and isopropyl alcohol, which is a product derived from petroleum, are entirely different things. I have always used ethyl alcohol in my shop as a solvent for shellac and, where indicated, for thinning acrylic and latex paints, as well as for a marine stove fuel and I buy it by the gallon tin. I've never used it for dissolving PVA adhesive, but I've heard many recommend isopropyl alcohol for that purpose, but never ethyl alcohol. Do any of the chemists in attendance, or even anybody who plays a chemist on the internet, know whether, when we talk about using alcohol for dissolving PVA adhesive or conditioning acrylic paint, it makes any difference whether we use ethyl alcohol or isopropyl alcohol for such purposes, or are the two completely interchangeable?
 

Simply amazing! Are you talking about a radio-controlled galley? (Maybe even with a speaker for the sound effects of the cadence drummer and lashing whips?) How cool is that, or what?
 
 

I believe that The Art of Shipmodeling has reached that pinnacle of universal reference work that it is simply referred to by its author's last name: "Frolich." I see where, inexplicably, Amazon has it for sale new for $70.00. That's a steal at less than half the price most of us paid over the last 22 years since it was first published. I'd grab a copy in a hot minute if I were you. There's a wealth of information in it. 
 
But beware! Do not confuse The Art of Shipmodeling by Bernard Frolich with The Art of Ship Modeling by Richard Mansir, which is an entirely different book. It's "Frolich" that you want to make sure you are buying.
 
If it's classic books on modeling technique and "tricks of the trade," I'd strongly recommend:
 
 The Techniques of Ship Modeling, by the late Gerald Wingrove: The Techniques of Ship Modelling by Wingrove, Gerald A. Hardback Book The Fast 9780852423660 | eBay There are always a few used copies on eBay (both hardcover and quality paperback) so shop for the lowest price, usually less than ten bucks used. 
 
Ship Modeler's Shop Notes, Volumes 1 and 2 from the NRG. There are always used copies of these on eBay and Amazon. New copies are available from the NRG store through this forum. As for Volume 1, I'd advise you get a newer printing with the spiral binding which permits the books to be laid flat on a workbench or tabletop when working from them. The original binding was a glued spine paperback and the glue dried out and the pages come loose. My copy of Volume 1 is held together with a bulldog clip. I should bring it to Staples or one of those places and have them spiral bind it for me.
 
William Frederick's (1874) Scale Journey: A Scratchbuilder's Evolutionary Development, by Antonio Mendez C. This book was "remaindered" on eBay a couple of years ago for seven bucks a copy and I grabbed one. It's focus is radio controlled sailing scale models, but its content is a survey of technique, and it is full of subjects not found elsewhere, especially regarding tools and shop practices. It would take you years of following build logs on MSW to pick up but a fraction of the how-to-do-its in this book. Unfortunately, it appears to have become something of a collectable at this point and Amazon is now selling them for $47.00. If you watch out for a copy on eBay, you may get lucky and snag one for closer to the price when they were selling off the remainders new. William Frederick's (1874) Scale Journey: A Scratchbuilder's Evolutionary Development: mendez, antonio: 9780975577202: Amazon.com: Books  I checked eBay just now and see where they have three between $50.00 and $169.00! (Let this be a lesson to modeling library builders everywhere!) 
 
Plank-On-Frame Models and Scale Masting and Rigging, Vol. 1: Scale Hull Construction and Plank-On-Frame Models and Scale Masting and Rigging, Vol. 2: Scale Hull Construction by Harold A. Underhill. This two-volume set is a classic and there are lots of used copies on eBay for surprisingly reasonable prices. (Still in print, new copies run around $90 per volume!) plank on frame models underhill for sale | eBay
 
Masting and Rigging: The Clipper Ship and Ocean Carrier by Harold Underhill. This is what I'd call the Bible of the last days of commercial sail. If you are interested in clippers and windjammers, as well as general rigging practice at the highest level of its evolution, this book is it. Used copies are available very reasonably priced on eBay.  Masting and Rigging: The Clipper Ship and Ocean Carrier for sale | eBay
 
These titles are recommended for their treatment of general modeling practices and techniques more than for specific research data on specific types and periods. When your interest becomes focused on a particular type of vessel in a particular period, there are specific reference works that become "must haves," but they tend to be expensive (some running more than a hundred dollars and up) and sometimes very difficult to find. If you continue to pursue your interest in ship modeling, you will find yourself acquiring a library of some value and doing that easily becomes a related hobby in and of itself.
 

They'd pretty much have to be very close and rowed in perfect unison. What's apparently inaccurate in the Ben Hur galley scene is when the rowers start "falling out" from exhaustion, what happens to their oars? Nothing, in the movie. In real life, a dropped oar's loom would likely immediately start flailing about inboard, making it impossible for adjacent rowers to row in unison, and the blade outboard would foul the blades of adjacent oars, creating a mess, and probably a "chain reaction" type of mess at that. Imagine what below decks would look like in combat when the vessel was rammed amidships. I guess naval tactics in that age boiled down to "ram and hold fast, board and kill all the other guys, then hope there was at least one ship left to make it to shore on.

Simply amazing! Are you talking about a radio-controlled galley? (Maybe even with a speaker for the sound effects of the cadence drummer and lashing whips?) How cool is that, or what?
 
 

Decades ago, I had home just north of San Francisco, CA, which had a 14" high living room wall built of exposed Belgian blocks, recycled cobblestones from the streets of San Francisco. In earlier times, the ships would arrive in SF in ballast carrying Belgian blocks, unload the blocks and take on a cargo of grain for the return trip. The blocks were used to pave the streets. In later times, some of these cobblestone streets are still to be seen, although most have be asphalted over. The City now has an ordinance requiring that any cobblestones dug up in street repair belong to the City, which reuses them in parks and other landscaping applications. The cobblestone streets are famous, but their origins aren't commonly known.

It's nice to hear of another who remembers Ray Aker, a man who certainly deserved greater fame than he realized during his lifetime. He was a very good maritime historian and one of the better draftsmen around. I still have the copy of his beautiful technical drawing of the remains of the 1840 whaling bark Lydia uncovered during excavations for the 1978 construction of the San Francisco Peripheral Sewer project which he gave us when I knew the archaeological impact report consultants on that project. 
 
 

http://library.mysticseaport.org/ere/odetail.cfm?id_number=1961.72
 
Without passing any judgment pro or con regarding your posting your research records on the Drake Navigator's Guild's website, as a fellow member of our generation, I would urge you to strongly consider making provision for the donation of your research files to the J. Porter Shaw Library at the San Francisco National Maritime Museum at Fort Mason, San Francisco. As you probably know, the J. Porter Shaw is the best recognized repository for such subject matter these days.  

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.)

When looking for tools keep in mind that model shops often have the bad habit of selling cheap stuff at elevated prices to unsuspecting fellow modellers. Most fine tools are not made for us, but are adopted from various trades, such as watchmaking, surgery, dental care, luthiers etc. In the age of Internet, global trade (my sympathy to our US American colleagues) and supply chains, there is no reason not to look for the real source of such tools. Just do a search when you discover a tool and the search engines or auction platforms usually propose a wide selection.
 
It is also a good idea to browse the (on-line) catalogues of the above mentioned trades to get an idea for what tools are available and what their price range may be (attention: medical stuff may be expensive, but often you can find 'seconds' on the Internet at lower prices that are good enough for our uses). 
 
 
I not normally use a pin-vise for drilling, there are tiny single- or double-action Archimedean drills for watchmakers that do a better job and clamp down to 0.1 mm, if you get a good one.
 
I gather there are four types of pin-vises on the market: the all-steel toolmaker ones with knurled bodies, the slender watchmaker ones with steel jaws, but often a fluted brass body, the watchmaker ones with exchangeable collets (not sure what the point is, it is better to have a set of pin-vises handy), and the biological ones that are steel, but have a fluted ebenony handle. In addition, you get the cheap modeller ones with brass jaws and/or eloxated aluminium bodies.
 
The larger toolmaker ones (e.g. Starret or Eclipse) are bored 2.5 mm, so can hold the common burrs and other tools with the same 2.4 mm shaft diameter, such as triangular scrapers etc., which could be useful for deburring and other tasks. Not sure whether there are pin-vises bored for 1/8" for the Dremel bits.
 
I posted the picture below before, but it can give you an idea of what is on the new and second-hand market:

 1 - Archimedes drill for watchmakers.
 2 - Slender modern pin-vice with hollow fluted brass body.
 3 - Slender antique pin-vice with hollow fluted brass body.
 4 - Shop-made pin-vice with walnut body and head made from an insert drill-chuck; these drill-chucks are unfit for their intended purpose as they usually do not run true.
 5 - Eclipse toolmaker's pin-vice with knurled steel body; these come in different sizes.
 6 - French-style pin-vice; these are closed with the sliding ring and have usually brass inserts in the two jaws that can be adapted to special needs;
 7 - Dito, here the jaws are replaced in hardwood for delicate parts.
 8 - Antique laboratory pin-vice with fluted wooden handle.
 9 - Modern pin-vice with fluted wooden handle; these come in different sizes and capacities.
10 - Antique toolmaker's pin-vice for very delicate work in confined spaces.
 

Rope shrouds would stretch to some extent when new, but this was no surprise to them. As you may know, they used "shroud-laid" cordage for standing rigging before metal cable came into use. (And metal cable stretches, too.) Shroud-laid cordage is laid up with four strands around a heart, or central, strand. Shroud-laid rope doesn't have the tensile strength of three-strand hawser-laid cordage, but it is designed to be much less liable to stretch, hence its use as standing rigging. When a gang of rigging was made up, the shroud-laid cordage was often wet down and "pre-stretched" beforehand. By the time shroud-laid rope is properly wormed, parceled, and tightly served, and all of that impregnated with white lead paste and pine tar, it's a heck of a lot closer to an iron bar than a rubber band!
 
I can't imagine a "sudden change of tack" causing a mast to "come over like a whip" in a vessel of the size of Great Republic. Coming about in any square-rigger, and especially a larger one, is a slow, gradual, and rather complex evolution. There's nothing "sudden" about it. Their masts don't "whip."
 
Lee shrouds and stays will always be slack when the vessel is under sail. That is meant to be. Taking up the slack in lee shrouds while under sail results in seriously over-tensioned shrouds when those lee shrouds become windward shrouds on the opposite tack. A lower mast section might survive such abuse, but such tightening of a smaller upper mast section could even snap it on the opposite tack.  I've never heard of a sailing ship heaving to in mid-ocean to take up slack in its standing rigging.
 
The purpose of the standing rigging isn't simply to "keep the masts from falling down." It's more important function is to distribute the energy loads evenly throughout the vessel's structure. Every part of a vessel moves to a certain extent, and particularly wooden vessels. They are engineered to move so as to minimize shock-loading. Shroud tension is widely misunderstood modernly. We see many modern Marconi (jib-headed) rigged sailboats exhibiting structural damage from shrouds and stays being cranked down with turnbuckles until they sing like violin strings. The mechanics are the same as those of a bow and arrow. Tight shrouds push the heel of the mast downwards like the pointed end of an arrow while pulling up on the chainplates and we frequently see cracked frames and opened garboard seams in wooden boats and even catastrophic chainplate failures and hull fractures in fiberglass boats as a consequence. Shrouds and stays really only need to be tight enough to not be slack when the vessel is at rest. When it is under sail, the windward shrouds and stays tighten up and lee shrouds go slack. Their masts may bend a bit to leeward on each tack until the windward shrouds take up, but that is as it's intended to be.
 
The "long equatorial passages" by square-rigged sailing ships were almost exclusively made in the Trade Winds because that put the wind at their sterns. The sailing was all reaching and they would do as much as possible to avoid windward work which was certainly not a square-rigger's best point of sail. Reaching put most of the stress on the backstays which in many instances designed as running rigging, particularly those run to the lighter masts aloft. That arrangement accommodated stretch to the extent necessary.  Reaching doesn't put a lot of stress on the shrouds, relatively speaking.

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.

Let me add one more thing to the above "tome." "Flaming" the thread used for reefing lines to remove any "fuzz" before use is highly advised. Dark line "fuzz" contrasts strongly with the lighter sail material.

Whatever you are seeing on Facebook can probably be found on a site you would be more comfortable with like Amazon or Walmart
 
These 'cheap' tools are all coming from China and can be found on may different sites.
 
I never click through adds on Facebook because scams are rampant there.
 
Checking here at MSW is always a good screening process.

Okay, I'll bite. No, I wasn't actually there back in the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries, but I've used enough pine tar on enough cordage, blocks, decks, and other wood not to feel like I have to add the disclaimer, "IMHO." I know firsthand how it looks and how it weathers. There's several options.
 
Real pine tar ("Stockholm tar") is dark brown, almost black, colored, The more coats you apply, the darker it gets. (It's much like orange shellac in this respect.) 
Straight pine tar on new wood: This with bring out the figuring and darken the wood, as might be expected of any "oil."
Straight pine tar on old wood, multiple coats: Dirt and dust will make it darker still. Mold will often grow in and on the wood surface beneath the tarred coats and make it darker still. So, depending upon how many coats of tar have been applied, it will eventually look darn near black, or sort of a charcoal grey eventually when in use.
Color of blocks and shells when tarred: This depends upon the species of wood used. At the top of the list was lignam vitae, which was always hard to come by. It's a dark brown color. Locust, another dark wook, was another favorite, As mentioned above, tarring the wood makes it darker. Weathering makes it darker still. It ends up black or charcoal grey eventually.
Pine tar with lampblack on wood: I'm not sure of the date this started, but was a pretty common thing eventually. They say it made the tar last longer, which it probably did, slowing down the UV degradation. This was not used on running rigging cordage. Only on served standing rigging.
Painted wood: Pine tar and lampblack early on. Later pine tar, lampblack, and a bit of Japan drier. Ultimately, linseed oil and lampblack with a bit of Japan drier. All thinned with turpentine. The color of this was black, obviously. Pine tar and lead oxide with a bit of drier made white paint. White's reflective qualities made it even better than black for withstanding sun damage.
 
Most cordage was hemp and hemp cordage must be tarred to preserve it in the marine environment. Running rigging is tarred with thinned pine tar, turpentine historically being used as the thinner. When manufactured, the yarns of the larger diameter cordage were run through heated copper troughs of thinned pine tar, then spun. They were able to run the yarns through rollers that, by squeezing the yarn, could regulate the amount of tar on the yarns and in this way vary the qualities of the cordage produced. "Small stuff" was spun first and then dipped in thinned pine tar. When tarred, new hemp cordage is a fairly dark golden bronw color, but it darkens with use (picking up dirt.) Weathered, it's a grey-ish brown color. Manila cordage isn't really suitable for the marine environment because it shrinks when it gets wet and, if tied, and gets wet, the knots are very difficult to untie.  Light straw colored running rigging wasn't used on boats and ships. (It was sometimes called "Manila hemp," but that was because all cordage was called "hemp" back in the day. It's not made of hemp at all, though.) White colored cordage was never seen until the advent of the synthetic fibers after WWII. While frequently seen today, white or other light colored lanyards run through deadeyes is a glaring inaccuracy on any ship model prior to circa 1950 or so. Hemp production was once a huge industry, but was pretty much rendered obsolete by synthetic fibers, not to mention a "certain prejudice" against hemp that arose in the 1930's when marijuana was outlawed. It's rare to come across a length of hemp line these days, but well broken in hemp line is wonderful stuff. It's soft and supple, yet very strong.
 
As for other colors, forgedaboudit! The only blue pigment available until 1704 was ground up lapis lazuli, which was hugely expensive. Artists used it. Nobody was painting ships and boats blue until a German guy discovered how to make Prussian Blue. In 1828, a Frenchman created another blue, French Ultramarine. Yellow was not as expensive, but pretty much the same. It wasn't until 1820 that Chrome Yellow was available at a reasonable price. Until mid-Nineteenth Century, the world was pretty drab, at least outside of artist's colors. Lots of blacks, whites, yellow, red, and brown ochres and rust oxides. (The "red barn" wasn't a fashion statement. It was just a cheap color, as was "red lead" used in marine construction.) Those rainbow colored Mayflowers, Ninas, Pintas, and Santa Marias... no way!
 
Nobody's going to go wrong coloring standing rigging black, running rigging medium to dark brown, or deadeyes black or dark brown. Remembering "scale viewing distance," it's pretty much going to look black or charcoal grey with a touch of brown on a model. Given what we do know of the history of the maritime trades, many of which are still practiced today by some, I don't see any argument that can adequately justify the "oak colored" deadeyes and "white" or "straw colored" lanyards we see on some models today. Except of course that is the was the model maker felt like doing it for who knows whatever reason.
 
Real pine tar:
 

 
 

Another book you may consider is "The Riggers Apprentice" by Brion Toss. I see it's on Abe Books for less than $20 US. Lots of really good information, great for beginners and wonderfully illustrated. It's gold!
Peter

That's great news!  It will be interesting to see at what price point they will be offered.  

Wipe on polyurethane is simply thinned polyurethane varnish or "clear coating," if you will. It's marketed for folks who don't want to go to the trouble of mixing their own and for that convenience they pay the price of polyurethane varnish for a can half full of far less expensive thinner.   The same result can be achieved using a mixture of half boiled linseed oil and half turpentine. Either way, the "preferred technique" is getting it on the wood however works for you, and then wiping off the excess before it starts to dry. It's really no different than any other oiled wood finish, save for the chemical components of the coating itself. As the man says, "Follow the directions on the can."
 
How many coats to apply and whether you feel the need to sand or not are matters of personal taste. As with all finish and wood species combinations with which the user is not completely familiar,  one should always test the application on a piece of scrap wood of the same species (and preferably the same color, if colors vary in the species) to ensure the result desired. Nothing's worse than ruining a work piece with a botched finish!
 
 
 

True that, Roger, but there's a lot of difference between wood species that will be encountered. A hardwood gun stock of walnut, for example, will not "whisker" much at all. On the other hand, a piece of soft basswood will "whisker" a lot over repeated wettings. Sealing any wood with shellac will harden the surface of the wood and subsequent sanding to remove "whiskers," "fuzz," or raised grain will then only need to be done once, rather than repeatedly until there's no more grain rising when the wood is wetted. 

No matter how you cut it, cutting the rolling bevel in a planking rabbet (sometimes called a "rebate") is a tedious process that takes some thought and care. You will find lots of theoretical instructions in boat building and modeling books about how to do it using the information that may be developed using lofting techniques. The exact angle of the rabbet can be developed for any point along the rabbet's length from the lofting (or lines drawings) and from that the rabbet, back rabbet, and bearding lines can then be developed and drawn or lofted. These varying angles define the shape of the rolling bevel that forms the rabbet. In small craft and model construction, there's an easier way to cut the rolling bevel without reference to the drawn or lofted the rabbet lines at all. Experienced boat wrights dispense with a lot of the lofting by "building to the boat," as  they say, rather than "to the plans." With the planking rabbets, this means that the angle and depth of the rabbet at any given point along the rabbet is developed using "fit sticks" and battens to define the rabbet lines and the bevel's rolling angles. It's easier done than said.
 
What you do is frame out your boat or model. Take care, as is always necessary, to fair the frame face bevels. This requires setting up the frames and sanding the faces so that a flat batten laid across the frames in a generally perpendicular relation to the frames, as well as at lesser angles, will always lay flat against the frame faces. (You may need to place temporary blocking between the frames or otherwise secure them well so they don't wobble when you sand across them.) Your frames should be cut and set up as in full size practice, with the corner of the outboard-most side of the face precisely cut and set up on the section lines such that when fairing wood is removed from the forward side of the faces of frames forward of the maximum beam and from the after side of the faces of the frames aft of the maximum beam. The accurately cut frame corner, the forward corner on frames aft of the maximum beam and the aft corner of frames forward of the maximum beam, is the reference point for fairing your frames. Use one batten for marking the faces of the frames and another, with a suitable sheet of sandpaper glued to its face, or a manicurist's emory board, to sand the excess off the faces until they are fair. The batten used for marking is chalked with carpenter's chalk and rubbed against the faces of the frames to mark the high spots. Where the colored carpenter's chalk transfers from the marking batten to the frame faces is where the frame face is too high and needs to be sanded down some more. When the marking batten lies flat in contact with all the frame faces, transferring chalk to the entire frame face, the frame faces are fair.
 
Now, with your frames faired, take a small stick of wood the same thickness as your planking and cut across at the ends perfectly square, which is called a "fit stick," and place it against the face of a frame and slide it down until the lower back corner of the fit stick (the inboard corner) rests against the keel. Accurately mark the point where the corner of the fit stick and the keel meet. This mark is where your bearding line is at that point.
 
Then take a second fit stick and place it on top of the first with the first in the position it was in when you marked the bearding line point and slide it down over the first fit stick until its lower back (inboard) corner touches the keel and mark that point. This mark is where your rabbet line is at that point.
 
Make these two marks at each frame. Spring a batten between all the upper and lower marks on the keel and draw lines through all the marks. These lines will be your bearding and rabbet lines. Extend them out as far as they will go, but, for the moment, they are relevant only for the span from the forward-most frame to the after-most frame.
 
Now, at each frame, with your two fit sticks stacked as when you marked the lower rabbet line, take a knife or chisel and using the lower edge of the upper fit stick as a guide, cut into the keel at the same angle as the face of the bottom edge of your upper fit stick, i.e. with the flat of your blade against the edge of your lower fit stick. This cut should be as deep as your planking is thick. (This first cut can be easily made with a small circular saw blade on a rotary tool if you know what you're doing. Mark the blade face with a Sharpie to indicate the depth of cut.) Cut down to the point of the rabbet cut you've made from above so that you end up with the back rabbet face of the keel at a right angle to the rabbet line cut.  Test your cut with a fit stick, which, when the rabbet section cut at that frame is done, should lie perfectly fair on the face of the frame with its bottom edge fit perfectly into the rabbet you've cut. Because the angle of your rabbet is defined by the lower edge of the top fit stick and it's depth by the thickness of your planking, there's no need to worry about where the back rabbet line is. You'll develop the back rabbet naturally when the two lines you are cutting to meet at right angles at the bottom of the cut.
 
Now, you simply "connect the dots" or rabbet "notches" you've created at each frame by carving out the wood in the way of the rabbet and bearding lines between the frames to form a continuous rabbet with a fair rolling bevel.
 
The stem, deadwood, and stern post are a bit trickier than the sections where the frames are set up on the keel, but the method of marking them and taking the rabbet angles off of fit sticks is the same and shouldn't need much further explanation. The main difference is that a batten of the same thickness as your planking is place across the frame faces, rather than perpendicular to the frame faces, and extended to where its bottom inboard edge touches the stem, deadwood or stern post and is marked there for the bearding line, and then another fit stick batten is placed on the first to find the rabbet line. You will find a chalked marking fit stick batten to be handy again in fairing up the dubbing on the wide deadwood rabbets. These techniques are a lot easier to learn by doing than to explain in writing. 
 
On a real vessel, cutting the planking rabbets is a very exacting process because the ease of caulking and the watertightness of these seams are dependent upon the perfect fit of these faying surfaces (where the planks and keel touch.) This isn't a big consideration in a model. What's important for a model is only that the visible rabbet lines and the planking are fair and tight. If the angle is off behind the planking and a bit too much wood is removed, it makes no difference because a sliver can always be glued in place to raise the plank to where it has to be and the rest filled with glue, or if too little is removed, the plank face can be sanded fair after it's hung. (The latter being the less preferable. It's generally better to remove wood from behind the plank than from the plank itself.)
 
This may seem like a tedious exercise and it is, but doing it correctly will make your planking a far easier task, particularly in hull forms where there is considerable twist in the planks at the ends. A final word of caution for the modelers with a machinist's background: This is a hand job. You won't find a way to do it more easily on your mill. Many have tried to devise some sort of jig which would permit cutting these rolling bevel rabbets with saws, routers, or other power tools. As far as I know, and those I know who know a lot more about it than I do, nobody's succeeded. Don't waste a lot of time trying to figure out what nobody else has been able to accomplish. I expect that it could be accomplished, in theory, at least, with very sophisticated CNC technology, but would probably take a lot longer to program and set up than doing it by hand will.
 
This video of full-sized construction illustrates the method described fairly well:  
 
 
 

Pretty good looking mast hoops! I was probably the one whose description of this technique inspired you to try it. I'm glad it was helpful. It was a trick I picked up from Gerald Wingrove's book, Techniques of Ship Modeling, if memory serves. It was a long time ago and I've been making them like this ever since.
 
I'd suggest in the future that you consider doing it a bit differently, assuming you have a lathe, or can chuck your mandrel in a drill chuck and hold the drill in a vise. Instead of using narrow shavings, use wider shavings taken from the edge of a one inch plank or even larger if you have a good sized plane (a No. 5 or 7, even.) Take as long a shaving as you can, aiming to get long, uniform curled shavings. (A sharp iron is a necessity for that.) Sand one end of a shaving to a tapered end on the flat, as you did here. Wrap your mandrel with a couple of layers of waxed paper, holding the waxed paper tightly around the mandrel with a rubber band at each end so the glue will not stick to the mandrel when the shaving is wrapped around the mandrel. Laminate the shaving around the mandrel a bit thicker than you want your hoops to be. The purpose of the waxed paper is to prevent the glue from sticking to the waxed paper and/or the mandrel.) Use a small rubber band to hold the shaving tightly around the mandrel while the glue dries. (I use Titebond, but the glue type really doesn't matter. Then repeat the process with another shaving, wrapping it around the mandrel next to the first one and continue until you have more than enough laminated wide shavings to yield the number of hoops you may need. (You will break a few hoops, no doubt.) Let the glue dry well, like overnight. Then chuck your mandrel with the shavings wrapped around it into your lathe or drill chuck. Then, with the mandril spinning, slowly is better if you can control the speed, sand the shaving bands down to the finished thickness you want your hoops to be while they are on the mandrel. Then part off the individual hoops as wide as you want them to be by spinning the mandrel and cutting them with a fine jeweler's saw, a sharp hobby knife, or whatever suits your fancy. (With wider shavings, you'll find it easier to wrap them around the mandrel and hold in place with a rubber band while they dry. You'll be able to get several hoops out of each wrapped shaving when they are wider and you don't have to fiddle with the wrapping to make sure the edges are perfectly in line. If they aren't, just discard those edges after the parting is done, keeping only the hoops with good even edges. When your hoops are all parted, slide them off the mandrel. The waxed paper should slide off the mandrel fairly easily and you will end up with a bunch of perfectly sized hoops. Then remove the waxed paper from the inner face of the hoops. It should come off easily since the glue shouldn't stick to it. This method yields perfectly uniform mast hoops of any size desired. Their edges will be "sharp," (not rounded,) but if you wish, you can sand the edges slightly to knock the corners off them. (A block tumbler would probably round them well, but I've never had occasion to try that.) 
 
This "mass production" method should cut your production time down from two days to about an hour, not counting time for the glue to dry.  
 
 

What do you mean by 'making your thinner'? Normally, thinners are a simple chemicals, such as (distilled) water, alcohol, acetone or white spirit.
 
OK, you could do a bit of moon-shining and make your own alcohol or distill some water, but the others you cannot make at home
 

Pricey stuff, here in the uk. I guess I’m also missing the obvious - it’s probably flaking because the Vallejo primer is water-based,  whereas, since these are metal parts, if I just used normal car body primer it should stick just fine. Or the little humbrol spray cans, which I sometimes use anyway for convenience.

I have to confess I've used Duco Cement almost as long as you  and I still do, perhaps because I'm used to it. Because I try to the greatest extent possible to create a mechanical connection when joining fittings and parts, I find it is much easier to work with than epoxies when gluing a metal mounting peg into a wooden hole. Duco is nitrocellulose  that's been dissolved in acetone, so a lot of people in California get their knickers in a knot over it, but so far it's still available in most hardware stores. A homebrewed approximation of Duco Cement can easily be prepared, athough with a styrene base instead of nitrocellulose, by dissolving styrofoam packing material in acetone until a sufficiently thick consistency is achieved. It takes a surprising amount of styrofoam to accomplish this, but i always seem to have plenty of the stuff on hand. Both nitrocellulose and styrene are probably not very archival, but when used to cement pegs in holes, they seem to do fine. 

So true! The fact is, it's only been in recent times that kits with a high level of historical accuracy and quality materials have been available at all. There are now some pretty darn good kits on  the market, but you have to know what you are doing to make sure you're not buying junk. The old kits some of us cut our teeth on forty or fifty years ago were really scratch builds more than anything else. You'd get a set of plans, a rough shaped hull block, some dowels and some sheet wood, a bit of wire and string, and some (often poorly) cast metal fittings. After that, you were on your own. Laser cut wood parts were unheard of.   
 
That said, if you invest the time and effort to learn how to read and draft plans, there is a near-limitless supply of ship modeling subjects all over the place. You can buy really nice plans drawn for modeling purposes, or spring for some of the Anatomy of the Ship books, or you can scale up something from Chapelle's and Chapman's books, order plans from the HAMMS collection at the Smithsonian or The Historic American Engineering Record Survey (HAERS) plans that are free online from the National Park website, the latter being some of the best historic ship plans available anywhere.
 
People buy kits because they think the kit is going to make it easier. Kits do make it easier for those who are starting out, but you really pay a price for that. Kits cost many times more than scratch-building. For what some pay for kits that often remain unfinished, they could amass a great collection of fine tools and be able to build anything, anytime, anywhere, for next to nothing... and be able to sell the tools when they were done and spend the money on a nice tombstone. The only catch is that one must do their own research and look up what they need to know to get the job done. Thanks to the internet, that task is easier today by orders of magnitude than it was before. There's a lot more to this hobby than just following instructions and assembling a model no different than hundreds or thousands of others out of parts from a box. When the day comes that you start to think about freeing yourself from the constraints of the model kit marketplace, you know you've begun to arrive at an entirely different level of interest and enjoyment.

Seems Byrnes' tools are a better investment than the stock market!