vossiewulf
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Everything posted by vossiewulf
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Yes, I happened to live in Tulsa when Jack Kearby was working on and finishing his production-accurate SE5a using Replicraft plans. I got to crawl all around, unfortunately before the days of good cell phone cams. I didn't see the first flight, but I think I visited the weekend after and saw him fly it. At the time I was flying actively and would have strongly considered donating a testicle if it would have allowed me to fly it, but not surprisingly he never offered... sigh. I don't think anyone else flew it when he owned it, if I recall he sold it at some point. Jack Kearby's S.E.5a -
Finding sheaves for small functional blocks?
vossiewulf replied to FoxtrotHotel's topic in Masting, rigging and sails
Yeah a few pieces is not a good reason to spend hundreds of dollars. Do you have a rotary tool or cordless drill? Lots of people make very nice turned parts by chucking them either in a Dremel tool or a cordless drill depending on size. All you need is a round needle file to shape the sheave correctly and then you can saw them off one at a time. -
What he said. For regular taper point drills, they will "skate" all over the surface before biting into the material. Accurate hole-drilling in wood by hand definitely requires a starter mark to prevent the drill from skating. What he means about wood drills is that there are drills specialized for wood, they are called Brad Point drills. They skate much less. However, I still always use an awl to mark a spot even when using Brad points.
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My recommendation is finish sand the piece of wood, and either use Indian ink directly, or an Indian ink marker (artist supply stores have them, most "black" markers are actually dark purple). Both will penetrate the wood and leave the wood texture totally exposed, so it looks like the wood is black and not painted.
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What Mark said, you can expand a hole just by twisting a round file in said hole, and you can make it move one direction or another by pressing more on one side. You should be able to fix any minor spacing issues just by expanding the holes slightly and controlling the direction in which they expand.
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Of course up to you, but the one with the spinner is the one I'd do, as that might have been the best S.E.5a that ever flew. You know the story of him tuning the engine to death and completely stupefying the Rumpler pilots by diving on them at like 19k? Well, other tempting one would be the mid markings set of No.56 Squadron and do it as it appeared on the day that he and Rhys-Davids and the rest took down my namesake.
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Does it have the spinner McCudden put on his S.E.5A? He stole it from a LVG C.V or something.
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They don't look bad, did you use an awl to make a starter hole? It's nearly impossible to drill a hole in an exact spot with a big handheld cordless drill without using an awl or a nail to make a starter hole at the right spot(s).
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Yeah, I read an account where a Buccaneer tore off its tail pod at Red Flag, pulling UP into power line.
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Question about table saw technique
vossiewulf replied to jdbondy's topic in Modeling tools and Workshop Equipment
I'm glad you were working with a little Byrnes saw, learning those lessons yourself on a full-sized table saw could cost you fingers and whole hands. If you have a Woodcraft store local, they give table saw training classes. Or simply have a friend who's worked with saws walk you through the basics, you can also damage blades or the saw if you haven't had intro table saw training. -
Vanda-Lay Industries
vossiewulf replied to BETAQDAVE's topic in Modeling tools and Workshop Equipment
Ditto, it's too unlikely a name for a small modeling tools company. -
MONTAÑES by Amalio
vossiewulf replied to Amalio's topic in - Build logs for subjects built 1751 - 1800
(more sounds of angels singing) -
Long time ago when I was in the games industry, we had a game con in Tampa one year and had a couple events at Kermit Weeks' museum. One was getting a chance to hear firsthand the story of the only guy in WWII to take off on a mission in a P-51 and land in a FW-190, Colonel Bruce Carr, who arrived at the dinner flying a P-51 at close to 300kts right over our heads as we stood out on the tarmac. I think he was 85 at the time. Anyway, he got shot down by flak and bailed out and decided to surrender to the Luftwaffe, heading toward a German field. But he changed his mind, and just before dawn he stole a fully fueled and prepped 190, figuring out how to start it and eventually to get the gear up. He flew at treetop height back to his field in France, where he crash landed just before they were about to shoot him to pieces with quad .50s. I know the article says 40mm guns, but I remember Col. Carr very clearly describing them pulling the covers off the quad .50cals on M16 halftracks. It's a really nice facility, airplane geek heaven.
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Thanks Paul Tonkinese frequently change their color significantly starting around week 8 or so, Takita looked very much like the new little one does now when Takita was a little kitten. But it's not predictable, should could end up fairly light colored as she is with small contained points, or she could go the direction of huge points and very dark red hair of Takita. As for the ship, in all likelihood I'm going to rip these brass pieces off and bite the bullet and resand and refinish the lower hull and start over with a material somewhat less perverse. Very annoying but brass just can't be used this way very well, only way to make it work is with actual mechanical connections by drilling holes in the strap and using round-head brass nails. Also annoying as although the straps are still fighting me, the rudder is perfectly positioned and aligned at the moment. Ah well, I went down a path thinking I could work around brass' dislike of glue but that turned out to be a misjudgment. Cue plan B.
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Looks great. Has anyone done Oeffag Albatrosen starting from a D.III? Converting one to a blunt-nosed fuselage with a 300hp Hiero and buried Schwarzlose MGs of a series 253 version would be an interesting challenge.
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I've used the pencil highlight for metal going back 30 years, but now I use metal powders, applied to a properly prepared surface, they are indistinguishable from actual metal. Uschi van der Rosten carries a number of modern metal powders and pastes, you should give them a try.
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Takita and I were very close. It was quite a long time before I could even think of the subject. Thanks Gregory. These brass straps have pretty much become a giant white cetacean and I'm playing Ahab. Although if I can't get them looking better than they are now, I will end up ripping them all off and having to resand and refinish the entire lower hull, the planking is old enough now that it's oxidized and darkened a bit so there is no way to do spot sanding. The easiest thing to use would be styrene, but I don't much like putting plastic on a ship. Second best is probably wood as you say. Another option that I have used many times is paper soaked in thin superglue. once it sets but before it fully hardens, you sand both sides smooth and it makes a very strong and reasonably flexible composite material. I'm just using brass because that is what is traditional so I wanted to do it that way at least the first time. That turned out to be a terrible idea.
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Did someone say Infinite Improbability Drive? Ok enough thread-jacking with Hitchhiker references //he said, after contributing to the jacking
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Had company for another week, and haven't gotten much done but am plugging away at the #%##@@#$@#$ rudder. Well not the rudder itself, it's ok, but the damned brass gudgeon straps that go on the hull, I have been driven past distraction to insanity. Star Fleet personnel couldn't glue brass. I don't know why all frying pans aren't made out of brass, because nothing sticks to the stuff. Not even lacquer primer on a cleaned surface, just handle it for a few seconds and pieces will fall off. GAH! I made the tiller as close as I could to one of the Tony's contemporary models, but this kit is designed with the tiller going around the top of the rudder rather than inserted into the rudder head as I see in the contemporary models. It's done except for a flat clear coat on the tiller. In other news, I had lost my previous Dockyard Supervisor last year, her name was Takita. She sat in my lap pretty much every minute I was home for 16 years, because I was not competent to do much of anything without her input. Yesterday I went to visit the new Dockyard Supervisor, who is also Tonkinese like Takita, but four weeks old. In two months when she is 12 weeks she will begin her education into how ridiculous humans are and how they desperately need cat supervision at all times.
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If you ever wondered what these things could do, there's this guy Mikael Carlson who's like a Swedish airline pilot, and he builds his own production-accurate versions of German WWI aircraft including the engines, and as such feels free to fly them as hard as he wants to. And he frequently flies them right to the limit. This is his Dr.I in Jasta 6 colors, I think Neckel's maybe. Anyway, you'll see he flies it in a big reverse Cuban-8 where he's split-Sing on the far side of the loop instead of zooming up, his direction is considerably more dangerous as he's doing a split S just a couple hundred feet up. Even better, on his first attempt to zoom up a bit and then roll inverted, he was too slow and the plane departs into an incipient spin at the top, and only some really good stick and rudder skills stopped him from going splat right there. Then he follows those with some max-G horizontal turns, and yes the Dr.I could do a 360 in an absurdly tiny space. The Dr.I and Camel were pretty evenly matched with the Dr.I turning a bit tighter but the Camel being somewhat faster and rolling quicker, so this video is a good approximation of what a Camel could do also. I'm sure none of this is good for his life insurance premium, but it's wonderful stuff for WWI aviation fans.
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If you want to get creative Doc, there was a night fighter version of the Camel called the Comic, it was used to battle the ever-increasing raids by German strategic bombers late war. The twin Vickers were replaced by two overwing Lewis guns on Foster mounts (allowed reloading), and I know there are good aftermarket 1/16th Lewis guns out there. You could stump quite a few people with a Camel with twin overwing guns. Even if you don't do that, you should look at aftermarket Vickers guns, they will be much better than the kit versions, and I thought I saw 1/16th 3d printed WWI aircraft engines someplace. That's the weakest part of these kits, MSW's insistence on using white metal instead of resin, and that's made worse by the castings frequently being extremely rough, requiring inordinate amounts of time to clean them up. You could save yourself many hours of filing and sanding by replacing as many of the white metal parts as you can.
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For anything small where tweezers won't work, take a short piece of rod (I use carbon fiber, brass will work too) and use a SMALL drop of CA to glue the end of the rod to the piece, at whatever angle you need it to be for the gluing operation. Glue the piece, once the main glue is set wiggle the rod around, if you do it right the drop of CA will come off the piece clean, still attached to the rod. Nothing at all left to clean up. If it doesn't do that and the rod comes free leaving the glue, you used too much glue.
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Question about table saw technique
vossiewulf replied to jdbondy's topic in Modeling tools and Workshop Equipment
I think your problem is the buried cuts. When the saw blade doesn't clear the top of the stock, it can't shed the chips and the second half of the cut will be ragged due to chips completely jamming the tooth gullets. I agree with Kurt, you'd do much better doing it in one pass with the teeth completely clearing the top surface of the wood. -
Wood for decking
vossiewulf replied to JamesT1's topic in Building, Framing, Planking and plating a ships hull and deck
I used holly for my deck, but it's too white in my opinion. I wished I had very slightly stained it, as I can't see any of the common deck woods of the time looking this bone white despite holystoning and UV bleaching. Maybe it will be better after it yellows a bit.
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Best type of micro drill bits for metal
vossiewulf replied to BETAQDAVE's topic in Metal Work, Soldering and Metal Fittings
And using a tungsten center punch or awl is never a bad idea even using a stiff centering drill when drilling curved stock if you can't do Wefalk's trick for some reason. I also have a very spiffy laser center finder that properly calibrated will mark the center within a couple thousandths of an inch, which is fine for anything but the most precise work. Very useful if one can fit in the budget.
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