vossiewulf

I am confused also about cutter bow ports, every model I've seen has not enough room for the guns one way or another, Lady Nelson is even worse than Chuck's Cheerful. I totally gave up on the idea of placing guns at the bow as they were much too cramped. Even looking at the contemporary models I see the same problems. Trial for example, although not really built for fighting, has absurdly cramped forward ports, I don't think you could even fit in a carriage. The others in the gallery aren't much better, and none are displayed with guns in the forward ports. So it seems like they just really liked having holes in the bow that didn't help them do anything and which probably shipped lots of water.

They used what was called orthochromatic film at the time, and it does odd things with colors. For example, yellow will appear very dark, and there are photos of planes out there that look like they have black noses when we know they were painted bright yellow. So it's basically impossible to get colors from photos. Also, the paints they used (as well as the German printed lozenge fabric) faded quickly when exposed to weather, so planes recently vs. not recently painted could look very different. My suggestion is to research what is the current best guess for various colors, but don't stress about it too much, you'll never get it exactly right unless you had a color photo and then you could match a plane's appearance only on that day.

Approach carefully, generally rasps are very rough on wood, leaving deep scratches. Don't make them deeper than you intend to sand. Not sure why it is necessary, any plane, chisel, gouge, or knife should be able to trim down balsa easily if they are sharp. But a rasp will indeed remove wood quickly.

I use tack cloths from Liberon, no wax or silicone and tacky while leaving no residue. Not that a damp cloth won't work, I just prefer not to get any water on wood once I have started a finish. OTOH we should probably just leave Keith alone to finish his finish before digressing on another discussion of finishing techniques

Jolene, you'll find it easier if you get the balsa to the right thickness to fit between two bulkheads, and then mark each side by tracing the bulkhead in front and in back on each side of the balsa piece. You can then use a scroll saw or any number of other tools to shape it down very close to what is needed while off the model. Then when you glue them in, there's just a bit of sanding to do. Also, if you can, you try to orient the grain of the filler blocks lengthwise to the ship, that makes shaping the them much easier.

Nice marquetry.

What's NOT to like about a candy cane-painted capstan that's actually correct for the period? I think you'll get a universal thumbs up for that one.

Your best option is to go to Syren and get a range of sizes of replacement line, it's much better than that from the kit, whatever that kit is. Museums recommend you do not use beeswax as it is acidic and will eat away the rigging in the long run. If you want to use wax, use paraffin. For what sizes to use, you need to buy books on rigging and fitting out ships.

I found some good ones at Cornwall.

Yes you want better belaying pins. I'm planning on ordering some for the same reason.

I think it's hard to sand the frames that way with the parts to be sanded all floating free. If you don't want to use filler blocks, then you can at least take some square stock and cut short pieces and glue them between the outer parts of each bulkhead pair. That will stiffen the structure quite a bit and make sanding much easier.

Found. And 99 cents for the Kindle version!

If you look around I'm sure you could find von Hipple's decals in 1/32, if you like it enough. As I recall the strut started as a field modification but became standard late production. Popeye, you are close. Berthold commanded Jasta 18, and when he was given command of Jagdschwader II he took advantage of a loophole and swapped squadron designations between Jasta 15 and Jasta 18, so Jasta 18 became 15 and vice versa. JG II consisted of Jastas 12, 13, 15, and 19, all sporting overall blue but with each Jasta having different colored noses and tails, you're probably familiar with Berthold's D.VII in overall blue, with the red nose and tail of Jasta 15 and his big white wing symbol on the upper wing. A Ltn. Raben (Raven) took command of Jasta 18 when it switched with Jasta 15, and afterward they started calling themselves Jasta Raben and used the white tail and red forward fuselage with the ravens and other black markings, starting with Albatros D.Vas and Pfalz D.IIIs and then continuing to use that paint scheme when they were equipped with D.VIIs. You have to be careful of those markings on D.VIIs though, because at some point Jasta 18 switched aircraft with Jasta 43 for some unknown reason, and Jasta 43 continued to fly those D.VIIs either with the same markings or slightly modified versions of the Jasta 18 markings, and photos were taken of Jasta 43 with those aircraft. Since you like D.VIIs, below is one of my 3d modeling artworks, it's an early Fokker-built D.VII that Udet flew in 1918, he went on an amazing scoring run in it before a Breguet 17 gunner literally shot it to smithereens, with Udet's life being saved by an early parachute he was wearing. In this engagement he shot down two SPAD XIIIs of SPA. 96. "Du doch nicht!!" literally means "you most certainly not!" but would be better translated today as "no way, dude!". The LO! is a reference to his then girlfriend and later wife, Lola Zink. You see it on most of his aircraft.

Here is a good pic of the leading edge strut. This is von Hipple's aircraft from Jasta 5, same time period.

CDW, the Mercedes D.III engine had three versions, the D.III, the D.IIIa and the D.IIIau, the latter having a higher compression ratio, putting out about 185hp. Now I'm not remember the details but as I recall the D.IIIau had red stripes around at least the first cylinder if not all of them, to indicate to mechanics the different engine as the cylinders and heads were not exchangeable between the D.IIIa and D.IIIau versions. That would be another nice touch for the engine, most late war DVas flew with D.IIIau engines. Also does the kit have the small strut that was added to the front of the wing V struts, leading to the leading edge? One of the biggest problems of the Albatros-built D.Vs was the single spar lower wing that it inherited from the D.III. This gave it little resistance to twisting, and aerodynamic flutter resulting in loss of one or both lower wings occurred frequently. Later in the war, Albatros tried to address this by adding the small leading edge strut. Oddly, the Oeffag-built Austrian Albatrosen were much better aircraft. After licensing it for production, the Oeffag engineers corrected many problems, including redesigning the lower wing to have two spars and their aircraft could dive at much higher speeds than the German versions, and were also considerably faster. Only drawback was the Schwarzlose MGs, they were terrible aircraft guns with a slow ROF. BTW, I have a painting of Fritz Rumey and Josef Mai in D.Vas coming into land at the Jasta 5 field in Cambrai over my fireplace

Thanks Keith. Not sure, but it took me a couple evenings to work out a method that would work, and then a couple more to make all the lines, and gluing one set in place took several hours.

French Polish supplies

Add some pumice stone and it's a French polish for ship's hulls.

For anyone who wanted to see the rest of the process of making these damnable things Each hoop has two "short" lines and one long. The short lines go on opposite sides of the buoy from each other, run the length of the buoy and then are cut off at the end with the ends hidden by the seizing. The long line as you see, runs down one side, is made into a loop, and then back down the other side where it wraps around the hoop. Because of that you have to glue and seize that one in place; the rest were made on a post, soaked in glue at the top of the loop, cut at that point, inserted onto the hoop and then reglued. Way easier than doing it in place. Run it under the hoop and bend it almost all the way around and glue it at that point at the top of where it bends around the hoop. Then soak the next bit of line in thin super glue. Within a couple minutes, before that glue hardens fully, clip it at about a 60 degree angle, put a small drop of glue on the cut face, and press it down into the rope below. I've just done that here, the loop we're working on is at the top now. Then wrap some 14/0 fly line under it and tack glue it in place. Cut off one end of the fly line, then put thin super glue on the tip of the other end and then start fishing it around, tack gluing it every couple turns or even every turn. This is very squirrely to do so keep gluing as you go. Done, the one we just did is at the top. Then seize the end loop. Then repeat that process going the other direction. Once done, go over everything with Testor's Dullcote or some other flat varnish to hide the glue.

What Bruce said. In my opinion it was criminally poor leadership by Beatty in striving for an absurdly optimistic idea of "overwhelming" an enemy with so many shot splashes that their spotting becomes useless. This prioritized shooting speed over all other considerations, including accuracy, and was responsible for both the first two magazine explosions at Jutland and the very poor shooting of Beatty's battlecruisers. Notably the 5th Battle Squadron that trained with the Grand Fleet and not Beatty were attached to Beatty's force at Jutland and shot much better than Beatty's ships. Also the Germans always used an inherently safer cartridge, with their main charge in a brass case and only the fore charge was silk-bagged. And they very nearly lost Seydlitz at Dogger Bank to a turret hit, and were therefore lucky to be able to see exactly how close they had come to losing the ship. They modified their safety practices between that battle and Jutland and were operating with altogether much safer gun operation processes than the British were at Jutland. Hood and Invincible weren't lost to terrible safety practices as much as to the weak armor favored by Jackie Fisher. With armor unable to stop the shot being fired at the range at which it was being fired, all it took was a lucky shot aimed at one of the magazines. No safety practice saves a dreadnought from a direct magazine hit. This photo is another one that captures the ugly side of the peak of gunnery combat. Some 750+ of these guys didn't make it. It's Blucher capsizing at Dogger Bank in 1915.

Rob, I have neck and back problems too, if the chiropractor can't clear the problem after several tries and nerves are still so pinched that you're numb in a hand, this might be one of the rare cases where a shot of cortisone is called for to get the inflammation down enough for the chiropractor to get the vertebrae back in place. Steroids should be avoided but sometimes they can be needed.

Considering the Lady Nelson instructions consist of about two pages of "stick all the stuff in the box together", you'd already be way ahead of my choice with the instructions you get with this kit. And with minimal rigging and what looks like relatively straightforward planking, I think it would probably make a good choice. If you want the argument against, it's pretty big and has a fair amount of fiddly-looking deck detail, you'll need patience for those. And if you're not just a novice ship builder but a novice making stuff, you might want to start even easier with like the Model Shipways rigged longboat.

You could call it a Fazdangler Boomenhooper rig and it would make just as much sense as most of sailing terminology.

Ok that made me officially LOL.