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vossiewulf

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  1. vossiewulf
    Everything important is either on Google drive or my CloudForge repository, I learned a long time ago to keep data in one place and applications in another and backup the crap out of said data, with cloud being the best option these days. And it makes rebuilds much easier, they just require app installation while your data drive gets dropped into the new build. And these days google drive is nice. I take ship photos with phone, save to Google drive from the phone and by the time I walk across the house to the computer room my (RIP) desktop has already synced and I can open them in Photoshop for cropping. I ordered a new laptop about 30 minutes ago and this being San Francisco it will be delivered before 10PM. About 50% of what Amazon carries is available here from Amazon Prime Now, which offers two hour delivery for a single $5 tip for the driver. I even got them to deliver a new mouse to my hotel room in Seattle last year when I was visiting my team in Bellevue. So I'll have a machine I can install some basic things on this evening, and I can't complain about that part at all.
  2. vossiewulf
    Oh I'm not recommending you follow all my steps, just see the places where I found things out of alignment or otherwise problematic, like the bulwark strips and their crazy top line and confusing gunports. In this case you should see where I eventually added filler/reinforcement to all of the inter-bulkhead gaps because in every case if you don't, the first planks will not follow a fair line but have flats between bulkheads that are at best hard to totally remove, and they will flex under sanding leading to dips that need filler. But at the same time to make it right, those filler block outlines need to follow the correct curves, you can't just sand them flat or you have the same problem. If I did it over, I'd use filler blocks everywhere. That said, what you have looks good. One thing you should do now also is ensure perfect symmetry on the last transom frame - make a template from one side and flip it over and make the other side match. I didn't do that and had some annoying work to get it right later.
  3. vossiewulf
    It was a similar chore for the wings of aircraft with external bracing wires, with the time required multiplied by the number of bays in the wings. This was another reason ground crews liked the later Fokker aircraft as there were no external bracing wires, with both the Dr.I and the D.VII the wings were fully cantilever (some of the first); early prototypes of the Dr.I had no interplane struts. But that made pilots nervous and there was a bit of resonance so they added the very thin struts of the production version. Those struts should be very thin on your model, they only really had meaningful strength in the tension direction. With the D.VII they skipped over the pilot complaints by adding minor N struts to the wing cellule, but again they were there just to prevent vibration. The Pfalz D.XII came out not long after the D.VII and was a reasonably good fighter aircraft but ground crews disliked it in comparison to the D.VII because it not only had external bracing wires, it had two bay's worth to get straight. The fuselage got out of straight by being (except for AEG and Fokker that were steel tubing) wood covered in fabric that was exposed to the elements daily plus a wide temperature range (it get very cold upstairs remember) plus any loads they put on it. For the same reason ships have adjustment methods for almost all of the standing rigging, WWI aircraft wings and fuselages moved and changed and needed regular adjustment. Fuselage fabric could generally be removed, most had "stitching" somewhere (usually on the bottom) that today would be called lacing, and could be unlaced and replaced. I'm not entirely sure about all aircraft as some didn't have visible stitching, but it's hard to imagine how they could perform the required task with it on. My knowledge of the actual process is somewhat limited, but I know they would set the tail up on something so that the reference lines, usually the top longeron, were level; the reference lines varied from type to type. They'd then use squares and plumb bobs and sighting tools to measure, and iirc they worked from engine backward. Each plane type had a specific documented process for these steps and I know there was generally a few phases where they'd get one or two axes right and then the rest. More detail than that and you need to go to the Aerodrome forum, in particular the builders' forum where there are people who know orders of magnitude more than I do and who likely can tell you the exact steps for the Dr.I.
  4. vossiewulf
    Go read my build log Mark, I recommend filler blocks the whole way if you can stand it, also will show you a whole series of issues to avoid and how to handle double planking on a keel plate that is a smaller width than four layers of planking is.
  5. vossiewulf
  6. vossiewulf
    Tried a new power supply, looks like everything is fried. Good thing I paid for top of the line PSU and motherboard that are supposed to be thoroughly protected from this kind of thing. Will have to disassemble it and have a shop test to see if anything still works. Meanwhile I guess I am going to order a new laptop as well, it's four years old, will just yank out the HD to save a few files. Going to be an expensive week and rebuilding the desktop is about 1/10 getting new hardware and putting it together and 90% and a couple of weeks of reinstalling and configuring the CC suite and MAX and several code IDEs and about 20 other applications.
  7. vossiewulf
    And my laptop that I have been using daily for YouTube TV in my work area that I had gotten hooked up to my desktop monitor and keyboard just started failing, the fan isn't coming on so it shuts itself down with overheating two minutes after you start it. I am sitting here repeatedly counting to 10 to prevent myself from taking a hammer to both of them.
  8. vossiewulf
    Safest way is edge tool of some kind until you're close (knife or skew chisel), then needle files/rifflers to finish. Pretty hard to screw it up that way, and generally just need a touch up in the corners with your edge tools.
  9. vossiewulf
    Yes, the two top stringers end one... I thought two frames short but there should be a piece that goes from a couple inches below the top stringer from that frame to the rudder post at the end of the fuselage, that forms a recess on top where the tailplane goes, and it should have a distinctly positive angle of incidence to offset the inherent tail-heaviness. But yes, you can see how assembling an aircraft out of steel tubes required a fancy alignment jig. However, they also didn't have to get it quite as right as you do, very few WWI aircraft had fuselages that were fully cantilever and self-aligning, almost all had internal rigging wires with turnbuckles of some kind, and ground crews had to regularly go through an annoying process of realigning the fuselage through use of those rigging wires because once you got it straight, it immediately started to go out of straight again.
  10. vossiewulf
    Safari is Apple's browser like Chrome or IE. You can download and install it, and once it's installed, run it and use it to access those webarchive files and you should be able to see what's inside that archive.
  11. vossiewulf
    Haven't even gotten it out of the machine yet, was too disgusted to deal with it this evening. Getting the PSU out that always goes in first is never fun. This is the innards, I have always built my own machines. PSU is behind the drive bays top left, water cooler radiator to the left of the CPU. It's i7/5930 overclocked from 3.7 to 4.2Ghz and the video cards at Nvidia GTX 970s.
  12. vossiewulf
    Webarchive is an archive type exclusive to Safari, won't be able to read them without installing and using it.
  13. vossiewulf
    Another one folks may not be aware of are universal tints, as the name implies they can be used to tint lacquer and water based finishes and fillers. However since they're pigment-based they are most commonly used to tint fillers and you can often get a closer match tinting a neutral filler than you can with the glue/sawdust method which (in my experience) tends to come out a bit dark. Universal tints at LMI
  14. vossiewulf
    Yeah I have a laptop but it's not a powerhouse. Not a big deal WRT this project but feels like an arm missing when I don't have access to my full development environment. Overall I like white more at the moment but again no reason to decide now.
  15. vossiewulf
    That's the waterline on the plans. And now I have a new problem, I was on my desktop when the very expensive 1100w power supply suicided, boom computer goes down and we get a nice electrical burning smell. My only hope is that it didn't take the also very expensive motherboard with liquid cooling and the dual video cards and the 32gb DDR5 and the SSDs with it.
  16. vossiewulf
    You can do everything you need to do with paths/splines in Photoshop CC plus have a much more logical workflow for the graphics, Illustrator is really for folks specializing in vector graphics for advertising or other graphic design. I recently took Gerard Delacroix's Commerce de Marseille deck plan (with his permission) and did the below in Photoshop. I'm pretty sure this kind of detail is enough for what you need and as you can see you can generate depth without much difficulty - almost all of the shadows here are just painting very low strength black (like 95% translucent) with a soft-edged brush and building up those those strokes where it should be dark and not so much where it shouldn't be, and limiting where they go by working inside selected areas. If 2D isn't good enough you need to go to 3D, CAD programs are the obvious choice there but I prefer 3d modeling programs, I think the workflows are much easier to use for creation of complex 3D objects, you can always export a DXF/DWG/OBJ and import into a CAD program if you need the plan/drawing generation features. However, the learning curve is both steep and long and it takes real commitment to learn enough to be reasonably productive. I've been using 3DS MAX since it was 3DSr4 for DOS in 1994 including off and on professionally, and there are still big sections of it that I have no clue about. So strongly suggest you go as far as you can 2D.
  17. vossiewulf
    For Steve and anyone else, here's a slightly refined version with a white bottom and without.
  18. vossiewulf
    Looks really nice and clean Tom
  19. vossiewulf
    And being an educated professional debater, I will respond by sticking my tongue out and going PHTHTTTHTHTTHTTT But the reality is of course aesthetics are in the eye of the beholder. There is a woman on my street who has one of those teensy Fiat 500s that already looks like a toy painted in a color I could only describe as 1960s insane asylum interior green, it's this horrible grayish green that makes the muses of beauty all burst into tears simultaneously. But she always seems happy driving her awful tiny ugly car, so there ya go. Steve, I am still considering that also. I'd prefer to work it up that way, doing black on all the lower planks but that will make painting the white a real headache if I decide to go with the white. So I'm still thinking about it.
  20. vossiewulf
    If nothing big enough for lithotripsy I should be ok from here, starting to catch up on sleep after getting very little through much of last week. CT scan would tell with near 100% accuracy but I no longer do them as they're like 100+ normal xrays and I've already had plenty. Work was thoughtful enough to page me, but thankfully it was a transient event and we can do the forensics Monday. Although I wasn't aware of exactly why, I had noticed you had brought yours up to the main wales. I assumed you had documentation showing that was a valid choice, but also clearly waterline makes sense, of the two I think waterline will work better with what I am doing. And yes, although we can go with the paint hides all sins method, as I'm doing elsewhere on the model I'd prefer good color that still shows there is wood beneath with at least some visibility of the planking. Don't worry, it will be fine doing it the correct way with the garboard and the first couple next to it running straight and that makes sense from a keel strength standpoint, but I think my method is better from an aesthetic standpoint
  21. vossiewulf
    Ok obviously this is very quick and dirty - in fact my eyelid is twitching at how quick and dirty it is - but it is roughly what she will look like color-wise based on the current plan, and is enough for the purpose. Please let me know what you think.
  22. vossiewulf
    Oh BTW Rick I heard you about the garboard. I didn't like it, but I heard it I guess you're right, it just makes the stealer problem more complex, much easier to fit stealers in that nice vertical spot where you're not also dealing with bending and twisting.
  23. vossiewulf
    Oh yeah, chances are I won't be able to make three different head types visible , mostly I just thought it was interesting that they used three different kinds of attachment mechanisms. When I said I might machine these, I mean machine a .115" or so groove in solid brass, leaving enough material at the end to properly do the hinges- they clearly weren't thin straps. Then remove material on the strap parts until they're appropriately thin. Just musing mostly, will decide when we actually get there.
  24. vossiewulf
    Well if nothing else we found a post that Mark doesn't like If this forum has achievements that should be one. One thing I will say is the first few are by far the worst. Also, if you're even slightly prone, you should keep a prescription of Toradol around. It's non-narcotic, primarily an anti-inflammatory, but for whatever reason it works to largely stop the really bad pain at the beginning. To get us back to vaguely more pleasant subjects, I made another little sanding block for PSA paper specifically for deck sanding and used it to test my ink idea a bit more. Here it is before inking: And I managed in few minute stretches over the last couple days to "paint" it with three coats, leveling between with 1200 grit. It looks quite good and I think it compares reasonably well with dye in terms of color and translucency while providing an actual film finish over the wood; dye needs to be followed up with a clear coat of some kind. It's more translucent than you see here, it's so red it seems to be overwhelming the CCD in the camera. I was also testing Rhino Glue, which claims to be powerful enough to stick a criminal charge to a rich guy and stick anything to anything. It seems at least closely related to CA, but it smells a bit different, and it sets up slower than CA of similar viscosity. I also scored the wood and sanded the brass with 120 grit in several directions before gluing. Unfortunately I don't think I can use the red ink for the inner gunwales, since the fashion pieces and stern fascia would have to be stripped again (!), and the fashion pieces ripped out and replaced with wood since this finish is translucent. But if I were to do this again, this is what I would use to paint all of the gunwale red surfaces, and I'm now experimenting with black ink instead of the black dye I was intending to use, the latter is quite red and that's been bothering me. And a different subject, I found this interesting pics in Brian Lavery's Ship of the Line series, in vol. II. What I find interesting is that if you want to be accurate, the pintle/gudgeon straps would show three different head types for the screws, the nail-things, and the through-bolts. I'll have to see when I get here but I'm tempted to try to machine these.
  25. vossiewulf
    Thanks Tom. I have them every year to 18 months and have been through the ultrasound lithotripsy procedure a dozen times. I've had them on both sides at the same time a few times, including now. At least the ultrasound I had didn't see anything big, I've had them >1cm. Anything that will pass on its own is no big deal to me, when you get the lithotripsy it's like having a pro boxer beat on your kidney for a few rounds and it's a good solid week at least before you can go take a leak without steeling yourself for the pain. And no, none of the recommended dietary changes have made any difference, as my doctor said some people's chemistry is so good at making them that it doesn't matter. Just something I have to live with.

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