vossiewulf

I understand Tor, I got halfway through an Alb. D.V before it got killed in a move and I decided not to re-try as they are just not that great kits and even someone just trying to build something reasonably good out of the box has problems, as you have had. The up side (which is pretty big) is no one offers anything like it. But they've always looked like airplane models designed by ship modelers who don't know much about flying and they would do themselves a big favor by hiring an experienced RC aircraft designer to redo them for higher accuracy. Then there is the inexplicable obsession with white metal, it's inexplicable as you can see the masters were reasonably good, so if they'd just taken that master and cast the part in resin it would have looked nice and been easy to work with if you want to add detail. Instead they use white metal and it's pitted and bumps are everywhere and they take a ton of effort just to get in basically usable state. But I doubt they have much impetus to do a redesign when no one else is competing, so there's room for someone to step in and do better.

Don't give him any ideas. Trust me he's been trying to figure out how much house modification would be required to fit a 1:12 Commerce de Marseille

What he said. India inks work great and will give you the blackest black that ever blacked a totally black thing. It builds a slight film, thinner than paint, is almost unnoticeable with one coat. Alcohol-soluble aniline dyes can be bought at Woodcraft or any luthier supply place. I've been somewhat disappointed in the blacks as so far they have a purplish tint to me, but all other colors are great, they dry instantly, and they don't raise grain so you can wipe on your stain and then spray a clear finish one minute later. Best of all to me, since they're molecular color and NOT pigment, they in no way obscure the underlying grain. This is how guitar makers create bright green curly maple guitars: Permanent black markers are usually a form of lacquer and work fine too. I haven't seen anything about how permanent those permanent colors are though.

BTW, when did the 2MB image limit go away? I just noticed I'm uploading 3.9MB images with no errors. Couple of updates on the planking method. First I was having a problem with plank ends particularly under significant bending, so I decided to make myself something to provide the required leverage. I had some handles sitting around (you can get them from jeweler supply for like $1.50/handle) so I made it out of a piece of 1/8" thick carbon fiber, but you could make a fully effective one out of wood, just reinforce the tip by soaking in some thin CA. It's designed to put pressure low down on the side of the plank to not mar the future gluing surface, and on the center top of the plank. It's working very well and is just as handy on the bow and stern plank ends. Next is my Advanced Planking Symmetricizer. It's worked quite well in speeding up the mirroring of the starboard side to the port and ensuring we're staying aligned on both sides. Position and height are arbitrary but it is a requirement that it be exactly aligned vertically with the ship's center line as seen from either end. Also the threads can't rotate, they should measure from a fixed point so I super glued in ones aligned with the rear and front centerline of the APS to check points aft and foreward of the APS respectively. After I trim and sand and fully finalize the starboard side, I can quickly transfer that line to the port side with as many marks as I want. As I mentioned I wanted to try single-bevel knives for trimming, so I got a L/R pair from Japan Woodworker. They aren't very expensive ($27 I think) and I knew the steel would be good but the inexpensiveness means they won't be terribly flat. So first step was flattening the back and bevels, you can see the back was less than flat. They're typical Japanese design with a thin very high carbon piece forge-welded to a lower carbon piece for flexibility. Working bevel with 220 coarse stone. Here they are after 4000, I worked through 8000 and the strop before they were done. And oh yeah sharp. The basswood endgrain test, clean enough to be an identification sample. After initial use though I realize the tips were too thick, too much cutting resistance. So I took them to the bench grinder to taper the blade. Cleaned up. Then blade protectors that aren't so much to protect the blades as to protect the rest of the world FROM the blades. I make these protectors for my knives, putting pressure down on the second piece of cork with the knife in place while gluing makes the perfect fit - they will NOT come off unless you pull them off. Shake them all you want, they stay in place and are perfect in that respect. I'm not done though, they need handles. In Japan these are mostly marking knives and are therefore held lightly. For any carving/cutting purpose like I am putting them to, they MUST have thicker more rounded handle. The reason is flat pieces like this when squeezed vertically, just like you'd do trying to make a careful cut, have a very alarming tendency to twist suddenly in your hand, and blood and bad things can result.

Just google plank bender, there are many. Cornwall Hobbies (closer than US) has two electric benders and several crimpers. But if you buy a crimper you should feel bad as that's an awful thing to do to wood.

For future reference, Micro Krystal Clear is made to do glass for instruments (on larger scales) and windows (smaller scales), and works pretty well.

Remember to hook up spark plug wires! That's not hard to do. Plugs at top left of cylinder, wires were bare wire going down to a distributor at the rear center hub. Pushrods are hard enough to see under a cowl to skip, but they're also not hard to add.

In general there are many build logs and also many people who get started but never go beyond that. Add the fact that yes there is a bias for military vessels, and you're not going to have lots of people visiting right at the beginning. But if you keep going, people like Michael and Nils will find you and other people will see you're sticking with it and decide it's worth following along. So I think you'll find it worth it to keep taking those photos and posting them. Also, look around for other similar builds and stop by and say hi. And have a link to your build log in your sig. Lots of people don't have time to do lots of build log searching but they'll notice something waved around in front of them. You already have people here very much worth having available to answer questions, look at some of their builds if you want an instant fit of jealousy Or you just wait for Keith to post a pic of insanely nice little lathe. I'll be growing up next to Michael on the watchmaker life path next time around.

And yeah, post those notes, I'm sure there are a few dozen people like me who would like to vicariously own that piece of equipment with you through a diary of its ups and downs

You should PM member wefalck. He's an expert on watchmakers' lathes.

It's like sanding a big chest of drawers that started out really rough, it's going to create enough sawdust to require several floor sweepings at least. I like the positive-pressure face mask Gaetan, I might look into that. Looks much more comfortable than a cartridge mask.

No, it's too fast-drying in general to be a good brush finish, I've sprayed it whenever I use it. If the temp gets much above 70 degrees F you start to need an extender to give it time to flow out and level before the surface starts hardening. But if it's in a spray can you're not going to be adding anything to it anyway, so no worries. It sands very well (cellulose after all) wet if you give it time to dry. Guitar makers would say min 24 hours for that and I agree, it will be gummy if you try to sand too early.

Only thing is to make sure you follow the directions to get correct flow-out and leveling, and you should see if they have an extender to slow drying time if you're applying it in warm weather. It dries plenty fast even with an extender/leveling agent. You're going to want to use around three coats, sanding between with 1500 or so wet. More coats if you want a perfectly level finish.

Any luthier supply site will have many nitrocellulose lacquer options, it's still a popular finish for musical instruments.

Yeah Michael, the problem is the flimsy construction. When I make a drill press, I plan to machine a 12" x 12" solid brass bar for the quill and the post will be 14" diameter hardened steel, made from the boring bar used to cut the 16"/L50 guns of the Iowa class. It will fit into a 6 ton piece of grey iron, 4' x 4' x 5' tall and will sustain a runout of < .001" during an earthquake up to 7.7 on the Richter scale. If I didn't have a good mini-mill I'd be asking you how much I'd have to pay you to make one for me How has it been working for you now that you've had it operational for a while?

Short answer: English 74s were the smallest of the three but most strongly built, intended to last many years in service and they did for the most part. They were also the slowest-sailing of the three. French 74s were generally the largest of the three, and the best sailers, but lightly built and did not last long in service. Spanish 74s were arguably the best, being larger than the usually too-small British 74s, almost as good sailers as the French, and were built reasonably strongly out of the best woods- teak and mahogany that were very resistant to rot and imparted great strength without the need for the heavy scantlings of British 74s.

Well, it's not like those are really bad choices, I just think a few other shapes are better. Hopefully you've gotten good use out of them?

BTW, again for new people, this is the circumstance that I've run into most often that causes gaps in planking. The below drawing is very exaggerated for demonstration purposes, the reality is usually more subtle and sometimes extremely so. The biggest problem is noticing them, especially the very subtle ones. The most obvious way to see them is by testing with the plank you intend to glue on, keep bending it to follow all the segments, you'll see most of them here. The very subtle ones are on lines that are almost straight - basically the less curve there is overall, the harder it is to see the flat. These I found I could detect with my spring steel sander thing, I move it down a plank edge with a little bit of pressure at a steady and fairly slow pace. Periodically the sander will feel like it slips. That's your flat. You keep fixing and testing with the sander, eventually you'll do that test and you'll feel consistent resistance the whole way. Bravo! You have perfect continuous curves at that point that shouldn't have any gaps. I think there's nothing special about the spring steel there and any little sanding block with a gentle curve (like my steel sander has) will do.

Artco Tools has a better selection, I should have known that as they seem oriented toward supplying the remaining real-life die makers. Most of the professional rotary tools, particularly the air-powered ones, seem primarily designed for polishing molds. This is my other favorite one, again safe edges all around, very simple narrow rectangle shape with all upper surfaces beveled back to reduce interference, it's the perfect tight-corners file. (Terrible low-res pics that were badly upscaled at some point on Artco) Now with "In Action" screenshot!

Congrats Tor, glad you are very happy with it, that's the only thing that's important in the end.

I think we agreed that riffler file sets are what you need next? Certainly if you don't have a good set, you're going to find tremendous use out of that as a purchase. The annoying thing is the set I bought is no longer available anywhere. There is this Glardon-Vallorbe set at Otto Frei, but I don't think the choices in that set are the best for ship modeling. I think the best choice at this point is to buy individual Grobet files, Contenti is a good supplier that I've bought from for years. In fact you should add them to your supplier list, they are jeweler/watchmaker supplies like Otto Frei but they have some things Otto Frei doesn't. I tend to use Otto Frei because I get next-day delivery on standard shipping as they're just across the bay from me. Some things about rifflers - you want diesinkers' or diemakers' riffler files. Almost all suppliers call them diesinkers as a group now but sometimes you run into ones that know that there is a division there and will list them as two separate groups. DO NOT get silver smiths' riffler files, they are much too big. Unless you want an 800 pound gorilla riffler to teach a 1/24 build what's what. You want both cut 2 and cut 0. Those would be medium and coarse respectively when used on wood. If you can only get one... I'd probably get 2 as you can use it in precision cases, it's just not as good at removing large amounts of material. Number 901 is the one I use most, it has safe edges all around and you can do fairly big areas laying it flat or very tiny areas with the pointy end. Number 951 is generally useful but it also seems specifically designed to help make clean planking rabbets quickly. Click here to see it in action doing that (toward the end of the linked post). My other favorite is missing... I'll have to look around to find another supplier who has ALL Grobet rifflers, you can see there are many numbers missing from Contenti's list. There are others they have that are useful, but each of you should decide from here which ones will help the way you work. I do strongly recommend you focus on the ones with safe edges, if you have cutting surfaces all around it makes them more flexible but also capable of causing as many problems as they're solving.

Yep, obsidian and flint were the first scrapers, and glass was very popular as scraper material throughout the 18th and 19th century as I recall, and still works fine today as mischief says, you just have to be careful handling it and the edge is not going to be regular. Every edge tool you own can also act as a scraper, and I regularly use them as such in small areas. As long as you don't do it too much, using them this way doesn't significantly increase sharpening requirements, at least in my experience.

*Poster is not responsible for any resultant marital strife and/or budget destruction You guys are just joining me. Because I do all this digging I've been living with years-long wish lists forever Even now that I'm in a position to spend quite a bit more than I used to, it's STILL years long. But at least if you know all the cool things out there, you can make better judgments about priority and get the ones that will benefit your processes most first.

Yeah, if you want good chisels or planes with blades that stay sharp near forever, most of Lee Valley/Veritas tools now have the PM-V11 powdered metal alloy as an option. You pay more but the reduction in sharpening time makes it very worth it.

See the list of suppliers you want to look at that I posted over in my tools thread. I didn't include Lie-Nielsen as they are out of most folks' price range.