vossiewulf

Great! I'm glad it sounds like it should work to you also. I don't have any brass in the right size, I need like 2cm x 4-5cm x 2.5cm. I think I have steel dowel pins in the right size for the ball bearings. I'll also find a good brass screw that won't mark the steel of the tools. I need to make some progress on my ship but I'll work in some time on this also, I'm using Mikhail's tools regularly so I want a good sharpening solution in hand soon. By the way, in following my thesis, you missed a question I had up there about typical sizes for wood for this type of carving See the post between the one with photos of other jigs and the post that has my design. I want to order some wood and I'd very much appreciate your advice on sizes.

Maybe something like this. The disadvantage is we are not registering off the flat back of some of the tools, but the advantage is that I think maybe this will work for literally everything but the angled cutters (skew chisels). If I drill and ream the hole to .111" that would be .001" over the round tap dimension and therefore we could turn the tool by hand. Although there is some space to be seen between the tool handle ferrule and the jig, the idea is that ferrule sets the correct angle for grinding the straight cutters (chisels) and the semi circle cutters (gouges). We prevent the chisels from rotating with the screw, the gouges turn freely and we'll have to keep forward pressure to maintain the angle. I'm largely certain this will also work for the the spoon cutters as well, which surprised me. On the spoon tools, Mikhail has ground them such that the cutting edge is a radius centered on the tap center and therefore can be sharpened accurately by turning along their length. The only difference is they will not extend as far from the jig to account for their grind angle and will require a spacer, maybe one for each tool, so the brass handle ferrule can still set the correct angle. May get the skew chisels with the same jig if we drill holes 45 degrees right and left of the central straight hole. I'll have to look at the geometry. Oh the second ball bearing that is transparent is where I thought one would need to be to behind the tool's center of gravity (CG) and therefore naturally cause the jig to fall forward on the tool cutting edge. Actually that's not right, the jig itself is falling forward and it will have a reasonable mass. I will just have to see where the CG is when the tool is attached to the jig.

Alexander, what are the typical rough sizes of the pieces? I need to buy some wood if I'm ever going to do some carving with these, and my collection mostly consists of furniture hardwoods and exotics and basswood, I don't have any thicker pieces of boxwood or pear, although I do have some holly that seems to carve well. Have you tried holly? Anyway, what are the typical stock sizes? 3cm x 3cm? Bigger?

Thank you Alexander, I think I followed that, and I will try it - I mean the making of eyes. I understand what you mean about no protrusion of the lower edge of the semicircle gouges. Below are some photos of various jigs for sharpening gravers. These are what I have been looking at while thinking about making jigs for Mikhail's tools. As you see, a jig for the straight chisels should be very simple. With a little added complexity, it could handle the straight and skew chisels. This is what I intend to make first, I have some 1/4" ball bearings sitting around that are a good size. For the semicircular gouges, I am still thinking. Basically the idea is that the jig axle and the piece that holds the gouge are geared together such that as the jig rolls forward, the piece that is holding the gouge turns along its long axis. I think that will work but I'm not completely sure. This is the "Crocker Pattern" graver sharpener. They are made by many companies. I don't think they'll work without significant modification or making Mikhail's tools separate from the handles. This is a Bergeon 2461, not expensive, I ordered one to try it. It's for sharpening screwdrivers. This is a Bergeon 2462 graver sharpener, fairly expensive for what it is, not sure if I will try it. All brass version. This is a very cheap graver sharpener you can find all over EBay and any jewelry or watch making supply companies. This is one guy's home-made jig. I like it. Another home-made jig. More sturdy but only good for one sharpening angle. And a seriously cheap and easy home-made jig

For the straight and skew chisels a graver sharpening fixture will work to maintain the correct geometry, gravers are sharpened with flat bevels like we want on our chisels. But as you see they're expensive and they don't address sharpening of the U-shaped gouges. So I have been designing a jig in my head for the gouges, and a different jig for the chisels. The one for the chisels is pretty simple, the one for the gouges is not simple as what I want to do is have the tool rotate along its long axis while the jig moves forward on the sharpening stone so the entire edge is sharpened equally. I'll get a prototype going and show it to you once it's working.

Although English clearly isn't your native language, you are perfectly understandable, so don't underestimate your English. As I said, I think it is a very hard language to learn and you've already reached a point where you can discuss complex subjects successfully, so you are doing well. That ship is also amazing, do you have a link to the project? I'd love to see the progress on it. Speaking on engraving, have you looked at engraving blocks to hold your work when you are carving? It seems to be a perfect tool for the purpose, I have a GRS block and intend to use it for carving- it can be locked so it doesn't move, and you can also unlock it and easily move the work around to any orientation you need. In fact if you look at my build log, I have been using my engraving block to hold the entire ship - the block weighs about 15lbs, it's filled with lead, so it can be used to work and relatively large objects. Here's a video of one in use. And I agree about tool handles, anyone who is serious about the work will eventually make handles that fit them and the type of work they do. The only reason I want pencil-type handles is for wood joint work on my ship, sometimes the teardrop shaped handle is too big, I also want something narrow that can fit into tight corners.

Clamp 20 of them together like a book and sand all the edges on one side at once on a nice flat surface! Then reclamp and do the other side. Doing them one by one would be very annoying. I'd use a piece of 3/4" with a rabbet cut into it to hold 20 or so pieces with them just proud of the surface, then split that in half on my table saw and drill and install telescoping brass rod and tube so they can slide. Put pieces in, clamp with c-clamps.

First Alexander, good luck on learning English. In some ways I think it's about the worst of the choices for the international language. First, it's actually three languages merged, old English and old Norse and the language of the Normans, plus a considerable number of words from Latin. And if you compare English and Spanish, English has approximately three times the words Spanish has. And it has more exceptions to the rules than any language I'm aware of and pronunciation that makes pretty much zero sense. So good luck Your work as usual is beautiful! We call that traditional acanthus patterns, based on a Mediterranean plant called acanthus. Here is a good example. Also, Gaetan's next project is a 1:24 scale 74 gun French ship. It's going to be HUGE, close to 3 meters when finished. Make sure you follow his progress, it's amazing. I have yet to start actually carving with them, but I am using Mikhail's tools daily working on my ship. I've been telling people to not think of them only as tools for carving, but the best micro tools for making small wood joints on ships. They're a real joy to use. For example, try finding another tool that could cut a planking rabbet like in the image below. Of course it makes more sense to cut that rabbet before the stem piece is attached to the ship, but the kit doesn't call for a rabbet here and I didn't think of cutting one until I received Mikhail's tools. And the wood of the stem piece is cocobolo, not at all easy to carve. I am considering taking them to my lathe though and remove the handle, leaving just enough wood for a threaded insert. I could then switch between the palm and pencil type handles depending on application. I also wish Mikhail would make it possible to completely remove the tool from the handle, like gravers used for engraving. I am trying to design a sharpening jig for the straight and skew chisels, and it would be much easier if there was no handle on the tools at the time we sharpen.

They're usually sold to woodworkers as a group with raw sienna and burnt sienna and burnt umber and black, basically red brown and green brown and black. But you can get them in all colors, see Highland Woodworking.

I now wish I'd mentioned that as you've found out, the only valid test of a filler color is dried And if at all possible you use test pieces off the main work. People will also say test in a small corner but if you use a small unnoticed corner chances are it's hard enough to see that your judgment of the color is going to involve a degree of luck. You can get the color you need with universal tints, guitar makers use them every day, as long as your filler is considerably lighter than the color you need so you can add more filler if you go too dark.

There ya go, win-win for everyone! And it was about 80 outside yesterday Back in reality, very nice progress and she looks great.

Rick, that sounds correct, it wouldn't surprise me at all if stern names were reserved for 6th rates and up. But this might be one case where I intentionally deviate from reality, as a display object for the average viewer having the name on the counter seems right. But I haven't decided for certain. Sailor, that's actually an interesting idea, I'll keep that in mind Popeye, pretty sure I have some extra cooling jackets, they'd be a tad big though, and thanks for the well wishes. I actually pinged PPD and told them they should advertise here, really surprised they don't already, this forum is chock full of likely customers.

BTW, I'm thinking of making this something other than Lady Nelson. I need to go look on Threedecks.org for a cutter of the right time period and size. There's a company called PPD Limited in Scotland that will do one-off custom photoetch for about $50 delivered to me, and the sheet is large enough that I could do the artwork and get the brass for a number of ship names that would fit the kit part. I would then be open to sending the unused ones to people building. I had them make me 1/12th scale Spandau cooling jackets a couple years ago, was very easy, I made the artwork, emailed it to them, had brass in my hands in a couple weeks, I think I fit like 12 on the smallest sheet they do. Barrel is just a rod, front piece was cast resin. And if folks here don't know about this company, they should. If you don't have Photoshop skills, not too hard to learn what's needed for this, it's actually pretty simple. Or talk/bribe someone like me into doing something, it doesn't take me terribly long unless you want to do something to simulate super-complex carving. I think I did the artwork for the cooling jackets in about an hour.

Oh man, now you just know it's going to be the left

Back up on the laptop at least, and installing the basics. I'll take my desktop parts to a shop this weekend, not going to be able to do it during the day this week. And then depending on the answers I'll have some level of shopping to do, and earliest I could start the rebuild is probably the following weekend. So I should be able to get back into the ship workshop and make some progress. That's assuming, of course, that like my leg doesn't arbitrarily fall off while I'm cooking an omelet or something. I intend to remain fully in a combat stance for the time being, other shoes keep dropping and I'm not sure it's over. That's going to be my new phrase for this kind of thing, it's been raining shoes

The encoding from MSW may be causing an issue. However that's hardly a mainstream file type regularly used, so I'd be happy I was getting it to work at all.

Hey Tom can you come over and do the rigging for my LN? I think you could knock it out in an afternoon. I'll totally pay for the soda and chips

Another one, make sure the bearding lines established by the lower parts of your filler blocks are exactly symmetric and the bulkheads on both sides end the exact same distance from the keel. When I went to cut the rabbet for the first planking I found my two bearding lines looked good but didn't agree in places up to 1/32" and that would have been replicated to the planking and the finished model. I didn't do this, but if you want to be sure of hull symmetry you can use paper strips, cut one and make it follow one of the bulkhead sides and cut it to the exact length of one side, then lay it on the other side of the bulkhead; if they match you're good.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.