vossiewulf

Thanks Keith! Thanks Pat!

You know I'm glad I am doing the yards and masts in castello boxwood, not only can it be scale smooth, but it's strong and you can make tiny parts with it. Like these sling cleats... I think they're called that. Otherwise, I received my Syren Servomatic from @Chuck. Chuck, it went together reasonably well and it turns easily and almost fully smoothly. And it's working with the fly-tying thread I wanted to use. The only downside is with your dark brown thread I need magnification just to see my serving I may need to use the tan rope just so I can accurately serve the ropes. And I intentionally did not sand the char. I like cherry with black trim, going back to a customer furniture shop that I worked at 35 years ago that frequently used that look.

If you're going to get a mill, get the Sieg X2D mini mill. It's a real machine that is very capable in small and medium-scale work. I don't think you'd be happy with the Sherline in the long run.

Yep you got it, airbrush has a high maintenance ratio making it a pain to use at times, but it's also the only tool that can produce a quality finish for a scale project. Spray cans are like firehoses, airbrushes provide much more control. Also you can decant finishes and paints from spray cans and then apply them elsewhere with the control of an airbrush.

The first thing I learned about airbrushes was that every time you use one, you disassemble it entirely and clean each part like your life depended on it before putting everything back together. At least you do that if you want your airbrush to work predictably. The planks and the engine look good

You're right, it doesn't. Ah well, once less piece of P/E to attach to a curved surface.

When I worked in a customer furniture shop many eons ago in college, we called that a "wind" pronounced like winding a clock. If you used CA, god himself is not getting that hull back apart, you can either stop or keep going but there's no fixing it. At a minimum it's an object lesson to watch closely for that next time.

Thanks @SardonicMeow again for taking time to take all those pics and for uploading them here. It's yet another variant- two yards like Cheerful, spreaders and no mast top like Lennarth Petersson, lots of other variations that others will be better at spotting then I am. What I've concluded from this exercise is that there was not a standard cutter rig, at least in detail. Either the third yard was standard but only carried in light weather, or there were at least two basic cutter rigs- three yards and two yards, both on just two masts. Forestays terminated in either three-hole or five-hole deadeyes. Main backstays either had a simple rig or a seemingly unnecessarily complex one. There could be a mast top and ratlines for the topmast, or there could be simple stays with no shrouds. It goes on One thing interesting about Surly is that it does in fact say Surly on the stern. I had given up the idea of putting the Lady Nelson P/E on the stern as none of the contemporary models had their names on their sterns. Now I'm going to rethink.

Hmm yeah somebody hit the wrong toggle, there's no attach images functions.

Thanks Peter! Studying the pics now

Another quick update, I worked on the yards today. I had never had to turn small scale square stock into small scale octagonal stock (no Lennarth Petersson, I am not doing hexagonal) so I had to make a little v-groove jig. I made it about 50% longer than it needed to be for these yards so it will be useful in the future on larger 1:64ish models. The plane is a Lie Nielsen model maker's palm plane. It's pricey like everything else Lie Nielsen but it's also very well made and is about the perfect size for ship modelers. One thing I really like is that the iron is 1/8" thick, very thick for this size, so you will get zero chatter with it. If you were going to buy a single plane for ship modeling, I'd recommend this one. Anyway, the v-groove jig worked fine and I was able to put a good octagonal shape on stock down to 3mm. I normally prefer dye stains to pigment stains, because dye stains are molecular, there is no pigment grit to be seen at small scales. But I'm going to try a gel stain from Woodcraft on my blocks. I've used General Finishes gel stain once before on a chest of drawers and it came out nice, so I'm hoping it might work better than the results I've gotten so far with the dye stains, which is very blotchy.

Are you sure it wasn't there before the first planking? The process you followed shouldn't have made it twisted but I would have kept up the two strakes on one side followed by two strakes on the other side in the second planking to be ultra sure.

Far as I know the anchor cables were always wrapped around the windlasses in a cutter, the crew would be out of luck if an anchor deployed with no windlass to recover it.

😊Glad I could help.

Welcome back! WRT the pics, upload all your pics to the drag files here to attach or choose files area. Then write your text. Then move the cursor to where you want a pic to go, and click on that pic's thumbnail in the uploaded images area. Repeat until you've placed all images.

If you want more detailed info, I recommend R. Bruce Hoadley's Understanding Wood. I read it 30 years ago which means I've forgotten some of the details, but it is a really good explanation of the material we call wood and why it behaves the way it does.

Received the Faber pens and blackened the driver boom, then put a clear coat on it with Minwax Polycrylic. That turned out to be a mistake; although it had performed ok on a test piece, it didn't level on my driver boom at all and its sheen which was supposed to be matte is greater than I consider good for a satin finish. Now I'm waiting for lacquers from Mohawk, they mostly supply luthiers but I've found they're really good, level well and are very clear. We spray so little in a ship model that there really isn't much reason to avoid VOCs, while we do need finishes which smooth out well, are clear, and have a predictable sheen. I also made the gaffe boom from more square castello boxwood stock... ...and finally got the right size nails for my chainplate ends.

It's just natural oxidation, although II don't know why the darker strips seem to be affected more. Anyway, all exposed wood changes color over time- cherry goes from pink to light brown and all woods darken. You can take a look at my build log and scroll back a bit to see a holly deck after five years, it only changes slightly to a cream color from bone white. I imagine it will continue to yellow over time.

<squawk>Uhhhh... think we need an emergency CT scan for Glen , over<squawk>

What's not to like about a neat holly deck Nice and quick work Greg.

I would not use the Danish oil, I would simply spray the whole thing with a matte or satin clear coat of your choice. You don't need any more stain at this point, you have nice colors already between the natural woods and painted surfaces.

Welcome to MSW!

Welcome Dale! Model Shipways' easier kits are a great place to start.

Remember Lutzow sank at Jutland/Skagerrak in 1916, I think the torpedo nets were still carried at that point.

Been making the driver boom, I think that's what it is called, the main fore and aft boom, not sure why other than it's one of the things that needs to get done. I also received my Servomatic machine from Chuck, so I will be putting that together tomorrow, I need it to serve the stays as the intent is to have them fully served. Not sure how many people remember at this point but one of my crazy ideas that worked really well was the doing the black of the hull not via brush or spray, but via pen. I got Faber Castell india ink archival waterproof ink pens and colored in the hull like a 3D coloring book. It was very easy and low stress and I like the result better than paint- a single layer of paint at 1:64 scale is like 20 scale coats and detail is lost. The film thickness of ink is negligible. Anyway those original pens are long since gone and while I wait for Faber Castells from Amazon (Jan. 11?! bah) I tried some pens I found locally that also claimed to be india ink archival black pens. We can see at least one of them is lying, it's not black it's dark purple. That's like the "black" of Sharpie pens, it's actually dark purple. The other one is desaturated but it looks more dark gray than black. Guess I will have to wait for the Fabers. Like I said working on driver boom. For those interested in the process, I started with square Castello boxwood stock and made it octagonal using my model maker's palm plane. I then took it to the lathe, and rounded it and tapered it down at both ends, the thickest section is about 1/3 of the way along the boom. I then took it off the lathe, and used the same small palm-plane to create the two angled flats to accept the cheek piece thingies. I then ripped a piece of boxwood to about 2.5mm and drew out the side pieces, then cut them out with a fretsaw and touched them up with the Nakanishi micromotor. I used black gaffer's tape for the iron reinforcing bands, the white edges of the tape will go away when the whole boom is blackened. And then I made and glued on the small wooden cleat.