vossiewulf

Think it qualifies for zeroeth class.

Perfect seems inadequate, I'm going with "uber spiffy perfectomundo".

She should be very pretty with the radical French hull form. Wasn't this one of the non-Sané designs? I seem to remember there was one guy who particularly favored the angular hull forms. I have Boudriot's book on French frigates, I should go look it up.

One thing to consider with handles Gaetan is how well it locates the point of the blade and its rotation for you. A curved and fully rounded handle can be quite comfortable, but it's hard to know exactly where the point is just by the grip. That's why I always make the back edge of the handle straight, and perfectly in line with the point of the blade, and also with slight flats on the side, these help you intuitively feel where the edge is pointed. With a fully rounded handle, you can be holding the knife slightly twisted in your hand without noticing.
 
But in the end, handles are very personal things, make what feels right for you.

Lots of knives here from reasonably good to extremely good. Western and Japanese knives. If you want to try western knives, try Pfeil and Two Cherries and they also carry Ron Hock's blades. And any of the Japanese marking/woodworking knives here are going to be Rc63 or so and therefore sharpenable to a very good edge. You just regrind them to whatever you want and make a handle.
 
And if you want an insanely good edge, buy really good Japanese marking knives, they'll be pushing Rc64-65, but edge fragility is an issue.

Many of the fancy super-cool knives you see made are just 440 stainless steel which is only partially hardenable, at best you get a very marginal edge with them. If you want a fancy-looking blade that is also good cutting edge steel, look at Japanese knives.
 
Also I'll second what Gaetan said, you can't do true precision work without an extremely sharp edge. Once you try one a lightbulb goes off and you say wow, this is MUCH easier. And from that point on you're obsessed with making your knife as sharp as possible
 

I don't have too much more to tell you, you understand all the factors now  From here it's just refinements of the knives you have, and maybe purchasing or making some special purpose knives (like matched left/right single bevel knives).
 
With the Shapton Glass stones, yes they are very expensive for very high grits, but really who needs a 30,000 grit stone anyway? That level of fine polishing is best handled with a strop.
 
The other item WRT Shapton stones that is expensive is the special stone they make that is designed to flatten the Shapton Glass stones when necessary. Don't buy it. First, as I've said, they stay flat for a very long time. Second, even if you do need to flatten them, it can be done with a much less expensive diamond stone or even silicon carbide sandpaper taped to a flat surface.
 
I wouldn't recommend buffing wheels, it's very easy to round the edge that way. Actually it's quite hard to use one without rounding the edge to some degree. If you do use one, you need a very firm felt wheel, you need to have it rotating away from the blade edge, and you need a very fine touch- if you press down at all into the wheel it will begin to round your nice V-shaped edge.
 
Also, it looks to me like your test was accurate, that's pretty much the order I would have guessed for that knife collection. The thing you'll like about your PM-V11 blade is it will stay sharp for a comparatively long time, so besides performing best it will require resharpening the least.

I should have known you have given this considerable thought
 
First of all Japanese steel will be referred to as white steel or blue steel. This has nothing to do with the color of the steel but rather the color of the wrappings of the bars as they leave the steel foundry, traditionally pure unalloyed steel (Fe + C) has white wrappings, while alloyed steel (some combination of Fe + C + chrome + molybdenum + vanadium) comes in blue wrappings.
 
Many argue that nothing can be made as sharp as white steel, however it's also the most fragile and also loses its edge quickly since the alloys are all designed to add resistance to loss of the edge (particularly vanadium) plus heat and stress resistance. In general a blue steel blade will hold an edge longer than white steel and will take more stress (twisting cuts) without the edge fracturing as compared to white steel.
 
With western steel we have primarily O-1 and A-2 steels, both are alloys with the first being quenched in oil, and the second being left to cool in ambient air (hence the O and A respectively). O-1 is easy to sharpen but doesn't hold an edge very well, whereas A-2 holds an edge better but is difficult and time-consuming to sharpen. In  better quality steel there is also a cryogenic process that helps sort the molecules properly, leading to greater edge toughness.
 
Also for the first time in a while there's a newcomer, powdered sintered steels. These get around limitations in standard alloying practices by never completely melting the steel, instead the powdered ingredients in the desired ratios are mixed and placed in a form and a hydraulic die press basically squashes them into a solid steel bar in one quick shot. This is important because high vanadium in steel leads to much longer edge life, but in traditional alloying the amount of vanadium that could be added was very limited since vanadium will quickly grow into much too large crystals. With powdered steel, you can put in much more vanadium since the sintering process doesn't allow it time to grow large crystals.
 
As such, the most sophisticated (and best IMO) steel available to woodworkers right now is the PM-V11 steel that Lee Valley uses for many of its tools. It holds an edge for insanely long periods (I have jack and smoothing planes with PM-V11 irons) but is at least as easy to sharpen as O-1 steel. Unfortunately they haven't made any knives yet with it, just plane irons and chisels. 
 
A couple of suggestions. One is Shapton Glass Stones. They're ceramic waterstones and 1) remain almost perfectly flat and 2) remove steel faster than anything I've ever used, and I've used all sorts of waterstones (including natural stones) and diamond and other ceramics- none of them come close to how fast Shapton stones remove steel. This means much less sharpening time and much more working time. I use 220 for shaping bevels, 1000/4000/8000 for sharpening and a strop.
 
Another is to try a knife or two from Ron Hock. He's the best of the western blade makers (IMO) and makes excellent plane irons and knives. He stops at Rc62 to provide somewhat better edge strength under stress, and he also cryogenically treats all his steel.
 
You're also right that you basically need blades with an edges parallel to the knife handle (straight blade), beveled at an angle (skew blade) and perpendicular to the handle (chisel). All are needed for good woodworking. For the chisels, I recommend the Lee Valley PM-V11 bench chisels, and you should also look at Japanese dovetail chisels and also shoji chisels (used for making the mortise cuts in Japanese shoji screens) since you are constantly working into tight spaces.

You know I seem to remember an argument some time back where you insisted nothing was as sharp as a scalpel  I'm glad you've seen the light (and the metallurgy). The only downside to Japanese knives is they push the hardness to Rc63-64 and therefore the edges can be brittle, don't try many twisting cuts with your new knife. 
 
And I agree with you about the weight, that's why I add the brass weights to my knives, to move the balance point to just ahead of center and to give them more mass for control.
 

Go to Amazon and get several hundred tattoo ink cups for about $10.
Drill a hole in a 3"x5"x1/2" or so piece of wood to hold the ink cup. Set in there it will never spill.
Fill the cup with the CA container, put CA container away where you can't knock it over.
Use a piece of wire with a loop in the end to apply the glue. Cut off and make a new loop as necessary.
Apply the CA in dots, don't try to smear it around. This increases the open time of the glue and will result in fewer mistakes of glue where you don't want it.
 
Also, keep your CA glue container in the refrigerator, it will last far longer. You can purchase a better buy bigger container and not worry about having to throw half of it away.

I've used the pencil highlight for metal going back 30 years, but now I use metal powders, applied to a properly prepared surface, they are indistinguishable from actual metal. Uschi van der Rosten carries a number of modern metal powders and pastes, you should give them a try.

Two other books I recommend:
 
Rigging Period Ship Models (excellent detailed drawings of everything)
The Masting and Rigging of of English Ships of War 1625-1860

With stays (standing rigging that just holds the masts and bowsprit in place), including the shrouds, they were actually wormed, parcelled, and served.  A serving machine is not difficult to make, search for serving machine here on MSW for self-built ideas.
 
Otherwise I would recommend the serving machine from Syren Ship Model Company. You still have to put it together, but it works well and is not expensive ($55).
 
It's very possible they simplified the rigging, as you say it's an entry level kit and that almost always means simplification. 
 
You're about to be confronted with the biggest mass of confusing terminology there is anywhere when you face ship rigging for the first time. You pretty much must get some books to help explain that terminology and what all the standing and running rigging did and how they were made and set up if you want to know what you are doing and to make a rig that is actually sensible.
 
Another good move is to go to Syren and replace all the line that came with the kit with Syren rope, it's far, far better than average kit line and the entry level kits get the worst line. Very fuzzy with threads sticking out a scale foot or more. BTW don't use beeswax on your lines, it's acidic and will eat away the rigging over time. If you must use wax, use paraffin. But IMO the best rigging is just good line with no wax.
 
And you're zooming right along, so make some decisions and order some things so you don't get stuck waiting for supplies to arrive. That's always very frustrating when you're on a roll with a build.
 
 

Mark, search MSW for Golden Hind. There are a couple promising build logs, the one below has numerous links to informational sources on 16th century ships.
 
 

This is where much of the challenge is, researching what the ship really looked like and deciding which improvements you're going to make to the basic kit. Just following the instructions is a parts assembly exercise, stepping out of that into making your own better parts is where you'll keep pushing the edges of your envelope.
 
And when I build something, much of the fun is not the process or the finished product, but educating myself as to how that thing was designed, built, and operated, and how it fit into the history of the technology tree. Ships were the space shuttles of their day, the most complex machines operated by man for hundreds of years. Learning the details of how it all worked is a REAL challenge, and it's fascinating to see the highly engineered solutions they had to problems when they were limited to wood, rope, and pieces of iron.
 
Many people start as you did by mostly assembling a kit, then they cross into making some of their own parts, then they move on to full scratchbuilding because that's where the hardest challenge is.

Yep you're right, I meant Port Arthur, the night time destroyer attack on the Russian fleet.

Yeah, I read an account where a Buccaneer tore off its tail pod at Red Flag, pulling UP into power line. 

Not sure what you guys are talking about, sanding sealer is just a standard clear lacquer/varnish/poly with a high percentage of solids. As such, once applied, the strength of any glue bond you get is (depending on finish thickness) mostly or entirely limited to the strength of the finish's adherence to the wood, which is always going to be MUCH less than that of glue bonding with wood. In some cases with thin CA and a light coat of sealer you'll still get a semi-strong bond as the glue sinks into still-open grain and that creates a mechanical hold, but it's still not going to be as strong as it should be bonding with plain wood.
 
I almost never do that, I will remove any finish including sanding sealer from a surface before gluing.
 
Anyone who wants to really understand what all these finishes really are and the basic chemistry of how they work should read Understanding Wood Finishing: How to Select and Apply the Right Finish, it's about the most advanced finishing book I've found in terms of explaining all the source materials of finishes and how/why they work the way they do. You'll learn that much of what you think you know is wrong and that much of what manufacturers say about their finishes is complete nonsense, but other info on the can that you're not really paying attention to now is very important and will tell you exactly how that finish will behave.
 
It's from American Woodworker which I normally don't associate with highly technical woodworking (like Fine Woodworking) but this really is the best book I've found, and I probably have 15 or 20 books on different types of finishing.

To return to another point of yours, how thin the blade is definitely matters, but it also matters in how often it needs to be sharpened and how strong that edge is. If you're making straight cuts and don't mind sharpening often, I long since had reached the same conclusion as you where the sharpest blade is achieved when each side of the blade is a whole bevel. I've been sharpening my detail/chip carving knives that way for a long time now, and I carved 90% of the chip carving below with a Hock detail knife sharpened that way.
 
The disadvantages are weakness under any twisting load, they have to be sharpened often, and sharpening takes much longer because you're hitting so much metal. Most of the knives I use for ship work aren't sharpened that way, they still have a big bevel but not the whole side of the blade. For me the only time the performance vs. drawbacks is positive is when I'm chip carving where you need well more than scalpel sharpness.
 
 

Unfortunately in my place I made the workshop impossible to cut off, seeing as it's the house's alleged dining room  I've had no problems with cats knowing that there are places they aren't allowed on, but of course the young ones will jump up just to prove they can the second you leave the house. So extra safety measures will be required at least until she gets out of bratty cat teenager phase.
 
I didn't have cats until I was 21, when I moved into a house with a girlfriend after college, and pretty soon there were four cats and three dogs. For whatever reason I picked up cat language pretty quickly and have had them since. My wives have always laughed at me having regular conversations with them as they follow me around the house and monitor my activities.
 
Progress remains slow, just haven't had much time to work on it, but steady in that I try to move forward a little bit every day regardless. Unless I talk myself into rudder pendants, the rudder is done. I just don't see pendants on the contemporary models, but I still find it hard to believe they'd go into the North Sea and the channel with nothing holding the rudder on but gravity. At least I'd feel like a colossal moron for drowning in a capsizing ship because the rudder just fell off and I had no backup to catch it.
 
This was also one of those cases where cup burs come into play. I don't use them super regularly, but when I do, boy howdy do they speed along the process. Here as you see below, after I tore off the brass and started using styrene, I drilled holes for .030" styrene rod, and after letting the CA set for 30 seconds on those rod pieces, I just clipped each one off close with a good nail clipper.
 
Then I went over them all with the right size cup bur in the rotary tool, and we have reasonably even nice rounded bolt heads very quickly. By the way, I drilled the holes in situ instead of on the mill or something to give it a more handmade look, but I ended up wobbling more than intended in a couple places. Rarely does a good idea go fully unpunished.
 
Next up is deadeyes, which I've started but am at the moment wondering how to chuck them somehow to properly round them off. I've tried a few things so far with no luck, I'm considering just drilling a hole through the danged things and then filling them later with side grain wood.
 
 

(Fingers in ears) LALALALALALALA

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.

As Johann said, you let a professional do it  Any decent sized town will have a jeweler that does custom work. The easiest thing to do is get jeweler's wax and carve/build up a master, they can then make a mold and do the casting. It shouldn't cost too much. I've had parts made that way for projects, and I also made some rings for an ex-admiral.

Important thing is don't think of them just as carving tools, think of them as the best micro joinery hand tools in existence, over half the set is straight and skew chisels, with the latter having left and right-hand single bevel tools in three sizes.
 
Speaking again about handles, if you intend to primarily carve with these get the palm handles as you see below. If you intend to use them for general ship joinery, get the pencil handles as they will be able to reach places these can't and will be more natural to people used to holding xacto knives.
 
I told Mikhail what I think he should do and I might do is pull the tools out of these handles, get a pencil handle set from him, and then modify the handles like graver handles with set screws to hold the tools. I first thought about cutting the wood part off on the lathe and then adding a threaded insert and switch between handles that way, but he has the tool a good 5cm into the handles.
 
 
My set:



 
This is what I mean about joinery, I decided to cut a rabbet on the stem for these inside planks, just because I could now with my spiffy tools. What you can't see is that despite the confined area and that the carved wood is cocobolo that never saw an edge tool it didn't hate, I was able to quickly cut a perfect rabbet that even has an angled bottom relative to the stem so it perfectly fits the square ends of the planks.