vossiewulf

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.

Had company for another week, and haven't gotten much done but am plugging away at the #%##@@#$@#$ rudder. Well not the rudder itself, it's ok, but the damned brass gudgeon straps that go on the hull, I have been driven past distraction to insanity.
 
Star Fleet personnel couldn't glue brass. I don't know why all frying pans aren't made out of brass, because nothing sticks to the stuff. Not even lacquer primer on a cleaned surface, just handle it for a few seconds and pieces will fall off. GAH!
 
I made the tiller as close as I could to one of the Tony's contemporary models, but this kit is designed with the tiller going around the top of the rudder rather than inserted into the rudder head as I see in the contemporary models. It's done except for a flat clear coat on the tiller.




 
In other news, I had lost my previous Dockyard Supervisor last year, her name was Takita. She sat in my lap pretty much every minute I was home for 16 years, because I was not competent to do much of anything without her input.

Yesterday I went to visit the new Dockyard Supervisor, who is also Tonkinese like Takita, but four weeks old. In two months when she is 12 weeks she will begin her education into how ridiculous humans are and how they desperately need cat supervision at all times.

 

For small blades like this you have lots of options for sharpening, including diamond and ceramic and water stones. Of those I prefer water stones even though they're the most messy, they cut fast and leave an excellent surface. Diamond cuts fast but tends to be much more coarse in terms of grit, their supposed 1200 grit is more like 300 in water stones, plus they wear out. I've tried several ceramics and they all got tossed as useless, they cut slow and glaze easily.
 
Probably best option if you don't want water stones is sanding films, they come in appropriate grits for sharpening and work well, but I find them to be expensive as like any sandpaper, these wear out rapidly and you can spend $3 or $4 just sharpening one knife.
 
My favorites are the Shapton Glass stones, not cheap but cut faster than anything else I've used but unlike water stones they stay reasonably flat. I have those in 220/1000/4000/8000 with a strop to finish and haven't used anything else since I got them

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?

Thanks Chuck for the starting a thread and posting the info above. I am thinking of getting a ropewalk so even if I can't talk you into carrying polyester maybe I can give it a spin myself. But I think you should support polyester, maybe make it a premium special order or something where you'll only make what people order and they'll have to wait a bit for delivery.
 
As for colors, one is pretty green and the other is a more saturated yellow, I prefer that one from an aesthetic standpoint but the green one may be more realistic.

Or it could be just a trick to make us THINK he's human! All the while he's operating with those 8 arms
 
Am I understanding you Amalio that you remove the dried glue with the nylon brushes turning very slowly? I've never heard of removing PVA glue that way and I've been using it for too many years. Interesting.

Seems to be a required rite of passage to publicly flail your way through a first build. For introductions, name is Jay and I'm director of production support for the MAP division at Visa that includes Cybersource and Authorize.net. That means I'm on call 24/7. So, no stress or anything.
 
When it comes to the subject at hand I'm something of a ringer though, as I have extensive experience making small precise stuff in many materials, and I have two entire rooms dedicated to workshop. One is for medium-sized power tools and a small scale machine shop (mini-lathe, mini-mill, etc.), other is primarily a woodworking area for hand tool work (this is where ships will be set up). Well three rooms because the semi-finished "bonus room" has my full-sized table saw and I have plans for a Laguna bandsaw to go in there too.
 
And I've already spent a couple years reading extensively on the ships and the building techniques while working on my game, which also needs to continue to make progress, called Line of Battle.
 
Anyway, I have a crapton of tools and my home is arranged around my workshop areas, so you can assume I am divorced and have no constraints
 
The plan for now, and I already have all the kits, is to go Lady Nelson -> brig Syren -> MS Constitution -> Victory HMS Revenge -> Caldercraft Victory. But I also want to do some very small scale also, we'll see.
 
Since this part is uninteresting, only a couple photos - one of squaring up the transom bulkhead and the assembled frame. In case you're wondering, all my little brass flat sanders that are used with PSA paper were machined perfectly square so I don't need to fiddle with heavy machinist's squares except for outside 90s.
 

 
 
In case you're wondering, it's being held in a GRS engraver's block. But anyway all clean and straight and square and ready to go to next steps.
 

 
 
Planned next step is balsa filler blocks at bow and stern, and to make things super easy on myself I'm probably going to fill in the first three gaps on both ends, so everywhere significant bending is occurring I'll have a surface to work against.
 
However, need some advice on wood. I bought the Crown Timber boxwood package for this, so I have a bunch of boxwood coming. However, I have my own wood and don't want to do it 100% in boxwood, whatever I don't use will get used later in something else. Right now what I'm thinking of is cocobolo for the keel, wales, and rails, lightly stained boxwood planking, and a holly deck. BTW these 1x1x12 American holly turning blanks are available at Woodcraft for $10, good deal if you can resaw to scale timber.
 

 
 
However, I'm not sure about the cocobolo, the color of course is great but it has pretty strong grain and figure and may not look good in this small build. Also I'm not sure about the idea of having a keel/stem darker than the main planking. Anyway, advice appreciated, as I'll have this ready for the keel and planking soon.
 
I know, I'll plank it in snakewood. Cut this into 4mm strips, cut in half (it's 5/16" thick) and then plank both sides with strips in the exact order we see here Just kidding of course. That's a $150 guitar fingerboard blank and will be used for that purpose in the future.
 

Globalization is making acronyms way complicated.

I'm just going to shorten it to SOA: Singing Of Angels.

(more sounds of angels singing)

You can't fool me! He's just hiding the other six arms behind him!

Or it could be just a trick to make us THINK he's human! All the while he's operating with those 8 arms
 
Am I understanding you Amalio that you remove the dried glue with the nylon brushes turning very slowly? I've never heard of removing PVA glue that way and I've been using it for too many years. Interesting.

Yes, everyone is amazed because as far as we can tell he never, ever does anything that's not flawless. Hence my hypothesis that he's not actually human, and has multiple prehensile arms and is orbiting Saturn. It would explain a lot.

Seriously, how do you get the lines to drape like that? Even the line-draping is ridiculously perfect. As is the joinery, as usual. 

That much joinery, all of it completely flawless... I'm still going with Amalio being an eight-armed alien. Maybe 12 arms. And at least 16 eyes.

Fixed that for you.

Some thoughts on potential responses:
 
That's like being told that behind Darth Vader is the Emperor, so weep even further for your pitiable ship-building skills It seems like I will need to kick Spain in the shin for being an entire country of better ship-builders than me I don't want to see Baldomero's models, I'm afraid I would be driven mad, mad I tell you, by the endlessly repeating "HOW DID HE DO THAT?!?" question spinning through my mind  

Your sarcasm detector seems to be malfunctioning, Carl.

I've been sitting looking at the capstan and trying to figure out how I'd make it, and all the paths require a lathe and milling machine and rotary table with tailstock and indexing head and possibly custom tapered mills. And at least several complex jigs, most of which would be single use, they'd be made specifically for that capstan. If you're able to do that with only simple tools I'm coming all the way to Spain just to kick you in the shin for being that good.
 
He estado sentado mirando el cabrestante y tratando de encontrar la manera que lo lograría, y todos los caminos requieren un torno y fresadora y una mesa giratoria con el contrapunto y la cabeza indexación y posiblemente molinos cónicos personalizado. Y al menos varias plantillas complejas, la mayor parte de lo que sería de un solo uso, estarían hechas específicamente para ese cabrestante. Si usted es capaz de hacer eso con sólo herramientas simples que estoy procedentes de todo el camino a España sólo para dar una patada en la espinilla por ser tan bueno.

Ok after that capstan I'm back to thinking we need to check for alien DNA. That's really not easy to make and it's completely perfect. 

No idea how you keep the grate glue joints invisible when you flex it like that. I'm going to have to buy a Spanish thesaurus, I've run out of English superlatives.

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.

It's like a perfect ship-building machine.