Lady Nelson by vossiewulf - Amati/Victory Models - 1:64

[vossiewulf]

On 12/24/2024 at 10:03 AM, Gregory said:

Are those the newer Printed blocks from Syren?

No Gregory, those are standard Syren wood blocks.

[vossiewulf]

9 hours ago, Dr PR said:

vossiewulf,

 

The "jib inhaul/outhaul/halliard ring thingy" is called a "traveller." There are some other things called travellers, most (all?) involving metal rings that slide along some kind of boom or rod and provide a place for tackle and rigging to attach to - like the ring that the boom sheet block will attach to on the "horse" (horizontal metal bar) at the stern of your model.

 

You must have great patience to be manually serving ropes with that very tiny thread!

 

Your bock holder is a nifty idea. I'll have to make one for myself when I get back into rigging.

 

Have a happy holidays!

Thanks for the explanation, Phil, I'm trying to absorb the topic of rigging now and every bit helps

 

Yes, it takes patience to serve line with fly tying thread, but I'm hoping it will get better with Chuck's serving machine, that is making its way through the mail to me.

 

As for the block holder, make one carbon fiber rod about 1/8" longer than the other, this makes getting them both into the blocks much easier as you're only doing one at a time.

[Gregory]

26 minutes ago, vossiewulf said:

No Gregory, those are standard Syren wood blocks.

OK that brings up my next observation.

 

I never cared for the bright look of Syrens boxwood blocks, but there was not any alternative that came close to the shape/quality.

 

Myself and others found that the boxwood did not take traditional wood stains very well. 

I experimented with Fiebing Leather Dye  ..  Just another option you might consider.

 

The difference in color here is the lighting.  With hindsight I would have polished them a bit more.  I would like to get more of the look I see on contemporary models.

 

[vossiewulf]

1 hour ago, Gregory said:

OK that brings up my next observation.

 

I never cared for the bright look of Syrens boxwood blocks, but there was not any alternative that came close to the shape/quality.

 

Myself and others found that the boxwood did not take traditional wood stains very well. 

I experimented with Fiebing Leather Dye  ..  Just another option you might consider.

 

I am using ethanol-based dye stains like they use for musical instruments because they don't penetrate much, and if they don't penetrate it's hard for the result to be splotchy. But it was anyway, I'm not happy with the results I've gotten so far. So I'll take a look at the leather dye, thanks.

 

While I'm here, I finished the blocks on the jib boom eyes.

And then I took a hand at trying to create thimbles 75% of the size that Chuck creates in his Cheerful instructions, and I can report that making thimbles out of 1.2mm OD brass tube is not easy. The cuts in the tube have to be square and parallel to each other, and no matter what you cut the tube with it leaves a tang of uncut metal that needs to be removed with a small full-flush side cutter. I made a blunt-curved end brass rod per Chuck's suggestion and used that with a little chasing hammer to tap each side of the pieces of tube to form the curve of the thimble edge. Not easy to get consistent results and you really need a reasonably thick piece of brass to go under the tube sections when you're tapping.

 

I ended up cutting the tube sections on my Byrnes saw while holding my hand right over the blade to catch the tube section as the blade hurled it in some random direction, and then clipping off the tang under magnification.

As noted I wish there was more consistency in the results, I'm trying to be as consistent as possible with the number of taps and how hard they are, but I've still got some variation. I'm going to stare at these for a day or so and decide if I want to try again for improved results.

[Gregory]

2 hours ago, vossiewulf said:

I am using ethanol-based dye stains like they use for musical instruments

The Fiebing's is alcohol(ethanol?) based but I seemed to have gotten pretty good penetration.  I would suspect the formulation might be different across intended applications.

 

One caveat to keep in mind is that DrPR talked about using shellac on some of his block rigging and the dye was bleeding into the rope.

Not a problem if you don't use shellac.

[Dr PR]

I was trying to use the shellac to shape the rope. Shellac is an alcohol solution. Fiebing leather dye is alcohol based. If the alcohol in the shellac wicked down the ropes to the blocks the dye bled into the ropes, discoloring them.

 

I also had problems with the light brown stain on the wooden blocks. The end grain is more porous that the side grain, so the ends of the blocks soaked up the stain and are almost black. The sides stained OK on the smaller blocks, but the sides of the larger blocks were splotchy. I think this was caused by glue on the wood from the sheeve pins in the multi-part Syren blocks.

 

All in all, I think I would have gotten MUCH better results with just painting the blocks.

[vossiewulf]

15 hours ago, Dr PR said:

I was trying to use the shellac to shape the rope. Shellac is an alcohol solution. Fiebing leather dye is alcohol based. If the alcohol in the shellac wicked down the ropes to the blocks the dye bled into the ropes, discoloring them.

 

I also had problems with the light brown stain on the wooden blocks. The end grain is more porous that the side grain, so the ends of the blocks soaked up the stain and are almost black. The sides stained OK on the smaller blocks, but the sides of the larger blocks were splotchy. I think this was caused by glue on the wood from the sheeve pins in the multi-part Syren blocks.

 

All in all, I think I would have gotten MUCH better results with just painting the blocks.

Noted  

[vossiewulf]

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.

[vossiewulf]

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.

[vossiewulf]

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.

 

[BANYAN]

Nicely done Vossie, looks good.

 

cheers

 

Pat