74-gun ship by Gaetan Bordeleau - 1:24

[Gaetan Bordeleau]

52 minutes ago, EricWilliamMarshall said:

Were/are you a furniture maker as well? (Yet another hobby requiring eight-foot wall-space lengths per project!)

I did some furniture for fun. If I would do others, I would like to do lounge chairs. There are a lot of other things I would like to do like life size carvings.

In fact, I have always like to work with wood. My father was building houses so I had access to all the tools and I did try most of them.

The strangest  accessory I remember he had is rosin but I do not remember what he used it.

 

I would have loved to do the job you had when you were young.

 

Working with wood is very satisfying. Working with metals is a very different world. It is more a dirty job. Hands are never clean. Machining is a long precision process. I did fabricate tools for the lathe and the mill while 10 years. The idea was to build tools to build more complex tool to build even more complex tools and it was going in a spiral like this. About 10 years ago, after building tools for about 10 years, I stopped because I had no more goals of building tools, even if there was still a long way to go. Then, I came back to model ship building. I put a photo as example.

 

Occasionally, I like to mill some tools. But now, I rarely use steel, when metal is required, I prefer aluminium and when it possible I prefer to use plastic.

 

Here s what i did this week: a plastic thumb to help to hold the camera and  I did adapt an existing head rest  to a lounge chair. The most difficult part was that the leather was red and I changed it to black. It is the first time I tried to change the leather color.

[EricWilliamMarshall]

Wood finishes are messy too though. I would love to have such metal working skills! I have a mini Taig lathe that my daughter and I are trying to come to grips with.   How many of those accessories (in the 1st photo) did you make?!?

[Gaetan Bordeleau]

There are 2 main tools to use for metal; a lathe  and a mill. These tools are expensive but even more expensive are the accessories because you need a lot of it. So it is easy to buy a lathe for $1000 and it is also easy to buy $1000 of tools. When you buy a lathe  or a mill, you should double the price you want to spend, the other half being for the tools.

 

By example a 3 jaw chuck with a precision of ,001 would cost $100 and if you want a 3 jaw  chuck with a higher precision you will have to add another 0 to the price. That was a big reason why I did make many accessories myself, because I did not have the money to buy these new. On the blue flange, I built all what you see and I built many others. On the previous page of this log, I showed few examples of the books I did read to learn machining and at the same time building tools.

[EricWilliamMarshall]

2 hours ago, Gaetan Bordeleau said:

I showed few examples of the books I did read to learn machining and at the same time building tools.

Yup, you were kind enough to answer my question about your library! I found a large number of those book are quite affordable used! Not all of them have arrived yet.

Edited March 28, 2020 by EricWilliamMarshall

[Gaetan Bordeleau]

With all these books, be careful, it could be dangerous for you to buy an even bigger lathe, like a tool room lathe to build tools. But even if can turn a cube on a lathe, a milling machine is also necessary.

 

I remember at the beginning of the learning on how to use a lathe... many hours of fun.

[EricWilliamMarshall]

1 hour ago, Gaetan Bordeleau said:

it could be dangerous for you to buy an even bigger lathe

Ha ha ha!! To be fore warned is to be fore armed!! I’ll attempt to meet the danger head on!

[Gaetan Bordeleau]

Post are shaped in angle. It is a lot of fitting to align everything.

I planked the front balcony, 1 of the reasons, because it can be very tricky to go to get a small tool that felted in the bottom of the hold.

[Gaetan Bordeleau]

This week , I began to work on 10 pieces and I am still fitting these in relation to each other. If I would keep all the parts that I missed, I would have kept a lot this week. Often, a piece itself was good but in relation to another one, it was good. On the last photo, we can see my preferred curve that I use.

[Gaetan Bordeleau]

Few notes about the tools.

First, using a small knife with a small handle is harder  to control. So I sanded  a bigger one, much more comfortable.

Second photo. It is a set of jaw which can be installed on the top of the other vice. Do you know why one side has 2 pin to secure it, and the other side has only one?

Third photo, the answer; to hold a tapered part. If the part is parallel, it also works because the pin is in the center.

Photo 4, many parts of the present assembly are tapered, so it was useful.

Parts are done, ready to glue.

 

[rshousha]

The speed with which you work is astounding. Do you ever sleep, eat? I wish I had your determination. Well done!

 

Best Regards, 

Rick 

 

[Jorge Diaz O]

fantastic.

[Gaetan Bordeleau]

Thank you Jorge and Rick

 

Quote

 

Trying to understanding lighting. We know that LED  is a good step to recreate outside lighting. Actually, I use T8  4 feet long. Specifications are 6500 K and 2850 lumen. I think  these spec are wrong. If I measure temperature I will reads around 4000K. As for a standard bulb where we knew how much bright the  bulb would be by the wattage; 15 watts, 60, 100.  For the T8, 32 watts does not help me much. the intensity of the Fluorescent T8 is written in lumen, 2850 for this one. Intensity is one thing but if you do not write at which distance the reading is done, it is dishonest because the distance plays a major factor in the formula of inverse square law in photography: The intensity of light is inversely proportional to the square of the  distance.

We can see an example  in the second photo. When you move away from the double of the distance, every time, the intensity decreases more than the double. In fact as we can see in the third photo, the light decreases extremely rapidly in the first feet as we can observe the yellow curve. This is for this exact reason that I can take a photo white a light source very close to the model ship boat and have a dark background behind the model. There is another variable which affects the intensity of the light: the number of LED bulbs. I did modify some  tripods fixtures to install these on the ceiling. I also bought new LED lights That I will receive soon  I hope. In the 4th photo, we can read that more LED means more intensity that we read in Lux or foot candle.The temperature in Kelvin stays the same. When  I use the Sekonic  C-500R to read the Kelvin outside on a sunny day I read 4300. Roughly, if we go lower, the image will be red and if we go higher than this middle point higher than 4300 K the image will be blue. I think that it is for this reason that that we can add a blue filter in glasses when we use the computer screen.  For this same reason, we begin to read that the blue Light of some kind of LED lights can be harmful for the eyes as in the  following example (in french).

 

https://ici.radio-canada.ca/nouvelle/1169994/del-lumiere-bleue-effets-nefastes

 

In the last photo, the set up that is in progression. In conclusion, there is a world apart when you can see which part you are working and this, you cannot understand if you use just a simple incandescent light of 60 watts; which is literally like working in the dark.

 

 

 

[Gaetan Bordeleau]

The tool I used the most this week is the lathe. To turn sheaves and to make adaptors for the light fixtures. Some last words on this not so popular subject, the lighting update is complete at about 75 %.

On a photo you can see the difference between fluorescent and LED tube 4 feet. The lumens are higher for the fluorescent and  the Kelvin are slightly higher  for the LED. Even if both are rated at 6500 none goes that high.

I did put in the garbage my dentist  and  medical exam lamps. Both had halogens and any are in the race anymore to see clearly.

I bought few years ago  for $5 a used Vemco Vemcolite VL-4 telescoping drafting lamp. I kept the stand and replaced the lights( fluorescent and bulb) by a LED light. I also added an handle saved from the dentist lamp.

A final word on lighting, at the same distance, a LED fixture is roughly twice as bright than LED tube 4', Kelvin are about the same; this is true for the lights Im measured.

 

[Gaetan Bordeleau]

For the next weeks, i have to make some curves. For this section, there are no real obligations to follow exactly the plans. This is why Boudriot says: It only has to please the eye.

[SJSoane]

Beautiful work, Gaetan!

 

Mark

[mtaylor]

Very eye pleasing, Gaetan.

[Gaetan Bordeleau]

Thank you Mark and Mark.

 

 

Recently I tried 2 new micromotors from Foredom.

The main differences are the rpm and the torque. The portable is light, turns at 30000 rpm and has little torque. It is easy to stop it if you push too hard. The small ones (Foredom and Geswein)are execllent for carving.

The second one turns up to 50000 rpm, very useful for metal and has much more torque. I also have a flex shaft from Foredom but I did not use it for many years. In comparison, flexshaft are harder to handle and you do not have as much control like you have with micromotors.

[Gaetan Bordeleau]

I did fix the last parts and  we had the first real nice temperature this week...

I did some maintenance on the milling to increase the spindle precision. One of the most interesting facts  is the difference between a press drill and a milling machine.

The spindle of a press drill has standard bearings.

The Bridgeport has  angular contact ball bearing with the main line at 40 degrees.

This is why the spindle can work in more directions than the press drill.

[Gaetan Bordeleau]

Taking photos is an easy way to exercise quality control.

As an example, in the first photos, we can clearly see that one part, in red,  is clearly not parallel to the other. Parts are not glued yet, it will be easy to rectify.

[Retired guy]

Quite the complicated curves you have going on there 😲 but they do look brilliantly done 👍

 

Regards

Richard 

[Gaetan Bordeleau]

Thank you Richard

 

Are these complicated curves, I do not know. I think that what is complicated is that you need to constantly refer to what is on the construction site. I also think that plans for this section are almost impossible to follow at exactly 100% because for every part that a slight variation it does affect many other parts.

 

For now, it is enough with this part, I think I will come back on decks.

[GrandpaPhil]

Very nice!

[Chuck]

Lovely work Gerard.  You are using cherry wood correct?   But your wood doesnt seem to darken as much over time.  What finish do you use on the wood?   It might have been mentioned once before but I couldnt find it.

 

Chuck

[Gaetan Bordeleau]

Thank you GranpaPhil

 

 

Sorry to disappoint you Chuck, but my name is not Gerard and yes I use 100% cherry wood.

 

I f you look the second before last photo;

 

half down is coated with tung oil and the top is not covered with anything yet. I tried many finishes and to my eye, for cherry 1 coat of tung oil is enough, 3 is too much. I bought many batches of cherry wood and never had 2 identical batch, always different color. for this batch, here is an example inside the model:with and without tung oil. In a way we could say that the "real color" comes tung oil. It is like aging the wood 100 years in 1 hour only.

[Gaetan Bordeleau]

The midlle third of the miling cutter was  grinded  with a wheel for carbide. This way,  the cutter  has a smaller diameter than the diameter of the cutters. Before the diameter on the top of the cutting part was larger. This meant that the cutter could not go deeper than the area which is sharpened as a cutter. This also means that I could not mill through the wood part completely. Now, the cutter can go through completely.

[rshousha]

Gaetan, 

 

Thanks for posting this. I was missing my fix of inspiration!

 

Best Regards, 

 

Rick 

 

[Jorge Diaz O]

Fantastic sir,oil tung is perfec

[SJSoane]

Gaetan, Beautiful, finely crafted, a work of art! You are an inspiration.

 

Mark

[mtaylor]

Beautiful work on the ship, Gaetan.   And thanks for all the milling and machining tips.   

[captain_hook]

Absolutely stunning!