Pomeranian Rahschlup 1846 by wefalck – 1/160 scale – single-masted Baltic trading vessel

[Keith Black]

Eberhard, Merry Christmas and Happy New Year to you and yours. 

[wefalck]

I hope everyone here had a good start into the New Year 2025!

 

***************************************************************

 

Continuing with the bulkheads

 

Progress over December was slow, due to a couple of travels and a visitor over Christmas, but quite steady. All parts of the backbone have now been cut out and sanded/filed to shape. Dimensional accuracy was checked by placing the parts over a drawing on a LED-backlit board. The cant-frames, however, can only be finished, when the bulkheads have been glued in place.

 

Collection of finished bulkheads

 

I was happy to see that the Plexiglas-sheet is dimensionally very accurate and fitting tightly into the milled slots in the base. This means no particular arrangements need to be made to ensure that they sit perfectly perpendicular on the base.

 

Milling a chamfer on the inside of the stanchions on micro-milling machine set-up as router

 

The bulkheads still required a bit of work. I thought it would be a nice detail to give the future bulwark stanchions a light chamfer over part of their length. This kind of edge-treatment was very common on many ship parts for both, aesthetic reason and to reduce the risk of splintering in case of an impact. It is not seen very often on models though. To this end I had made the router table last autumn. A 0.5 mm drill in a collet served as guiding pin and a small conical burr was used as router. The length of the chamfer was marked on the stanchions before milling it freehand. The result is difficult to photograph on the clear Plexiglas, but will become visible, once the model is being painted.

 

Filing notches for the wales on the shop-made filing-machine

 

Another operation was to cut shallow notches for the wale. The top-edge of the wale is marked in the original drawings and its width was taking from a table of scantlings of a similar ship. Having the wale fixed in that way will give a guidance for the later planking.

 

The shop-made filing-machine in action on the bulkheads

 

The notches were cut with a 1 mm x 1 mm fine machine file on the shop-made filing machine (https://www.maritima-et-mechanika.org/tools/diefiler/diefiler.html). I was lucky to have been able to find on ebay some years ago whole boxes of unused machine files in various shapes, dimensions and cuts. A life-time supply of a tool that is not made anymore.

Collection of finished bulkheads 

 

To be continued

Edited Wednesday at 10:30 PM by wefalck

[JacquesCousteau]

Very precise work, the plexiglass construction method is very visually striking as well. Having never worked with any sort of glass, I'm very curious to see how you fair the hull. I may have missed it elsewhere, but will you be planking it in wood or some other material? 

[wefalck]

There won't be any wood on this model. On the prototype only part of the wale, the deck, mast and spars would not have been covered in paint. At this scale, even the grain of box-wood would difficult to handle and Plexiglas keeps much crisper edges.

 

More details on the planking etc. at its time 😉

[druxey]

A very interesting approach to small-scale modeling.

 

Your machine file system is interesting. How do you keep the file teeth clog-free?

[wefalck]

The swarf from acrylic glass is quite crumbly and brittle, so it is easy to remove with a bristle brush.

[FriedClams]

Recently found your new project log and have read through it in its entirety.  Excellent research and an interesting read.  Question - did you choose acrylic glass over polystyrene because you had a readily available cache of it, or does it machine and hold edges better?  As you know styrene is a favorite of many model makers for its available thicknesses, workability and solvent welding.  Not questioning your decision of course - simply curious. 

 

Looking forward to following this project and watching you perform your tiny scale magic!

 

Gary

[wefalck]

Plexiglas (acrylic glass) is much harder and stiffer than polystyrene. It machines very well in comparison and keeps a keen edge. It can also be polished, unlike styrene, which comes handy when building skylights etc.

 

I am kind of partial to Plexiglas, as I sort of grew up with it. My father worked for the pharmaceutical subsidiary to the parent company Röhm GmbH, the original manufacturer of Plexiglas. So we had easy and cheap access to it. In fact most of my supplies were acquired before my father retired in 1986, so the material above is probably more than 40 years old.

 

A problem is that Plexiglas is not available in thicknesses of less than 0.8 mm. So, the 'structural' parts of the model will be made from Plexiglas, while the planking will be styrene - not ideal, because I would have preferred something stiffer. I could use bakelite-paper, which works very well for the purpose, but I want to engrave some of the planks (as one will see later on in the building-log) and that does not work very well with the brittle bakelite. Also, I would have to glue everything with CA, which I don't like too much. 

 

[amateur]

Somehow I missed this log. Shame on me.

Going to be fun to follow this one. 
 

Jan

[BANYAN]

16 hours ago, wefalck said:

but I want to engrave some of the planks (as one will see later on in the building-log)

Hi Eberhard, this may be excuse you need to get that 3D printer you have hinted at  

 

cheers

 

Pat