Thanks for the comments Bill!
The stanchion heels are indeed from the AOTS Hood; they are not exactly correct as drawn. The AOTS shows them with a 'fold' if you will, but the actual one is symmetrical. That would be too hard to do with 3 etched parts so I went with the fold approach (one part folded, the other one goes through the plate into the hull). I think I took the scuppers from the AOTS as well? They are clearly marked on the drawings so I thought it would be a nice idea. They should have been recessed but soit.
Stanchions: there are going to be individually etched in 0.15mm stainless steel with actual rigging. I already had to designs etched; one failed, the other semi failed. The first one failed as I had no experience in both 0.15mm and steel. The thickness difference is not entirely trivial, as I noticed for 0.10 you can go a bit further than advertised and still get good results, but for 0.15 that was not really the case. I tested three designs, most of them etched away too much material. The second one was going more towards the advertised tolerances, but again not entirely... this worked much better but the holes in the stanchions were about 50% etched through. With my new 0.1mm drill set I can easily correct that. I think
But I thought it was going to work so I already drilled in the position of all them in the quarterdeck. This was actually very tricky as these small drills break easily... a drill press would be nice but I do not have the tools to position the press accurately so by hand it is. The stanchion design will have a heel too (in the right sailing direction... post imminent to explain), that are two small foldable flaps; these also limit how deep the stanchion can go into the model, so two-birds-one-stone. Now, about a third of the stanchions have a cross bar and that actually makes the etched part fairly sturdy. Most etched sets have far fewer cross bars so that helps.
Individual stanchions may be a pain in terms of workload and pulling the rigging through the holes but also "solve" a few items
1) No bending or cutting to shape
2) No "short runs to avoid thermal expansion problems".
3) Easier to place around bollards and such were the lowest line should no continue.
4) Oh so very thin wires; flexible..
5) The railing is now not curved but goes from stanchion-to-stanchion as it should and no trouble with the "spurnwater" line at the bottom of the railing.
Have to do a few more practice runs to see if more changes are needed. I am worried for damage, but that is the case for ordinary etched railing as well. This one might be easier to repair but we'll see.
Railing in 0.15 is actually quite good for 1/350 as these stanchions are quite "crude" on the actual ship. For 1/200 you probably end up with 0.25mm which is still very thin for machining... you'd have to lathe all of them and drill them in? No way that works without CNC and I guess it won't be cheap for a custom job (I cannot drill 0.3mm holes in brass with my hobby tools, you need very high rpms so I cannot even do that at home if I wanted to). I think etching might be a better idea? This is not my problem, fortunately
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And Semtex, dark deck grey... all tins basically...
