Zuiderzee-Botter

[LE BOSCO]

Hello Welfack

this phase of construction of the glass case, interests me many , thanks for the share
cheers
Nicolas

(Timmy C and Christian . officially , that was of supports missions "has great fishing" in greenland )

[wefalck]

In small steps due to the sweltering heat here in Paris ...

The individual parts were cut such that the front and back pane abutt against the side panes. Since ordinary Plexiglas is much more prone to scratching than silicate-glass, the protective paper is being left on as long as possible. On the inside, however, it would be difficult to remove, once the case has been assembled. This was even more the case with the slightly oldish sheets I am using. Therefore, the paper was completely removed from the side that will face inward. On the outside a narrow strip along the edges was removed to prevent the glue sticking to it. The paper was only removed from the parts that were assembled at that moment.
Plexiglas can be cemented together with a variety of glues, including cyanoacrylates or those UV-hardening acrylates that recently entered the DIY market. Epoxy resins, however, should not be used, as their exothermic reaction can stress the Plexiglas, which eventually will lead to fine cracks. If you can produce a perfectly flat edge that is at a right angle to the sheet, you can use a low viscosity cement. In most DIY applications it is better to use a more gap filling higher-viscosity cement.
In order to achieve high quality bonds from both, the optical and mechanical point of view, the best option is to use the Plexiglas-manufacturer�s (Rh�m, now Evonik) own cements. I used Acrifix 192, that is easy to obtain. Acrifix is a light-hardening cement, essentially liquid Plexiglas (more on specialised cements for Plexiglas at http://www.acrifix.com). This means that the bond has almost the same optical and mechanical properties as the sheet itself. According to the manufacturer, Acrifix 192 has a shelf life of two years. The stuff I bought apparently in 1998 and kept in different fridges at various places around Europe since then worked without any problems. Only the open time was a tad short, but this seems to have been due to my two 100 W worklights. When I used only one and turned it away from the case, I could work longer on the bond.


Cementing the parts of the glass case together

The parts were arranged around the base plate. It would have been better to build the case before starting the scenic display, but my impatience to try out my �icing� skills got the better of me. Now have to work a bit more cautiously when cementing the parts together. The four parts are held together temporarily by a gadget that is normally used to fix picture frames and the likes during glueing. In addition I used cellotape to keep the parts together. In order to allow the application of cement, the fixations are loosened a bit at the respective corner. The cement is applied rather sparingly in order to avoid it squirting out and damaging the surfaces of the Plexiglas sheet. All four corners are cemented together one after the other.


Cementing the parts of the glass case together

It is possible to obtain a perfect bond without any bubbles � with a bit of practice. However, I wanted to be on the safe side, preventing the cement to squirt out and disfigure the panes, and used a minimum of cement, which may result in some bubbles. This is of no consequence as the corners will be covered later by L-profiles in brass anyway.

To be continued ...

wefalck

[dafi]

Cool project for these hot days!

XXXDAn

[wefalck]

Not so hot in Paris anymore - for the moment at least ...

So: The case received its lid. The fifth piece was cut to size using the technique described above and cemented on the others. This open box now has a remarkable stability.

The next step was to fit a wooden plinth around the glass case. It was cut from 5 mm x 20 mm ramin-wood laths using a mitre-saw. The fit of the mitres was perfected on a home-made disc-sander.


The parts of the plinth

After careful sanding on the future outside, the parts were glued together using PVA glue. The fixture for picture frames came handy here again. When the glue had set, the top of the resulting frame was sanded flat. Before that two holes were drilled through the wood and the Plexiglas. They were countersunk for two brass wood-screws with which the glass-case will be secured to the baseboard.


Waiting for the glue to set


The drilled and sanded plinth

Actually, this design is only possible with Plexiglas, as drilling through silicate-glass would be a bit tricky to say the least. In the past I used a design, where the glass tightly fits into a groove of about 6 mm depth formed by the baseboard and the frame and was not secured any further. In the image below I sketched the construction used here (left) and how I did it for silicate-glass (right).


Cross-section of vitrine construction

wefalck

[wefalck]

When this structural work was completed, the plinth was treated with a mahagony stain. After a light rubbing down with steel wool, it was ready to be varnished, again in mahagony colour. A treatment with wood filler and shellac in several rounds would have been better, but with age one gets a bit lazy.


The stained and varnished plinth.


Plinth and glass case joined.

I had to interrupt the work on the glass here until after my summer vacations: I realised that I bought 3 mm brass angles (for 2 mm glass), but actually used 3 mm glass, which requires 4 mm angles to cover the edge joints. I won�t have time to buy the angles before going away.

To be continued ...

wefalck

[JIM BAUMANN]

Excellent work-- have a nice holiday!!

Cheers

Jim Baumann

[wefalck]

Thanks, Jim, you too. We'll just miss each other, as I will be passing through CH at the end of August. Paddlesteamers sounds like Vierwaltdst�dter See or Z�richsee ...

wefalck

[JIM BAUMANN]

Indeed... I grew up with "Stadt Rappersil" and "Stadt Zurich" on Lake Zurich...

The lake Lucerne steamers are polder and quirkier -as in my model of "URI"

http://www.modelshipgallery.com/gallery ... index.html

But the most beautiful paddlesteamers are the clipper bowed variety found on lake Geneva

true "Belle Epoque " paddle steamers....



image courtesy of www.simplonpc.co.uk ( simplon merchant shipping Postcards web-site )

[wefalck]

Forgot that they also have paddlesteamers on the Luzerner and Genfer See. I once (during my time at the ETH) travelled on the STADT Z�RICH, I think shortly after she was re-furbished around 1980. It is quite fascinating to see the huge horizontal engine doing quietly its work. The excentric and very delicate gear that drives the paddles on the paddlewheel always intrigued me - one day I should make a model of such steamer.

I am digressing from my thread, but this is what a German colleague (in his 80s) made of such a thing in 1/100:



The whole model of the Bavarian paddlessteamer can be seen here: http://www.arbeitskreis-historischer-sc ... lsbach.htm

wefalck

[wefalck]

Back to the subject of the thread:

As it hasn�t been quite so hot lately here in Paris and the sweat didn�t trickly onto the desk, I tackled a job that filled me with some apprehensions: painting the registration number onto the botter�s main-sail. This is something that can easily spoil a whole model.

Finding an easy way to produce white lettering or other markings on a model would deserve a modellers� Nobel Prize. Any procedure I could think of requires several, sometimes elaborate, steps. There are virtually no printers that can print white. In the past there was one or the other thermotransfer printer, but they seem to have disappeared from the market. Owing to the fact that you really need heavy pigments to arrive at good coverage, ink-jet printers are not really a feasible technical route. Recently OKI came onto the market with a laser printer that uses white, yellow, cyan and magenta toners: http://www.okidata.com/procolor/711wt. I don�t know anyone who has one already and for that price, I would rather buy some other machinery. Printing on white decal sheet is also not really a practical option, as you will never match the background colour, at least not with the murky terracotta I used for the sails. Then I thought about stencelling. This would mean to etch a stencil first � too much work for just two markings. Technically speaking, a good option would be tampon printing. This is routinely used e.g. to apply the lettering on model railway rolling stock. Again, you need to etch a clich� first. For one offs, you could use a drill press as transfer press. You would also need to find some chunk of silicone rubber to make the tampon. All these options are too involved, though I will be watching this laser printing thing. Some day they may come out with a consumer version of it.


Main sail with registration number painted in.

So, in the end I resorted to hand-painting. I took out my old lettering stencils that hadn�t been used for decades and marked the lettering on the sail. I then used a short-haired 5/0 brush and white airbrushing acrylic paint. I had also experimented with a pen, but the brush allowed more control on the somewhat uneven surface of the sail. I painted the main strokes of the letters/numbers and then added the serifs. They will have rounded corners, but the lettering was touched up with the base colour of the sail to get sharp outside corners. Finally the sheen was equalized with a light touch of matt acrylic varnish.

wefalck

[wefalck]

I still found time to begin with the rigging. Work will progress only slowly since the parts are rather delicate and the work is rather nerve-wrecking.
At the prototype one would install, of course, the fore-stay first. The fore-sail would be attached with its iron hoops. In my case, however, the hoops have already been sewn onto the sail, a work that would be largely impossible to do in situ. Therefore, the fore-stay has to be installed with the fore-sail attached to it. Form a modelling point of view sailships of the late 19th / early 20th century are quite difficult to rig. In previous periods ropes were often either spliced directly into eye-bolts or sewn on, which both are quite easy to reproduce in a model even at small scales. In later times, to the contrary, shackles and hooks became ubiquitous. It made the rigging and repair easier, but making shackles or hooks of 0.5 mm or 1 mm is quite impossible (the smallest shakles I managed to make are about 2.5 mm long). Just the fore-stay of the botter is hooked into an eye-bolt of the mast. Wire with a scale diameter would bent open under the load. So I had to take a shortcut and to sew it on.


Reeving of the fore-stay deadeye with the help of tripod

There were various methods of rigging the fore-stay of a botter in use up to the end of the 19th century. I chose the somewhat old-fashioned method with a dead-eye. The lanyard was made from a rope made on my own rope-walk: three strands of Veevus fly-tying thread 16/0 in golden brown. The colour was chosen because the lanyard would have been tarred. I wanted to put a real wall-knot onto the end, but the fly-tying thread works almost like wire and is well nigh impossible to splice.


The fore-stay deadeye

The first picture shows my rigging aid: a small tripod that came from deceased father�s estate and was used to suspend a pharmacist�s balance (not sure sure what he �above� would say to this re-use ...). A wire loop suspends the dead-eye so that it keeps clear.

To be continued after my vacation ...

wefalck

[wefalck]

With the European vacation season safely behind us, now some small progress:

I didn�t like the sewn-on fore-stay in the end. So I went back to it and fabricated a minute hook from copper wire. Once the hook is tinned and soldered together it is actually quite resistant against the pulling forces on it during the rigging operation.


The now correctly attached fore-stay

Lucky me that I am not dafi working on his VICTORY and that I don�t need hundreds of them ...

wefalck

[wefalck]

Not much progress on the model since I came back from vacation. Once reason is also that in the meantime a little item ordered in China had arrived:

Ever since I came across the LED ring-lights for cameras and microscopes, I thought something like this would also make a good illumination for the milling machine. However, all these lights were to big and too expensive for the purpose. With my limited electrotechnical and electronics knowledge I did not dare to put something together myself. Then I became aware of the so-called 'angle eye' cosmetic tuning parts for cars. Apparently, these are fitted around the bulbs in car headlights to give the headlight a aetherical appearance. They are produced, guess where, in China and sold via ebay at a price at which I cannot get the components, not considering the hazzle of soldering everything together. I ordered a couple (for obvious reasons they are always sold in pairs) and fabricated a lamp around these rings made from epoxy base-material.


The components of the lamp

As I wanted to protect the LEDs from oil splashes I chose a Plexiglas-offcut of suitable size and bored an annular groove into it. The groove has a shoulder on which the epoxy ring rests so that the LEDs do not touch the front cover of the lamp.


Turning the lamp body

The outside of the lamp was milled to shape by holding the body in a three-jaw chuck mounted on my http://www.maritima-et-mechanika.org/to ... let-holder.


Shape-milling the lamp body

The backside is covered by a washer-like lid turned from a piece of bakelite sheet. Into the 'handle' of the lamp a neodynium magnet was embedded that holds the lamp to the spindle of the milling machine.


Turning the lid

The lamp was painted using a stainless steel acrylic paint.


The finished i-Mac-style lamp

As LEDs require a current-stabilised power-source, I ordered, again from China, a small electronic transformer or 'driver' for LEDs.


The lamp in action

More: http://www.maritima-et-mechanika.org/to ... Ring-light

Now work on the model recommences ...

wefalck

[JIM BAUMANN]

Excellent results on the sail

great 'old school technique'....!!!
Superb determination and tenacity in getting the forestay 'just right! '

Fascinating embracing of LED technology for your fine machine tools...



Marvellous and inspirational!


Jim Baumann

( send me a PM with your e-mail addy and I will send you some paddlesteamer and steam train images from Switzerland )

[wefalck]

Thanks, Jim, for your encouraging remarks !

-------

Now the rigging begins in earnest. As different sizes of rope are needed for the various parts of the rigging, they are made on my [url]http://www.maritima-et-mechanika.org/maritime/tips/Ropewalk/Ropewalk.html]ropewalk[/url] as the rigging progresses.

A special difficulty arose from the fact that fore-stay and fore-sail have to be set up simultaneously: the eye-splices of the stay do not fit throug the hanks of the fore-sail. Hence the stay has to be first reeved through them and then hooked into the hook of the dead-eye. This operation cannot be performed on the worktable, but has to be carried on the model.


Rigging of the fore-stay

In a first step the various blocks, namely the sheep�s head-block for the fore-sail halliard had to be hooked into the bolt-rope and a single sheet-block with second eye had to spliced to the clew of the fore-sail.


Fore-sail with hallieard and sheet read to be set

The halliard is an interesting item, as it also serves as a down-haul, i.e. it sort of endless its �free� end is spliced around aone of the hooks of the sheep�s head-block. In real life the halliard is a pointed rope, meaning it becomes thinner at the �free� end. However, this cannot be reproduced seriously at the 1/90 scale.


Head of the fore-sail with halliard and down-haul

The sheet is also lead in an interesting way. It is lead like a gun-tackle, but the second single block inboard is missing. Instead, the sheet is lead around the groove of a half-cleat on which it is also belayed.


Clew of the fore-sail with block attached (actually, the block should have been spliced into the bolt-rope, but I overlooked this when making the sails)

BEYLEN (1985) describes alternatives for the arrangement of the fore-sail sheet, some of them lead like a gun-tackle, but with one or even both single blocks missing. He does not explain the rational for the absence of the blocks. The increased friction would be of advantage when holding the sheet in strong wind, but would make it more difficult to haul it in.

wefalck

[wefalck]

A colleague on a German forum pointed out to me that botters usually had an iron rod as forestay. I was aware of this arrangement, but somehow I assumed that these rods with forged-on eyes were introduced later, together with a set-up by lacing or a bottle-screw. I assumed that the somewhat antiquated arrangement with a deadeye would be used together with a wire-rope stay. With this idea in mind I misinterpreted the drawings in BEYLEN (1985) und DORLEIJN (2001). I re-reviewed the historical photographs I have and as far as can be seen the forestay indeed is an iron rod.

I corrected this now and re-rigged the fore-sail with a 0.15 mm diameter wire with soldered eyes as stay.


Fore-stay made from a �rod�.

wefalck

[wefalck]

The rigging of the foresail was a rather painful process. My paper-sail turned out to be not quite fit for the purpose. They would be good to represent sails billowing in the wind. However, for representing sails that are hanging limp from the rigging in order to dry this technique is not quite suitable. In the past I made similar sails from �silk-span�, i.e. the silk cloth that is used to cover model airplane wings. These sails could be draped quite well, but the material would have been still too thick for sails in the 1:90 scale.


The foresail set for drying


Details of the foresail rigg

So I toiled, sweating blood, but am still not really satisfied with the result. The foresail simply looks too stiff. I also had too cheat a bit in the area where the sail is pushed together above the dead-eye. Due to the rather forcefull procedure of folding the sails some of the hoops on the which the foresail runs on the stay were ripped off. There are many area where some touching up is necessary.


Forestay set-up with dead-eye


Halliard/down-haul belayed on mast-cleat

On the botters everywhere half-cleats were used. This makes belaying a bit tricky on a model and somehow doesn�t look quite right, though I followed the sketches in BEYLEN (1985)


Fore-sail sheet


Forestay set-up with dead-eye

A shortcoming often seen on shipmodels is that the running rigging seems to be sticking out of the block, i.e. it doesn�t run properly around the sheaves. The reason, of course, is that usually only a cross-hole is drilled, without attempting to shape the sheave. The rather elaborate procedure of block-making described earlier was intended to remedy this. Looking at the pictures, however, it seems that I only have been partially successful.


Fore-sail sheet


Masthead with the head of the foresail rigged with a sheep�s head-block

And finally here a selection from my arsenal of rigging tools:


Rigging tools (from left to right): straight watchmaker�s tweezers, bent tweezers, stamps-tweezers for draping sails and straightening wires, two antique micro-crochet hooks to pull on rigging, pin-vice with forked needel for pushing rigging, pin-vice, sewing needle for making fake splices, micro-scissors, microscopy-scalpel.

Next the main-sail will go on. Another problem case ...

wefalck

[wefalck]

Before I am off to the Polar Circle for a few days here a small update.

The mainsail was sewn onto to the port side of the gaff. Correct, sewn ! On those Dutch craft the lace-line runs through a grommet of the head of the sail, then straight through a hole drilled into the gaff with a pear-shaped cross-section, runs along the starbord-side, returns throught the next hole and grommet, continues along the port side of the sail to the grommet, etc.


Port side of the mainsail

Into the grommets of the fore-leech of the sail the various lacings were spliced. With these the sail eventually will be tied to the mast. Often chafing of the lacing was reduced by a number of parrels. However, I neither could find small enough beads (0.6 mm diameter with a hole drilled through), nor did I manage to produce them myself. The parrels are optional anyway.


Starbord side of the mainsail

I also started to put in the reef points. These reef through a grommet and are secured by a knot on both sides.

As one can see, the paintwork e.g. on the gaff needs a bit of touching up after all the handling ...

wefalck

[wefalck]

It is high time to report on some progress. The work progressed slowly, interrupted by various business travels and also a short hospital-stay.


Head of the main sail from starboard

The main sail was fitted out with the halliard and the throat-halliard and then attached. The imagined szenario is that the sails are set for drying. The shore of Volendam is exposed to the East, so that the sails are slightly filled by a light easterly breeze. The cold easterly breeze, that comes across from Germany and the Baltic was a winterstorm a couple of days ago and forced the botter to seek shelter in Volendam. The easterly wind brought with it the frost that is responsible for the Marker botter to be locked in the ice. The main boom has been topped a bit to provide better clearance in the workspace underneath.


Head of the main sail from port

In the meantime various ropes of different size were made from fly-tying thread. Then I also noticed that I forgot to make that special block with a half-cleat that forms the lower part of the main sheet tackle. This block was carved in the classical way from a strip of Pertinax and fitted out with an �iron� band etc.


Running rigging at the mast


Running rigging at the mast

The running rigging was attached by fake eye-splices. On the prototype, all blocks are attached to eye-bolts by hooks, which are secured by musings. The pictures do not show this detail yet. Owing to this way of rigging, all tackles could be prepared in advance and just hooked into their respective eye-bolts. The throat-halliard is made up from a short length of chain with an S-hook at its end. The S-hook is attached to the eye in the bolt-rope. The throat-halliard is hauled taught with a tackle that hooks into an eye-bolt in the mast. The S-hook was made from a short length of wire that was flattenend and provided with a hole in the middle for a chain-link.


Stern with boom-sheet


Stern with boom-sheet

The halliards etc. were belayed prototype-fashion on half-cleats, which is rather difficult to do at this small scale in comparison to the same process on normal cleats. The rest was coiled up and stored at suitable places. I am not sure how this was done really on the prototype, as the half-cleat do not allow to suspend the coils in the usual way. The rope made from fly-tying yarn is relatively stiff. However, with a drop of flat varnish it can be persuaded to form more or less orderly coils. Hanging coils have to be loaded while the varnish dries in order to attain a natural shape.


Shaping of the coils while the varnish dries

In order to facilitate the work on the rigging the model was fixed on a small cast-iron stand. This stand can be turned and pushed around on the work-table at one�s convenience, yet is stable and safe.


Model on the work-stand

To be continued ...

wefalck

[JIM BAUMANN]

Excellent progress-- looks pretty fine-scale to me!!

Ref the rope coils...

On 1/1 scale sailboats ( classic and modern engine-less keel-boats )I have always suspended a rope coil on an (under-sized!) cleat by taking two turns of the rope around the coil and then passing a single loop through the coil and hanging the coil up on to the projecting horn -on the single loop line.

-that way of you need to drop sail or a spar... ==> you simply lift the suspending loop off--and the coil drops neatly into a col on the floor--and the rope is ready to run cleanly

In ( larger than my usual scale !!) model form I often pre-make the coils and fix their shape using thinned white glue

I then hang or place them in the desired position(s)... over the tail of the relevant halyard or similar

here is one of mine from 20 years ago