Hello Jim,
yes, fitting these lines THROUGH holes is very difficult and time consuming... sometimes you do 5 in a row and then you need 15 minutes + drinks for the next one.... 10x magnification won't help, difficult to get everything in focus.... on the lookout for other types of magnification.... getting good light is most important. I build these ones with the match in the calipers and the reflection is hell, so I had to cover the metal parts. I know scale wise you can barely see the difference with a passing wire and I will be using paint to simulate the stays in the railing as such. However, if experiment 3 will fail I may cancel that. One more try before I give up.
However, a half-method with the wire against a nudge in the stanchion finished with a bit of paint may work as well.... hmm... perhaps I can add those in experiment etch 3.... the advantage is that it is easier to glue; now I have to cut the part going through the last stanchion and I made some mistakes there as well...Edit: I will include them in the test... may be just fine.
At the moment (you cannot see that in this shot) there is a larger 'circle' around each hole that is also present in the real railing, but it only partly compensates for the local weakening of the stanchion (all those classes in structural engineering explaining moment of resistance wasted). I think I'll have to make it a bit better... and this is already in steel; the brassy colour is because of my lousy phone... There is a degree of local over and under-etching, so it's always not quite right. You really need to check each one for being etched properly through. The current design is slightly over-scale... I know I should not fall for the usual trap: having the part magnified 100 times on your monitor and not worrying too much about small details.... this railing is already better than nearly everything I've seen on this scale. A bit more over-scale will be just fine. It's difficult for me to stop worrying about these things
I used 0.03 wire for the lower lines and wanted to use 0.05 for the top one to also get the right scale effect as the top line is heavier. But 0.05 is too much compared to 0.03... I've asked Uschi if he has 0.04 as well (not in his catalogue). I can try the 0.01 lines as well. Fortunately the railing stays actually work as railing stays! You can put quite a bit of strain on the lines; the stanchions and the stays (were applicable) are drilled in 2mm... (the shoe at the bottom of the stanchion are two foldable parts that act as a depth stop; note how they all point in the same direction as on the real ship). There are not many curves/knuckles in the pattern fortunately, but on such a knuckle without a stay the railing may bend a bit. Not too bad, that happens with the real railing too and this is why there typically is a stay; about 25-30% of all stanchions have stays, may more that on typical railing sets. Getting the proper 'pattern' correctly will be a great effect. That is, it I can get it to work.