Wires of antennas?

[Jefgte]

What did you use to made wires of antennas between the masts?


Thank's a lot.


Jef

[Francisco P. de Nanclares]

Fishing line. The finest you can find. Stands tension very well and don�t sag. Easy to paint.

Hope this helps.

Cheers

[Jefgte]

"Fishing line"

That's not a big surprise.

Muchas gracias Francisco



Jef

[David Griffith]

Take some black braided nylon cord. I use a dog's leash and the handles from carrier bags. Provided it is woven in a straightforward over and under fashion it is possible to tease this out into individual fibres that are nearly (but not quite) invisible to the human eye. This can be glued to the masts with ordinary stationer's gum (the amber coloured stuff that comes in bottles with the spreader cap). It is strong enough to take some tension. This is just as well, as if it is slack it will have a lot of kinks from the braiding process. If you need to tighten it up, then apply heat gently by holding a soldering iron or a cigarette closely, but not too closely, to it.

Different cords can give fibres of different thicknesses, which will give visual variety.

That is what I use for all my rigging. You can see some examples in the Gallery.

Regards,

David Griffith

[JIM BAUMANN]

almost entirely stretched sprue!

check the results in my gallery

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

as for the how--here is a cut and paste frpm my contribution to the 'HOW-TO' section here at MW.com

cheers
JIM B
Rigging and Masts

I use ONLY scratchbuilt masts made of Steel/brass wire. For tall masts in 1/350 I use syringe needles, as a tube structure will not bend under tension in the sameway as a rod structure. When you make cage arials (Panay and Dreadnought etc) out of Ladies stocking lycra thread the cumulative tension is large and will pull masts out of line; even the shrinking of sprue with smoke will pull wire masts out of shape, always attach shrouds well, in model form they actually have a function even in sprue!!!

For all of my rigging (see some other ships of mine posted in the Modelwarships.com gallery) I use stretched sprue; the trick is to use the RIGHT kind of sprue. I have always found great success with AIRFIX CLASSIC SHIPS (sailboats,old,large..) in particular an HMS VICTORY that I have been melting down the sprue runners on for years; when I run out I will start on the yard arms, by my retirement I may start melting the masts... The main feature of this plastic is that it is BLACK, it requires no painting, hence keeping it thin and light.

Here is my method:

Light end of sprue runner until it just catches flame, blow out and dab one end onto piece of paper/card on workbench and slowly but firmly pull until the desired line thickness is achieved.The trick is to pull initially real fast to get it thin, then as the plastic cools, slow down the speed of pulling

If you are going to need LOTS, set up two paint tinlets on bench, and follow the procedure above but when you run out of space simply bend it around the paint tinlet and continue on till plastic cools and your thread breaks. You will need to practice a little to get consistently thin sprue. Black sprue is THE cheapest modelling material we will ever use pro rata, so if you are not satisfied with result simply discard it and start again.

To rig, use a small pool of liquid cement on bench, dab the end of chosen rigging piece in cement and with tweezers attach to ship/yard let set for 5-10 seconds and draw the other end to your chosen attachment point. Dab on a minute amount of liquid cement and draw the sprue piece thru the cement and let set. With liquid cement on the end of a toothpick, melt the plastic of the spruee and voila you have a neat attachment with no furry ends or scissors etc

Having rigged some shrouds for example you may wish to tighten them. Hold model over a consistent smoke source such as inscence or cigarette (I gave up, hence joss sticks) and the hot smoke will tighteen the rigging like magic.My advice is take a very old/scrap model and practice as it is very easy to completely rig a model and then at the tightening stage get too close to heat source and completely UNRIG the model.... with resultant fury, frustration and vulgar language...!!

[Jefgte]

Thank you very much for all this informations.


Jef