Hi there!
First of all, my apologies for having everyone wait for the sequel of this build, but life matters have to come first...
...It has been a while since I could continue my work on this build. But with
The MAYFLOWER finished I can focus again on this trial with lights and sculpturing...
As mentioned, I plan to incorporate some light into this build. The idea is to have some flickering light, imitating candle light. I bought this candle-LEDs and used four of them to create four lines of LED-strips, that flicker all in the same way, but result in four different random flickering sequences. For that the bright student I mentioned before (meanwhile making his Doctoral thesis) helped me with a schematic, that runs on 6V and is using a LM324N chip to distribute the circuitry of the four flickering candle-LEDs to the four LED-stripes. Each stripe should have 11 LEDs, but one line had only 10, as I figured out when it was already too late...
The following parts are needed for that circuitry (they all cost cents):
-4x LED with in-built random flickering circuit
-1x long LED stripe with 40-50 LEDs (now during christmas time everywhere available...
)
-1x LM324N chip or ic (and a socket for it, makes soldering life easier)
-8x 5 kilo-ohm potentiometers
-4x 2.2 kilo-ohm resistors
-4x 270 ohm resistors
-1x 100 nano-Farad capacitor
-1x 100 microFarad electrolytic capacitor
-1x ON-OFF switch
-2x 3V batteries and battery-holder
The schematics are presented here in
picture 1 and picture 2. My father is an electrical engineering technician and helped me with getting the schematics onto a circuit board
. So I took the soldering iron and did my best to put all together. Last time I soldered components like this was in the 7th grade, so the result was accordingly with cold solder, shortcuts and did not work at all (
pic. 3 & 4)...
....Back to the video conference with my father and consulting, what I did wrong. After some measurement sessions his advise was of course to use a "bread board" first and see if the circuitry works (
pic. 5)! So I bought some new components and tried again. With success! It works!
Now I needed to figure out how to place the LED-strips in the model so that two LEDs that flicker with the same frequency are not next to one another. So I developed a small colorful plan (
pic. 6 & 7).
The next step was to prepare the frames, cut holes into the bulkheads and the frame, where the LED strip will be going through (
pic. 8 & 9). The frame was painted black, the bulkheads as well as the roof of the gun decks covered with tin foil, or more precisely kitchen aluminum foil to mirror the weak flickering light off the roof and bulkhead walls (
pic. 10 to 13).
Then I somehow managed to pull the wires through (
pic. 14 to 16), had to "extend" the space between some of the LEDs in the middle part and put everything together. I used this time two 6mm aluminum-rods to strengthen the frame lengthwise.
I have to figure out how to post a video here, or a link to one, so you can see the "candle-light" result "in action"
I had to make that light installation work before I can continue on the build itself. So far the frame is not glued, yet still quite robust and tightly fitting together...
So much for now. I will wait with soldering the circuit board a bit until I figured out a good setting for the eight potentiometers, which control the amplitude and the amount of the flickering signal. Meanwhile I will focus on continuing on the decks, hull and planking...
Rgds,
RdK
...Febrero anno domini 1669...
"Señor Radék de la Sol de la Santa Cruz de Brazíl progressed with the build of the jewel of the Caribbean with the help of his young apprentice José Antonio de Gaztañeta so that by the end of February all the frame work was set in place. In order to make her the great Illumination of the Oceans!, much candles were needed.
"..So we order a lot of candles, señor Radék?" asked the young José Antonio.
"...Not just candles, my young shipwright. You see, here in the tropics the candles easily bent and cannot withstand the heat of the equatorial sun! The standard candles made from tallow, or the stinky fat of cows and other animals are not good enough for this ship. We will need the exotic product of bees wax with an additional secret ingredience, which will make the candles harder, brighter and producing a smokeless flame."
....As it so happened, the father of señor Radék was a very skilled chandler (pic. 17 - The workshop of the father), named Jorgé de la Santa Cruz, and used an old family recipe to make his candles. This recipy used the oil from the Brassica Rapa of the cruciferae family, commonly known as the rapeseed, yielding the much better colza oil (pic. 18). Unfortunately this secret ingredient remained secret for another 130 years, before it was re-discovered as a cheaper solution to the spermaceti wax extracted from whales in the 1800s....