Ship Model Rail Construction Experiments

[goodduck]

What is spacing between each rail post and height in 1/200?

[Gil]

Hi Allen,

The jig was scaled from a period photo of the Iowa. Dimensions were scaled from the height of a figure standing on the wing bridge. 5 foot 8 inches was used to calculate the figures height. The rail height came at a tad over 4 feet which was rounded to to an even 4 feet...,

1:200 Dimensions:

Distance Between Posts: 0.201 inches [5.1054 mm]
Height: 0.240 inches [6.096 mm]

+Gil

[Gil]

Hello All,

Carl sent the requested file for the BB-04 Iowa's wing bridge railing.

A railing jig design was created from it [shown below].

Jigs and fixtures are an accepted part of the art. It's difficult to do good work without good tools...,

Plan to build it this evening if time avails...,

+Gil

[B-Manic]

I like the scale you are using Gil. Most of the laser cut paper rails I have used had to have the top rail cut off otherwise they would scale out at 5' - 6' tall.

[Gil]

Hello All,

Carl, hopefully this looks familiar to you. If not I can understand. The top bridge rail is in-line with the rest.

Note the wide open space for the rail mesh...,

+Gil

[Don Boose]

The jig itself is a beautiful piece of work (as is so often the case).

Don

[Zathros]

Nice to see the "jig is up".

[Golden Bear]

Wow! That is a high end frame, Gil. As you could see from my setup I opted for something much lower on the scale of tooling.

For updates on my own attempts for this project:
- Tested using balsa strips:
- With effort I could get thinner strips than the card strips
- Could not do in a replicable manner
- Could not successfully do for pieces longer than about 3"
~ Closed down my testing for this option
- Tested using bass wood strips:
- Conclusions similar to balsa except that I could not actually get many thin strips because of curvature in the wood
~ Closed down testing.
- Tested using BW paper instead of card:
- Could not get thinner strips than I can with card at the price of much more frail parts.
~ May try one more option but probably not.

I ordered some solder paste from MicroMark so that I can attempt soldering with thin copper wire using a torch. It will be another week or two before I see how this works.


Carl

[Gil]

Originally Posted by Golden Bear

Wow! That is a high end frame, Gil. As you could see from my setup I opted for something much lower on the scale of tooling.

For updates on my own attempts for this project:

Originally Posted by Golden Bear

- Tested using balsa strips:
- With effort I could get thinner strips than the card strips
- Could not do in a replicable manner
- Could not successfully do for pieces longer than about 3"
~ Closed down my testing for this option
- Tested using bass wood strips:
- Conclusions similar to balsa except that I could not actually get many thin strips because of curvature in the wood
~ Closed down testing.
- Tested using BW paper instead of card:
- Could not get thinner strips than I can with card at the price of much more frail parts.
~ May try one more option but probably not.

I ordered some solder paste from MicroMark so that I can attempt soldering with thin copper wire using a torch. It will be another week or two before I see how this works.


Carl

One problem with the solder paste and copper wire solution is that the rail wires expand causing them to lose tension during the flame heating phase. The cross "posts" also have the same problem but aren't affected as much due to their much shorter length. This requires that the flame application be very carefully and evenly applied [not as easy as it sounds].

Tried stringing some flexible 19 Strand Stainless Steel Jewelry Wire. 5 Minute Epoxy was thinned with Ethanol [denatured grain alcohol] and painted onto the mesh and allowed to set [first below].

Note that the center cutout was reinserted into the frame. The amount of tension distorts the frame causing lacing problems. Revised design will have a second layer of 0.125 " MDF glued to it.

The cutout rail exhibited a twist though it is still useable. Below is a shot of the test samples to date [worst section of the jewelry wire trial is visible in the image].

The epoxy worked better than anticipated on the nylon sheath covering the jewelry wire. A nice feature of using flexible material is that it can take a lot of abuse whereas wire, wood and paper are somewhat limited in this aspect.

The epoxy creates a ball at the cross points which can be controlled by adjusting the amount of thinning agent used with the epoxy.

One other note. Some guy, working late messed up the nail pattern in fixture. He's on probation now - I told him, "One more screw up like that buddy and you're out of here"....,

+Gil

[Zathros]

I have a question. I used to make those little flags that drop down when an instrument fails in ain aircraft. The wire was bound to a post and then you would take a 5 or 10 foot section and pull until the wire "stretched" to a certain point, you can feel it, you know when to stop. The end result is a very stiff hard wire. I just wondered if you did this with the wire you used. At this state, when wrapped around the post, there should be little or no tension as the wire will "form" around the post. Just wondered.

For some reason I cannot enlarge the photos, but rail marked PVA looks the best, from what I can tell. Very interesting. This will probably end up being the standard way to make rails on a ship of this quality.

Is the rail marked "PVA", the silk thread doped with PVA?