Bending rails into an arc, 1/400 2-bar rails

Certainly gets my attention, Dale.

I think thats a good project. I did one similar ship, a freighter, recently except I'm still working on it. I made a "camber" template the width of the ship and used it for everything. Front and rear bulkheads of the well decks, deck house structure, railings.

I don't think the railings came out too well, but it was a first effort. Just gently bent them one run at a time. I wouldn't know if on the real deal the horizontals are curved or straight. Maybe curved on liners and straight on tramps? May end up with canvas dodgers!

On my T2 (AOL) I kept those pagoda deck houses and glued cambered splinter rails to the faces!

I am really eager to follow your build. What did you do to the hull?

I think your rails look good. I might even consider just building them freehand. I don't know how to post pictures, but when I figure it out, I'll show you. I don't have picts yet of the house.

Here. Go down about half way down the page to post # 431 & you'll see a couple of pics of my hull.

http://modelshipworld.com/index.php/topic/7452-us-brig-niagara-by-laxet-model-shipways-completed/page-22

Here is a pic of the actual ship.

https://www.dropbox.com/s/8x3gipoc9k7ezvj/img053b.jpg?dl=0

On two bars, I have carefully nipped the bottom rail/bar with an Xacto knife one one side of each stanchion (for concave curvature).  A little daub of paint covered the miniscule gap.

That's a good idea. I'm doing convex, but I can trim the bottom rail again after it is nipped away from the one stanchion.

Thanks for that.

First off ;

 Where is Flower Mound , Texas ?

  Now I have done the cambered rails with no problem . What I do is take the rail and carefully bend each one slightly and gently to the curve .It's time consuming , But on 1/400 or near ( bigger or smaller)  it's really not that noticeable .

" G "

     The camber is realy not as emphasised as you would think .On a vessel such as your freighter it would be noticeable , but not crucial to have a recognizeable camber . On your ship the actual camber would be a shift of less than .020 from one side to the other .

     I like what you've done with the "Evelyn " . You do need some uprights to support those decks though . She's looking good T.B.

Flower Mound is just NW of D/FW. In fact, we are under one of the approach paths.

Here is a pic of my bridge house so far. It still needs a bunch of work.
https://www.dropbox.com/s/d1kpd2cchm7i5pp/IMG_3031.jpg?dl=0

I didn't camber the main deck. I probably should have, but I didn't decide to do this until after I had already laid the deck.

Well Now ;

 That's purty good looking pardner ! I do like the unit .Very nice .   T.B.

We are talking convex, right? I did a T-2 using GM's camber pattern but only on the midship house, where it is most noticable. The front sections are solid railing, so that's no problem. The two bar rails aft are in sections due to ladder openings, so you don't have much of a run to deform. Cutting a section out of the bottom two rails and carefully bending the top one should give you plenty of curve.

Fred

Yes, convex. And you are correct. This will only be for the midship house. I think the way you suggested is the way to go.

Dale

If I recall, the runs on the aft side of the midship house are so short it shouldn't be bent much at all.

Here is a link to a picture of my old ship (I'm still trying to figure out how to post pictures here). The aft rails are about half the breadth of the superstructure at their longest.

https://www.dropbox.com/s/8x3gipoc9k7ezvj/img053b.jpg?dl=0

WHEN the forum search function returns, it's easy to look up.

Are you using the Revell decks? I did and really wished I had not. I spent so much time carving off detail that It would have been much easier to scratch build it.

You would know this better than I, but most of the detail is humbug. The hold access covers are ok, but the vent line system they put so much detail into is way over sized. And the valve handwheels are all little round cylindrical tree stumps. The transfer piping running fore and aft from the manifolds to the pump rooms is almost non-existent. Your excellent photo (more please!) shows the true relative scale of all this stuff.

Well I used the kit decks as-is. For 1954 or whatever, they did pretty good. But from your picture, laxet, it looks like your deck piping is a lot different. But I'd still use the kit decks and grind off the detail. That would still be easier than fitting a complete new deck, IMO.

Fred

PS. Somewhere on here are the lengthy threads on GM's build and mine, if you can find them. 

PPS You said the Austin was jumboized? So you will have to add length to the hull? This will be interesting. Keep us in the loop please.

Here we go:

http://cs.finescale.com/fsm/modeling_subjects/f/7/t/109585.aspx?sort=DESC

http://cs.finescale.com/fsm/modeling_subjects/f/7/t/154754.aspx?sort=DESC

I replaced the deck. Here is a link to a picture of the hull.

https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/62936400/IMG_6999.jpg

I have read & even contributed to your first link above, but I hadn't seen the second one. Thanks for that.

Here is a link to Auke Vissar's T-2 site, where I have uploaded a bunch of deck photo's of us underway.

http://www.aukevisser.nl/t2tanker/id599.htm

http://www.aukevisser.nl/t2tanker/id822.htm

If anybody wants fullsized .jpg's of any of these, let me know. The originals, which are scans from negatives, are quite large.

I don't have a lot of experience with photo-etched parts, but one trick occurs to me that might help.

If you're using brass parts, heat them over a candle. That'll soften the brass, and make it easier to bend - and more amenable to the minute amount of stretching and compressing that it will have to undergo when you bend the rails to match the deck camber. Let the heated brass cool naturally; don't be tempted to quench it.

If you're using steel or nickel parts, all bets are off. But Tom's Modelworks and several other companies do use brass.

Whether anyone thinks they look ok or not, and Laxet sounds like you did- I just gently eased a curve into it one secction at a time while pressing flat on the desk top.

A problem I see with taking out sections of the lower bars- wouldn't that cause the uprights to follow an upward/ outward radius? Shorter distance between them at the bottom than at the top.

You are correct. I blew up the photo in the attached link (which has been greatly reduced in size, btw), & found there was no discernable difference in length between the upper & lower rails. So it looks like bending will give the most accurate results if I can do it without screwing it up.

https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/62936400/img070.jpg

Here's an effort to get your pictures posted.

1. Set up a cloud photo storage account that assigns each image a URL. A lot of folks use Photobucket. Hint: if you have a general one already, make a new one for the forum. Otherwise you'll get folks scrolling through your personal image library. I've seen some pretty amuzing stuff.

2. Download the images you want to post from your camera, phone or www onto your hard drive. They should be a .jpg. Pdf won't work.

3. Upload them into your photo storage account.

4. In Photobucket which I use there is a label under each, including it's direct URL. Copy that onto the clipboard on your computer.

5. In the reply window here, or the new post window, there's a button to insert images. It'll give you a window in which to paste the link to your picture.

6. Insert, reply.

There's a test forum here if you want to have a batting cage session. Or just give it a whack.

I opened an account there yesterday & tried what you said. Obviously I didn't do it right, because it didn't work. I'll keep trying.