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Cut some holes in the aluminium tower's floor to make it free flooding and added some powerful flat magnets 
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Added a couple more deck magnets, and started to hook up the jumper cables. After some serious thought, about usingelastic thread, and finally finding a close by source, I talked with the lady that has the boat covers and sail shop, who recommended not to use it in the sun or salt water. And also some power boat guys that had used rubber bands and hair ties to secure stuff, said the elastic brakes down quickly in the hostile environment. Since, my usual choice for display models is various types of guitar strings. I would venture to guess, not many of you guys are guitar players and aware of the wide variety of sizes, material,ect of what is available. In this case, I will try to show, how and why, I will use some different strings for various usage. The Revell insulator blocks have a cable between each insulator that are comparable to the wound G string .017 on one of my electric guitars. These strings have a steel core of about .010 and are wound with very thin nickel wire. They hardly flex and are quite stiff and the nickel does not rust.
wire pictured here is the same string from an acoustic guitar, that has a bronze wire warping. Either nickel or bronze will work, it's just I have an abundance of both. They will get paint protection. I glued 3 pieces about 20mm between the block and tower for a secure point, for the magnet that will connect the single cable to the bow.
using a stiff wire for the cable, that is secured to the bow will insure there won't be any trailing loose ends going back to fowl in the screws. The magnet separation point forward of the tower.
securing the wire to the platic blocks ia a simple matter of unwraveling some of the covering, snipping off the core, leaving the covering hanging. Then pull the strand thru the hole in the block for the thread and snug the butt end up to the bloclk with a dab of CA, and then wrap the tag end of the bronze or nickle cover around the wire glued to the end of the block.
Last edited by Von Hilde; 05-28-2015, 12:00 PM.Comment
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The guitar-string use is slick! Love that you can expose a 'core' of the string so you have a solid, strong insert-fit into the insulator parts. I'm sold on it. I'll buy some of this string tomorrow. Thanks for the steer, Dave!
MWho is John Galt?Comment
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Well, I broke a plastic block, at the plastic cable that separated them, foolin' around. I knew that that was the weakest link in the system, but I found these2mm resin, single purchase blocks.
Now I can start all over and have enough to make all my 1/72 U boats new rigging. Uniformly, and secure.And they look almost correct, unlike the beads I have used in the past. Perhaps a little more labor intensive to re rig, but, like they use to say, yesterday was the easy day, finding these.Last edited by Kazzer; 05-30-2015, 06:29 AM.Comment
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Maybe drill a hole through blocks and thread them on the wire like beads?
Then add the wraps/ropes to make them look like they are what's holding everything together?
Scott TComment
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Exactly what I was planning to do. The steel core isnt interupted except at the magnet connection at the yoke by the tower. No worries about braking anywhere inthe line. Since Im operating in the open ocean, sea weed is going to be my worst obsticle. It floats in and out of my canal, on the tides. Probbably the biggest fear is the fish that come in loking for their easy dinner. Some of the big barracdas that lurk around here, eat fish whole, twice the size of this little boat.Last edited by Von Hilde; 05-30-2015, 07:47 AM.Comment
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Dave, what size are the 2 taps for the Allen screws for the props, and the little ones for the gears? On the tpe IX fittings kit. Question number two, for Mike, reguarding plating plastic parts. Expensive process?Comment
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4-40 X 1/8" longWho is John Galt?Comment
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Difficult to do. The commercial process has about 20 different tanks, few of them pleasant to handle, and certainly impossible to deal with on a small scale.
The short cut some of our clients use is to spray the part with a silver loaded paint, then copper plate it. and finally Copy Chrome it, but it's fiddly and requires practice to master the learning curve.
An alternative is to Aluminum Vacuum vaporize it. But this is specialized equipment costing thousands. There are plenty of companies doing this, but I doubt they'd be interested in one-offs.Stop messing about - just get a Sub-driver!Comment
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Too bad, I thought there might have been some revolutionary process with plastic. What with everything from plastic silverware to motorcycle helmets, fabric, vinal, ect that has the chrome like finish these days. The electro plating process with the copper then nickle took such a beating from the EPA back in the late 70s because of all he hazmat issues, most of the shops I delt with in my chopper bisiness went under. Farmac in Miami lasted a short while, then by the 80s all my stuff had to go to Brown's up in Paduka, Ky. I thought perhaps the new plastic wasnt actually a metalic plating, involving having to deal with the Hazmat issue, besides the labor intensive process.Last edited by Von Hilde; 06-04-2015, 07:02 AM.Comment
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