USS Arizona - 1/350

[Jeff]

🍺

 

I am watching in awe......

[Bomber_County]

Rob, just catching up, your PE work is phenomenal, congrats. I must get back to my KGV, how are the PE instructions?

I still haven’t fixed my record deck but was playing my Marantz CD player when I heard a clunk. There is a phenolic lever that opens the tray, for some reason and if I remember Phenolic will deteriorate over time. So to open the tray I have to stop and pull the tray open with a strip of tape…..😟 I need to update my equipment……..a friend who is a complete audio nut played me Symphony of Sorrowful Songs by Goreski, listened to it a hundred times but wow did his kit blow me away…….genre wise folk, soul, jazz, rock ……. I’ll stop there it goes on……

[DocRob]

43 minutes ago, Bomber_County said:

Rob, just catching up, your PE work is phenomenal, congrats. I must get back to my KGV, how are the PE instructions?

I still haven’t fixed my record deck but was playing my Marantz CD player when I heard a clunk. There is a phenolic lever that opens the tray, for some reason and if I remember Phenolic will deteriorate over time. So to open the tray I have to stop and pull the tray open with a strip of tape…..😟 I need to update my equipment……..a friend who is a complete audio nut played me Symphony of Sorrowful Songs by Goreski, listened to it a hundred times but wow did his kit blow me away…….genre wise folk, soul, jazz, rock ……. I’ll stop there it goes on……

Hi Phil, the manual from Eduard is not bad. It mostly shows what plastic has to be removed (a lot) and the placement of the PE is shown mostly correct. There are some detailed plans for the complicated mast construction with a measured side view, that helped a lot. Where the manual lacks, is sequence, which is not overly logical and in case of subassemblies there is non given, you have to figure out the building sequence yourself. As you have to plan the building steps ahead properly, that's not so hard to come by.

It seems that your equipment needs a proper update, what will happen, when you run out of masking tape and can't open the lid.

My good old Rega Planet CD-player has decent sound quality and no resonance problems with a lid as it has none. You have to manually open the starship Enterprise shaped opening, and put in the CD, no levers no nada. It's like many Rega products a non nonsense product, but a bit unusual. I don't hear Cd's that often and therefore will stay for another while in my rack

 

You say something about good sounding music. It's so nice to hear all the bells and whistles. I don't own too many classic recordings and the Gorecki Sinfonie #3 is on my search list, sung by Beth Gibbons from Portishead.

Cheers Rob 

[DocRob]

The aft mast section took me three days to get there. First the basic construction, than the traverses and finally the railings, which were very complicated to form, following the shape of the masts decks. Without annealing, I couldn't have done it. Half a liter of CA later, the tower construction misses only some antennas, the searchlights and AA-guns and some other minor details, which I will add later.

The entire midship section starts to look busy now. There is not that much plastic left and there is more PE to come, along with the boats, davits,...

 

 

Cheers Rob

 

[Landlubber Mike]

Rob, that's looking spectacular.  It's not easy getting those masts and their platforms looking so perfect - what a wonderful job!

I haven't annealed before - do you just hold the part over a flame for a couple of seconds?  I might have to try it some day.  So far I've been fortunate that the PE I've used has been thin with pre-fold channels to make it fairly easy to bend with tweezers or a hold and fold.

[DocRob]

Thank you Mike. Annealing alters the crystalline structure inside a metal due to applying a defined amount of heat. I use a candle and hold the parts a bit over the tip of the flame, until it changes into a blue color, then I move the part, let the blue wander with the heat, until the part is finished. If you hold it with tweezers or clamps, you have to change position and anneal the clamped section as well. The clamp, tweezer or pliers take the heat and hinder the annealing process. Don't glow the parts, they might receive structural damage, when you do. Sounds complicated, but really isn't and helps a lot, when it comes to bend curves. The brass is less springy after annealing and softer as well.
For that reason, I anneal only curved parts, to not loose structural strength.

Cheers Rob

[Bomber_County]

5 hours ago, DocRob said:

Hi Phil, the manual from Eduard is not bad. It mostly shows what plastic has to be removed (a lot) and the placement of the PE is shown mostly correct. There are some detailed plans for the complicated mast construction with a measured side view, that helped a lot. Where the manual lacks, is sequence, which is not overly logical and in case of subassemblies there is non given, you have to figure out the building sequence yourself. As you have to plan the building steps ahead properly, that's not so hard to come by.

It seems that your equipment needs a proper update, what will happen, when you run out of masking tape and can't open the lid.

My good old Rega Planet CD-player has decent sound quality and no resonance problems with a lid as it has none. You have to manually open the starship Enterprise shaped opening, and put in the CD, no levers no nada. It's like many Rega products a non nonsense product, but a bit unusual. I don't hear Cd's that often and therefore will stay for another while in my rack

 

You say something about good sounding music. It's so nice to hear all the bells and whistles. I don't own too many classic recordings and the Gorecki Sinfonie #3 is on my search list, sung by Beth Gibbons from Portishead.

Cheers Rob 

See if you find the Dawn Upshaw recording, IMHO  the best version…….

[Peterpools]

Rob

Some mighty fine and delicate PE work - looking simply fantastic. 

One question on annealing: some say that the annealed part needs to be dipped in waters and others say the dip in water hardens the brass again. Since you didn't mention dipping the annealed PE in water, I'm assuming you don't use water at all.

 

[GazzaS]

Rob,

    Your brasswork looks excellent.  The ship is coming together so nicely.  I can almost feel a desire to build a ship model.

[DocRob]

11 hours ago, Peterpools said:

Some mighty fine and delicate PE work - looking simply fantastic. 

One question on annealing: some say that the annealed part needs to be dipped in waters and others say the dip in water hardens the brass again. Since you didn't mention dipping the annealed PE in water, I'm assuming you don't use water at all.

Thank you Peter, I got a bit of a brass flash lately .

With metals there are generally two processes for altering the crystalline structure to achieve the wanted material characteristics. 

There is hardening, where you heat up the metal to a defined degree and then cool it more or less rapidly down with air, water, oil, whatever. The cooling process strains the crystalline lattice structure immediately and the result is a very hard version of your base material, which are mostly carbon based steels.

Annealing is the process to release a defined amount of strain due to inducing a lower heat than with hardening. the crystalline grid relaxes a bit, so to say. Every metal has a different set of annealing colors, which develop with the heating and show the temperature to which the material was heated. you can study that on steel exhaust manifolds, where you often got a full rainbow of colors, each indicate a different temperature and if you know, which material was used, there are tables, which give you the exact amount of degrees Fahrenheit or Celsius.
Brass is not hardened, but has structural strains resulting from the production process and annealing orders the inner grid of the material and as a result softens it. You don't need to pour cold water on the part, it's only about reaching the appropriate temperature.

I hope my blah is understandable in English, it's not so easy to sum up complicated processes and figure for the right words.

Cheers Rob

[DocRob]

4 hours ago, GazzaS said:

Your brasswork looks excellent.  The ship is coming together so nicely.  I can almost feel a desire to build a ship model

Thanks Gary, you don't need to start though, the GK isn't finished, am I right?

Cheers Rob

[Peterpools]

4 hours ago, DocRob said:

Thank you Peter, I got a bit of a brass flash lately .

With metals there are generally two processes for altering the crystalline structure to achieve the wanted material characteristics. 

There is hardening, where you heat up the metal to a defined degree and then cool it more or less rapidly down with air, water, oil, whatever. The cooling process strains the crystalline lattice structure immediately and the result is a very hard version of your base material, which are mostly carbon based steels.

Annealing is the process to release a defined amount of strain due to inducing a lower heat than with hardening. the crystalline grid relaxes a bit, so to say. Every metal has a different set of annealing colors, which develop with the heating and show the temperature to which the material was heated. you can study that on steel exhaust manifolds, where you often got a full rainbow of colors, each indicate a different temperature and if you know, which material was used, there are tables, which give you the exact amount of degrees Fahrenheit or Celsius.
Brass is not hardened, but has structural strains resulting from the production process and annealing orders the inner grid of the material and as a result softens it. You don't need to pour cold water on the part, it's only about reaching the appropriate temperature.

I hope my blah is understandable in English, it's not so easy to sum up complicated processes and figure for the right words.

Cheers Rob

Rob

Greatly appreciate the explanations and my conclusions are: anneal with heat and NO water to cool as it will harden the brass rather then soften it. 

 

[Landlubber Mike]

One of my other hobbies is bonsai, where you use annealed copper wire to wire your trees.  From what I understand, the copper is looped in coils and heated to anneal the copper.  When you buy the coils, the copper is soft and easily workable.  Once you start uncoiling the wire and using it, it hardens quickly - a very good quality for wiring your trees because the wire locks into position.  That's why you have to be very careful of any bumps to the pre-used coils, as the wire hardens and the thicker diameters get very hard to use.  Not sure if this is what happens to brass that is annealed then worked.

Very different from using aluminum wire on your bonsai, which is easier to bend and manipulate, but doesn't harden on use thus having lower holding power at the same gauge.

Sorry for the digression Rob!

[Peterpools]

MIke. very interesting. Any chance of posting some photographs of your Bonsai Tress - eager to see them.

 

[DocRob]

5 hours ago, Peterpools said:

Greatly appreciate the explanations and my conclusions are: anneal with heat and NO water to cool as it will harden the brass rather then soften it. 

Well Peter, yes and no to your conclusions. The first part is correct, no water is needed for cooling down the parts.
Harden metals is a different case, to my knowledge it works only with metals including carbon like steel. Hardening needs higher temperatures, depending the metal.

When you want to fabricate a tool from steel, let's say a knife, you harden the blade first with high temperature and cool it instantly in oil or water. The blade will be ultra hard then (good), but brittle as glass (bad). Depending on the purpose for the blade, it will be annealed in the next step, to soften the blade to the right balance between hardness and flexibility.
I only mentioned hardening, because these two heat treatments belong together. Maybe I should have left the hardening out, because it doesn't apply to non ferrous metals like brass. Non ferrous metals can have inner strains as well and these can be lessened through annealing.

Cheers Rob

[DocRob]

4 hours ago, Landlubber Mike said:

Sorry for the digression Rob!

No problem with that Mike, we are here to learn, and I haven't heard of that kind of behavior before, you mentioned with copper wire. I worked a lot with copper tin when I was younger, but never experienced this effect.

Cheers Rob

[Landlubber Mike]

It's called "work hardening" or "strain hardening" apparently. Bending the copper causes defects or "dislocations" in the cubic crystal structure, making it harder.  Annealing it removes these defects or dislocations.  At least that is what I gathered from here:

https://www.materialseducation.org/educators/matedu-modules/docs/Work_Hardening_and_Annealing_of_Copper.pdf

Yay science!

[GazzaS]

13 hours ago, DocRob said:

Thanks Gary, you don't need to start though, the GK isn't finished, am I right?

Cheers Rob

You are correct. 

[CANicoll]

Wow, stunning brass work Rob and love seeing your work process and the explanation is interesting and educational.  One question - how do you know how hot to make the brass for your purposes?  What kind of flame do you use (ok TWO questions!).  I have not annealed any of the PE I've used (e.g. metal seat belts) so am interested to learn more.

Superior work here.  Fantastically interesting!

Chris

[DocRob]

On 2/24/2023 at 8:32 PM, Landlubber Mike said:

It's called "work hardening" or "strain hardening" apparently. Bending the copper causes defects or "dislocations" in the cubic crystal structure, making it harder.  Annealing it removes these defects or dislocations.  At least that is what I gathered from here:

https://www.materialseducation.org/educators/matedu-modules/docs/Work_Hardening_and_Annealing_of_Copper.pdf

Thank you Mike, I had a look into the document and I do know about the phenomenon. If there is deformation of metals, there is stress and the stress results in a bit of hardening, but I never have heard of such a change like you described from soft and flexible to hard and rigid. Live and learn .

Cheers Rob

[DocRob]

9 hours ago, CANicoll said:

Wow, stunning brass work Rob and love seeing your work process and the explanation is interesting and educational.  One question - how do you know how hot to make the brass for your purposes?  What kind of flame do you use (ok TWO questions!).  I have not annealed any of the PE I've used (e.g. metal seat belts) so am interested to learn more.

Superior work here.  Fantastically interesting!

Muchas gracias Chris, like I mentioned above. I use a candle and hold the part above the tip of the flame. What soot there is can by wiped off. All other soft flames, lighter,... work as well. Only blowtorches, etc. are way too hot.
The correct temperature can be seen, when the brass surface of the PE part turns into a blue hue. That happens very quick with small PE parts. Don't glow the parts, as they will become very fragile then. 

Cheers Rob

[CANicoll]

Ahh, 'don't glow the parts'.  I think way in the past I tried that, probably had them glowing, and boom - they broke when I tried to bend them...  Thanks Rob!!

[DocRob]

I continued with some more on deck subassemblies. The second catapult and the stern crane were easy to build up and I thought about having some relaxing fun with the boats and their cradles, but PE-madness stroke back. The plastic hulls needed a lot of cleanup but the extremely fragile racks where very difficult to glue into place unbent and more or less on level. They do look a bit rough and I hope to hide the crudeness behind primer and paint, as I have no intention to rework them.

 

Cheers Rob

[CANicoll]

Beautiful!!  I hope you display this with a magnifying glass nearby as the detail is amazing.  CN

[HubertB]

Beautiful 👍 !

Hubert