Merry Christmas And A Happy New Year!

Here's to wishing you all the very best of the season and a Merry Christmas! May 2021 be a far sight better than the previous one.

11 Years

I know,I know. Not much in the way of model building has happened this year. That's because I became too burnt out from it and needed to get away from it for awhile. But not to worry my friends. I will eventually get back into it. In fact I will be working on Airfix's 1/24 scale Grumman Hellcat kit soon. I finally found some decent paints for it. Funny, one would think that navy gloss blue would be an easy colour to find at one's local hobby shop, but alas no. At least not around here. During my hiatus I've decided to get back into playing and writing music again. Something I gave up back in the early nineties because of my growing distaste for the music industry. But I digress. Hope to see you soon. PS: This new Blogger format is terrible beyond words. Hey Google!! If it works don't fix it!!!

Merry Christmas!

Merry Christmas everyone, and a Happy New Year!

!0 Years

It's been 10 years since I started this site and I hope to continue it. I've just been taking a long hiatus as I've become just too burnt out from model building and I need time away from it for awhile.
But not to worry I will return.
In the meantime I've decided to take up playing music again. I quit playing music back in the mid 90's because the music business was more about business than music. I got sick and tired of agents telling us to "Play more hits guys" instead of playing what we wanted to play. So I walked away from it. The music business has gotten a lot worse since then. Just look at what passes for music nowadays.
Anyway regardless I've decided to pick up my guitar again and give it a go for my own amusement and bemusement, and I have to say that man do I suck. But It's coming back to me slowly and I am getting better.

Merry Christmas!

Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year everyone!
May you get that special kit or hobby supplies you've been wishing for.

9 Years

It was on this day nine years ago that I decided to start this blog. It's hard to believe I've built so many models. It's been a lot of fun and I have you to thank for it.
You may have noticed that I haven't built anything for awhile. This is because I've been suffering from model builders burnout and I've been taking a break. In the mean time I've been focusing on my LP collection and my stereo system upgrades. I'm trying to put together the best system I can using vintage components. One can build a pretty good system on the cheap when going vintage.
But not to worry. I'll be back building models again in no time.

Lest We Forget

Earth and Sky

Here are some images of a globe set up of which I cobbled together using acrylic spheres which can be purchased at any decent craft store for cheap, and parts gleaned from my spares box.
The globe and sky images I downloaded and resized from a wonderful site called paperPino.
They have a good variety of globe downloads as well as other paper crafts.
A great site. I suggest you check it out.

Happy Easter Everyone!

The Disciples Peter and John Running to Sepulcher on the Morning of the Resurrection, circa 1898 by Eugene Burnand.

3,000,000 Hits!

Three Million hits and counting and I owe it all to you (plus my index finger pushing the refresh button a gazillion times but I digress). :-)
In the grand scheme of things three million hits may not be much, but for a little site like mine it is a grand thing. Thank you ever so much!

Hurdy-Gurdy

Here are some images of UGears Hurdy-Gurdy wooden laser etched model kit.
I've always wanted to try one of these if anything just to see what they were about.
A fun simple kit and it looks great on a wall.
I wouldn't try to stain the wood though. There are a lot of imperfections.
Musically speaking it sounds like an old chicken's death rattle but it actually works.

From Wikipedia"
The hurdy-gurdy is a stringed instrument that produces sound by a hand crank-turned, rosined wheel rubbing against the strings. The wheel functions much like a violin bow, and single notes played on the instrument sound similar to those of a violin. Melodies are played on a keyboard that presses tangents—small wedges, typically made of wood—against one or more of the strings to change their pitch. Like most other acoustic stringed instruments, it has a sound board and hollow cavity to make the vibration of the strings audible.
Most hurdy-gurdies have multiple drone strings, which give a constant pitch accompaniment to the melody, resulting in a sound similar to that of bagpipes. For this reason, the hurdy-gurdy is often used interchangeably or along with bagpipes, particularly in Occitan, Catalan, Cajun French and contemporary Asturian, Cantabric, Galician, and Hungarian folk music.
Many folk music festivals in Europe feature music groups with hurdy-gurdy players. The most famous has been held since 1976 at Saint-Chartier in the Indre département in Central France. In 2009, it relocated nearby to the Château d'Ars at La Châtre, where it continues to take place during the week nearest July 14 (Bastille Day).

Merry Christmas!!

Merry Christmas to one and all! May it be a good one.

!3th Century Medieval Wheel Clock

Here are some images of Lindberg Models 1/1 scale 13th Century Medieval Wheel Clock. Or was that 15th Century? I guess it would depend on what release you buy.
Now if I can only get the darn thing to work.

From Wikipedia"
The verge (or crown wheel) escapement is the earliest known type of mechanical escapement, the mechanism in a mechanical clock that controls its rate by allowing the gear train to advance at regular intervals or 'ticks'. Its origin is unknown. Verge escapements were used from the 14th century until the mid 19th century in clocks and pocketwatches. The name verge comes from the Latin virga, meaning stick or rod.
Its invention is important in the history of technology, because it made possible the development of all-mechanical clocks. This caused a shift from measuring time by continuous processes, such as the flow of liquid in water clocks, to repetitive, oscillatory processes, such as the swing of pendulums, which had the potential to be more accurate. Oscillating timekeepers are used in all modern timepieces.

The verge escapement dates from 13th-century Europe, where its invention led to the development of the first all-mechanical clocks. Starting in the 13th century, large tower clocks were built in European town squares, cathedrals, and monasteries. They kept time by using the verge escapement to drive the foliot, a primitive type of balance wheel, causing it to oscillate back and forth. The foliot was a horizontal bar with weights on the ends, and the rate of the clock could be adjusted by sliding the weights in or out on the bar.
The verge probably evolved from the alarum, which used the same mechanism to ring a bell and had appeared centuries earlier. There has been speculation that Villard de Honnecourt invented the verge escapement in 1237 with an illustration of a strange mechanism to turn an angel statue to follow the sun with its finger, but the consensus is that this was not an escapement.
It is believed that sometime in the late 13th century the verge escapement mechanism was applied to tower clocks, creating the first mechanical clock. In spite of the fact that these clocks were celebrated objects of civic pride which were written about at the time, it may never be known when the new escapement was first used. This is because it has proven difficult to distinguish from the meager written documentation which of these early tower clocks were mechanical, and which were water clocks; the same Latin word, horologe, was used for both. None of the original mechanisms have survived unaltered. Sources differ on which was the first clock 'known' to be mechanical, depending on which manuscript evidence they regard as conclusive. One candidate is the Dunstable Priory clock in Bedfordshire, England built in 1283, because accounts say it was installed above the rood screen, where it would be difficult to replenish the water needed for a water clock. Another is the clock built at the Palace of the Visconti, Milan, Italy, in 1335. However, there is agreement that mechanical clocks existed by the late 13th century.

The earliest description of an escapement, in Richard of Wallingford's 1327 manuscript Tractatus Horologii Astronomici on the clock he built at the Abbey of St. Albans, was not a verge, but a variation called a 'strob' escapement. It consisted of a pair of escape wheels on the same axle, with alternating radial teeth. The verge rod was suspended between them, with a short crosspiece that rotated first in one direction and then the other as the staggered teeth pushed past. Although no other example is known, it is possible that this design preceded the verge in clocks.
For the first two hundred years or so of the clock's existence, the verge was the only escapement used in mechanical clocks. In the sixteenth century alternative escapements started to appear, but the verge remained the most used escapement for 350 years until mid-17th century advances in mechanics, which also resulted in the invention of the pendulum.  Since clocks were valuable, after the invention of the pendulum many verge clocks were rebuilt to use this more accurate timekeeping technology, so very few of the early verge and foliot clocks have survived unaltered to the present day.
How accurate the first verge and foliot clocks were is debatable, with estimates of one to two hours error per day being mentioned, although modern experiments with clocks of this construction show accuracies of minutes per day were achievable. Early verge clocks were probably no more accurate than the previous water clocks, but they did not freeze in winter and were a more promising technology for innovation. By the mid-17th century, when the pendulum replaced the foliot, the best verge and foliot clocks had achieved an accuracy of 15 minutes per day.
 Most of the gross inaccuracy of the early verge and foliot clocks was not due to the escapement itself, but to the foliot oscillator. The first use of pendulums in clocks around 1656 suddenly increased the accuracy of the verge clock from hours a day to minutes a day. Most clocks were rebuilt with their foliots replaced by pendulums, to the extent that it is difficult to find original verge and foliot clocks intact today. A similar increase in accuracy in verge watches followed the introduction of the balance spring in 1658.

The verge escapement consists of a wheel shaped like a crown, with sawtooth-shaped teeth protruding axially toward the front, and with its axis oriented horizontally. In front of it is a vertical rod, the verge, with two metal plates, the pallets, that engage the teeth at opposite sides of the crown wheel. The pallets are not parallel, but are oriented with an angle in between them so only one catches the teeth at a time. The balance wheel (or the pendulum) is mounted at the end of the verge rod. As the clock's gears turn the crown wheel, one of its teeth pushes on a pallet, rotating the verge in one direction, and rotating the second pallet into the path of the teeth on the opposite side of the wheel, until the tooth pushes past the first pallet. Then a tooth on the wheel's opposite side contacts the second pallet, rotating the verge back the other direction, and the cycle repeats. The result is to change the rotary motion of the wheel to an oscillating motion of the verge. Each swing of the foliot or pendulum thus allows one tooth of the escape wheel to pass, advancing the wheel train of the clock by a fixed amount, moving the hands forward at a constant rate.
The crown wheel must have an odd number of teeth for the escapement to function. With an even number, two opposing teeth will contact the pallets at the same time, jamming the escapement. The usual angle between the pallets was 90° to 105°, resulting in a foliot or pendulum swing of around 80° to 100°. In order to reduce the pendulum's swing to make it more isochronous, the French used larger pallet angles, upwards of 115°. This reduced the pendulum swing to around 50° and reduced recoil (below), but required the verge to be located so near the crown wheel that the teeth fell on the pallets very near the axis, reducing initial leverage and increasing friction, thus requiring lighter pendulums.
As might be expected from its early invention, the verge is the most inaccurate of the widely used escapements. It suffers from these problems:

• Verge watches and clocks are sensitive to changes in the drive force; they slow down as the mainspring unwinds. This is called lack of isochronism. It was much worse in verge and foliot clocks due to the lack of a balance spring, but is a problem in all verge movements. In fact, the standard method of adjusting the rate of early verge watches was to alter the force of the mainspring. The cause of this problem is that the crown wheel teeth are always pushing on the pallets, driving the pendulum (or balance wheel) throughout its cycle; it is never allowed to swing freely. All verge watches and spring driven clocks required fusees to equalize the force of the mainspring to achieve even minimal accuracy.
• The escapement has "recoil", meaning that the momentum of the foliot or pendulum pushes the crown wheel backward momentarily, causing the clock's wheel train to move backward, during part of its cycle. This increases friction and wear, resulting in inaccuracy. One way to tell whether an antique watch has a verge escapement is to observe the second hand closely; if it moves backward a little during each cycle, the watch is a verge. This is not necessarily the case in clocks, as there are some other pendulum escapements which exhibit recoil.
• In pendulum clocks, the wide pendulum swing angles of 80°-100° required by the verge cause an additional lack of isochronism due to circular error.
• The wide pendulum swings also cause a lot of air friction, reducing the accuracy of the pendulum, and requiring a lot of power to keep it going, increasing wear. So verge pendulum clocks had lighter bobs, which reduced accuracy.
• Verge timepieces tend to accelerate as the crown wheel and the pallets wear down. This is particularly evident in verge watches from the mid-18th century onwards. It is not in the least unusual for these watches, when run today, to gain many hours per day, or to simply spin as if there were no balance present. The reason for this is that as new escapements were invented, it became the fashion to have a thin watch. To achieve this in a verge watch requires the crown wheel to be made very small, magnifying the effects of wear.

Verge escapements were used in virtually all clocks and watches for 400 years. Then the increase in accuracy due to the introduction of the pendulum and balance spring in the mid 17th century focused attention on error caused by the escapement. By the 1820s, the verge was superseded by better escapements, though many examples of mid 19th century verge watches exist, as they were much cheaper by this time.
In pocketwatches, besides its inaccuracy, the vertical orientation of the crown wheel and the need for a bulky fusee made the verge movement unfashionably thick. French watchmakers adopted the thinner cylinder escapement, invented in 1695. In England, high end watches went to the duplex escapement, developed in 1782, but inexpensive verge fusee watches continued to be produced until the mid 19th century, when the lever escapement took over. These later verge watches were colloquially called 'turnips' because of their bulky build.
The verge was only used briefly in pendulum clocks before it was replaced by the anchor escapement, invented around 1660 and widely used beginning in 1680. The problem with the verge was that it required the pendulum to swing in a wide arc of 80° to 100°. Christiaan Huygens in 1674 showed that a pendulum swinging in a wide arc is an inaccurate timekeeper, because its period of swing is sensitive to small changes in the drive force provided by the clock mechanism.
Although the verge is not known for accuracy, it is capable of it. The first successful marine chronometers, H4 and H5, made by John Harrison in 1759 and 1770, used verge escapements with diamond pallets., In trials they were accurate to within a fifth of a second per day.
Today the verge is seen only in antique or antique-replica timepieces. Many original bracket clocks have their Victorian-era anchor escapement conversions undone and the original style of verge escapement restored. Clockmakers call this a verge reconversion.

8 Years

8 years and counting since I started this blog and I have you to thank for its continuation. Here's to many more.

Hitler encounters rivet counters!

Gutenberg Press

Here are some images of Artesania Latina's 1/10 scale Gutenberg Press.

From Wikipedia"
Johannes Gutenberg's work on the printing press began in approximately 1436 when he partnered with Andreas Dritzehn—a man who had previously instructed in gem-cutting—and Andreas Heilmann, owner of a paper mill. However, it was not until a 1439 lawsuit against Gutenberg that an official record existed; witnesses' testimony discussed Gutenberg's types, an inventory of metals (including lead), and his type molds.
Having previously worked as a professional goldsmith, Gutenberg made skillful use of the knowledge of metals he had learned as a craftsman. He was the first to make type from an alloy of lead, tin, and antimony, which was critical for producing durable type that produced high-quality printed books and proved to be much better suited for printing than all other known materials. To create these lead types, Gutenberg used what is considered one of his most ingenious inventions, a special matrix enabling the quick and precise molding of new type blocks from a uniform template. His type case is estimated to have contained around 290 separate letter boxes, most of which were required for special characters, ligatures, punctuation marks, and so forth.
Gutenberg is also credited with the introduction of an oil-based ink which was more durable than the previously used water-based inks. As printing material he used both paper and vellum (high-quality parchment). In the Gutenberg Bible, Gutenberg made a trial of coloured printing for a few of the page headings, present only in some copies. A later work, the Mainz Psalter of 1453, presumably designed by Gutenberg but published under the imprint of his successors Johann Fust and Peter Schöffer, had elaborate red and blue printed initials.
The new era in print ushered in by the Internet is a distant mirror to Gutenberg's work which similarly revolutionized the printing process.

Merry Christmas!!

Merry Christmas and a happy new year to one and all!! The best of wishes for 2017!!

Seven Years.

It was seven years ago today that I started this blog, and we're still going.
Many thanks to my readers. I wouldn't have gotten this far without your readership.
Some of you may have noticed that I no longer publish in large amounts as I use d to.
This is because back in those days I was playing catchup, publishing models That I had already built before I started this blog.
Now That I'm all caught up, I only publish one to three models a month.
So no I'm not the speed demon some may have thought.
So on that note, a big hardy thankyoumuchly, and here's to many more years to come of The Great Canadian Model Builder's Web Page!!

2,000,000 Hits

At some time later today I will be crossing the 2,000,000 hits mark and I have you my viewers, the casual observers and the occasional wandering wayfarer to thank for it.
So I would like to send out a big hardy Thank You, a Whoop and a Hip Hip Huzzah!!! To all of you!
Here's to the next million hits!

Wright Flyer

Here are some images of Revell's 1/39 scale Wright Flyer.
One would think that the years this kit has been around, Revell would fixed the rigging instructions for this kit by now. If there ever was a subject that needs to be done in a high tech kit it's the Wright flyer.
To be more accurate extra rigging has to be placed between the front and back pillars respectively. Like what you would see on a Spad.

From Wikipedia"

The Wright Flyer (often retrospectively referred to as Flyer I or 1903 Flyer) was the first successful heavier-than-air powered aircraft. It was designed and built by the Wright brothers. They flew it four times on December 17, 1903, near Kill Devil Hills, about four miles south of Kitty Hawk, North Carolina, US. Today, the airplane is exhibited in the National Air and Space Museum in Washington D.C.
The U.S. Smithsonian Institution describes the aircraft as "the first powered, heavier-than-air machine to achieve controlled, sustained flight with a pilot aboard." The flight of Flyer I marks the beginning of the "pioneer era" of aviation.

The Flyer was based on the Wrights' experience testing gliders at Kitty Hawk between 1900 and 1902. Their last glider, the 1902 Glider, led directly to the design of the Flyer.
The Wrights built the aircraft in 1903 using giant spruce wood as their construction material. The wings were designed with a 1-in-20 camber. Since they could not find a suitable automobile engine for the task, they commissioned their employee Charlie Taylor to build a new design from scratch, effectively a crude gasoline engine.^[3] A sprocket chain drive, borrowing from bicycle technology, powered the twin propellers, which were also made by hand.
The Flyer was a canard biplane configuration. As with the gliders, the pilot flew lying on his stomach on the lower wing with his head toward the front of the craft in an effort to reduce drag. He steered by moving a cradle attached to his hips. The cradle pulled wires which warped the wings and turned the rudder simultaneously.
The Flyer's "runway" was a track of 2x4s stood on their narrow edge, which the brothers nicknamed the "Junction Railroad".
 The Flyer was conceived as a control-canard, as the Wrights were more concerned with control than stability. However it was found to be so highly unstable it was barely controllable. Following the first flight, ballast was added to the nose to move the center of gravity forward and reduce pitch instability. However the basics of pitch stability of the canard configuration were not understood by the Wright Brothers. F.E.C. Culick stated, "The backward state of the general theory and understanding of flight mechanics hindered them... Indeed, the most serious gap in their knowledge was probably the basic reason for their unwitting mistake in selecting their canard configuration".

Upon returning to Kitty Hawk in 1903, the Wrights completed assembly of the Flyer while practicing on the 1902 Glider from the previous season. On December 14, 1903, they felt ready for their first attempt at powered flight. With the help of men from the nearby government life-saving station, the Wrights moved the Flyer and its launching rail to the incline of a nearby sand dune, Big Kill Devil Hill, intending to make a gravity-assisted takeoff. The brothers tossed a coin to decide who would get the first chance at piloting, and Wilbur won. The airplane left the rail, but Wilbur pulled up too sharply, stalled, and came down in about three seconds with minor damage.
Repairs after the abortive first flight took three days. When they were ready again on December 17, the wind was averaging more than 20 mph, so the brothers laid the launching rail on level ground, pointed into the wind, near their camp. This time the wind, instead of an inclined launch, helped provide the necessary airspeed for takeoff. Because Wilbur already had the first chance, Orville took his turn at the controls. His first flight lasted 12 seconds for a total distance of 120 ft (36.5 m) – shorter than the wingspan of a Boeing 747, as noted by observers in the 2003 commemoration of the first flight.
Taking turns, the Wrights made four brief, low-altitude flights that day. The flight paths were all essentially straight; turns were not attempted. Each flight ended in a bumpy and unintended "landing". The last flight, by Wilbur, was 852 feet (260 m) in 59 seconds, much longer than each of the three previous flights of 120, 175 and 200 feet. The landing broke the front elevator supports, which the Wrights hoped to repair for a possible four-mile (6 km) flight to Kitty Hawk village. Soon after, a heavy gust picked up the Flyer and tumbled it end over end, damaging it beyond any hope of quick repair. It was never flown again.
 In 1904, the Wrights continued refining their designs and piloting techniques in order to obtain fully controlled flight. Major progress toward this goal was achieved with a new Flyer in 1904 and even more decisively in 1905 with a third Flyer, in which Wilbur made a 39-minute, 24-mile (39 km) nonstop circling flight on October 5. While the 1903 Flyer was clearly a historically important test vehicle, its hallowed status in the American imagination has obscured the role of its two successors in the continuing development that led to the Wrights' mastery of controlled powered flight in 1905.