"Making Pre-Dreadnought Masts" Topic

I have been busy making masts for my British pre-dreadnaughts. I have been using piano wire and while that works pretty well it is also fairly dangerous to inattentive or clumsy gamers.

I am wondering if anyone has experimented with white styrene rhymes like the ones that havergreen makes for model Railroad Types.

One other suggestion I got was brass rod but I have never worked with that so wondering if it is easier to work in then piano wire.

Thanks for any suggestions.

I have been busy making masts for my British pre-dreadnaughts. I have been using piano wire and while that works pretty well it is also fairly dangerous to inattentive or clumsy gamers.

I am wondering if anyone has experimented with white styrene rhymes like the ones that havergreen makes for model Railroad Types.

One other suggestion I got was brass rod but I have never worked with that so wondering if it is easier to work in then piano wire.

Thanks for any suggestions.

I have been busy making masts for my British pre-dreadnaughts. I have been using piano wire and while that works pretty well it is also fairly dangerous to inattentive or clumsy gamers.

I am wondering if anyone has experimented with white styrene rhymes like the ones that havergreen makes for model Railroad Types.

One other suggestion I got was brass rod but I have never worked with that so wondering if it is easier to work in then piano wire.

Thanks for any suggestions.

Toothpicks or broom bristles?

In the States, Tichy train group sells tubes of straight brass wire. The 0.15" and 0.12" generally work well for mast hollows on WTJ prints in 1/2400, which are mostly what I use (I am planning on using 0.20" for some 1/1200 models).

Much easier to cut than piano wire, and you can solder the yards to them with a little care.

9 Pound
Do you need to cut them with a fine saw?
Or do you just clip them?
I'm trying to avoid the burrs from clipping if possible.

Cutting styrene with an X-Acto knife would do it, so I'm considering styrene.

9 Pound
Do you need to cut them with a fine saw?
Or do you just clip them?
I'm trying to avoid the burrs from clipping if possible.

Cutting styrene with an X-Acto knife would do it, so I'm considering styrene.

Chicken wire mesh.
link
You should be able to find a smaller, cheaper amount or even snip a small square from a neighbor…

I stopped using piano wire after notching a second pair of wire cutters. I'm slow to learn…

Honestly, for small scale ships, the piano wire is unnecessarily hard – in both senses. It's a hard wire that is functionally impossible to bend in short lengths, but it's also very hard to cut, extremely hard to file, a danger to the eyes (when cutting a tiny section of wire that shoots out of the wire cutters at high speed), and it occasionally draws blood.

For 1/2400 ships' masts and spars, I switched to floral wire. It comes in straight lengths of various small gauges (I have 18, 20, 22, 26 and 28 in my craft desk). It's soft and malleable enough that it does get bends or wibbles during storage and careless handling, but it's easy enough to just cut around the bends and use only the straight sections. When cut in lengths short enough for my 1/2400 ships, it's much stiffer. It's easy to cut and easy to file – I mostly use fine sandpaper or sanding sticks to grind off the points.

I love working with brass wire, but these days I only use it for spears and pikes (it's easy to smash the tip into a leaf blade shape). I can only find it in spools, and I got tired of straightening it. I'll take a look at Tichy.

I have also used the Evergreen wire-center plastic rod, when I need larger scale masts (e.g. 1/1200 or 1/600 masted ships). I originally thought the styrene shell would make it a cinch to weld on styrene rod spars using styrene cement, but I've never been able to make this work well enough. Even with a divot in the mast, the surface area of the plastic rods must not be sufficient to give the weld strength. To get the gaffs and booms to remain attached to the wire-center styrene masts of my 1/1250 HMS Inflexible (1876), I had to use superglue.

I mostly use brass rod for 1/1250 scale ship models – much easier to cut and file than piano wire and you can even file a taper if that is a prominent feature. Easy to solder for cross-pieces and you can combine it with tube to depict concentric masts of different diameters.You can even drill into it to solder on gaff spars or derricks.

link

Working at 2400 scale, I've always used dry flower wire. It comes in varying gauge sizes and is gloriously inexpensive. You can get long flat bags at most any craft store. It cuts easily and, if you want, you can use a light grit emery board to smooth the cut point.

For larger masts, consider clipping paper clips.

For very small vessels consider using regular office supply staples.

Brass tubing is good for funnels at 2400 scale, or the lowest tier of a graduated diameter mast. I ground down a finishing nail into a cone shape when I did the Indiana Class military masts ages ago, but in retrospect I have to think there must be an easier way to render them.

War Times Journal is a fertile resource for mast assistance. They have created 3d print files you can have rendered to make mast "jigs" to assist in gluing wire pieces into spar masts and tiny disk "fighting top" buckets.

Anything plastic will be either too soft and bendy, or too rigid a snap in a heartbeat. If there is a happy plastic medium, I've never found it.

I too use floral wire, although I've heard others who use piano wire to ensure others take proper care with their miniatures. Better a punctured palm than a mismatched mast (I guess)…

Piano wire requires a different cutter, one that shears rather than clips. They are easily found and cheap. I tried styrene but found this much too flimsy and prone to warping. You can't file piano wire, but I use the side a Dremel cutoff disc to remove burs. You should be able to solder it.

I use cutoff discs to sharpen piano wire for lances and pikes. The blood that is shed during ECW battles by the unwary is of little concern compared to anguish of having to deal with bent lead and just adds a little realism to the conflict.

I bought a hair brush and the dollar store and took the clippers to it. This gave me a huge number of black, straight-but-flexible spears/masts, whatever. It's only a pity that they're so short. They're fairly rugged, easy to work with, don't hurt you.

@ Alakamassa
"Piano wire requires a different cutter, one that shears rather than clips. They are easily found and cheap."

I'd love to get one – what in the world would that tool be called?

@ All
Thanks for the many useful replies, I will try some of this out!

Very easy to clip brass, and file flat.

I've found styrene rod is suitable for such small scales. It cuts and sands easily for notching and tapering, and glues well. As long as you're not banging the models about, and not rigging them taut enough to bend the plastic, it is a fine solution.

It is, but a soldered joint, if done correctly, is very strong, making it much harder to knock the spars off.