Some caveats about this because I'm not sure I'm the person to come to for information about lighting. Not sure this is the place for the caveats either, but you should know something about the source before you can evaluate the validity of the information. I started making 1" scale miniatures years ago when my mother took an interest and I saw commercially made miniatures that I knew I could run rings around. While I do only mechanical and some optical miniatures, my father was also a master miniaturist with furniture--some of the finest true scale pieces you've ever seen. So I've been around things like dollhouse lighting, and I'm reasonably familiar with the different kinds of systems available and have seen them used, but (now finally to the caveat...) I've never done any of it myself. That said, at Jame's suggestion, I'm moving my answer to Gary's lighting question over to this forum with some annotations, and will let it run from there, for whatever use it may be and with apologies for the repetition.

Indirect lighting should be fairly easy because the source can be hidden so exact bulb scale is not an issue, though you'll need some way to power it, which means either a lead from the ship or an accessible battery compartment. Dollhouse suppliers have a variety of lighting options available that should be adaptable. Some run off of relatively heavy transformer units; others on batteries. My first inclination for all of this would be to design the system with totally external power (transformers or batteries can be concealed inside a display base and are probably more accessible there). Direct lighting is a little dicier since even the tiny wheat bulbs used in 1" scale dollhouse lighting are probably too large to be within reasonable scale for most ship models and they are the smallest I know. Fiber optics would probably offer a viable solution for scale lighting, but the system would have to be designed up front and integrated as ship construction proceeded. I've never tried it, but can see it as a potentially quite complicated planning task for anything more than a couple of running lights. One advantage would be the need for only one light source, which could be a very bright and easily accessible LED supplying a fiber tree to various parts of the ship. If necessary, two or more LED's in different colors could be used. LED's are long-lasting, relatively cool, and have low current demands. The fiber ends could lead into diffusers of the right shape and scale for things like running lights or ship's lanterns. Making the diffusers in the appropriate color would simplify back to a single white light source. For example, for a ship's lantern, a clear or yellowish block of lucite could be carved to shape and used for the clear part of a lantern, with a fiber or group of fibers leading into it, perhaps concealed in the hanging chain or rope. Lot of possibilities. The fiber optic solution may be more viable in the long term because of the difficulty of replacing individual bulbs if they burn out, and the fine optical fibers would be easy to conceal. It would probably take some experimenting to come up with the right solutions, but the biggest difficulty I can anticipate with it is planning and integration into the construction.

Regarding power, it occurs to me that for some models at least, there should be ways to activate a power source concealed in the stand merely by having the ship resting in its cradle, with contacts on stand and hull (and a switch in the stand, of course). Copper- and other metalic-clad hulls offer some possibilities, but a couple of the planking nails could be made to work as electrical contacts too, to make the whole wiring linkage nearly invisible from the outside. Perhaps that's a start, but I expect the group can come up with all kinds of ingenious ideas to integrate lighting. (Just had an interesting idea for using fiber optics to achieve a St. Elmo's Fire effect in a dioramic display...endless possibilities).

 

Custom Search

Searching for something? See Search Tips, Main Search Page, Amazon Quick Search Do a "Quickie" - Google that is!  Or would you rather - "Amazon"

Michael:Outstanding!
This is exactly what I meant. I'm sure others will add even more information as the thread progresses.
Are fiber optics available at Radio Shack or do I need to find a specialty shop? (like to shop local when I can)
Would LED and fiber optic set-ups be available at the R/R sites?
Do you have some good doll house suppliers web addresses? Never thought about them as a materials source but it would be a good one.

No hurry on the info. It's too late for me to wire Victory's hull but it would be a nice addition on the Conny and the Flying fish.

Thanks for starting the thread and the info.

 

Custom Search

Searching for something? See Search Tips, Main Search Page, Amazon Quick Search Do a "Quickie" - Google that is!  Or would you rather - "Amazon"

One more planning concern: fiber optics can be bent, but the turns must be radiused, not crimped, so that needs to be taken into account in laying out concealment designs. I'll have to dig up some online dollhouse sources, as most of my miniature shopping has been local. Not sure about fiber optic sources, but Radio Shack might be a place to start looking (I know they can supply the LEDs). I've used junked out fiber optic lamps as a source for some minor experiments (yard sale cheap), but haven't done enough with it myself to have needed a commercial source. See what I can dig up.

 

Custom Search

Searching for something? See Search Tips, Main Search Page, Amazon Quick Search Do a "Quickie" - Google that is!  Or would you rather - "Amazon"

I've always bought my fiberoptics online, I don't believe radio shack carries any.

For this type of use, you don't need the expensive stuff like a long data signal would use. We can get away with the un-jacketted, plastic core stuff. I've had good luck with fiberopticsproducts.com in the past for both the fiber as well as LED's

 

Custom Search

Searching for something? See Search Tips, Main Search Page, Amazon Quick Search Do a "Quickie" - Google that is!  Or would you rather - "Amazon"

Michael / Hans:

Thanks guys. Duly noted.
Another thing i never though of, "yard sales", that would be those funny looking desk lamps right?

 

Custom Search

Searching for something? See Search Tips, Main Search Page, Amazon Quick Search Do a "Quickie" - Google that is!  Or would you rather - "Amazon"

To add to the initial excellent post by Jim, I'll put in my own info on what i've done with lighting so far. I'm pretty handy with a soldering iron at times, having rewired a few cars, all my radio work with the Army and so on. So wiring is second nature to me. I've only done one extensive wiring job on a Star Trek kit, but I have put a lot of LED's and incandescent bulbs into a lot of things in my days.

For scale model work, I can't see any reason to use anything BUT led's these days. The reality is that most internal lighting you do will be permanent and impossible to replace, unless you make serious compromises to the model design for the purpose of accesibility. To me, these compromises are unacceptable. LED's will normally last tens of thousands of hours, and even then they don't generally fail.... they start to loose their luminescence and become dimmer. They use much lower voltage, make less heat, take less space. The colors are more rich and even, and you have a degree of control with the LED's themselves since they actually only emit light in a 60 to 90 degree cone. So it's a no-brainer to me to use LED's.

This comes with a big caveat though, voltage variances. Different color LED's require different voltages. And you need to be fairly close in the voltages you provide to the LED's. This means you need to do some proper circuit design work regarding your power source and resistors, every LED needs a resistor somewhere. As far as circuits go, it's easy electronics, but it's still unfamiliar to most people. You can get complicated and add all sorts of effects such as blinking lights if you want, but that starts really ramping up the difficulty levels.

For power sources, you can go internal or external. Meaning, batteries inside the model? Or something outside the model, batteries or a wall adapter? Putting batteries inside can quickly eat up the volume available, and you have the same difficulty of needing to replace them. Even worse, if a battery goes bad it can leak acid. Inside your model. Again, unacceptable. But that means you may need to be creative to discreetly put the power from another source inside the model.

As to the planning, it MUST MUST MUST MUST MUST MUST MUST be done before you do any significant work. Lighting can and will snake its way through almost every aspect of a model, which makes it difficult to add at a later point. So the earlier you start running wires, and the less changes you make mid-build, the easier it will be. As to ships, I would say if you've planked the hull and deck already, it's too late. Solid hulls will be very difficult to do, probably requiring routing out wire paths and planking over them.

Fiberoptics can add a lot more options for you. Such as the ability to run lighting to places that may not have the room to mount an LED. It also allows for smaller lighting points, meaning smaller dots of light. You can get some tiny fiber down to .25mm in size. Like Jim mentioned, you just need to be careful about keeping any turns smooth. With larger sizes it also helps to polish the ends.

I had originally wanted to try and light my Benjamin Latham as I built it, but so far I've only identified 2 points that I can add lighting to. So right now I'm undecided, unless I can find more spots that I could wire to.

-Hans

 

Custom Search

Searching for something? See Search Tips, Main Search Page, Amazon Quick Search Do a "Quickie" - Google that is!  Or would you rather - "Amazon"

Hans:
Excellent information.
I think on the level of regular electric wire! My attempts would have been pathetic (if I didn't burn the model down!!) You guys have saved me a lot of grief already, and I haven't even started Conny yet!

I think you could still do running lights, masthead lights and possibly an anchor light (if at anchor), binnacle lights; I'll stop here, the list could be quite long. I think I will add those things to my Victory (with a little help).
Will the resistors vary in size/type? Forgive me, my electronics experience is "Nil".

 

Custom Search

Searching for something? See Search Tips, Main Search Page, Amazon Quick Search Do a "Quickie" - Google that is!  Or would you rather - "Amazon"

Hans

Lighting the Latham is an interesting challenge. She's a turn of the century ship but I rather doubt if she made it into the electric age. I'm guessing oil or since she carried an engine, perhaps kerosene. I suspect at night she ran pretty dark but that's not to say lighting couldn't be interesting.

You've probably thought of the points already but here's what I'd look at.

1 - running lights, dim red and green lights in the shrouds, - trick how to get the wires to the lamps

2 - main cabin which has ports and a sky light. Here I see the glow of a stove and flicker of a solitary lantern - color orange to yellow

3 - the binnacle (compass housing really) - here a dim light shows from inside the cabin projecting down onto a model compass - model the compass with a short cylinder of clear rod, paint the dial on the bottom and the sides with brass paint and arrange a very small white led to shine into the top.

4 - If you model the round hatch with its little eye on top, another tiny light could show from within the foc’sle.

Several challenges, possibly for relatively little effect but then, sometimes that's what modeling is about, after all, we're the crazy ones who carefully cut stealers only to cover them with copper plate.

Regards

 

Custom Search

Searching for something? See Search Tips, Main Search Page, Amazon Quick Search Do a "Quickie" - Google that is!  Or would you rather - "Amazon"

Good info there on the lighting types I can shoehorn in there. The Latham supposedly survived long enough to get electrical lighting. But other than the instructions, the research I have on it is nil. Getting the wires to the lante