First thought..I wonder if one could stiffen the inside with say an aluminium or plastic rod and then use a guillotine with a stop for the length. The guillotine would need a base board, metal strip edge and then a heavy blade (good kitchen knife or cleaver hinged at one end. If you can find one of those cleavers with a hole at the blade end for a hinging bolt… You then need two stops… one for length and one to stop the tube rolling away from the blade as you cut.

Second thought… If you're happy enough doing the cutting with a knife then make up a jig .. the rod resting between two closely spaced pairs of bearings.. it'll sit in the angle between a pair of bearings and be able to rotate.. and bridged across from the other pair gives you a gap to cut into. A raised block and stop at one end for the length and a guide for the knife. You should be able to build something robust enough out of timber for thin tube like this. Rolling the tube under the knife should give a clean straight cut??

Third thought.. hunt around for tiny brass spacers in that size and buy a bundle. It's the sort of thing that is used in small races to space the id of bearings so may be worth a google search.

But surely on a model the blocks don't actually need to work? They just need to look right.

The people that sell kitsets for wooden boats will also sell you little bags containing lots of little blocks, in different sizes too. They don't have actual sheaves in them but if this is a glass case model that should not matter.

John

A possible solution might be to make a small guillotine. The blades would each have a 2mm hole in them and and be arranged to slide past each other. You could either have another hole in the plates as a pivot point or arrange for them to slide past each to be used in an arbor press. I have never tried this but it might work. You could add pgk's idea of putting plastic or aluminium rod through the tube while cutting it.

Les.

Edited By Les Jones 1 on 25/05/2015 09:11:02

http://www.syrenshipmodelcompany.com/swiss-pear-rigging-blocks.php

Should have what you need.

> Wooden jig, Dremel with circular saw.

What the man says

I have a lovely little tube-cutting jig for use with a razor saw on test here from Expo, including a neat end-stop. I would recommend it except that you will get through a fair number of razor saw blades doing 700 and your hands will go numb.

Build a dremel into a temporary support so you can slide the tube past a cutting disk, you will get through cutting disks but may keep a vestige of your sanity.

Neil