Hi, I have another solution for the insulators.
I've been building and selling sailing ships for years, and found that the cost of the prefab wooden blocks got to be too much, and as was already mentioned, they required a lot of sanding to round off the edges which are usually too square. Sanding these little things is very difficult since there's nothing to hold onto. (You could stick a pin through the hole as a handle)
What the group I modelled with started to do instead was to make our own, and it's a lot easier than it might at first seem. If you make them out of spare plastic sprue, they also won't have the wood grain and can be polished to look more like the real ones, and you can make them any size you want.
What you do is take a dowel (or plastic sprue) and first shape it lengthwise to the dimensions of of the face of your block (insulator). Keep in mind that the part is going to be oriented lengthwise along the sprue.
After you have the shape you want, cut the grooves in lengthwise along the sprue. The easiest method is to use the edge of a triangular needle file. For the insulator shape, you'll probably want 4 grooves in total.
Next, mark off the length of one insulator, mark THAT length on a piece of scrap and then use iit as a jig to measure the lengths for all the insulators you're going to make out of the sprue.
Then, again with the edge of a triangular needle file, make a notch at each mark to give you an idea of what the dimensions of the finished insulator are going to be.
Drill out the holes for the "cable", remembering to rotate 90
degrees for each hole, with one hole at what will be each end of the finished insulator.
Once you have all the holes drilled, use a round needle file to round out the inner edges of each hole like the real insulators, and whatever file you find appropriate to round over the insulator at each end..
Finally, cut the insulators off at the notches and voila, you have insulators of the proper scale size. Do not cut off the insulators until you're happy with the shape since they're much easier to work with when still all together on the sprue.
I know it sounds complicated but once you've made the first one and gotten the hang of it, (You'll probably throw your first one out anyway as you'll be happier with all the rest), it goes quite fast. I've been able to make about a dozen blocks/insulators in about 10-15 minutes, and they turn out looking much better than any mass-produced ones I've seen.
