Sinagot by thibaultron - Heller - 1/60th - PLASTIC - Small - French fishing boat

[thibaultron]

Sinagot Fishing Boat – Heller – 1/60 – Plastic - Small

 

PART 7

 

Today I shot the next coat of primer onto the hull and several other pieces.

 

First Note: Applying masking tape with gloves on is a pain in the a..! It was bad enough when I was using the old style enamel paints, now that you have to wash the model and then handle it with gloves on until painting is finished is not fun. With the acrylic paint, you have to have an oil free surface for proper paint finish, that includes skin oils!

 

Second Note: Trying to airbrush long thin plastic pieces with an airbrush causes interesting oscillations at the unsupported end of the part! Next time I’ll brush paint these parts! This was aggravated by the need to use about 30PSI to the airbrush. More on that later.

 

Third Note: Using a double acting airbrush for anything other than small parts is frustrating, and takes forever.

 

Fourth Note: When using said airbrush with Stynylrez, and I guess most acrylics, for an extended period, clean out the airbrush regularly, even if you don’t change colors! I was painting for about an hour, and almost needed a chisel, or sand blaster to clean the paint out. It had dried inside the passageways and the inside surface of the cup.

 

Fifth Note: Also completely disassemble the brush and check the needle, etc. when cleaning after using the Stynylrez! When I used the double acting brush when I was practicing, I cleaned it out and ran cleaner and water through it. When I went to use it this time, I had filled the cup, and then tried to use the trigger, it was stuck solid!! I disassembled the brush and found a crust of the Stynylrez all over the needle! After this session I broke it down all the way and cleaned it. When I was using the Vallejo primers and paint on another model, the brush cleanup well without the disassembly.

 

I chose the double acting brush for this job as there were a number of nooks and crannies under the seats. I felt that the external mix brush delivers too much paint and would flood the interior while I was trying to get under the seats (Yes, I know that there is a perfectly Nautical term for them, but everyone knows what a seat is), especially under the one at the stern. In the end I will still have to go back and brush some under both seats. I shot it at 30PSI, the upper limit in the Stynylrez directions, using a 0.50 needle, also as per directions.. As noted earlier, this high pressure caused a couple of the smaller spars the oscillate when I was attempting to paint the far end. Also trying the use an airbrush to paint long thin round “things” is difficult. From now on I’ll brush paint both the primer and topcoats.

 

I plan to brush paint the interior for the color coat, but wanted a smooth primer coat to start from.

 

In the pictures below are the taped hull and the rudder and spars held in clothespins. When I primed the rudder with the Red-Brown primer it was held by the tiller end, so I had to hold it by the bottom today and prime that end. I used Tamiya masking tape and some fairly heavy white paper for the masking. I was going to use regular masking tape for the Tamiya to paper joint, but decided that it was both too wide and I was afraid too sticky, and might pull off some of the primer. I masked the hull below the railing, as the hull will later be painted black. I chose to do the rail first, as the Stynylrez sets much faster than the Vallejo color coats, so I can mask it several days sooner than if I had to mask the black color coat.

The next two pictures are close-ups of the masking on the hull.

As I said earlier it took a long time with the double acting brush, but I got the job done. For priming the other ends of the spars, though, I’ll use a paint brush. I also need to go back through the box, there is one of the yards missing, from the washed parts! I had other things to do today, though, so I didn’t get to look today.

 

Sixth Note: I will buy some of the poster board sheets, and cut some to cover the bottom of the inside of the booth, even with the little painting I’ve been doing, it is starting to become “Not White”.

 

This is the bottle of primer, I put the black dot on the label (lower right) to indicate that it is open and that I’ve put a stainless steel BB in it to help mix the paint, before use. I bought two sizes of specially coated balls, 6mm and 8mm (I believe), for this purpose. I read that regular SS comes in many types, and most of them will rust when constantly immersed in water based paints. I’ll look up the manufacturer and post the name later. I use the 6mm for the regular Vallejo size color coat bottles (17ml), and the 8mm for the larger primer ones (2oz in this case). I tried glass beads, but even large ones are too light.

From my experience today I think I will thin the Stynylrez a little, next time, and add a couple of drops of retarder to help with the fast drying inside the airbrush. I also need to dip the needle in a lubricant, to help keep the paint from adhering to it. I have a bottle of the Badger brand, but forgot about it today. It is “Regdab” (Yes, that’s Badger spelled backwards, who can tell with Marketing Types!). No picture of it, it is buried under junk, due to the (eternal) remodeling of the shop.

 

The next two pictures are of the result of my efforts, before I removed the masking. Note the “Rube Goldberg” clothespin setup to support the hull until it dried. The gray piece behind the model is my Test Piece. I use it to see if the airbrush is working, paint consistency, etc. You’d almost think I knew what I was doing, nope, just figuring it out as I go.

 

It does not show in the picture, but the coat on the spars leaves much to be desired.

 

And pictures after the masking was removed. The pictures have different contrast levels as some are taken with flash and the others without. I choose the pictures that show the best detail, rather than worrying about how they look compared to each other.

As can be seen by the two side shots, I need more practice with the masking, but it is OK. The model also has the standard out of scale raised grain patterns, typical of plastic models, working against me here. When I paint the black for the hull, I’ll use an old trick to help with the bleeding. After masking hit the edge with a thin spray of the color you are masking off, in this case white as I’ll be protecting the railing, or with a clear coat. This way any paint that bleeds through matches the protected color and seals those spots for when the new color is applied.

As also can be seen in the third picture the primer coat is a little spotty, due to trying to cover a relatively large area with a small spot size of paint. It will do for the primer coat though. Again I’ll brush paint the light blue interior color coat. For the railing I went over the area many times to build up the opacity. If I had to do a larger area, than the railing, the double acting brush would not be a good choice, or I'd apply a white color coat.

 

The last picture is the primer coat on the stand. Again not an opaque coverage, but the color coat will fix that. Another problem with using the airbrush on this small part was that it was being blown all over the booth whenever my grip slipped.

 

 

Edited November 12, 2018 by thibaultron

[cog]

I like the "shading" on the stand

[Javlin]

I think she is coming out quite Nice after the retouches.The complaints about acrylics may be founded but I use alcohol if I think the model has gotten dirty from oils/sanding dries in minutes and sterile screw the gloves experience but I do use enamels.Acrylics if you do not clean your gun quickly will harden up fast. I have left mine with paint in it and came back hours later and it cleaned just fine with enamels.Milk! that's the consistency of your mix and I spray alot at from 10-20psi when doing small parts and small areas just to control the spray using a Badger Renegade Airbrush and use higher pressure for bigger areas.I hope that helps and yes I know of guys who use higher pressure than 30psi with acrylics and do beautiful work gun/talent/years.Keep at it it has the looks of a good build coming about  Kevin

[Ebomba]

Ron, I agree she is really shaping up, keep up the good work, and thanks for the tips

 

Ed

[thibaultron]

Got my Sinagot book today! While I can't read French, it does have many diagrams and boat sketches that show the rigging. I may scan the book and run it through OCR and French to English translation programs.

 

[cog]

Whatch yerself with those translation programs ... google may attach a halyard to her keel, instead of a belaying point ...

[thibaultron]

I wish I remembered all those years of French I took, 45 years ago!

[cog]

You will, you just have to dig in ... After a year not having spoken any French, it usually takes me a few days to "pick it up" again. You will be surprised how quickly it will return

[thibaultron]

Did some more painting today. This time I was using a brush. I repainted the spars, as the airbrush did a poor job on them. I also hit the interior areas of the hull that the airbrush could not reach. I did have to add a little water to the Stynylrez to get it to flow well with the brush. Tomorrow, I'll paint the ends of the spars now being held by clothespins.

 

I've also been slowly translating the Sinagot book from French. I hit a snag though. While on vacation, I was using my laptop, and it picked up a virus. I had to do a full scan of it and the external drive. It took 35 hours. Now I'm rescanning it to verify that I got it. Once that is done, I'll transfer the files to my desktop, and continue.

[cog]

Sorry to hear about the laptop. Nasty buggers those colds ;: hope you get it sorted out quickly

[thibaultron]

Got a bit more painting done. I'll post pictures later. Still need to improve my skills in this area.

[cog]

5 hours ago, thibaultron said:

Got a bit more painting done. I'll post pictures later. Still need to improve my skills in this area.

whom doesn't ...

[thibaultron]

My panting skills where further aided by my cat! It was very cold, for here, yesterday and she slipped into the shop. Normally she goes off and hides, so I can't put her back out. Yesterday, however, once I got started painting she came over and sat on my lap, and kept bumping my arm, for attention! I didn't want to put her back out in the cold, and if I took her back to the house, I would have had to clean up all the paint "stuff" first. At least there are no cat hairs in the finish!

[thibaultron]

Sinagot Fishing Boat – Heller – 1/60 – Plastic - Small

 

PART 8

 

Finally got a chance, last week, to get back to painting. Major fail! Seems I need a lot more practice with masking and brush painting. One thing I definitely need is to either get a second magnifying light for the spray booth, or bring my workbench one over when I’m painting. My eyes are definitely getting older!

 

Anyway, to start with I found a neat item I’m using as a paint bottle holding tray at Dollar Tree. I think it was in the cosmetic section. It has one large section that is great for the larger primer bottles, and 8 smaller sections, just right for holding a bottle of Vallejo paint.

For the upper hull I’m using Vallejo Model Color Black and I’ll be using Model Color Sky Blue for the interior. The blue is not quite a direct match for the Humbrol blue supplied with the kit, but it is close.

I noticed that while masking the hull I damaged the thin plastic traveler. I will try to repair it later. I may have to fashion a wire replacement, as there is still quite a lot of handling to be done in the future.

So I masked off the bottom of the hull and the railing, then I painted on diluted white and hull red at the tape joints to try and seal them, but either I did not burnish the tape down enough, or I lifted the tape with the brush. Burnishing over the cast in wood grain is difficult to start with, so that may also be contributing factor.

Here is what I found after removing the tape. I also managed to get some of the paint on my gloves, and onto other areas of the model.

 

 

[thibaultron]

Sinagot Fishing Boat – Heller – 1/60 – Plastic - Small

 

PART 9

 

Went back yesterday and did some touchup to the model with a brush, freehand. It looks better now, though there are still some spots to correct. As masking tape wasn’t developed when these boats were first built, a little roughness at the edges can be excused. “That’s my story, and I’m sticking to it!” LOL

 

First thought I selected a color that I think looks right for a varnished spar/mast. Vallejo Model Color 70.873 “US Field Drab”….. was the closest I found in my stash of paints. It is darker then the Humbrol brown supplied with the kit.

The pictures below show lighter streaks on the spars, this is the wet color of the paint, before it dries. This time I moved my magnifying light over to the spray booth, and painted using it. I found a world of difference when using it. Much better control. I’ll wait a week for the paint to set, before I mask off the metal parts, for their black paint.

 

I also had to put 3 coats of the Model Color on the base to get full coverage. I’m thinking of using some of my Vallejo stains, really thin paint, to add some grain to the base. The stains come from the Vallejo “Wood and Leather” set. I’m also thinking of putting a gloss varnish finish on it, similar to a real wood base. For the name plate I’m going to do the “wood” area like the base and the Name Plate area in brass paint, both letters and background.

 

Below are pictures of the touched up hull, still some work to do, but better.

 

The last couple mornings I’ve been insulating the back wall of what will be the ship building section of the shop. This is the hardest part, as it is a 16x7 foot section of shelving. So I have to take down the “stuff” do the wall, then put the shelving and “stuff” back up. Limited room makes this interesting. I’ve gotten the left hand side double studded and double insulated (R-13 x 2 for R-26), so far. The side wall shown in the left of the first picture is already double studded, and has the through wall AC installed. The AC unit is a 5000 BTU window unit, semi-permanently mounted with bolts to the wall. A few years ago someone broke into my shop by pulling out the window AC unit, so now the shop has no windows and both units are bolted to the wall!

[Ebomba]

paint job looks real good , especially like the stand, good luck with the remodel job, should be a big improvement when done

[thibaultron]

Haven't given up on the build. I've just been working 6 to 7 days a week, and spent the last week and a half between jobs working on the renovation of the back of my shop. This area will become the ship building section, when done.

[thibaultron]

Got the Sinagots book scanned , converted to text, and translated. bad news, really bad translation. The OCR I used is 20 years old, and while it did catch most of the words, it missed a lot of the French accent marks! It is readable, but not for technical details. I have found, though, how to set MS Word to spell check the OCRed French text, before translation, so I'll work on that, then re-translate.

The spray booth is presently hidden behind building supplies, so not much progress has been made. This weekend, I'm going to be cleaning, and rearranging the renovated portion of the shop. Hopefully next week, I can continue the build.

[thibaultron]

Well after 6 months of scanning, OCRing, spell checking in French, and translating electronically into English, I finally have a semi-readable version of the Sinagot book!

 

I've reached a point in the shop renovations, that I can now do some actual modeling.

 

Next I'm going to try making the hoist assembly for the spars. instead of attaching the hoist to the spar, there is a ring assembly that the spar is hung off of. This replaces jaws and parrel beads standardly used.

 

 

 

Hoist Fitting_01.tif

[Ebomba]

It looks like you are going to put the new workbench to good use, waiting to see the results

 

Ed

[thibaultron]

Ordered some .008' copper wire, as well as .010 half hard and dead soft brass wire to make the hoist rings from. Here is a dimensioned drawing from the book. I hope that at least one of the wires will be strong enough to hold up after i make the fitting. It will not have to support the yard, That will be glued to the mast, as per the kit design, but it will have to withstand my fumble fingered installation!

 

 

I estimated the sizes by measuring the actual diameter of the masts at the ring height, and used that as a basis for the other ones. CAD is great! The final diameters of the ring may be slightly larger than in the drawing, as the base of the masts are 0.115", and the ring should be able to rest on the deck, I would think. The drawing is quite busy, but it has all the dimensions I need.

 

[thibaultron]

Played a little with the wire for the hoist fittings. The .008"  (0.2mm) is too soft. I was able to make a rough fitting, but it collapsed before I could finish.

 

I'll try the brass wires today, with pictures this time. I may have to build a simple jig.

[thibaultron]

PART 11

 

I worked on the Hoist Ring today. This is the diagram I showed earlier, and the following one with dimensions.

 

 

The critical dimensions are:

 

Ring Diameter = 5/32” – 5/32 drill bit as form, initially (see below)

Eye Diameter = 0.015” -  #77 drill bit

Hook Diameter = 0.023” - #73 drill bit

 

This was just a practice/trial and error session. This is just as well, as the “new” used camera I was using was set on 640X480 resolution, as I discovered when editing the pictures!

 

I bought 0.008” copper, dead soft brass, and half hard brass wire, to experiment with. The half hard is what I used, the copper was way too soft to hold a shape under handling. I skipped the Dead Soft, and found the Half Hard quite workable, and sufficiently sturdy. There will be no load on the ring as the spar will be glued to the mast.

In this scale, 1/64^th, I will not try to replicate the forged construction of the original. At first I tried wrapping the wire around the 5/32^nd bit then folding the ends across each other, then vertical to form the hook and eye legs, forming a sharp corner, but no firm connection. This worked, but the ring did not hold its shape during further work. The two corners separated when the ring twisted.

 

For the “final” version, I used a pair of needle nose pliers, with a stepped taper on one jaw and a flat mating surface on the other. For the area where the legs will be, I tied a simple knot by looping one leg back through the ring. After a bit of pulling and tightening of the knot, I got a firm joint at the legs.

Next I used a pair of flat jawed needle nose pliers to clamp the ring in and stretched the legs to be at right angles to the ring. I then held a #77 drill bit on one jaw, on top of a leg and wrapped the wire around it, forming the eye. Then while also holding the #77 in place, I repeated this on the hook leg, using a #73 drill bit. This time I only wrapped it enough to form the bottom of the hook

 

The assembly now looked like this.

After playing with it a bit using pliers and tweezers to get everything in line, I cut the excess wire with a single bladed razor.

 

Here is the final trial piece. You can see some kinks in the main ring. I was reusing the same piece of wire as I practiced, and it was distorted from prior attempts. For the final pieces I'll have to refine the eye, but I'm calling this trial Hoist Ring a success.

When I make the finished parts, I’ll take a better sequence of pictures. I finally got the camera reset to take full resolution (14megapixel) shots, so the pictures will be better next time.

 

It may be a few weeks before I can get back to the model. I’m about to start a month long 12 hours a day 6 days a week short term job.

[thibaultron]

PART 12

 

 

Now that I’ve gotten the camera reset to the full resolution, I’m going to continue the Hoist Ring fabrication.

 

One feature the “new” camera lacks that the old, failing, one had, is that in Close Up mode, there is no option to force it to use the flash! It only has No Flash , or Auto Flash settings. The camera seems to default to No Flash when taking close ups. This makes taking the pictures more difficult. For these shots I had to either have my magnifying lamp illuminating the shot, or take the picture through the lens of the lamp’s magnifier. As this part is so small taking the shots through the lens was a requirement anyway, but still this is a pain! I’m still getting used to the camera, so the shots are not always as focused as I would like.

The 0.008” half hard brass wire worked well for this application, both for forming well through all the operations and holding its shape afterward.

 

Here are two shots of the tools I used in making the ring. The , in real life orange, but here red handled cutters are “Rail Nippers”, used to cut track rails in model railroading. I need to buy new ones, as the cutting edges are dinged up from cutting HO scale rail and hard wire over the years. These are more robust versions of the similar ones sold for plastic modeling to cut the parts from the sprues.

One of the pair of tweezers I used is shown in both shots.

 

I started by holding the wire in a pair of jeweler’s pliers. I bent the wire to form a rough loop then fed one end back over the other side, under both, and then back out. This created an overhand knot. The knot is used to make a firm connection at the point where the ring, eye, and hook are forged together in the full sized assembly. In this small 1/64^th scale, I do not have the dexterity to make the ring from “forged” parts. The knot is almost invisible in this scale, so will serve the purpose of forming the joint.

This is a picture of the ring with the knot tightened.

This left the ring smaller than needed, so I placed the wire onto one jaw of the set of pliers with both tips smoothly tapered (black and red handles), Then I forced the wire down the jaw expanding it until I was the correct size (no picture).

 

The piece was then clamped in a set of flat jawed pliers, to flatten the ring, and start tightening the knot at the joint, by turning the ends 90 degrees and pulling.

 

The part was then placed back in the first set of pliers and the knot worked to tighten it, using both pulling on the ends and the regular, as opposed to self clamping, tweezers to tighten the knot on itself, and rotate the knot so that it was at 90 degrees to the plain of the ring. After some work the joint looked like this.

 

Note that the end of the step where the pliers jump to the next size, luckily, happened to be the correct diameter of the finished ring. This made sizing the ring much easier!. While tightening the knot I had to hold the pliers closed by clamping them between my legs, so that I could use both hands to work the knot.

 

The part was then returned to the flat jawed pliers, and the eye and hook ends again turned 90 degrees. Then a #77 drill bit was held over one end and the wire wrapped around it a couple times to form the eye.

After This shot was taken, I rolled the eye closer to the joint.

Next a #73 drill bit was held over the other leg (while still holding the first bit with my thumb), and the wire bent over it to form the hook.

Here is the part after this shaping.

At this stage it looked like this.

I then trimmed the ends with a single blade razor knife.

I still need to trim the eye loop more and form the hook a little better, but that will wait until I’m ready to install the parts. Once I paint or blacken the part, the knot should all but disappear.

Here is the original drawing again, for comparison.

 

 

[Haliburton]

Nicely done Ron!

[thibaultron]

Thank you!

[thibaultron]

PART 13

 

Well, after a long delay, I’ve finally made some progress on the model!

 

I painted the interior Vallejo “Light Blue”. This color is the closest I have to the Humbrol blue provided in the kit. As you can see in the photo , below, some of the blue got on the side of the white rail, but that is the best I can do. It is almost invisible from more than a few inches away. I will probably have to replace the plastic traveler ring, that I broke when painting the hull (in the left of the picture). I’ve tried gluing it a couple times, and have had it not hold. I’m not sure that the ring would hold up under the stress of rigging, even if it was intact.

 

After looking at this photo, I noticed that the white primer was showing through the blue, so I gave it another coat.

 

I painted the name plate the same color as the base and masts.

I then tried a couple of different ways of highlighting the name. The first was to paint some gold onto a glass sheet and carefully press the name plate onto it, so that only the letters would get coated. This failed as the letters are too shallow, and/or the paint too thick. The paint got on the nameplate surface every time I tried it. I had similar results trying to paint just the letters. Finally I painted the whole front and sides gold, and in a day or two, I will try carefully sanding the letters to expose the brown paint or raw plastic.

 

This “simple” build to give me a break from longer builds, has turned into an equally long one.

 

My next major task is the sails. Do I use the vacuum-formed ones in the kit, or try to make some silkspan ones. The plastic sails would look OK, but both the larger “Square” sails are formed billowing, which is wrong for this type of boat. In the real boats each sail is set on opposite sides of their mast from how the other sail is hoisted. One sail is hoisted on the port, and the other starboard. Thus as the boat sails, one sail is always pressed up against its mast, causing it to crease where it touches the mast. This is quite unique, and I would like the model to show this. I can’t find my silkspan, however, and I’ve never made sails of any type before.

This is shown on the cover of a different release of the Heller kit (circled in red). As a side note, this cover also shows that no one is minding the tiller!

I once owned a 17 foot sailboat, and obtained an ad for it on the Web. The boats “spacious” cockpit was shown with 4 or 5 people occupying it! On closer inspection all the people were young children. I love ad companies!

[cog]

4 hours ago, thibaultron said:

After looking at this photo, I noticed that the white primer was showing through the blue, so I gave it another coat.

I liked the whitish in the blue, it turned out very turqoisy. When I look at the last image, it can be lighter, it is very contrasting now. 

[thibaultron]

I had to go with the paint I have. It is too late to add yet another layer of paint. Even Vallejo Model Color builds up, with multiple coats.

[thibaultron]

PART 14

 

A quick update. I sanded the faceplate to expose the original plastic color of the part, and it worked. I wish now that I had painted it with a lighter color, to make the contrast better, but you can clearly read the name. Here is a shot of the nameplate. I only had 320 grit sandpaper available, so you can see some scratches in the close-up, but not from viewing distance. I touched up the areas around the edges that also caught the sanding, and will go with this look.