SawdustDave

G'day Dave 

Great work on the two dragons. Amazing detail! 

Question: do you do the work on glass and let it harden before you place it in the oven or what do you do? 

Havagooday mate 

Greg 

Good question Greg....

The Sculpy clay doesn't begin hardening until placed in the oven..... a thin piece like this only requires 15 min at 275 degrees.

You go Bug. Great start!

Dave

Dragons roughed out in Sculpy....

Think I will try something new with this one because of the delicate nature around the necks and heads of the dragons.

Taking this to the oven on the glass used to sculpt it. 

After baking it to a cure, I'll build a mold box onto the glass around the figure and pour the rubber mold compound.

I'm afraid to try to transfer this particular piece from the glass to another mold box.

New carvings finished and placed.....

The clean-up of the two new carvings went pretty well.... actually a little more detail than I expected, considering the scale.

And here's the image of the carving I'm choosing to fit into that last panel.

Unfortunately, I expect to lose a lot of these amazing details once I scale it down to fit in the 1/2" x 1-1/4" panel.

I may have to go back to Sculpy for this one.... we shall see.

Hi Dave,

 

Wonderful work and as Mark says really fast!  I can't believe how rapidly you are able to create these lovely carvings.  

 

As for the item in his left hand...my 2c is it looks like a royal orb so perhaps it really is the king himself!

 

Cheers,

 

Nigel.

Royal Orb....Knew I could count on you Nigel. Thanks

That's a really good likeness of the carving in the pic Dave. Is that one that needs a duplicate also?

 

Note that the finished plastic casting will have considerably sharper and cleaner detail.

I just came in from detailing the first casting from the "birdman" mold, and it really cleaned up nicely.

Should be able to post pics from both pieces tomorrow.

Thanks Frank, and Greg.....always great to hear from you guys.

Two carvings in a day....

Note:  The sword (right hand) and the ??? in his left hand will be added separately.

Nasty cold weather kept me hunkered down in my warm shop all day.

Forecasting more cold for the next three or four days.

Heck, at this rate, I might just finish the whole build by next week.........

Beautiful job Ulises. Man! That's a lot of gun ports! I agree with having both sides look the same. As for open vs closed lids, I personally like to close the bottom ports and open all the others, but that's just my preference.

Nice organized work space mate. So many others would kill for a space like that.

Keep up the good work.

Dave

While waiting for the new rubber mold to cure.... about 8 hours.... I've selected this next clip art image to begin working on for the next carving.

Could that be King Chuck himself?

Note that the height of the image was a little too tall for the panel I will be sticking it in, so I had to distort the image slightly before gluing it to the vinyl board. 

Also, I'll be trying something a little different with this new carving.

I discovered that much finer detail can be achieved by etching and carving into the plastic casting.

I think this rough shaping in vinyl will give me a sharp enough mold casting to make a decent piece.

.

Found a new rich source for carving ideas...... Pinterest.com

Here's the next carving I will begin working on....

Update....Bulkheads

Before returning to the few hull carvings remaining to be done, I spent a few hours re-visiting the ornamentation of the three main bulkheads on the weather decks.  I have recognized all along that they still needed a little more ornamentation, but never could decide what I wanted to put on them.

Here's what I came up with.... (before and after pics)

May still need to tweek the area on each side of the half deck initials "CR" seen in the middle pic....

Very nice looking doors Dave and to forget the hinges.  But - but - no door knocker or a little bell with a pull cord?? 

Glad you could save the door molding pieces, plenty of bling there

 

Cheers,

Thought about the other hardware on the doors Piet, and concluded these doors would have always been secured internally with a heavy bar, and would have only been opened by a crew member from inside. 

What think ye?  Not too late to add the typical rings.

Also considered adding King Chuck's "CR" to the doors, but decided against it. 

on the photo ..I think this has turned out to be my favorite panel at this point.....on the panel next to the queen.....how did you create that really fine mesh or whatever it is?...amazing......

Good question Vic.... I refer you to page 19.....posting #370

I think it really is a beautiful little trim that makes those panels pop in a unique way.

The SOS is all about "bling", and that mesh trim allows me to bling away.

Glad you like it.

Thank you Bug for what you are doing. I gladly offer my services, as a Confederacy builder, any way I can help.

I knew Augie was having health issues, but shocked and extremely saddened to hear of his passing. His love for modeling.... And his excellent craftsmanship is a great loss to the MSW community.

My sincere condolences to Diane and all friends and loved ones.

Thanks again mates.  The carving and sculpting is, indeed, a major part of the SOS.... main reason for my attempting to build her.  However, I am also enjoying the difficulty of all the other aspects of creating the structural parts.

This morning began with another re-do.... no surprise there, huh?

The main port entry, created months ago, (originally created with a sculpy piece).... was installed as an open port, with no door.

Faced with adding the same entry to the starboard side, I decided it should have doors, rather than an open port shown by the old plan sheets.

So I carefully removed the delicate entry....managed to get it off in two pieces with no damage. 

Created the doors and stuck it back in place.

Using the original mold, I'll do the same for the starboard side.

.

Update.... New Sculpy figure.

Mostly worked on adding new cannon ports and lids the last few days.  As a break from that tedious task, I took a couple of hours out to play with this new little bust figure, very much the same as the one shown in earlier posting used on the gallery panels....slightly improved.  These will be added to the aft main bulkhead.  Again, using sculpy.... my favorite medium for such figures.

Another improvement to one of the newer panels....  the "Queen on the Throne" carving seemed to have too much blank space on each side of the carving, so I added these two very simple little horses.  Works much better for my eye.

I think this has turned out to be my favorite panel at this point.

Such a truly masterful work of precision and extreme detail Alexandru. Thanks for sharing your work.

Cheers

Dave

You will get it my friend. Cheers.

Thanks for dropping in again Pete, Greg, Mark,and Patrick.... and all the "likes".

There's still area's to come that intimidate the heck out of me.  I think the real challenge is going to come when I get to the beak and stern. 

Most of those figures will be created using Sculpy....one reason why I just took a shot at the little "busted" lady figure.

All this hull decorating stuff is just practice for those more prominent areas that really define the SOS in my mind. 

Hope I'm able to pull those areas off within reason. 

Getting closer.

Finally managed to stick all the new stuff in place. 

As you can see, very few of the original panel pieces made the cut.  Same goes for the starboard side, which is now very close to being exactly the same as the port side seen here.

Only the three blank panels below the forecastle left to complete the broadside hull carvings.  Haven't decided what will go there, but, we shall come up with something eventually.

For now, I think I will work on a few more gun port lids and possibly rig another cannon or two.

Information overload Ed.... My head just exploded!

However....my son is a serious amateur camera jockey, and might be able to help me decipher your friendly guidance.

As beautiful as your work is Ed, I continue to be almost as impressed with your photography. Every pic is perfectly lighted to clearly show the colors, and fine detail. Very few, including self, are capable of doing the quality of work where we would even dare let the camera capture all of our little freckles and pimples.....

Adding to that, you even have fingernails!

Cheers

Dave

Maybe I am missing something here Nenad. Seems to me like those large screws are such a serious overkill. I have ships that have been sitting in custom cradles for years with nothing but a single dowel securing them.

Having said that, I would think some type of rubber washer fitted snugly into those four holes might be a very simple, and effective solution.

If I could drop over, we would have a few drinks, smoke a few cigarettes, and knock this issue out of the park before you know it.

Then we could have another couple of drinks and smokes for good measure.