Landlubber Mike

Unicorn underway again......again...

You raised an earlier question about your build and painting sequence...I prefer to assemble the hull and then smooth out the join line before painting. This requires masking later on, but it's easy to do provided you use a good quality tape. Sometimes I assemble the deck and hull as well. Once you get the hang of the airbrush, it's not hard to paint the deck without spoiling the hull paint on the sides of the hull, but mask as required if you need to.
I don't like painting the hull in separate pieces then assembling because it's more difficult to keep from showing where it was cemented together than it is to mask it. In the end, do whatever makes you feel the most comfortable in doing it. After all, everything is a learning experience anyway no matter who we are.

Moving along to the artillery for a change, I first snipped the barrels of one of the ILK Hood's main guns and drilled a 1.1mm hole in the end of each blast-bag. This was tricky because I was holding the stump between finger and thumb. But it worked. I used ILK's parts as practice before daring to approach those of FL's. Flyhawk's barrels and blast bags are a good bit smaller than ILK's but the pin on the brass barrel is only 0,6mm in diameter. The plastic stumps are just too small to hold with fingers, so I glued them into the gun housing, carefully filed the ends parallel and drilled 0,5mm holes in each. I drilled smaller than was needed so I could use the drill to open up the hole and centre it. I still managed to get the starboard barrel a bit off-centre which annoyed me greatly. 😠 As can be seen in the 1st pic, I used a mini vice to hold the turret and a wooden coffee stirrer to get both barrels absolutely parallel - worked a treat. I had also clamped the gun housings in the vice while drilling, which made things much easier.
The 2nd pic shows how different in size FL's turret and barrels are compared with FL's - both are (supposedly) 1/700. 🤥
 

 

Nice job Greg!  The figures really bring it to life!

Nice job Greg!  The figures really bring it to life!

Pretty much done, I’ll look at it with fresh eyes tomorrow 

Thanks, Mike.  My Leavitt book on the Morgan finally arrived today.  Great recommendation!
 

At 1/700, I wouldn't bother deburring.  Any tiny bits are likely not going to be seen, and I found you run a risk of ruining the part - or worse yet, losing it if it happens to ping off somewhere.  On my current 1/350 build, I'll spend some time deburring but only for larger, more robust pieces.
 
The spiders take time but really aren't too difficult.  Pre-bend the legs down, then test fit.  Rinse and repeat.  Just make sure that if the funnel is not symmetrical, that you have the spider set up the correct way.  Once you get the legs close to final fit, you can start gluing one end, and then adjust the legs as you glue the others.  This is one area where having very thin brass is an advantage.
 
 

Painting continues…
 This week has been a bit of a marathon in the paint shop.  Here are those Copper, Leather and Black parts all painted up. I added some gold/brass to the buckles on the "leather" straps (bottom left in photo). Hard to see in the photo, but the wicks of all the lamps are also painted black. The engraving on the shield was also painted black. This was achieved by painting the entire shield face, and then wiping over very lightly with thinners to leave only the engraving painted.
 

 
Next up was some parts that were partly Brass and partly Black:
 

 
And here they are all painted up:
 

 
Next up some all-Brass parts (some bits are deliberately unpainted). Note also the gauge face on the boiler gauge:
 

 
Then some miscellaneous Red parts:
 

 
And while I had the red paint out, here are the parts for the Brake Assembly:
 

 
And finally, the Steam Regulator and Steam Whistle. In this photo the four hub caps are at the bottom left. Although there are cast parts for these, they are also provided as machined brass parts. I simply polished these and then gave them a gloss clear coat to stop them from tarnishing. The colour of the painted “polished brass” is a pretty fair match for the actual polished brass.
 

 
I was about to paint the Axle Limit Chains, but when I looked at the chain provided in the kit, I was disappointed to see that it is nowhere near the correct scale. Here is a picture of the kit-provided chain overlayed on the 1:1 scale drawings:
 

 
I have found what I think will be a suitable replacement chain and have ordered that. Should be here in a week or so.
Coal Buckets…
 Next task was to make up the Coal Buckets. These are provided as photo-etched brass:
 

 
And here they are after bending and forming:
 

 
And after painting:
 

 
That completes the painting of all the metal components (apart from the Chain). With that mammoth task behind me, it was time to tackle the construction of the Wheels.
Wheel construction
 The wheels are made up from some laser cut  ¼” plywood rims, some laser cut basswood spokes, and some machined hubs.
 
The first task is to lightly sand the front and back faces of the plywood and basswood carrier sheets to remove the excess char. Then the back face of the Rims are marked with a reference mark, and the front face of the spokes similarly marked. The reason for this is that because the laser cuts at a very slight angle, by mating the front side of the spokes with the back side of the rims, the angles will mesh tightly.
 

 
 
 With that done, the parts for one wheel at a time are removed from the carrier sheet and all sides cleaned of excess laser char, being careful not to remove the index marks.
 

 
The instructions then say to lay the rim over the provided template to mark the position of the centre of the spokes. It was at this point that I realised that the templates had been printed incorrectly and were not properly to scale. Easily fixed – I scanned the template into my computer and reprinted at 94% scale and voila!
 

 
The spokes are then assembled into the machined hub. This is a clever design and makes building the wheels really easy. At this stage they are just a push fit. Note the reference lines on the spokes near the hub.
 

 
The Rim is then added to the assembly, taking care to align the reference marks to the spokes, providing nice and even spacing. Once satisfied with the arrangement, thin CA is applied to the spokes, rims and hub and wicked into all of the joints. Here’s one of the front wheels:
 

 
And now with one of the rear wheels also completed:
 

 
Two more wheels to assemble to this stage, and then the fun begins with shaping both the spokes and the rims. Stay tuned…
 

Some nice chains and anchors, and the clean up crew 

Primarily because they are so tiny and tedious, put off building and painting the ship guns until last. Mains and secondaries won’t be bad but the other AA guns are a different story.
 

This ship has more tiny wood deck pieces than any other model I have built to date, but it all comes together in the end in a way that’s visually pleasing.
I knew it would probably happen, but managed to inadvertently crush a few pieces of railing here and there while disassembling and reassembling the superstructure pieces. Straightened them as best I could.
 

 
 

At 1/700, I wouldn't bother deburring.  Any tiny bits are likely not going to be seen, and I found you run a risk of ruining the part - or worse yet, losing it if it happens to ping off somewhere.  On my current 1/350 build, I'll spend some time deburring but only for larger, more robust pieces.
 
The spiders take time but really aren't too difficult.  Pre-bend the legs down, then test fit.  Rinse and repeat.  Just make sure that if the funnel is not symmetrical, that you have the spider set up the correct way.  Once you get the legs close to final fit, you can start gluing one end, and then adjust the legs as you glue the others.  This is one area where having very thin brass is an advantage.
 
 

They aren’t cheap, but after trying out many tweezers, I tried Dumont tweezers which are very good.  I believe I first heard about them when reading a book on miniature ship model building.
 
Here is a picture of the tips of two that I use the most.  Very sharp points!
 

WASA (cafmodel.com)
 
i do hope this comes to something Please @cafmodel

Looking fantastic Biggles!  Not sure if you're aware of this, but I saw that NeOmega Resin makes a really sweet catapult for the 1/48 Hurricane.  I have their catapult for an upcoming Walrus build, but this one looks really tempting:
 
 
https://www.neomega-resin.com/cam-ship-hurricat-catapult-section-997-p.asp
 

   

Thanks OC
I reshot the photos inside my white photo box. Didn’t like the way they came out inside the black box.
 

Laid some paint on the superstructure then a little post shading for modulation. Will disassemble the superstructure pieces then work next on the wood deck pieces, before final assembly of the deck component parts. There are additional sections of railing that will go down after the decks are completed.
 

More added then another dry fit. Getting ever closer to paint. Slow but sure.
 

Interesting picture. I did not realize that they had experimented with naval helicopter deployment early enough to have used the Langley as the platform.
 
As this picture had to be taken in 1935 (+-) be3fore the deck was cut down I suspect that the aircraft was not a helicopter but an Auto Gyro. Very similar, but an Auto Gyro cannot hover and needs forward speed to take off. Still interesting to see that the concept was being looked at at that time.

I decided to skip the blocks in the kit and order some from Syren.   They are much more realistic and have to be assembled.
In my case I ordered double blocks.  They come with five sheets that must be glued together to form six full double blocks.    Instructions makes several references to carefully align the five sheets that form each block before glueing.    In reality the five sheets all go together very easily and align perfectly.   In fact they aligned so easily, I thought I was not doing it correctly.    As I played with the sheets trying to see if there was some other way of lining them up,  I realized the pieces on these sheets break off very easily - Ask me how I know that ....  🙂
 
Four of the six blocks had all the pieces and glued together nicely.   The other two blocks I had to piece together to glue.  The picture below does not show how really small some of the pieces on the first and last sheet (shown below) really are.   So small, just the friction of the tweezers picking them up would make them stick to the tweezers.    Save yourself a lot of time and grief and treat the sheets gently....  Gluing the blocks together from the sheets is much easier than having to build them by hand.
 

 
Once the blocks dry, they can easily be broken out of the sheets, sanded and ready for stain.    As with most things, the more you do them the better you get at it.    While the finished blocks below look better than the stock ones, they could be better.   Lack of skill on my part.   My next set of blocks will be better
 

 
At this point the hull has it's final paint coat and all machinery has been completed.    All the remains is to assemble them.
 
Starting in the bow with the Howitzer..
 
For raising/lowering the  canon, the instructions called to wrap a 1/16 tube with thread to simulate screw threads.   Instead I opted to just us an actual screw.  Cut off the head to leave just the thread.  To me it just looks more like screw thread.  In hindsight, the hand crank (to turn the screw) probably should have been left brass or maybe painted silver to more stand out.   As it is (black), it is kind of hard to see or really know what it is.
 
One challenge was creating the two large wing nuts used to anchor the canon.   Instructions call to cut a slit in the 3/32 tubing and insert the wing.   Initially I was going to skip that part as I felt, no way was I going to be able to cut a slit in a 3/32 tube.    But I gave it a shot and with a razor saw was actually able to make the slit.   Not sure it did the very find teeth on the saw much good, but I was able to cut the slot and form the wing nuts.
 
Similar issue when creating the three attach points for the canon.   Here a hole must be drilled through the 3/32 tubing and a pin inserted.   With a vise and a steady hand the hole was drilled.   When drilling the hole, once you have gone through the first layer of tube, stop and re-align the bit to insure you will be drilling directly through the other side of the tube.  If not, it is easy to get out of align when the drill comes out the other side of the tube.   Again - ask me how I know that   🙂
 
In the below picture you can see four of the six blocks in action - used to move the canon back and forth on the deck.   The hooks were just made out of eyelets and the blocks were stropped with very fine line.    As you can see,,,, my stropping skills need a lot of improvement.
 

 
Below shows those canon lines coming from the blocks to a couple cleats below the deck.   Whatever army guy ordered the line for those blocks had no clue really went overboard.   Those lines probably should go over the deck by maybe 6 feet or so...   As you can see there is probably about 20 feet of line from the blocks coiled on those two cleats .     A little more line than needed 🙂
 
 

 
Here are a few more pictures of the front section,,,
 

 

 

 

 
 
Moving to the mid-section of the boat we have the machinery.   Not really much here.  Since the machinery has been assembled, all that remains is to insert them into the hull.    I will say,,, in the philosophy of "do as I say and not as I do"....  I did have some (shall we say) "fun" with the machinery.
In my case I wanted all the piping that was intended to go through the deck, to actually go through the deck.   To me that just looked better then having the pipes just stop at the deck.    
 
Thinking I had a good idea, I cut the vertical pipes (the one that were to go through the deck), longer than need be and glue them into the upper pipe.   My thought was that then I could then just hold the piece machinery where it was supposed to go, mark the deck, drill the hole, and then lower the machinery and the pipe would go into the deck.  In reality it did not work out so well.   Holding the piece of machinery, it is very difficult to mark the exact spot in the deck for the pipe.    Off by the tiniest bit and the machinery will be out of place.    Put the machinery in the correct spot, and if the hole is not exact, the pipe is not vertical.   Even if the pipe is only out of vertical by a tiny about, it is real obvious - Again,,, ask me how I know this.   
 
It took me way more time trying to get the machinery and pipes straight than I am sure it was supposed to.   I think a better approach would have been to put the machinery in place and then measure/cut and glued in the vertical pipes.

 

 
 
In the case of the rudder, I wanted a curved rudder.   Using the two rudder pieces supplied I was able to make a curved rudder, but to me it was just too skinny.    Perhaps it was do again to lack of skill on the builder (me)...
 
Using my skinny rudder has a template I used a couple pieces of spare wood and made a thicker rudder.   To me it looked better,,, some may disagree.
 

 
 

 

 
 
In regards to the torpedo I had a few cleats left over, so rather than take several lines to one cleat I dedicated a cleat to each line.   This time the army guy in charge of lines got it a little more accurate (or at least he thinks so).
 
The forward and aft lines and firing pin lines need to have extra line in order to be able to launch and trigger the torpedo.   Those three lines go to their respective cleats and the remaining line is coiled on the bench.  The torpedo release pin line is only used to release the pin, so not a lot of extra line would be required.  As such this line goes around a cleat with the remainder just hanging in the boat
 

 
 
At this point "I am calling it",,,,,  To me I am done..... Below are a couple more pictures,,
 

 

 
And it her final home....  
 

 

I built a small stand to hold the ship while working on it.  It certainly makes things easier.  

For this update I added a dolphin striker to the bowsprit, painted the top half of the hull, added a bit of gold from a Hershey’s chocolate wrapper to the tip of the knee (I had to eat quite a bit of chocolate to ensure I got that part just right.  In fact, I may need to rework it some more).  I will apply copper tape to the bottom half of the hull later.
 
Next, I started work on the deck fittings.  From left to right in the 2nd pic are the windlass and anchor chains, companionway, try house, hatch, skylight, and hurricane house.  I was working on the shelter/boat bearer but decided I needed to wait.  I’ve got to build out the mizzen mast first since the base of the mast will need room to clear the shelter when it is laid over to the stern. 
 
It doesn’t look like a lot of stuff, but the deck space is filling up fast.  I don’t want to overcrowd the deck but I also want to include as many of the distinctive Morgan items as possible.
 

I got a set used for micro electronic repairs.
I also got a few of cheaper ones which I sharpened with dremel tool and turned equally good to the pro set
Frequently sharpening of twizzers, pliers and other tools  removes glue, paint and keeps them very effective no matter how they cost.

They aren’t cheap, but after trying out many tweezers, I tried Dumont tweezers which are very good.  I believe I first heard about them when reading a book on miniature ship model building.
 
Here is a picture of the tips of two that I use the most.  Very sharp points!