hof00

If you need some practice cleaning up flash, this is the kit for you. Lots and lots of flash, stray ejector pins, etc., but it's a vintage kit so that's to be expected.
 

Hi all I have done some of the planking I've cut the planks at 70mm which I think in this equates to 10 yards at this scale (although the planking supplied is I think is over scale at about 12"wide ) I'm not going to add the nail heads as I've seen on the printed decks available in this scale as I dont believe a nail with a head diameter of 6 mm would be visible at this scale at.
The planking is very slow going but quite satisfying.

I'm doing this ship differently than the other two rigged ships I've built.  On those, I mounted all the yards on all the masts before doing any of the standing rigging.
 
On this one, in addition to the shrouds on the foremast, I've decided to do the foremast stays as well, and then complete mounting the yards.   I'm concerned that if I don't tension the foremast now, I'll have problems in two areas:  (i) The remaining yards, which have only the yard lifts for vertical support, might move a bit up or down as the mast is tensioned by the stays, and (ii) I don't want any "wrinkles" in the ratlines due to slight shifting of the shrouds.
 
So finish foremast stays and bowsprit stays, then hang the remaining foremast yards, and then do the foremast ratlines.  Then move on to the main in the same way.  We'll see how that works.  
 
Pictures of progress to date on the foremast are below.
 
Regards,
David

Foremast shrouds now rigged.  
 
Regards,
David

This was a last minute choice in what will be 2 ships. This is the 1/400 Academy Titanic kit. I purchased laser cut wood decks, PE Deck Chairs, PE Hand Rails.

Hi all whilst waiting for my planking to come I decided to start on some of the many other things in this kit, here is a start on one of the cabins.
It's like a kit in its self, I have a feeling I'm going to love this kit, for the calking between the planks I used a lead pencil and just ran it along the edges of the planks.

Butterfly Keel and stringers, to keep the shape I had to use planking pins to hold the in place, then removed when set.

I've built the lowest yard on the foremast -- pictures attached.
 
The brass swivel fitting gives about a 90 degree swing to this yard, which I think could spell trouble while I'm building, so my next move will be to put up the foremast shrouds to give some side support to the yard.   The upper shrouds are already rigged so they will support the next yard up, and then the ones above have wooden fittings which will be stiffer.  I was originally reluctant to fix the masts too soon as I thought I might want to remove them to mount these lower yards with brass swivels, but now that I've done it it's actually easier with them fitted on the ship.
 
The swivel assembly on the yard is difficult and a bit fragile -- took a couple of tries to get it right.
 
Regards,
David

Its amazing how a bit of bling can really make it look like your making progress

So instead of using the card stock image for the exterior of the pilot house and main cabin I decided to drive myself nuts and use the smallest of wood possible...
i happen to think it looks so much better.


 
I also installed the remainder of the rub rails.  

Some promotions lol and here’s a picture of a visitor from my backyard today!

Pictures below of the lifeboats and the anchor.  The hull is now complete (with the exception of the lifeboat parrels, which the manual says leave until later).  So it's on to the masts now.
 
Regards,
David

Re my comments above about drilling holes under the channels for the deadeyes, I used the right size (short) drill on an angle and then angled in the bottom of the chain plate.  Worked OK, but some distortion of the rods that I couldn't fix.  I did that on the side that won't be visible.
 
Then I just bit the bullet and used a 1/16 inch drill straight down, which gave a hole a bit too large, but since I was reinforcing these by bending the other wire under the channel, worked fine.  A picture of that below.
 
Regards,
David

After washing with water and soap, a first layer is painted.

further built.

Further painting is done by cannon per cannon.
First the Pak. Dry brushing with light gray, and further applying colors.

(Not ready yet)
Next to a figure, an immense anti-tank cannon.
Hard to handle
Hard to camouflage
But probably very effective, when a tank was hit ...

Thanks for following
 

made a little headway on the lighthouse...........getting into the fun stuff now.   setting up the screw pile,  the support pillars were cemented into place.

it's a tiny bit off.........and no matter where I place the line level,  it sends it of in another direction.   I need to support it from the bottom.   I didn't want to cut those pieces of supplied wood......I could probably use them in some other way.   since I have plenty of dowel,  I cut six of them to the length of the center support.   they were arranged on a spare piece of plywood.

with the bottom section in place on the new jig,  it leveled out the deck nicely.

these will all get cemented into place.   with that done,  it's time for the truss cables.   I'll be honest..........they are a pain in the tookus!   I'd better get the inner ones done first  

Thinned my bulwarks.  Wasn’t too bad with the Dremel I have.  I did 1/16”, couldn’t imagine doing 1/32” as the kit says would be correct scale.  

I've now pretty much finished all the deck structures and fittings.  Pictures here of all that.
 
Some comments on sequence.  I'm not exactly sure why, but I chose to go ahead and do the stern deadeyes early, which was a relief when I installed the curved stern railing.  I'm not sure I'd have been able to avoid mangling it if I'd done them in the manual sequence, which is during the rigging stage.
 
Speaking of those, the manual and drawings show a way to create the chain plate from wire, and then fix it to the deck below the deadeyes, which is conceptually fine for those in the middle of the hull if you have a 3 inch long .75mm drill bit -- mine are shorter, and I'm not sure they exist.  I may still do it by drilling on an angle.  It still looks like a flimsy fixing for the tension on the deadeyes, so I'm going to reinforce them to the bottom of the channel. 
 
But there's no clear way shown to attach the ones on the stern that you see here -- so I improvised by creating a sort of wire "plug" on the deadeye and gluing that into the hole.  I'll do the ones on either side of the hull next, as I won't want to try to maneuver those into place with masts and yards up (which is the way the manual would have you do it).
 
The other improvisation is the small front railing between the ladders.  I lost one of the stanchions on the floor somewhere, and of course Mantua provides no spares.  So I had to fashion the two rear stanchions out of wire.
 
Before I get to the rigging, I need to build the lifeboats and mount them, which is the next step.
 
Regards,
David
 
 

STILL WAITING for my Locomotive kit  , I decided to enhance the wagon with a load of logs. I downloaded some pictures of real logs and modified the sizes in Paint.net to suit the wagon. These took me quite a while to make, but it's filled in the time  :


 
I made them in four size diameters :


 
To save on paper and ink I only made the middle logs 20mm long :



 
I also made up some lashing chains and tensioners :




 
Danny

Hello again! I returned back to the bomb ketch after a lot of consideration, to try and add sails. It was a difficult process, but I settled in a method. If it is done in a bigger ship, it will look better and will be easier, but tried it with it regardless. The sails are made out of silk, I tried to strengthened the edges with thread, and generally tried to make them attached to the clue lines, at least the mainsail. 
All the sails are furled since the yards are lowered in the first place. Even with silk, they cloth is very oversized in this tiny scale, so the sails dont have their actual original outline and size, but are actually reduced in surface area and cut down before folded, so their volume won't look off-scale.
In any case, the return to the Bomb Ketch was worth it, I think. I'll try to update and add other threads with my current builds as well. 

It was a long hiatus, but last weekend was very productive and the model is ready! I thank everyone who followed it! I learned a lot from it, on to the next! 

The choice to make proper deadeyes proved very frustrating. Barely 1.5mm across and they take a lot of time. On the sovereign a lot of things will move much faster even though it a lot bigger. Perhaps not the best looking from point blank distance, just a few centimetres away they do the trick, so that will do. 
The shroud planks were generally a mistake that I tried to fix now, these plastic additions will be painted in the end...


 

Anchors from the front and general views.  Onward to finish the shrouds. 

I finished and mounted the rudder, and applied the bow and stern decorations.  Pictures below.
 
The drawing shows the white rubbing strakes running straight to the figurehead at the bow, and the brass decorations on that same line without the bend you see here.  While the rubbing strakes would "frame" the top decoration, I'm not sure what the bottom of the lower one would look like.  In any event, as I mentioned above, I had missed that in the drawings and terminated the strakes at the end of the hull.  So I extended them and applied the decorations as you see here.
 
Also as noted in my earlier post, the space between the strakes at the stern was not wide enough for the stern decorations, so I had to file them down to fit.  That seems to have worked out OK.
 
Regards,
David