ccoyle

Step 22 (cont'd)
 
Over the last few days, I have been replacing some of the already-installed paper parts with their 3D-printed counterparts. It hasn't been a cakewalk -- some of the parts are incredibly tiny. On two separate occasions, I thought I'd even lost a part, only to discover that it was stuck to the oil on a hand or finger, and too delicate to even notice! I also went back and painted over some of the red parts (valve handles, hoses, etc.) that folks in the know said should be gray.
 
Once that was done, it was time to move on to new construction. Next up was the hedgehog mortar. Only the mortar bombs and base are resin, the rest is card. According to what I could find online, the bombs (technically missiles, according to the USN) were either gray or olive drab; I went for olive drab.
 

 
With that installed, work can now commence on the forward gun tub.

Okay, the Messerschmitt is done, so it's back to USS England. As you know, I bought some after-market resin parts from Darius Lipinski. Some of these are parts whose card counterparts are already on the model; some would probably be too difficult to remove from the model without damaging it and, in exchange, their resin replacements would probably not be a noticeable upgrade. Other parts are definitely worth an attempt at replacement. The gun directors are one such part.
 
Here's the card director, after careful removal from the model, and its resin counterpart after painting:
 

 
And the new part in place:
 

 
More cosmetic surgery to follow . . .

Ken, I would really recommend trying a simpler model, unless you have some prior experience. From what I've seen about that kit, it will not be an easy build, especially with the F.2B's odd lower wing arrangement.
 
For a good first model, I can recommend the free Bartel BM 6a available as a download from CardPlane. The nice thing about free models, of course, is that you can booger as many attempts as you need without having to purchase another kit.

Nice work, Craig! I'm crossing my fingers that the skins will fit your improvised framing without too much difficulty.

At this point I'm setting up a temporary rigg so I can test the winches before I go further. I'm waiting for the winches and the submersible brushed motor delivery. So I need the motor before I start working on the keel.
I did some tests with the cannons to give them a good patina. Ammonia vapors worked the best, salt and vinegar not so much.

Now, I’m happy this is done,  now for some submarines 

The kit plans call for structural wire bracing along the sides and top of the fuselage. Since the top can not be seen once the inner skins are in place, decided to include it only on the sides.

The kit instrument panel needed some trimming relocating and cutting to fit.

Fuselage formers were added and now it’s ready for the inner skins.

 

Quite often, actually. Forming rounded parts is one obvious use, but it is also useful for creating neat petal joints (if you haven't done a petal yet, rejoice!) and rounding the open ends of tubes, plus the variety of handle diameters is great for rolling larger diameter tubes, like fuselage sections.

Step 23
 
This step didn't require too much work: searchlights, signal lamps, Carley floats, and a couple of lockers. The next step will include construction of the depth charge racks. 😮
 

I started this build about 2 years ago then took a long long break. I had planned on logging my progress so I took lots of photos but never got around to writing up anything about them. I've just  started back into the build today and I hope to log my progress from here on in. So here's what I've done to date. 






















































































































 

Thanks to EG, got the throttle assembly sorted out and installed. Almost ready to put on the inner skins, then the outer skins will follow. Going to find out soon what building the engine is going to be like. Quite a few small pieces per cylinder. 
 

First things first.  Armament. 
 
According to Howard Chapelle's "History of American Sailing Ships", we likely have sixteen "12-pounder carronades and two long 18's as chase guns".  Chappelle argues the lighter weight of the carronade would have helped with the Neufchatel's renowned speed.
 

 

 

 
Carronade mounts will likely be painted or blued at some point, and rigging will be an event in itself.
 
I really like the brass ordnance, but the elevation elements for the carronades were a poor fit.

A photo of a photo, showing her status in 2002.

I have always been a fan of tall ships, since childhood in fact.  Remember the Navy recruiting poster, sailor holding a kid’s hand in front of Old Ironsides herself?  That poster has stuck with me all these years (although ultimately I joined the Marines instead of the Navy).
 
Anyway, stop me if you’ve heard this one before.  2002 Festival of Sail in San Diego, California.  Toured something like 14 tall ships from around the world.  Walking out of the ferryboat Berkeley I spy the gift shop and some wooden ship model kits, and the Prince de Neufchatel really calls to me. 
 

 
I take her home to our apartment – no “shop”, no tools, no skills.  I proceed to get the false keel and frames together (relatively) square, attach the false deck and some fundamental shaping of the bow and stern blocks, and then – nothing.   Over two decades, I was able to plank the deck with a new exacto knife in hand.  Fitted the plywood bulwarks and transom stern.  A couple of false starts planking the hull occurred, neither of which was pretty to watch.  And so she sat in “ordinary” (storage) for, as I said, 20 years.
 
Then last month, after a marathon “Pirates of the Carribean” watchfest with the kids, I brought the Prince back out.  A little “battle damage” to the bulwarks with busted out gunports, but all in all she aged well.  And now I am committed.

This is something quick to fill in time waiting for the X craft PE to show up, This was a bargain buy. It claims to have new parts (2021) but it feels like an old kit. There is good detail on the main parts but there is some distortion at the edges and quite a bit of flash.

A decent number of parts and decal options. Elastic band tracks unfortunately

The undercarriage is interesting. Three pieces make up the road wheels, suspension and skirt. The assembly is shown at top


The turret was a real dogs dinner and needed a lot of cutting and filing and filling. I haven't followed assembly instructions which has you put the tracks on before adding the side pieces to the hull. Painting looks too difficult if you do that. So the plan is to temporarily add the top pieces to the hull and paint the camouflage then remove the top pieces and put the tracks on. 
The chosen paint scheme will be a Churchill at El Alamein 2 so a dusty finish.
The major parts have had a coat of Mig One Shot Brown primer and look good to continue

Thanks for looking in and I hope everyone has a great weekend
Alan
 
 

Hello Again,
Well, I certainly didn't expect to be building a J Class yacht until yesterday when a friend called and asked if I'd build his Shamrock V for him. He has had the kit collecting dust on a shelf for many years and doesn't anticipate ever getting to it, so asked me if I'd build it for him.
 
I have learned that Amati makes a range of America's Cup yacht kits, but the Shamrock V is one that has been discontinued.
 
Since yesterday I have been poring over the kit. It will prove to be a relatively simple build, but appears to be a high quality kit. The fittings are excellent and the instructions and plans are very clear and easy to understand. (I do have a question about the rigging, but I'll ask that in a separate post under the right topic.)
 
This kit has a pre-cast hull ( a type of resin, I guess) which will cut down on the amount of work needed considerably.
 
I have never added sails to a model before, but I think this is one model that definitely needs them, so I'll be reading through everything I can find on making sails. The fabric provided in the kit is very fine and I don't think it will need to be replaced.
 
Here are a couple of shots of the kit:


So, an unexpected change of pace.
 
David

Yes, this is covered under fair use. Be mindful that there is no standard definition of how much use of a work is considered fair and how much goes beyond the limit; fair use is considered on a case-by-case basis in the event a copyright holder wishes to mount a legal challenge.

Hi Everyone, thank you for dropping by and for the Likes. They are very appreciated. Before starting the deck and furnishings I decided to make a new rudder out of AYCedar using the kit supplied rudder as a template. The pieces of 1/8” x 1/8” strip have holes drilled in them for the pintle pins so that the pintles are integrated into the rudder. The pintle straps will be applied later. The gudgeon straps are made from left over laser board.
 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 
The iron bar pinned to the stem is blackened 3/32” brass strip.
 

 
Now it’s time to make the hatches. The frames are made from 3/16” x 1/16” cherry. I’m roughly using examples found in Chapelle’s book American Fishing Schooners. A piece of 1/16” basswood sheet is used to support the covers and it is supported by 1/8” x 1/8” strips. The covers are glued together, squared, and a line is scored down the center to suggest that there are two halves.
 

 

 

 

 

 

 
The strap that holds down the covers is supposed to have a hinged hasp at one end. Both ends fit over a staple. The bar should be slotted where it fits over the staple but I just drilled two holes so that the staple would hold the bar in place. No glue is used to hold down the bar. The iron bars that run down both sides of the frame are made from Cedar strip sanded down to .5mm . They look thicker but that’s as thin as I could get it. Did not want to try and glue brass strip along there.
 

 



 

 

 

 
Then a bit more planking was applied to the deck and sanded around the cockpit.
 
 
 

 

 

 

 
The cabin and more deck planking will be next. See you next time 
 

My stepfather has been building a partwork HMS Victory for the best part of a decade, and so I finally caved and bought myself a ship to work on too. 
 
I decided to stick with something at least (mostly) injection moulded rather than wood, but it's ended up slightly larger than I expected - baby for scale:

 
It will be built here:


The build will not be wholly as instructed, as there are a couple of modifications I'm planning to the base kit which are quite simple such as the bulwark stanchions and moulding around the deck houses. 

More significantly there are a few aftermarket parts available for the kit - the main one being the replacement of the plastic, three-part deck with a laser cut oak veneer equivalent. The supplied deck has 'positive' timber outlines and so even if I can fix the glaring gaps between the three deck sections and rescribe the grain it's still going to look quite bad. There are also photo-etched names and ornamentation, draft decals and flags which I think I will avail myself of, but the rigging and its level is yet to be determined (see later)

Anyway, on with the build, commencing with purchasing two hardback books about the ship (by C. Longridge) and getting the hull together.
 
The first modification are on the bulwark stanchions - seen here:

 
These should be metal posts rather than fillets, so I have cut away and sanded them flush as below. You can see the fairly awful decking laid in place:


I experimented with fixing the decks together with supporting styrene to get them as level as possible and extra clamps, but even so the joins are very obvious indeed. As such, I'm expecting to use the laminate decking and will work under that assumption:
 

 
Despite enjoying the occasional ferry and reading the Aubrey-Maturin series I've no meaningful knowledge of rigging and only a very minor familiarity with terms (please excuse me - lots of googling going on). I am aware that hismodel provide both rigging plans as well as CNC machined deadeyes, photoetched eyelets and hooks, etc. but frankly I don't know if that's just going to end up being too much for me. I think I would be quite happy with the rigging as described by the Revell kit instructions, except for the fact that the shrouds and their associated deadeyes/lanyards are moulded plastic - it just doesn't look right to me.
 
QUESTIONS ABOUT RIGGING:
Is real rigging a fools errand for a first sailing ship build? I don't mind taking time but I don't want it to be impossible! I'm thinking given the low cost to replace the eyelets and hooks with photoetch/wire as standard. My first thought was to use the Revell hardware placements like-for-like, and then add any additional for the 'real' rigging as I go along (if I take that path). Is that sensible, or should I really know upfront? If I go ahead with replacing the shrouds with thread, how much time is that as a proportion of the time spent doing a) the Revell rigging, or b) real rigging? I want to know if I'm going to commit to that whether I should just go the whole hog, or whether there really is a large gap and I need to think carefully. It is also really not clear to me why I would replace the belay pins, though it seems to happen frequently - I appreciate they are about twice the size they should be, but they are still very small. Does the fact they are plastic play a role?  
QUESTION ABOUT OTHER AFTERMARKET PARTS:
Most build logs seem to replace the plastic railing stanchions with turned brass equivalents - not cheap at all, worthwhile?  
Many thanks for reading, see you all soon.

Hello everyone,
 
I haven't made any updates for a while. 
 
I have made some progress on the Lathem. She is coming along well. I have made quite a few mistakes, but I am learning a lot. As you can see in the pictures, I have also started a new project. This is the Occre Endurance. I have started a build thread for this. Also, I am gearing up for my first scratch build. The French Corvette L'Amarante. Beautiful plans of a beautiful ship. I have also been collecting a lot of books and reading a lot of building threads.
I originally started the Benjamin Latham to see I would like scale wooden ship building. Now look what I've done.🙂 
 
Thanks,
Bill
 



 

Step 23
 
This step didn't require too much work: searchlights, signal lamps, Carley floats, and a couple of lockers. The next step will include construction of the depth charge racks. 😮
 

010 - Preparation for 2nd Planking
After sanding the hull some more this morning I was happy the hull was smooth except for a couple of areas with dips which needed filling.


I used my tried and trusted method for making a suitable filler paste which is a mix of Ronseal multi-purpose natural wood filler, titebond original wood glue and water. I use an approx. 50 / 50 split between the diluted wood filler and titebond. I am unable to take credit for the mixture as @James H described mixing diluted wood filler and titebond in one of his build logs. The photo below shows the ingredients ready to be mixed. 

Once the ingredients have been mixed, I end up with a nice smooth paste.

The filler paste is then pressed into the dip on the hull and is left to dry.

Once the filler paste had dried it is ready to sand smooth. The dip has been filled and the hull looks and feels smooth.

Now that I am happy with the hull, I decided to dry fit the keel, stem and stern rabbet patterns along with the outer bulwark patterns. The leading edge of both front outer bulwark patterns will need a little bit of sanding to get a good fit with the stem post.

After fairing the stern frames, the stern board was glued in place.  The outer stern counter pattern had been soaked in hot water for about 20 minutes and was then clamped in place and will be left to fully dry out before I can glue it in place.

Centurion 
C class Empire Flying Boat. 16” X 11”

Hi, Scott! Nice to see you pop in, even if only to offload some books. That's a good offer -- hopefully you'll have a taker soon.
 
Cheers!