vossy

Looking really good David. You can really see how your adjustments to the frames have pushed her out. It would have looked silly and too sucked in if you hadn't fixed those. Well done.
 
Cheers
 
Chris
 

Hi David, this is progressing nicely. Well done. How do you get the paper off the strips once you have glued it on?
 
Cheers
 
Chris
 

I was able to cut another step from side 2 strips.  The instructions have you carefully cutting the strips, then pasting them onto the thin ply, then carefully cutting them out again on those outlines.  I realized that I only have to be careful the second time, so I did a rough cut of the strips (so they would all fit onto the plywood sheet), and then pasted them on as shown.  Was able to paste some sets of 3-5 strips intact.
 
Took about 15 minutes all in, vs. maybe 90 minutes the other way.  Now I'll cut carefully.
 
Regards,
David

Finished the strip mounting on one side.  It's tough to keep the lines straight when you cut out the strips, even using scissors.  The other issue is that as you cut the long strips, they curl up to clear your hand and the paper tends to separate.  I dealt with this by using small clips on the paper as I cut, but in some cases I had to re-glue them down using PVA.
 
The first picture shows all of the strips mounted.  My modified alignment process worked really well, and having done it this way I am really glad I avoided the two step process with pencil outlining as specified in the instructions.  That would have been really messy.
 
Where there were no portholes to be drilled, I was able to remove the paper before mounting, which was fairly easy.
 
The instructions save porthole drilling for later (until both sides done), but I was concerned that when I flip this over in my foam cradle the friction as I work on the other side would pull off some of the paper (which marks the porthole and hawse hole locations), so I went ahead and drilled the portholes and filed the hawse and scuppers, and then removed the paper.  After some trial and error, I found that the best way to remove the paper is like wallpaper removal, using my steamer continuously along the strip while running the back side of my knife (like a smooth chisel) along the strip.  Second pic shows the strips with portholes drilled & paper off.
 
There is some more finish sanding to be done on these, but I want to be careful, as the strips are very thin.
 
Regards,
David

Vossy
 
google brings up a few pandora kits, one looks to be manufactured in China so check back with the banned manufacturers list.
 
Richmond

Pic 1 shows the horizontal paper strips mounted on the thin plywood.  I used spray adhesive.  They are then cut out for mounting on the hull according to the guides pictured in my previous post.
 
The instructions call for mounting the strips with pins only (there are about 18 on each side), then outlining them in pencil, then removing them to remove the vertical guides, then gluing them on again.
 
I realized that the only reason for that two-step process is to get the vertical guides off the hull, and it occurred to me that I could just pencil mark their position, then remove them, and then mount the horizontal strips with glue in one step.  Pics 2-4 show the marking process, and it should save me a bunch of time.  I also hate pinning things as the pins come loose, or put holes in the wood that have to be filled, so this avoids that.
 
Pic 5 is the first strip I've cut out.  Strong sharp scissors work fine.  I'll post again when I have some strips glued on.
 
Regards,
David

First hull planking completed -- see picture.
 
This was an interesting process with some "learning points" for me.  I decided to buy a sheet sander -- and it really worked well getting the hull planks smooth.  The problem was that it worked TOO well and some of the planks are now very thin.  I think my mistake was using the same grit (120) for the electric sander that I had started to use with my sanding block.  The electric sander is so efficient that a higher grit would have been better for the first sanding -- probably 180.
 
Nevertheless, it came out pretty well overall, and with some help from wood filler and a coat of varnish, it's done.  Now on to second planking.  I'm going to have to be careful when I use pins to align the second planking to make sure I'm going into thick enough planks.
 
Regards,
David

Hey Steve, interesting build. Can you post a link to where you bought this model?
 
Cheers
 
Chris
 

Michael,
It's the nature of the rivers involved.  They've tamed a bit by the dams but in the past, they moved.   One earthquake (and memory fails me as to the year), south of Saint Louis, the Mississippi moved something like 10 or 20 miles east.  The uncontrolled flooding in past also moved the river a lot.  Fascinating history of the Mississippi, lower Missouri and lower Ohio rivers.

The wheels are mostly done. Assembling the three rings into a coherent, well-aligned whole was extremely difficult. It was made worse by the fact that I wasn't as precise as I thought in keeping all three built to the same pattern; even very slight misalignments of the spokes led to difficult problems.
 
First, I made spacers to hold the rings the proper distance apart, and spent lots of time spinning and testing the rings to find the best alignment.

Some spokes needed filing or filling to get the buckets (the paddle planks) reasonably aligned. These changes looked terrible as I made them but they really fade into the background with painting and with the complexity of the wheel as a whole. Plus, I made a point of not modifying the outer ring, the only one that's really visible.

As previously discussed, I built the port wheel at about 40% completion as everything above that will be invisible. Here are four pictures of the completed 1.4 wheels test-installed on the model.




I think they look pretty good for scratchbuilt wheels, and am very, VERY glad to be past this portion of the project. I want to do some more weathering and I haven't yet decided how to install or simulate all the iron bolts that hold each bucket to each spoke. More on that later. Thanks for reading!

Thank you guys for the replies, all are very much appreciated (just got back from work..)
 
OK, I plan to work on the Alert cutter first, followed by a mid-18th century brig, heavy frigate ( I have three frigates in mind altogether) and then a very nice looking 5th rate. That is as far as I can go at the moment. I have found a laser cutting company in the UK, and have plenty of viable options for the PE work. Will probably end up selling my car to invest further if the first model does OK. Not sure how to go about getting the 'off the shelf' fittings like blocks, rigging, ladders etc. yet...
 
The models with gun ports will have the new way of incorporating the gun port frames into the hull, like Victory and Bellona - I was never 100% happy with the pre cut gun port patterns as you only have to get one side slightly off and nothing will line up properly, plus you then have to build up the inner edges to simulate the correct thickness of each port. I first did the pre-cut patterns for gun ports on the Cruiser 20 years ago!
 
It will add cost to the kits, as there is a lot more laser cutting and a lot more parts involved, but at least I know that every kit will have their gun ports always in their correct positions.
 
About the Chinese and copying stuff, not much I can do about that, except not sell anything to them!
 
Hollowneck, I received your message, thank you, I will have a good read of that tomorrow (or later today), when I am less tired.
 
Cheers,
 
Chris

I would love to see an out of this world high end Bounty or Endeavour, or a ship that doesn't get much airplay, the Pandora.
 
Cheers
 
Chris
 

I would love to see an out of this world high end Bounty or Endeavour, or a ship that doesn't get much airplay, the Pandora.
 
Cheers
 
Chris
 

The center of the Titanic's hull is tub-shaped, so the center frames make a sharp turn from the side to the bottom (Pic 1).  The planks at 7mm wide would make bad wraparound on those frames (Pic 2).
 
The obvious answer was to cut the planks lengthwise, but I was concerned that those cuts wouldn't be even (too long for my planking vise) and therefore wouldn't butt well.  The solution was to split them partway with my knife (Pic 3) -- since only a part of one plank goes over the center frames, I could keep the rest unsplit.  That meant that I could mount them with the split edges mated and get a good curve, as shown in Pic 4.
 
Regards,
David

Looking really good David. You can really see how your adjustments to the frames have pushed her out. It would have looked silly and too sucked in if you hadn't fixed those. Well done.
 
Cheers
 
Chris
 

Finished the main deck (and instruction sheet 1)
No real problems.
Now onto the boiler deck.

Looking really good David. You can really see how your adjustments to the frames have pushed her out. It would have looked silly and too sucked in if you hadn't fixed those. Well done.
 
Cheers
 
Chris
 

Progress on first layer planking. 
 
For those of you who read the earlier posts on adjusting the shape of the bow frames:  in the second pic, you will see how the shape of the bow is coming out.  On the Amati pics of the model, the bow narrows sharply just where you see the blue tape on mine.  As you can see, mine with the adjusted frames begins narrowing a bit further forward, and the narrowing slope is more even.
 
Regards,
David

the rudders were trimmed so they would fit closer to the hull.   I still need to give them a coat or two of clear lacquer.........I failed to snap a picture of them in place.   the signage is up........the Tumblin' Dice has it's name!  


the paddle wheel is in place too.........the connecting rods aren't in place yet though.   I wanted to give the gold plenty of time to dry.......it's one of the worst colors in relation to drying time.   any metallic is,  in fact....in some cases,  I'll give it a coat of lacquer,  so it will attain a hard finish.

I made sure that the other connecting arm was opposite of the other......

for most of the time being,  the model remained in the dry fit condition.........stacked up as you last saw it.   I was surprised to find that the admiral hadn't seen it........I said "really!?!?!?!"  so,  to remedy the situation,  I set the model back up for her to see.  as mentioned,  she never even noticed that I used different decals for the signage.

I do believe it looks like I made some progress       I am pleased!   I'll see what I can come up with in the next update.   

I'm feel'in much better today.......the admiral thinks so too..........I'm eat'in everything in the house!      .......and I've been busy!  even with all the distractions,  I've managed to amass quite an update for ya folks!  it all started with having to recut the shaft for the paddle wheel......darned if I knew where it went.  ....and then I thought........is that the piece of dowel that the wheel frames are drying on?!?!  no matter......I have plenty of dowel    one of the connector arms was cemented on the freshly cut shaft

still thinking of what to use the connect the two arms together........while I was pondering the matter,  all of the paddle blades were painted.

the smaller holes were all drilled out to 5/64 ths.........I used a brass rod to fit them......then cut and filed to length.


the longer arms were in the paint booth being painted flat black.  they were brought to the table and drilled out as well.

off to the paint booth went the shaft and the other connecting arm.  the signage was another aspect that was in the works.   these were painted white and later sanded around the edges.   I had some darker wood,  a 1/16 x 1/16 strip.......I think it's walnut........I started to build the frame around them.

the outer sides of the longer arms is indented...........I painted inside the indention with flat red,  and detailed them with gold

yea.......nice imperfection.....huh?!?!?!  oh well.....it's metal and I can't do anything about it.   turning back to the signage,  the frame was trimmed and sanded .......then I went over it with a clear lacquer.   Murphy had to get his dig in......there was some residual red paint still in the brush.......I'm sure you can guess the rest      even though the damage was minor,  they had to be repainted.   with a CLEAN brush  they were repainted.........and when they were dry,  the decal was applied.   sorry to say.......it wasn't the decal that everyone chose......ohhhh no........Murphy I guess got miffed because I thwarted his plans,  and decided to ruin one of the chosen decals........stain or some spatter of paint....not sure.   they still look good......I used the decals that didn't have the border around the dice.

the admiral saw them later.......she didn't even notice the difference    the bow fender had been sanded........I cemented it in place on the bow.

I think I'll better be able to gauge the fairlead holes with it in place.   with everything pretty much dry,  the paddle wheel was assembled.   the paddle boards cemented in place with CA {just the outside frames},  and then touched up.  I still need to touch up the black.......forgot to do that before assembly.


 
 

First layer hull planking started.  So far this has gone pretty smoothly.  At the stern, the planks need to be twisted with the steamer, but no side bending needed so far.  I also had to put some stealers in at the stern just below the initial plank to align things between the laser cut sides and the initial plank, but they will sand/fill out.
 
Regards,
David

Initial bow and stern strips, and initial planking strip, in place.  See pic below.
 
I am posting this because I caught something at the last minute that the instructions aren't clear on, and that would have given me real problems later.
 
The way the instructions read, you mount two stern laser cut strips first, and then butt the long planking strip up against the end of the second one.  There are no instructions for alignment of the end of the second stern strip, so I just eyeballed the second one to look level with the horizontal hull structure.
 
After I had glued almost all of the long strip, I began to worry about alignment with the deck above, so looked forward in the instructions, and sure enough, the distance is critical (16mm exactly from top of strip to bottom of deck), in order to fit a photo-etched piece in.  What actually governs that distance is a set of very small notches in the frames, but they are easy to miss and I did.
 
So I pulled up the long strip (fortunately the glue hadn't completely cured), and repositioned it exactly 16mm below, using the notches I could find after the rip-up, and a ruler for the rest.
 
The way it should be done is to use a planking strip, dry-fitted under the notches, as the master guide, and align the stern strip end with that, and then finish out to the bow.  I'll do that on the second side.
 
There is no mention of the notches in the instructions, but they are obviously critical, so that's a big miss in the instructions.
 
Regards,
David

Looks great David. Those deck planks must be quite narrow? What length are you making them?
 
Cheers
 
Chris
 

I buy all my kits from Cornwall. I got my Sergal Mississippi Riverboat from them. Here in Australia that kit would have cost me about $1200 AUD when I bought it in mid 2017. I got it from CMB, delivered in 4 days to my door, for a little under $700 AUD. Same with my latest kit from there, Model Shipways Chaperon. Nearly half price. Every kit I have got from them comes extremely well packaged and arrives in under a week from half way around the world. In all honesty, I would probably never buy a kit from any where else. 100% recommend them!
 
Cheers
 
Chris
 

I only have the 1 Iwata airbrush currently, so I'm either stuck painting a big hull with an airbrush that's too small or turning to rattlecans for salvation; this time I stuck with the airbrush and while it took forever I'm happy with the results. 
 
The family and I were out wandering the 4 corners region of the American Southwest this past week:
 

 

 
...so I didn't have time to do a lot on Bissy, besides make a mess to clean up later:
 

 

 

 

 

 
Fellow Bismarck fans might notice that I've modified the spray shields in front of the three big vents on the superstructure to reflect Bissy's earlier configuration. I've also put in the PE pieces I need to integrate into the superstructure in a (hopefully) seamless fashion before I go nuts with tiny PE details. 
 
Funny thing is, I'm still only on step #3 in the instruction booklet!
 

 
Work continues on! Still on good terms with my build and not sick of it yet.