JeffT

Something I've been thinking about also. Great job!

Agreed! I have a plan and we'll see how it goes.

Video 9 is complete. This structure was a bit more challenging than the first one. I have it separated into 3 sections. I feel like it will be a bit troublesome to try and glue this thing down to the deck as one piece. There are a few areas I still need to touch up with white paint yet. Reality is that you can't see much of this other than the extreme right area of the picture below. Moving on to video 10, there are a few more smaller structures to build for the orlop deck. The deck is glued into the model in this video. I'm not ready to do that yet. There are a couple things I still need to do in the hold first. One is the lighting and the other are the flour sacks. Once I finish these last few structures then I'll head back to that. One thing I've done in preparation for the lighting is acquired a smaller soldering iron more suited to the fine soldering needed and some finer solder. I'll practice the soldering a bit on some spare led diodes that I have before tackling that monster. For the flour sacks, I picked up some resin printed sand bags that I think will work. They are a bit smaller than those the kit has you make and seem more to scale to me. I really don't know for sure what size flour sacks were loaded on ships in those days though.

I should add that I bend the parts before blackening.

I appreciate your view. Its really situational for me, Some I paint, some i blacken. I painted the smaller parts, hinges and door latches. One of the issues I run into is the paint flaking off from parts when there is a need to bend the part as with the windows. The primer stays on nicely but the paint layer wants to flake off when I bend the part. With the blackener, I first soak the parts in alcohol for a little while. Then I treat in the blackening agent twice, cleaning in between the two treatments. no issues at all with the color coming off after that.

Video 8 is complete. I ended up scrapping the brass black as it was just too messy. I tried a couple of different ones including the Art Lat and AK versions. Both of these worked very well but I leaned toward the Art Lat version as my preference as it was the easiest to work with and produced very little residue. And here is the completed structure. I really struggled with the hinges and door latches as they are very small. It was very difficult for me to see them and so there are a few not well placed. The door latches were so small that I couldn't clearly see how much of the part was the actual part versus the photoetch sheet attaching points. Thankfully most of this will not be seen at all. On to video 9.

Not at all. I'm currently trying to learn the software watching videos on youtube. I agree with you. I think that 3D printed parts have a place in ship modeling. I prefer the 3D printed cannons and boats. They look great and the level of detail is very nice.

Great news. I never thought I'd see the day.

Update. With video 7 on hold, I'm continuing work on the orlop deck structures. Finished the rear section assembly. I decided to keep it separated into two sections until its time to glue it into place on the deck. Just getting started on the windows and doors. I expect this to take a little time because I'm only doing one window/door at a time to avoid mixing the parts up. Which means I remove the part from the photoetch sprue, clean it, blacken it, and then glue it in. This photoetch is very thin so a lot of care is needed as well. I'm using Brass Black to blacken the parts. When it comes to filling and painting, I'm focusing most of my attention on the areas that are most likely to be seen in the finished model. I can see some spots in my photos that some need some smoothing out though.

Another quick update. My first attempt to wire two bulbs failed. Its not so easy. The first problem I had is that the groove cut into the beam as shown in the AL video is way to small to support two bulbs and four wires. The groove needs to be much deeper and wider. My soldering attempts weren't too great either. To be honest, at this point I'm considering not doing the lighting at all. Its a lot of effort to go through for something I might turn on one time. Its a cool feature though. I don't really know what the end game is either. Where are these wires going? where will the power supplies be placed? There are two of those, each holding two AAA batteries. There are also 5 switches that need to go somewhere. Quite frankly, I don't really want to search through 80 videos to find out either. I really don't like the idea of drilling massive holes in the frames either. They are already pretty fragile as it is. You can see what I mean in my previous post. I think something like the picture below would work. I drilled a hole down through the beam and then the wire can be routed over the planking or through it for that matter. The amount of wire visible in that case would be minimal and can be painted as well to help conceal it. Keep in mind that this is the closed side of the ship. While I think about whether I will do this or not, I'm pressing on with the deck buildouts beginning with the orlop deck. I think I may build all of the deck structures before committing anything to the model itself. There are multiple structures to build here and thankfully, the parts are laser cut (mostly). There are two curved parts made using a jig and some wood strips, one is done here. This piece ended up being incorrectly sized and I had to add an additional plank to it after removing from the jig. Super easy to break them when trying to cut the windows out as well, so I did the window openings before removing from the jig. Instead of building the entire structure and then filling, painting and adding the photo etched parts, I'm completing half at a time. Its a lot easier to work with this way I think, especially when working with the photo etch. And this is the first half of the rear structure. Sadly, a lot of this will be unseen. This view will not be seen from the open side of the hull. This view is from the side of the hull that will be closed off.

Thanks!

Getting back on this project after a little break. I've been trying to understand the wiring for the LEDs. If anyone has some knowledge with LEDs and would like to share some insight, I'd appreciate it. The video would have you run the wiring for each individual bulb individually. And in the end you end up with this, this is just the wires for the hold: oof. I don't know why its done this way but it would seem to be more efficient to wire each pair of bulbs as either series or parallel as they did in the picture below. But is this series or parallel? I can't tell from this view. Does anyone know? Each bulb has a long side and a short where the longer side is positive but it appears they have been cut here. By wiring all pairs this way, there will be significantly less wires. I don't think these bulbs require resistors, or do they? None are provided with the lighting kit. Each bulb has a little cover that must be glued into place. In addition, they have small raised areas that need to be black. I can barely see these raised areas even with strong magnification. Once again, the sharpie is useful for this. You must also create a groove in the top of each beam to allow the wires to set in and avoid interfering with the deck. I used ALs little tool for that. I also test each LED with the 3 volt battery. I also have the 1/84 scale officers and naval crew but they are pretty small so I don't know if I can paint them with any degree of accuracy.

Video 6 is complete with the exception of the flour sacks. I'll address the sacks later as I'm still thinking of options. I mixed the sand with PVA glue in a mason jar. This made me feel less rushed to apply to the model since I could seal the jar if necessary. I was a little concerned about how the sand would work out but after curing overnight the result is like concrete. Nothing will move. I was also concerned that there wasn't enough sand to complete the ballast as shown in the video but it turned out there was plenty and I had a small amount left over. As for the barrels, I used a sharpie for the rings and and gave them a bath in poly sealant. I put a spot of PVA on the barrels contacting the sand and pushed them down into the wet sand mixture slightly. All barrels that sit on wood or on top of other barrels were glued down with clear Gorilla glue (not CA). This glue takes a long time to set but once cured nothing is moving. I followed the positioning of the barrels in the video to some extent but not exactly. There a few barrels left over which i set aside. Not sure if there is a need for these later on in the build. Next up in video 7 are the deck beams, wiring and lighting. A little nervous about this as it will test a skill I don't really have, soldering. The soldering will need to be neat and not lumpy. This will take me a while so I may also work on the orlop deck structures at the same time. Thanks for looking!

Thank you!

The first part of video 6 is complete. All support posts are installed. The video calls for very specific heights for each post and I made each post to that height. I'm not sure if that will be the correct height for my model but I can shorten them later with a set of very sharp nippers if needed. A small jig is provided with the kit to help get the correct distance between posts where there are three posts across the frames. I tried this with the first frame but it was getting in my way more than anything else. I abandoned that and just determined the correct distance apart for the posts. I used a brass nail in the bottom of each post as seen in the video and did my best to get the posts aligned correctly. Next up are the flour sacks. The kit provides a template to make these from paper or cloth I guess. I feel like this would have been a great 3d resin part. I'm going to skip that step for now while I see if I can find some 3d parts that will work. Next up are the barrels, a part I don't recognize (part H25 in the kit) and the ballast material.