gsdpic

Using a rail for macro focus stacking is certainly helpful. But at model ship sizes it may not be practical. That image above by Dr PR would require one heck of a rail to take it without changing the focus distance on the lens. And doing focus stacking in landscape photography obviously cannot be done with a rail. The size of the object in the photograph will change regardless of whether you use a rail to move the camera or you change the focus distance. For this reason it is probably best to compose the image such that the object does not fill the frame as much as you want and then crop after stacking. I suspect the blurry left edge of Dr PR's photo is due to this....the images where those parts of the model would have been in focus did not actually include those parts of the model in the frame.

The sails are looking great. I know there are some who will disagree, but I used cloth/sewn sails on my 1/48th America and I think they look fine at that scale. Yes, the weave of the cloth and the stitching are a bit out of scale, but no more so than the grain of the wood on the deck or deck fittings.

Wow, she's looking great with that finish! It's funny, I was just looking at your build log last night and was going to comment on it and say that I can't wait to see it with some varnish on it. Just then we had some brief power outages due to thunderstorms in the area so I did not have a chance to make that comment. Then I came back today and saw that my wish to see it with varnish was granted. I was going to suggest looking into the molotow liquid chrome. I've heard good things about it but never used it. The only other option I can think of is the "bare metal foil" chrome but I assume that is pretty similar to the chrome tape that you are wishing to replace.

She's really looking great with all those added details. You are making a lot of progress on this build.

Hello and welcome to MSW! You might wish to also post an introduction in the New Member Introductions section. It's great that you are starting a build log, there are a lot of helpful people around if you run into any obstacles. Nic from Bluejacket is active here and is one of those helpful people. I built this kit about 5 or 6 years ago. It was before I discovered MSW so I did not do a build log for it. If you have not seen it, cathead/Eric's review of this kit (linked below) has useful information. I believe that Bluejacket was planning to update this kit; not sure if that has happened or not so yours might be updated from the one Eric reviewed or the one I built. I'll pull up the first chair and follow along.

Hi Chris. I noticed that on your build log. It looks like you uploaded HEIC files (High Efficiency Image Container). Apparently the MSW forum software does not support/recognize that file type. You might google "HEIC file" to look for the best way to convert to a more standard format like JPEG to use when uploading files. If you took them with an iPhone originally, you can got to settings->camera->formats and select "most compatible" and that should use JPEG for all images from that point on (which may or may not be what you really want). There are probably apps on MAC OS to do the conversion as well. I am not associated with MSW, just another user. Perhaps someone associated with MSW will chime in with more info about picture file formats, or any easy way to convert.

Looking beautiful. That is quite a milestone to get all the frames attached and be ready for planking. Obviously a tremendous amount of work has gone into this build already. It will be interesting to see how the planking progresses, and how the unplanked section reveals the hull construction details.

Nice little boat. The cap rails do give it a much more finished appearance, in keeping with the elegance of the rest of the craft.

The youtube link worked for me. Cool project, and interesting application of Arduino to modeling. I've done a few Arduino projects in the past but it has been a few years.

Haven't seen this kit before. I'll follow along to see how it went. Those middle five bulkheads look far apart for planking. My guess is that was one of your challenges. Are there two layers of planking? Oh, and by the way, welcome to MSW!

Congratulations on completing this fine build! You certainly deserve to be, and have every reason to be, proud of this accomplishment!

Nicely done! I like all the details and lighting that you added.

Glad to see you continuing with your America build. She's looking really good. The frames don't look too far out of line from here. I also had to do some trimming and a bit of shimming of a few of the frames after attaching them to the keel to get things to line up. You might consider putting on the bilge clamps/sheer clamps before doing much fairing or trimming of the frames. The clamps will reduce the chance of snapping off one side of the frame when fairing or trimming them. I recall that I broke one or two of my frames and had to glue them back together. Of course you might need to do some fairing on the insides of the frames in order to put the clamps on so you'll still have a chance to snap a frame then. Also, one thing I don't see.....there is a small step up where the last third of the deck is a bit higher than the front two thirds. On mine, that step up was also part of the frames at this point...i.e. the tops of the aft frames were higher while the timberheads were shorter. But on yours they appear to be similar height. You may need to add some material around the tops of the frames or just compensate with the deck beams. Keep up the good work. If you have not checked my build log lately, I just very recently completed my America, so it is possible.

Nice shot Phil. Now I feel like an idiot for not bouncing the light off the walls and ceiling for my recent shots, though I have not done a lot of indoor macro photography. I've also done some focus stacking for very small objects or for landscapes but did not really think about it for a medium sized object like a model. Thanks for the tips, now I have something to try today.

Thank you, you are too kind. The finish on your Miss Severn and Fifie tell me I have a ways to go yet but I am getting there. Thank you all, I appreciate it. And thanks again to all those you looked it, commented, and hit the like button on this build log and on the pictures in the gallery. The encouragement means a lot to me.