Keith Black

Thanks Bill, your boat cover looks great! nice idea about gluing a strip around the edge, I'm hoping mine fold over when wetted without the triangular pieces falling off!
Regards,
Bruce

Amen to that, Glen. To Roel's "I'm probably one of worst builders in this scratchbuilding part of this forum" I say, hold on, Nellie, don't be tryin' to take the one award I was sure to win. 

The weathering is incredible. Love the rust hard water staining. 

Excellent build, Keith. It has a typical sooty, crummy look for equipment used in that coal mining area. 👍

Incredible piece of work Keith. That dollar bill is really showing how brilliant this build is. Not only the building, but also the painting of such tiny pieces with such a sense of realism is simply outstanding! 

I dunno, man, ol' George seems unimpressed. Maybe you should hold him up so he can get a better look. 
 
Seriously, that's awesome. As Paul said, the color really jumped out as perfect to me. And it provides just the right touch of diversity in the overall consistent color palette.

Keith, that is a great looking pump. You really nailed the color!

Adding the chainstays, I also wasn't happy with the waterline, so I'm going to repaint it.  The chainstays aren't great, but, fine.  I think the loops holding the dead eyes are too long.  I have added the standoff for the fore chainstays, undecided at this time, if, like some kits, I'll shorten them, it's really hard to tell if this is interpretation by other kits or fact.  Photos are too washed out to see and n something like this; paintings are not really to be trusted.

I beg to differ, Roel.  Your work is very impressive.  Especially since you are always doing unique subjects, so you don't have other models to reference. 

Thanks Paul, 
 
I must admit these overviews force me to take pictures from bigger distances due to her large size. A lot of her imperfections are therefore not visible on these pictures. 
I'd even go as far as saying I'm probably one of worst builders in this scratchbuilding part of this forum. I never quite succeed in getting things straight, always use too much glue and painting is mediocre at best. I have improved over the years, but I can not undo what I did 14 or more years ago. 
 
On her portside bow and foremast you also see damage from a collision with a bridge. Paint missing, mast severely damaged. I decided to treat that repair as a seperate project and first finish the ship. I wanted to mention that because for once it wasn't a construction or painting error by me. 😄 (it was a manoeuvring error by me though 😆)
 
One advice for anybody building a ship this size is use of a movable table or at least a set-up that allows you to move around the model.
You can't see it in the last picture, but the table feet are from Ikea and end in swiveling wheels (with brake). This allows me to turn and shift the model anyway I want and allows me to bring certain parts of the vessel closer to better lighting or powertools when required. 
 

Roel, the overview photos are fantastic. Thank you for showing us your jigs for making the stairs and handrails 

Thanks, happy to hear someone might have a use for my posts. 
The jig was built 10+ years ago, I guess I was clever back then. 
The jig for the railing is however the 2nd version. The first one ended up being cut up and used in pieces in another build. I didn't really think of continuing this build I guess. 
 
In any case, the forward PS part of the ship is also finished. The ladders aren't glued though. 

 
In this top view you can see the railing on main deck that connects the catwalk stair with the stair to the foc'sle.
 

 
I did have some time remaining, so I also built the 2 small stairs and 1 long one on the SB side of the catwalk (without railing or paint for now). 

And an overview:

 
 
 

Glen, I'm in, helmet on and straps fastened. Ride 'em, cowboy! This will be fun.
 
The grain of wheat bulbs are small but becoming harder to source. The LEDs have lots better longevity and they come in pretty tiny sizes. And they do make flickering modules, if you want

Late to the party as ever. 
 
I've contemplated drilling holes in bottles for past projects, but always considered it cheating, just short of heresy. 
That said, and for the great purpose you have in mind, I fully approve of this hole and I'm glad you tested this because I was certainly curious whether it could be done without wasting a bottle. 
 
I love this project. Perhaps you could use cotton wool (perhaps coloured) around the leds to simulate fire? Should not be too difficult to get into the bottle as well. 
I have a cotton wool smoke trail of a missile that hasn't lost its shape in nearly 20 years and I didn't treat the wool with anything. 
Not really sure how it will spread or "contain" the light though...
 
 

Hi all another update from me - this one's going to be a bit picture heavy.  This time I'm approaching the gunwales; moulding and timber heads.
 
So I started with the easiest pieces which were the lower gunwales.  These were easy to make and I pre-drilled all of the holes for the guard rails


Next I needed to sort out a piece that I had failed to see in the drawings - goodness how long ago was that!  It was this piece coloured in red below - Its a small extension of the short frame which supports the fancy transition between the quarter deck and main deck gunwales.  Because I didn't see this another issue was that I cut the interior planking too short.

So I made a piece that could fill the gap and also go far enough inboard to be flush with the interior planking


Next was the mouldings  - these were pretty straight forward.  I scraped them to shape and to hold the tricky bits still I PVA'd them to a piece of scrap and then heated the back to release them.  They did take a bit of fitting but I got there and I took the opportunity to finally shape the timber heads.




Now this is a tricky part to make - the gunwale transition.  It is such a prominent part it needs to be as good a possible.  The gunwales are different widths and they need the transition to "S" a little too.  So what I ended up doing was to make the part much wider that I needed it.  In fact I made it 13.5mm wide.

I then roughed the "S" out but left loads on to finalise the shape once the quarterdeck gunwale was fitted.  This is one of those parts where if you force it - it will snap so I just slowly worked away at them until I got a good fit.


Lastly I made the remaining wale - It fits around the timber heads and also the guard rail stanchions so I made sure that they fitted correctly.  I think this would be difficult once they are fitted.

A few pictures of where I am now.






So next I guess I need to finish the planking between the mouldings and also make the decorative face for the first beam on the quarterdeck.
 
Thanks for all of the nice comments
 
Mark
 
 
 

Thank you for the kind comment, John. 

I'm in.  
 

Thank you for the kind comment, John. 

Thank you to everyone for the likes and the comments.
 
 
 I got the Myers water pump made and installed. It's been a long time since I've made a piece of any complexity that hasn't been under a roof.

 
 There are 7 pieces to the electric motor and 14 piece to the pump not counting the belt. The water pump pulley isn't a pulley per se but it's the only wheel I had that worked in scale. Those that followed my Tennessee build may recognize it as a sew on clothes snap. 
 
 The electric motor is 0.10 inches W x 0.20 inches L. The pump is 0.275 inches W x 0,50 inches L. 

 
 This is just a fun photo putting this little guy's size in prospective. 

 
Thank you to everyone for your kind support and for following along.
 
   Keith 

Thank you, Keith. That character is what drew me to this project in the first place. It's been fun trying to replicate that character from the original photos.   

Thank you very much, Gary. I'm really looking forward to making that pump. 
 
 Thank you, John. It's good to have you back with us. 
 
 Thank you, Paul. There's not a lot of free space on this littler guy's deck, things are packed pretty tight. 
 
 Thank you, Eric. 

Your first planking looks great. 

Thank you to everyone for the likes and the comments.
 
 
 I got the Myers water pump made and installed. It's been a long time since I've made a piece of any complexity that hasn't been under a roof.

 
 There are 7 pieces to the electric motor and 14 piece to the pump not counting the belt. The water pump pulley isn't a pulley per se but it's the only wheel I had that worked in scale. Those that followed my Tennessee build may recognize it as a sew on clothes snap. 
 
 The electric motor is 0.10 inches W x 0.20 inches L. The pump is 0.275 inches W x 0,50 inches L. 

 
 This is just a fun photo putting this little guy's size in prospective. 

 
Thank you to everyone for your kind support and for following along.
 
   Keith 

Thank you for the kind comment, John. 

Thank you to everyone for the likes and the comments.
 
 
 I got the Myers water pump made and installed. It's been a long time since I've made a piece of any complexity that hasn't been under a roof.

 
 There are 7 pieces to the electric motor and 14 piece to the pump not counting the belt. The water pump pulley isn't a pulley per se but it's the only wheel I had that worked in scale. Those that followed my Tennessee build may recognize it as a sew on clothes snap. 
 
 The electric motor is 0.10 inches W x 0.20 inches L. The pump is 0.275 inches W x 0,50 inches L. 

 
 This is just a fun photo putting this little guy's size in prospective. 

 
Thank you to everyone for your kind support and for following along.
 
   Keith