lmagna

A very fiddly hour and it now has two headlights, 

Note to self : be more careful with tiny parts 🤔

painting  the camo next.
Thanks for the likes and comments everyone 😉

 
Cheers 

Coming along really niceley  - yep that little boat is cute and looks nice and detailed, I'm loving your weathering  - really authentic looking.
 
OC.

That's why we export it; no one here wants it  
 
cheers
 
Pat

Hang in there!  I’ve heard the dreaded ping off the tweezers too many times.  Not fun at all!

This is going to be so cool!

Hi Bill I forgot about this build (its probably in a bin somewhere)
I used clear bathroom sealant for the sea, its actually a very accurate kit for its time (ok they got the colours completely wrong) that said i really like the blue and gold colour scheme.
There are a couple of things wrong with the kit (its missing a couple of cannon placements and if I remember correctly some of the transom detail is wrong. As a kit it goes together quite well the detail is not that clear on the moldings but for kit of its age and price at the time I think airfix did a Stirling job.

Hi all here is the next update

Hi,
 
Airfix went with the colour scheme as suggested by the salvage team at the time. Blue was still shown as the colours of the ship in their museum guides till very recently so Airfix thought they had it right. I built this twice over the years and both times all the research and books illustrated her as being majority blue.
 
The little sticky uppy things are the tops of the Kevels that Airfix moulded into the rails rather than putting inside the bulwark. These would have been used for the rigging so you may need them if doing full sail rig. 

Awww  this kit,  I have built this one  but about 50 years ago when I was a kid,  I built most of the Airfix kist back then.
 
OC.

Hi all well here's one I shelved back in 2015 (can't remember why) Airfix goth the colour totally wrong they would have you paint it blue and gold (other than the transom theres very little gold on her, although she is very colourful mainly red though and vert little blue) ( actually i love the airfix colour scheme but that was not right) other than a few few small things it's a great little kit. it's been resurrected I've redone the woodwork, I figure if the Hermann Marwede is going to be in a seascape i may as well tag this one in with it.

where did you get the ammo belts?  they look really good.  I checked out the shapeways site......
PT-Boat by Johndrain - Shapeways Shops

Loving it  - all that detail.
 
OC.

Thanks all! been on a rampage these past few days on Bismarck... got the flak guns installed, railings up on level 2 of the superstructure and marathoned 6 more tiny Veteran Models AA guns. Damn those things are a nightmare. Also got some Veteran Models ammo boxes cleaned up, painted and ready to go.  

Nice work, looks perfect 

Also I’ve got so many shades of grey now that I’m not going to get more! So if the shades aren’t perfect then you will know why! But after all the washes and shading and weathering the original camo colours I use will be very different to the final colour so I’m ok with that. 

Ah yes! Thanks!! I’ll add that part next!
that was close...

I did a few coats with tamiya spray on primer but ran out so did a few coats with just a spare grey paint.
 

 
went over it a few extra times to try get a slight unsmooth surface but dried pretty flat once the paint layers were added.
 

 

 
I’ll get all the edges nice and sharp and it should show through as a nice subtle effect. I was quite pleased

"Hey  - thats the ticket"    looking  Nice........those should look  Really nice under the camo,      dont forget the  squared  raised peice of  armour reinforcement at the top  of the  bow underneath the  Fairleads   - should come down about 8-9feet  from the deck  and be about  5/6feet wide.
 
OC.

Another update here - after finishing printing all the hull sections yesterday I spent some time cleaning them up a bit.  Prior to permanently joining them all together I needed to put in some of the threaded inserts for stepper mounts and the arduino control board.  The "heat inserts" I use are from Mcmaster Carr: heat inserts | McMaster-Carr  and they come in a many different sizes.  I typically use 3mm inserts with 3mm machine screws, and there's several different types available even in just the 3mm size.  The row on the left are for 3mm and there's a 2mm example on the right side in this photo. 


 
Note I would recommend you spend the extra money on the heat inserts from Mcmaster Carr,  the cheap ones you can get off ebay are (in my opinion) garbage.   Easy to install a 3mm insert using a soldering iron with an adapter or thin tip: 

 
 
And here's what it looks like with most of them installed.  The aft most inserts are where the motor mounts get bolted to. 

 
Next I started gluing the section together - a thin layer of 5 min epoxy this time since I didn't have any 10 min lying around.  I find that 5 min epoxy is okay but sets quick and sometimes if there's some alignment issues your racing against the clock in a most uncomfortable way.  So I always check and recheck how things are fitting together before I mix up the glue.  I also take time to figure out which tabs will need more clamping pressure and have those handy.  You can kind of see the glue in this photo, keeping it to a thin layer means less ooze to wipe off.  
 

 
After gluing 3 pairs of two sections together I sent them aside for an hour or so to fully cure

 
 
And then I joined the three groups into complete hull.... (I forgot to take a photo but just imagine the whole boat with the bow on the floor and totally vertical teetering precariously against the work bench!)  Then once cured and when the Admiral wasn't looking I used the dinner table again for a photo of the completed hull:

 

 
The next step will be sanding the hull to get all the layer lines out and a smoother surface.  This can easily be done by hand although there's tricky area's that will need careful attention (more about that later).  For the most part a 2" air driven orbital sander will make quick work of most of the sanding.  I'll start that after work tomorrow. 

I am amazed as well! This is an awesome application of 3d printing.
 
Cheers,  Tom

That hull is amazing!

Fantastic job! This ship is special to me, because my paternal grandmother came to the US from Greece, third class, on the Normandie in late '35. She was a subsistence farmer on Rhodes, who in the space of a couple of weeks went from a part of the island with no electricity or running water to Piraeus in Athens and thence to La Havre and New York City to be met by my grandfather, a man she had not seen for several years while he saved up the money to bring her to the states. The culture shock must have been unbelievable.

Thank you wemattson, Mike, and Yves. Yves, I have seen some spectacular builds of the 1/200 Titanic on some other forums. I'll get to mine eventually but I could only hope to do half as well as some of the builds I have seen. Some of these modelers working on that kit have amazing talent. The amount of aftermarket support for that kit is also unmatched. I'm kind of tired of seeing Titanic but that's one kit I look forward to building.

Wow Chris, sorry to have not come across this one sooner!  What an incredible job!  You really knocked this one out of the park, congratulations!  Even more amazing that it was your first at this scale. 

Yes, you need to rest your eyes and your hands....so, the 1/200 scale seems like a good candidate for your sanity 😁
To be honest, I cannot wait to see someone build the Titanic from Trumpeter....especially someone with your skills and attention to details.
 
Yves