king derelict

Thanks a lot Lou and thanks for following along through the ups and downs Alan

Thank you very much indeed Mark. Its taught me a lot about long term projects and not getting bogged down when things aren't going well. Time to step back from looking down the tunnel and remember its supposed to be fun. Alan

Thank you very much OC and for the support during the build. I wasn't going to make a case for this one but I think seeing dust on it is going to upset me so I have changed my mind and give her some shelter and a good spot to be seen. Alan

A day of final details and the modelling gods were smiling on fools it seems. The White Ensign has been adjusted to its proper position and it slid up the cord easily and no damage resulted. The starboard davits were rigged without problems. The stanchion and railings by the radar room were made up, painted and added and it all fitted well. I used a focused LED flashlight to check all the railings and touch up any glints of brass and added a final wash to the decks to break up the uniform colour. The Lewis guns were added to the engine room roof to complete the build, The cats have checked and seem to approve so here are the photos A stand is needed and I have no idea what to make for one. And the big question. Where on earth am i going to put it! I want to try to find some crew for it so I don't think this is completely finished but probably no updates for a while. Thanks to everyone who has looked in, encouraged and made helpful comments. I was way out of my skill levels with this one and getting a good result has been a team effort. Thanks to all. Alan

With Campanula in the finishing stages I wanted to take a moment to think back over the journey and what I discovered. When I saw what @yvesvidal was doing I was fascinated. I had long wanted to build a corvette, 3D printing interested me and the thought of a big model was an attraction. So these are my perspectives and no criticism of the kit or the printer is implied. Firstly the kit. It is a generic Flower class (long forecastle mod) corvette. As such certain basic features don't match the ship I chose HMS Campanula. The engine room length is too short but is fixable but the portholes are wrong for example and harder to rework so this is a Flower class corvette in paint scheme and configuration of Campanula. Anything else would involve a serious carve up to the kit prints. The kit parts are comprehensive and generally work well for a FDM printer but some of the small parts would be better on a resin printer. The assembly is based around a working RC model with the decks set on a bed of caulking. Possibly because of this and possibly because some thermal stress in the hull prints results in the open side being wider than designed I found the decks to be a very loose fit in the hull. With hindsight I should have measured the hull width at the deck height and checked it against the deck print files and widened the decks to fit better. The kit has some excellent details in places but is very bland in others. You could spend a lot of time and money buying resin parts to replace the guns, boats and bridge fittings. But underneath you still have a somewhat inaccurate base model The printer. The Creality Ender 3 V2 is a great hobby printer at a great price. Being a complete novice I didn't realise immediately that upgrades like bed springs, Capricorn Bowden tubing, metal extruder are almost essential. I was expecting to be able to assemble the printer, check it out and launch straight into prints for the model. The reality is the printer requires setting up to a very fine tolerance and skimping this results in poor quality or unusable prints. I plan to get an automatic bed levelling set up The PLA filament makes a very robust print but it is horrible to work with. Sawing, filing, drilling and sanding are all hard work. Diamond files are your best friend for smoothing the hull pieces. Me. I really didn't realise that I should have spent a lot more time learning about the vagaries of the printer. If I had this log would have been about a third of its size. I usually work on models less than a foot long so I wasn't prepared for the consequences of working on something four feet long. It way too big for my work bench so the kitchen table has been used extensively. Unfortunately the light is not too good there even with an LED desk light. I have some vision problems which require a bright light for detail work and use of magnifiers. This is so big that I had problems working within the focal distance to the lenses. This was fun but in the future if it doesn't fit on the workbench its not going to be built. A 1/200 Bismarck is thus likely to be going for sale soon. I haven't tried scratch building or heavily modifying a kit so this was quite an adventure for me. I had thought to just build the kit as a demonstration of the print capabilities Making and adapting parts has been immense fun The following books have been excellent for reference and an understanding of how the corvettes operated. The Lambert / Brown book is full of very useful drawings, photos and colour schemes for the Flowers and much more besides. The RN museum book is a series of unedited interviews with men who had been on the corvettes along with some great photos which were very helpful. It also gives a vivid insight into the living conditions on board those small ships in the middle of a big sea. At times it wasn't much better than Nelsons sailors experienced. Well worth reading; it also explains some of the working of the ship and the weapons which I found helpful when trying work out how to place things. I hope this post hasn't annoyed anyone. I was trying to illustrate my limitations and my thoughts on working on the project. Alan

Thank you very much Craig. That means a lot. I was in over my head with this one. There were a few times when this nearly didn't get finished but I'm glad I carried on. I learnt a lot and enjoyed most of it. As always there is more that could have done but I'm generally happy with it. Alan

Thanks Mike It was worth reprinting them Alan

Thank you for spotting that Grant. I was trying to mirror the images which show the ensign just below the halyards peak but I rather overdid it. Luckily it was easy to slide it up to the correct spot. Alan

Thank you very much OC. I was hoping for a corvette coming home at the end of an Atlantic convoy and I think its more or less there alan

Thanks Mark; its been an adventure Alan

I was keen to see how the new parts for the davit falls would work out so I made up the 3mm brass pulleys which were very nicely made. The finished article These were then blackened rather than painted. It was a little nerve wracking removing the davits from the model but they came of very cleanly and I removed the old fake pulleys and hooks and replaced them with the new parts. They were reinstalled on the ship and allowed to dry before rigging them. The result in my eyes is considerably better. I'm not sure whether the lines are a little overscale. They are 0.5mm which is an inch diameter at full size. I'm not sure I would have wanted to be swung out over the Atlantic held up by anything much smaller. I like the new set up and I will complete the starboard side tomorrow I added a flag staff to the back of the funnel and rigged it. Then the happy moment of raising the White Ensign. Its been a long time coming! There is a lot of paint touch up and the Lewis guns need to be added but we are approaching the final touches. There is plenty of room for improvement. As noted by someone else in their log I think its acceptable to a blind man on a galloping horse (as long as its a dark night and he's looking through the wrong end of a telescope) Thanks for looking in Alan

Thank you very much OC. Two of the sets look promising. I want the sea boots, duffel coats and caps look rather than flared trousers and bibs. Alan

Thanks Mike I'll look into that. I'm not seeing much in the local online stores. ICM have some 1/48 USAAF crew figures that it might be possible to modify but they would need a lot of work. Alan

Not a lot of time to play today but I did get the last sets of tracks completed. I finessed the methodology and cut off the alignment pip on the jig for the sprocket wheel. Instead I glued the first link on the wheel and let it dry then put the wheel on the jig and rotated the wheel until the link was in place with the top length. That was quicker and less frustrating and seems to have produced a good result. The next tasks are adding the basics to the hull and making up the turrets with just the basic elements and then its off to the paint shop Thanks for looking in Alan

That sounds good OC. I'm not sure the kit instructions always give the best solution. Alan

A small package arrived today from Cornwall Sheaves, hooks, stanchions and an ensign so I can try to improve the boat falls and finish off the last details, EXCEPT = I now have @Old Collingwood thought about adding a crew rattling around in my head. I'm looking for suitable figures in 1/48 to turn into Atlantic convoy sailors.(ie wearing anything as long as its warm Alan

As an apprentice I earned 19 pounds a week in 1972 but rent and meals at the hostel were 3.50 pounds a week, petrol was 35 pence and a pint of beer was 10 pence so ............... Alan

Well with all the lessons learnt yesterday continuing with the tracks turned to be - a continuing pain and probably used up the rest of Augusts spicy language allowance. It was fiddly to line up the sprocket teeth and the link and length interface but it eventually got there and the first set are complete. The spacing looks good and I can't actually tell where the transition is from length to individual link so I am happy. A dry fit on the hull proved that the jig sprocket to front wheel distance matches the hull (major relief) and it looks like the short bottom section should be a good fit. I decided that clipping the teeth off the tracks to slide over the idler wheels was not going to be very tidy even though they won't be seen so I ripped off the trucks that had been installed on the first hull. Luckily I had not used much glue and they came off easily. My plan is to put the track in place using the front wheel and sprocket wheel then add the trucks and finally the lower length of track. A test fit suggests that it should work. The instructions have you put the trucks on first (as I did initially) and then add the tracks. There is no suggestion of how you get the teeth over the idlers. So, the trucks will need to be painted separately after all. Thanks for looking and have a great weekend all Alan

I finished building two sets of undercarriage yesterday and installed one set. This is where the parallel build diverges. I want to move forward with one tank getting the tracks sorted out and use any lssons to do a better job on the second build. The first job today was to trim off some of the features behind the drivers hatch which belong to an earlier mark. The modified hull is on the right. The Micro Mark chisels worked nicely The sprocket wheels were made up. The sprues are in between the teeth which required some careful trimming but I managed to get all eight done without cutting any teeth off. The two halves have a feature to register the teeth on both halves. The kit provides a jig to build up the tracks. Its double sided to work for both sets of tracks bt I am betting I forget to turn it over the second set. The jig has some nice features; little pips to hold the sprocket wheet in the correct place to line up with the tracks and also pips to register the tracks. So far so good. The problem was holding the top length of track, the sprocket wheel and the rear wheel in place while trying to add the links. Tape worked for the upper length but I finally thought of beeswax to hold the wheels in place. Things then got a little more interesting. The links were reluctant to join together. After some messing around I found that the moulding in the recessed parts of the track link seemed to be blocking the assembly so I filed it back and the links fitted together. Then I found the links and length wouldn't sit around the sprocket wheel teeth. This seemed to be because the teeth were too thick so I filed back the inside of the wheel I read that this is a scaled down version of Takoms 1/35 kit so maybe the reduction in size resulted in the problem. With the parts reworked the links have been fitted around the sprocket wheel and seem to have fitted into place quite well I'm realising that the teeth on the underside of the tracks are not going to have enough room to slip over the idler return wheels. I can trim them off in the relevant areas = the skirts will hide the top section of track. I will think of some alternatives for the second build. Small but interesting with some definite challenges. Thanks for the interest and comments alan

Glad to have you onboard Egilman. Your help and reference information is always greatly appreciated. Thanks for the tips on assembling the tracks = its going to be interesting. I'm saving up the daily allowance of bad language ready for it. Alan

I think it was one of the better British tanks; always liked them Alan

Thanks Mark I'm looking forward to trying the Berlin urban paint scheme Alan

Thanks Ken. I hope you enjoy this. So far the big sprues aren't a problem they are placed where it is easy to clean them up Alan

Looking forward to the Scharnhorst very much. It will be a great model Alan

A great model Craig. The exhausts came out so very well along with a complex paint scheme Alan