el cid

HMS GLENAVON. Paddle Minesweepers head out for the morning 'sweep' passed a 'Bar Boat' working on moorings. 
W/C 15” X10”
Jim

Big problem with silicone sealant contamination and fiberglass boat hulls...virtually impossible to get a decent paint job.

Big problem with silicone sealant contamination and fiberglass boat hulls...virtually impossible to get a decent paint job.

Big problem with silicone sealant contamination and fiberglass boat hulls...virtually impossible to get a decent paint job.

Bruce,  We had similar issues at a client's factory making nail polish.   A vending machine service tech came in one day and used silicone spray lubricant and it got into the air and in the nearby  manufacturing area.  When the polish was put on, it left fish eyes on the surface.   Fortunately, this turned up in QA testing before the batches from that day were shipped and disaster with end users averted.  No silicone sprays were ever allowed in the factory after that.   If a model is being spray painted, the same thing can occur, so be diligent about having silicone spray products in the model building area.   
Allan

Hello Bartley,
Not being a chemist, I must generalize quite a bit. A small amount of silicone completely ruined the finish on three projects underway in my old workplace quite a few years back. Someone had a trace on their hands (left hand from the evidence) and three of the four items we were sweating blood to get ready before a deadline had reactions when painted leaving finger and palm patterns where they had been handled. Besides the commercial crisis because of the need for the whole team to pull two all-nighters in a row to put right the damage there was considerable human fall-out.
The likely source was a can of spray lube for a garage-type door that had just been bought. We had a ceremonial can-burning, Wicker Man style. A friend in electronics then told me his own version of the problem and introduced me to 'silicone nodule migration' (yes, it is a thing).
Hence the NO SILICONE rule when I started putting together my workshop a few years ago in anticipation of woodwork and modelmaking. 
 
I know most people use it and don't have a problem, but any silicone-bearing product in our little corner of heaven has to stay in the house, not the important area where I fiddle around.
 

I was finally able to finish up the rope coils on my model and got all those glued on. I didn't like the fuzziness of some of my rope so I used some wax to clean that up and it looks a lot better. The anchor is also ready to go. I just have to finish a couple oars then i'll be completely done! It has been quite a journey. Still need to figure out the display case situation though. :[
 
 
 

Re: ship's lights.  Below is a transcribed diary entry from a midshipman in SYREN during her expedition with INTREPID to burn the frigate PHILADELPHIA.  I did my best to interpret the 12-hour clock times given to 24-hour time.  Second para mentions lights, but doesn't indicate where they were displayed.  Taken from "Naval documents related to the United States Wars with the Barbary Powers" five volumes of which are available online.  Many interesting SYREN factoids within...grueling schedule for the small US force involved.
 
Midshipman F. Cornelius deKrafft
16 February 1804


 
Commences with fresh breezes, clear and pleasant weather.  The Intrepid in company.  At 0230, made the land on our lee bow.  Hauled up the mainsail, took 1 reef in the topsails, and bent the stream cable.  At 0330, backed the main topsail for the Intrepid to come up.  At 0400, lowered down the cutter and sent 9 men on board the Intrepid with cuttlasses, pistoles, musquets. etc.  At 0430, the boat returned, hoisted her up and made sail for the land.  At 0530, mountain Togura (6 or 8 miles to the E of Tripoli) bore SSW, town of Tripoli SW.   At 0600, tacked to the NW.  At 0730, boarded main tack.  At 0930, tacked to the SW, set staysails and jib.   At 1000, called all hands to quarters and run out the guns, hauled down staysails and jib, and hauled up square mainsail, brailed up after mainsail.  At 1030, spoke the Intrepid.  At 1100, backed the main topsail, sounded and got no bottom. 


 
Midnight moderate and clear, lost sight of the Intrepid.  Hauled up the foresail, backed main topsail, sounded in 35 fathoms and filled away.  At 0100, sounded in 14, 12, and 9 fathoms (from 0100 to 0400 standing off and on the shore).  Showing lights for the Intrepid (which were answered).   At 0100, called all hands to quarters, run in the guns and secured them, shipped the ports, wore and stood off shore.  Made sail, the Intrepid on our lee bow.  At 0800, the high land near Tripoli bore SW by W, 7 leagues.  At 1100, the Intrepid tacked to the S and E.  Noon, wore to the S and W, handed square mainsail, reefed the foresail, and set after mainsail.  Moderate breezes and pleasant.  The Intrepid bearing S ½ E, 8 miles distance.

Last construction update..... Finished the Generator and mounted it. Manufacturing the lifting lugs proved to be a bit fiddly but I got it done.
 

Lifting Lugs constructed and attached to the clevises and cables....

Preparing the attachment points....

Putty fills the holes on the ends of the half-round skid bumpers....

Sanded flush and Lugs mounted....

Generator mounted to the lift and raised halfway to full height.....

Opposite side view......

Fully loaded position, the fit appears to be perfect....

Painting off the corners and touch ups....

Another test fit....

Cables painted off gunmetal, the Cables, although when manufactured were painted OD Green, in a very short time with moderate usage the paint flaked off leaving the oiled cables exposed. the cables were oiled to prevent corrosion....

Left side profile with the Generator in it's final position and the cables superglued to their lifting hooks.......

Left Front view.....

Right Rear View......

Right Front View....

Rear view with the generator permanently in place..... (and one touch-up still to do) Mount the drivers door mirror, body hoops and the antenna and she is done....
 
Complete......




With its M-51 Skysweeper hooked up..... I decided not to load up the body with details, I could have gone another couple of weeks building and adding stuff. This would make an excellent diorama subject not often built... I added a tarp, folded in its storage place above the ready ammo lockers, a simple piece of napkin trimmed to appropriate size, rolled and folded to fit it's space, then drybrushed in field drab with olive drab highlights.... An issue vehicle would have it's tarps... And no the M-51 didn't travel with ammo in the autoloader, it's just that sitting on the shelf for 4 months has caused the rotation mechanism of the ammo holder to freeze up. I couldn't rotate them to remove the shells. So I left it this way cause I didn't want to break it just to take a pic as unloaded.....
 

FINISHED!  
 
Thanks for the comments and likes, this was my first major project in a long time and I hope that you enjoyed it.... (even the wife was impressed)
 
EG

Afternoon Quickie 
Cutty Sark drying her sails. In the days before becoming a tourist attraction she was a hard working vessel in the Tea and wool trade.
19” X 7”
Jim
 

Fear Nothing
HMS Dreadnought docking assisted by Tugs
14” X 10” watercolour
Jim

Minesweeping Trawlers 'Ben Dearg' and 'Cardiff Castle' return to Base. 
W/C 11” X 9”

Wow.. Your bulkhead detail is exquisite, and the resin usage is genius.
If I may be so bold as to make a suggestion, look into Tamiya panel line accent color. Some judicious application on those bulkheads would really make them pop. The stuff comes in black, gray, dark gray and brown. The stuff works best over a gloss finish, and I use a finer brush than the one attached to the lid and let capillary action do most of the work.

Having largely finished my build of the 13th century Round ship, I am going back in time to the 9th century. At this time a transition was in play in the Mediterranean away from the shell construction using edge joined planks with pegged mortices to what would become the skeleton type of construction using full active frames. The vessel I wish to construct was positioned in between these techniques in that it had a mixture of shell and skeleton construction used in its construction. In addition , instead of using mortice and tenon technique to edge join the planks, it used an edge dowelling technique.
 
I will utilise the description and reconstruction published by the author:
Işıl Özsait-Kocabaş
Istanbul University, Department of Conservation of Marine Archaeological Objects, Ordu Cad. Laleli, Fatih, ˙Istanbul,
Turkey
The International Journal of Nautical Archaeology (2018) 47.2: 357–390
 
Copyright for images from this publication resides with Istanbul University Yenikapı Shipwrecks Project, I will withold these.
 
I hope to be able to demonstrate the techniques used by the original builder.
 
The dimensions of the vessel are
length overall (LOA) 9.24m,  beam  of 2.64m, and depth
 of 1.10m. The length-to-beam ratio
of the vessel is 3.5:1.
The wreck was found in 2007 at the site of the byzantine Theodosian harbour, one of the greatest treasure-troves of nautical archaeology yet discovered. The wreck of YP12 has good preservation of keel, framing and planking sufficient to do a viable reconstruction.
 
The keel is rockered, that is slightly curved, and made from three pieces joined by keyhole scarfs


The stempost and sternpost did not survive and have been reconstructed.
I have temporarily installed the spine of the vessels on posts as I believe the original builder would have done. This may end up becoming the stand of the model.

Cheers
Dick
 
 

 

Hey all,
   Well, I finished all the casting and terrain forming, and did the first few passes of tint for the rocks, riverbed and ground. There will be more washes and drybrushing on the rocks and riverbed to make them "pop" and soil, rocks and gravel added to get the terrain ready for the water resin pours.
   The techniques I used for the rock staining are straight from this Woodland Scenics Video. I used raw sienna and burnt umber for my secondary colors, and concrete for my primary color. I'll let it dry overnight and then seal it with 3:1 water to ModPodge ratio scenery fixer. Then comes the black wash and drybrushing. For the terrain and riverbed I used a thicker wash of raw sienna, burnt umber and black with a lot of random variations to blend everything together. After the scenery fixer dries, I'll make my dams for the base edges and start the resin water pour. I'll do all the dirt, foliage, trees and detail stuff after the water is completed.
   I did get some work done on the boat, I started adding detail to the bow... bedrolls, crates etc. As soon as the resin water pour is done, I can start adding the delicate parts on the boat. I'm waiting until then because I'll be handling the boat A LOT and I don't want to break off the fiddly stuff.
 
Here's Mr. Snowball telling me to get to work...

Here's some shots of the base after first tints...
 




Here's some shots of the boat included (to see if the colors tie together so far) and the added bow detail.

Contact 
HMS Alisma  drops a pattern of Depth charges
w/c 11” X 9”
Jim

I have glued black paper strips to the edges of deck planks. The paper strips were a bit wider than the planks, and were trimmed on the bottom side before gluing the planks down. After the planks were glued in place the deck was scraped to remove the high edges of the paper, and then sanded with coarse grit sandpaper because the planks that came with the kit were not all the same thickness. Then the deck was sealed with clear lacquer and sanded again with a fine grit to remove scratches from the coarser grit. The final finish was with 0000 steel wool.
 
There was no fuzzing. I used an organic solvent based wood glue (Duco) and that soaked into the paper and wood. After it dried the paper was pretty hard.
 
You can choose a paper thickness equal to the scale thickness of the grout on the ship you are modeling. I used a full scale 3/8 inch grout width. At 1:48 this was about 0.008 inch, and I found a black paper about that thick. Nothing fancy, just ordinary craft paper. For a 1:96 scale project I will need a 0.004 inch thick paper, and that is about the thickness of ordinary 24 pound printer paper. 20 pound paper is about 0.003 inch thick.

Thanks for the likes.   
 
Update..  sanding is done though I will recheck everything before planking.  Next is to set it upright and work on the gundeck by adding some decking and framing in the bulwarks, gun ports, and stern.   Not necessarily in that order.  I happy to be done with the balsa... miserable sawdust it makes.  I'll clean up the shop in the morning.
 
Here's photos.

Well, after getting sidetracked by the helicopter build and fiddling with air cleaners... I've been sanding and shaping the port side of the hull.  I will need some touch up on both sides before planking, maybe a bit of filler here and there and final sanding.  However, I still need to shape and smooth both sides of the bow.  I saved this part for last thinking everything before leads to here.  Hopefully, I'll get it sanded  by next week.   I'm going slow and cautiously.  I'm also using templates to check that both sides are the same.  Tedious, but must be done.
 
Here's the proof of life photos of the port side.

Update +Swordfish with Seaboots

Depot ship HMS WOLFE , two T class submarines, a TID Tug and a Rescue Tug
W/C 14” X 10”

Thanks for posting this. ' Been There, Seen the picture. Didn't get the 'T' shirt'. In 2016 I was asked if I could paint a cover and some illustrations for a book being written about the experiencies of a Ships Engineer Cadet on board a Liberty Ship the book 'Liberty's War'. To cut a long story short. The book was launched at the US Merchant Marine Academy, at Kings point. I had the Privilege and Honour to be invited to the event, and to give a short talk about how a retired ex RN Rating from a small village in Fife Scotland came to be there. The cover painting was acquired by USMMA Museum. What more could I ask, one of my paintings among such eminent company.
some photos of the cover painting, exhibition and launch.
 

Another practical reason for colour coding the boats may have been to ensure all the associated various parts for each boat were kept together. Thwarts, masts and oars would have been unshipped from stored boats on deck, especially when nested.
Often I wonder where the heaps of temporary kit must have been stored when needed close by. Not all of it could have been put down into the hold. There must have been a lot of organised clutter that never gets depicted on models.

Well my experience, (50+ years) in the real world of model building has been that the dedicated wood ship builders tend to look at plastic builders as something less than real modelers, but this forum is changing my opinion on that rapidly, and very happily if I might add......
 
To me it's all modeling, the medium and techniques/tools may change a bit, but it's all the same in the long run...... Recreating real life for others to enjoy, same as painters and sculptors in fact model making is kinda a combination of both those other art forms when you come right down to it...

Sorry, been off painting since before Christmas, just one of those things. 
Here’s the latest
 based on 'Fort Grahame' and HMS Acute J106