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GrandpaPhil

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Everything posted by GrandpaPhil

  1. Alan, Thank you very much! I have learned so much from everyone on this forum! The hull is completely closed up and everything is edge painted now: The Oryol is now at the point where it is becoming difficult to tell that this is a card kit from looking at it. The next steps are to seal the model, add the 75mm guns and then make the fore and aft torpedo tubes.
  2. Happy Thanksgiving to you too! Wire and toothpicks are your friends for making small masts and spars! The stiff wire that comes in balsa model plane kits for landing gears is perfect for that. Toothpicks and bamboo kitchen skewers can be shaved down to very thin diameters and are some of my go to sources for masts and spars.
  3. The hull is mostly closed up now: I made the executive decision to keep the blast doors closed and just have the 75mm gun barrels sticking out. This thing is going to have enough fragile pieces sticking out of the hull without adding more points of failure. Also, a battleship to me is an armored behemoth, and keeping the blast doors closed on the casemates would look better to me. I still need to put the rest of the blast doors on the casemates, install the anchor shelves, and then I have a lot of tidying up and paint work to do before I install the 75mm gun barrels.
  4. Welcome and Happy Thanksgiving! I’m a few states away from you and I get most of my stuff from Ages of Sails and Cornwall Model Boats. They both have excellent selections and pricing. Ages of Sails ships domestically for free on orders over $150. Sometimes, Cornwall is slightly cheaper even with added shipping costs. Also, Cornwall carries a lot more in the way of plans if you’re into scratch building. Seawatch books is really neat if you’re into scratch building. If you like card models, I strongly recommend Seahorse Models out of Poland. All of them are awesome to work with!
  5. Welcome! The flag is the wrong one for the War of 1812, but it looks like the privateer Prince de Neufchatel or a similar vessel based on armament, deck configuration, sweep port and gunport location and mast/sail configuration. It could very well be the old 1/64 Model Shipways kit based on the dimensions. Mine is 1/72 and is approximately 33” long. Enlarged to 1/64 the model would be about the size of yours. Here’s mine for comparison:
  6. Working on closing up the upper hull: The upper armor strips have been fitting relatively well. Due to the whaleback shape of the hull, a lot of preshaping has been required to get the pieces to accept the curvature of the hull. I’ll start working on the casemates along with installing the 75mm guns next time!
  7. Steve, Thank you very much! The front armor pieces had multiple conflicting compound curves around the bow area that didn’t go quite right. I decided to trim that up a bit and fix some problem areas as well as I could. One of those included the shield emblem on the bow that takes the place of a figurehead. It had a huge gap in it. I ended up making a filler piece then I repainted the Imperial Eagle. It’s not as good as a laser printed one and no where near as good as some of the hand painted stuff that I’ve seen on this forum, but I’m happy with it. The entire thing is 1/2” (12mm for you metric types) across.
  8. I finished making all 20 of the 75mm guns: I still need to edge paint them and seal them to cover the edges of the card. They are labor intensive and fiddly from the scale, but no worse than the cannon that I am used to making. I figure that these battleships were the early Twentieth Century version of a ship of the line, so I tempered my expectations accordingly. I have already built the Solferino, which was essentially an armored, steam powered, two-decker, with 55 cannon, also in 1/200 scale and made by Orel. Plus, I made all 46 guns for the Revenge, with carriages mostly made of card. So, I already kind of knew what I was getting into. I’m still glad to get over that hurdle though. The next major one will be all the ladders and the railings. Those are always my biggest problems. But, we’ll see how much I learned from Solferino and go from there.
  9. It’s a worthwhile rabbit hole to go down, though. Paper has become one of my favorite mediums to work in now.
  10. I fielded wheeled carriages on mine. Chapelle’s “The Search for Speed Under Sail” showed them. Here’s the link to my build log, which shows my sources:
  11. I have made 2 of the 75mm guns and I am building them completely. I am going to display the gun emplacements with the blast doors open instead of just having the barrels sticking out of the casemates. They are very labor intensive, especially at this scale, but they look good. Many of the parts are between 1-1.5mm that you cut, fold, roll and assemble. It’s a good challenge. I am learning and having fun with this one.
  12. The bottom of the Oryol is now painted and sealed. The props are also painted and sealed in addition to being glued to the ship. The cradle is now painted, sealed and permanently glued to the bottom of the ship. The first armor band is also glued on. Next up are the bow sections of armor, with another step. After that, I’m going to need to make all the 75mm guns and install them in their proper locations. This is all new to me, as I’ve never built a modernish card ship before. The only other predreadnought that I have built was the Olympia, which had brass gun barrels sticking out of the casemate. I have heard others saying that card guns, if you do the full thing, are very labor intensive and quite the nuisance. I’ll let you know my opinion after I make 20 of them after I install the bow armor sections.
  13. Thank you very much! I saved these. I have the Mikasa and a couple ironclads in my stash so these will be very useful.
  14. The lower hull is now assembled and ready to paint: The props are assembled too: I’m going to paint them also.
  15. The Oryol is sitting in its cradle now: Working on the fittings for the lower hull before I seal and paint everything below the waterline. I’ll paint the cradle at the same time and then glue the ship to it.
  16. The last time I planked a wood hull (a long time ago) I used a knife and it worked well for me. Some of the ship modeling books recommend using a modeler’s plane. It’s up to you. You could always try both and see what works for you.
  17. Here’s the cradle: I modified the end pieces to fit the Oryol. It still needs painted, and will be painted a dark brown before being glued. I’m going to go with gloss black, like I did Solferino for the actual base. I like gluing my models to their bases for structural integrity reasons.
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