cog

Next I made 8 shorter pieces that the spokes will lay between.
 
 
Jesse
 

Thanks everybody. I will leave the handles on. Ben struggling with a cold which is much worse with my illness and weakened immune system but have been able to get some work in.
 
The ships wheel the kit supplied is the worst thing I've ever seen. There is no way to make this thing work at all so I decided to try my hand at fabricating one myself. I copied the wheel drawing from the plans and glued the cut out on a flat wood base to go by.  A little while back another MSW member (Dennis R. in New Zealand) gifted me with some wood samples. One of the types he sent was some flexible beech. I liked the way it looked and well it is to work with so I used it to make the wheel. Started out with 4 pieces to form a circle to build up from and a round center piece. even with the template is was hard to keep things in a perfect circle. Used this old glue cap which happened to be the exact size to keep it shaped just right.
 
Jesse

Hey Kees
 
Absolutely fantastic to see you back at it! Love the workshop and don't get me started on the Triplets! Can I have one?????
 
All the best
 
Patrick

Hi Folks!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
 
Back again after Motorbike charsh and following unexpected kenn surgery and long  "not Amy Winehouse style" rehab I`m ready to go on again. Sorry for let you all waiting so long, new things will come soon. While my rehab I`ve searched for a new driving concept for the Bootlegger and other motor driven boats, maybe I`m coming up with a novelty in that case....
More about that soon!
 
Regards
Gerhard

Banyan, the holder is from a rivet maker set, basically a tiny metal wheel with teeth that I am using to make rivet lines which you won't see until it is painted and washed.
 
Amateur, I hope you're not put off from the scale
 
Hof, where are your logs?

Good evening, Greg,
My "Cup of tea!!"
 
Have Bismarck, 1/350/1/200, Titanic, 1/400 so really hanging on to your threads, thank you.
 
Cheers....HOF.

Hi Greg,
 
i already suspected this type of modelling is not my cup of tea. Now I know for sure
Thanks for sharing your techniques!
 
Jan

That's great Greg; very informative seeing someone with experience put it all together.  Many thanks.
 
Those clear perspex holders also look useful - where did you get them?
 
cheers
 
Pat

So, the build, firstly drilling out the .3mm holes in the top piece. You can see from the Pontos instructions they provide 1 piece of Pe but I prefer this.
 
Then using the perspex holders, cut the individual stanchions off the fret. Tamiya does these in steel and whilst very sturdy, they are very hard on blades.
 
Because they will be curved, I add all the stanchions to the .3mm copper wire.
 
The using the patented Ca applicator, add tiny drops of glue to the holes....
 
And there it in on my fingernail. Note I use bluetack to hold the pieces stable whilst working on them. They are my third hand.
 
Then the small hatches which are used with spares (none in the kit or Pontos, applied with a grease pencil。
 
Next are the ladders which are Tamiya and steel, obviously to save on brass, but hard to cut.
 
There are applied to the PE bender and folded on each side, using the blunt end of tweezers.
 
They are then applied with a piece of bluetack on the eｎd of a paint brush handle.
 
Then the aerials from the fret, as I said, there is no reference from pontos to say there are two type, but I figured it out, the PE bending as very fragile but achieved in the PE bender and very soft hands.
 
Hope it answers those questions.
Greg
 
 
 

So after a few requests, I have broken down the next component, the main gun control tower.
 
Firstly, the main tools I use:
 
1. A small shop photo etch bender
2. PE holders that keep the piece flat when cutting
3. Tweezers
4. Scalpels, (chisel ends work best for cutting)
5. Uschi applicators for large pieces and thin glue that go into the end of the scalpels
6.Beading flat pliers
7. Tamiya PE benders which I cannot master as they refuse to align properly.
All on a black perspex cutting board.
 
My PE applicators , offcuts of PE frets.
 
Xuron metal cutters, thin and medium CA , any old piece of plastic that I can drop glue onto.
 
Moving onto the piece itself, 34 is the Tamiya instructions, then the reference and then the Pontos detailed instructions. I discovered that of the four photos provided, that whilst there are two aerials, one is pre and one is post 1944 but they make no reference to this.
 
 
 
 

Hi Nenad
 
Good work the last weeks, friend! You have made so much progress with your skills, great pleasure to watch this. Your CS will be a great model when fiished!
 
Regards
Gerhard

Ken, you are right, but than again there is good bourbon and the stuff I drink (sometimes).
With all due respect to Chuck, I think that making this kind of ornamentation from scratch (no laser cutting) would be my next endeavor. I started to do this with a piece that was a bit thick and found that the #11 blade was not able to cut uniformly to the outline. Now that I have some small chisels (bought and made from small files) I might try this again.
My ultimate goal would be to do some 3-D carving like we all admire and have seen done by some great artists here.
All it takes is practice, practice and more of the same.

Yeah right ... your bottle's cap you mean
 
That's why you shouldn't use a carpet, but something smooth and contrasting in colour!!! Makes searching a lot easier

Fabulous Igor. How is your experience so far with the sillicone?

That is some major miniature work, Igor. The propeller is made from brass sheet, bent into form?

Bob,
 
Send you a PM om the memory card problem.
 
I can't stand topics without pictures !!!
 
Cheers

Tripplets!!! I like the red one, but you'll be painting them ...  like the progress

NICE ... I have been looking forward to your return at the bench!! You have been sorely missed here.

Hmmm, that I can understand, but you don't want them underneath ... which happens when you don't slide/push them off the side ... nothing beats a fishy control though

Looks smashing Dennis. Wouldn't you need some planking to push the catch in the box, so it won't block the conveyor belt ... or to avoid the catch from falling of at either end ...

Nicely done, Dennis. I would have expected standing sheave blocks on the deck, and the metal type at the foot of those beams ... Hope you feel better soon, i.e. good enough to work on your model ...

Forward Gun Tub
 
After a great trip out West it’s time to get back to work.
 
The next item on the to-do list is the forward gun tub. This marks the first departure from the kit in that the kit provides a nicely cast 3/50” AA gun which was the standard gun for probably 95+% of the Liberty’s but since the Hopkins was one of the earliest of the line the “standard” Liberty weapons were not available so she was fitted out with whatever could be scrounged up.
 
She ended up with a pretty peculiar choice of dedicated AA guns - they were obtained from the Army and consisted of 2 37mm guns. The original design of the gun was as an anti-tank weapon:
 

 
It proved to be notoriously ineffective against German armor and was withdrawn from AT service in 1943.
 
Someone thought it would be a good idea to make an AA version of the gun that could be mounted on a trailer:
 

 
Although the gun had good range (8000 yds) and rate of fire (90 rpm) it had a huge drawback in that it did not fire airburst or tracer ammunition. This made it almost impossible for the gunners to tell if they were getting close to hitting an aircraft, and more importantly, there was nothing to deter or distract a pilot on his attack run.
 
Nevertheless, that was all that was available and 2 of them were loaded on the Hopkins and fitted to jury-rig mountings (during a storm in the Indian Ocean both mounts broke loose.) As it ends up, they proved to be deadly when used against a ship at close range, as the Steir found out.
 
Before I could determine the shape and size of an appropriate gun tub I had to scratch build the guns. There is not a lot about them readily available on the Internet but after a lot of digging I found a 1944 Tech Manual for them. Why someone would take the time to scan and post almost 300 pages of an old maintenance manual is beyond me, but then again whoever it was probably thinks building ship models is strange.
 
After getting the dimensions of the guns I made the major parts out of brass and plastic: 
 

 
After adding more details and painting (I figured they would have been left in their Army Olive Drab paint scheme) they are ready to go:
 

Jay, nice carving of the ornamentation. 
 
The bourbon probably would work, but what a waste of good bourbon.    90% IPA works and it's cheaper than the bourbon.

They don't Michael ... nowadays everything is automated ... even in popeye's fleet

Mike I can get you holly from here sizes vary, but it's all relatively small
from
50-100 cm length, 12-20 cm width en 2 tot 7 cm thick
 
Don't know the prices, but I could ask for youd.They don't have an international website and I don't presume they'll be shipping abroad, but I could do that for you. Just send me a PM if you're interested