slagoon

Michael,
 
When I'll grow up, I want to become a ship-modeller like you!

Now, seriously, I enjoyed every bit of this log, but especially the metal works.  Your work is really inspiring!
cheers
Stelios

Sunday June 5th, 2011  
Yesterday afternoon I have installed the handrails I anticipated in the previous message. They are 15mm. long and are quite plausible. I think it is necessary to keep in mind that on the real ship these details will be probably removed during the clearing activities before a gunfight. As soon as possible I will show the images of these details: I like them and I think to expand their usage to other areas.
 
Here below other images of the model as it was yesterday.
 
01 Cross%20Section%20Santisima%20Trinidad/P1070614.jpg

02 Cross%20Section%20Santisima%20Trinidad/P1070619.jpg

03 Cross%20Section%20Santisima%20Trinidad/P1070611.jpg

04 Cross%20Section%20Santisima%20Trinidad/P1070612.jpg

 

as always, beautiful work.

Hello dear friends,
I appreciate your comments a lot and thank you for your support. It is sometimes hard to make various things of wood or metal without suitable tools. So i prefer to use card/ paper as a main material for my models.
BUT, for my models I naturally need some accessories made of wood and here i cooperate with people who offer CNC accessories in a high quality for ship models.
Here are some accessories that I bought in our country from Radek Beseda.
 

 

 

 

 

 
 
 

 
 
He also sends these CNC blocks and other things and models to foreign countries, so if you are interested, you can look through his web pages and contact him. I am very satisfied with his approach and willingness.
 
http://www.radekshipmodels.cz/en/
http://www.radekshipmodels.cz/en/list-of-kits-and-accessories/accessory---blocks

John Thanks.
 
Back at the block Factory, A long time ago I purchased a small board  of Lemonwood or Degame to make some wagon type wheels, the blanks were cut but the wheels never got made. I re-cut the small curved sections to use for blocks. the wood is quite hard and takes a fine polish it is similar in texture to Boxwood but a little darker. I wont be using this many double blocks, after shaping the profile I will cut a number of them in half to make single blocks like the ones on the right.
 

 
and a metric rule
 

 
The big blocks are Lemonwood the small ones in the front are Boxwood
 
I also worked on a maple one with a metal frame
 

 
The pin is 3/32 in diameter
 

 
the new block attached with yesterday's shackle
 

 

 
 
Michael
 
 

Tss tss.. you forgot the tea cups and the cookies.
 
Superb!

Viva yards (or Bounty, or Scott, or Brawny....) hehehe

Next up is making my funnel. Again, a silly little wood dowel for my funnel? How does smoke escape? through my brand new shiny brass one, that's how.
 

 
I cut it down and used blacken-it on it, but that didn't get me the look I wanted...so I put it over a candle for awhile, eventually using it as an actual funnel for the flame which got me the effect I wanted.

 
In the drawing of the ship I saw that they wanted it to look riveted so I took some of my scale rivets and applied them with a satin nail polish.
 

 

 

 

 
I also saw in the drawings that there were bands all the way around the funnels. I created this effect with simulated stained glass lead liquid.
 

 

 

 
My super glue cap is really useful!
 

 
Here is a before and after of the brass tube.
 

 
As always, thanks for stopping by. Any questions, comments, criticism are always welcomed

Mark, Sjors, what can I do to thank you besides showing you more pictures?
 
Next up was my railings, I chose to ignore the instructions that told me to make them black and instead I chose to have them dark walnut with high gloss for the finish.


 
Next were the catheads which were probably the easiest, just a piece of wood cut down at 45º that matched the size of the ones in the plans.
 
For the bow rail I wasn't really provided with any wood that was the correct thickness so I took some of the leftover sides from the paddle boxes and glued them together. Then I drew on the shape of the bow and started sawing it down.

 
This was tricky so I took a break and started shaping the shear strake. As with all the planking I started by just soaking the wood in hot water then putting it on the ship without glue and leaving it to dry.
 

 
I got back to the bow rail. I finished cutting it out (which was tough because it liked breaking on the grains so then I'd have to wood glue and wait till the next day). Luckily I had plenty to do with getting my build log rebuilt.
 

 
I shaped and shaped and filed and sanded and then cut out the couple details that I still had and came up with this!
 

 

 
As you can see, by now I have also finished installing the shear strake and the catheads

 
Next up was the doors for the gun ports. They told me to make it out of the plane board provided (yet again I found it inadequate) so I took a piece of teak that I'd gotten recently and glued two leftover planks to it. Then I cut them down to bite-sized pieces...er gun port door sized anyway and painted the front the same black as the rest of the boat. I also added some eyebolts to act as the part where the rope will hold them open.
 

 
I cut really thin bits of brass and used those as hinges and attached them to the boat.
 

 
You can see that I just varnished the teak on the other side. It was TOO pretty to paint...I only used it for this because it was the only thing I had available to me without making yet another trip to the hobby store.
 

Viva yards (or Bounty, or Scott, or Brawny....) hehehe

Another build log that was eaten by the hard drive monster was my 1:144 Harriet Lane so I will attempt to recreate it here. Again, like my Bounty's Jolly Boat I will include some retrospective content in the attempt to help anyone who wants to try this ship in the future.

Lets start at the beginning. I got this gift as a Christmas present from Santa (my husband still denies that he bought it). It is a model shipways boat and this model is from a solid hull. 
 
 

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

There are lots of little knick knacks that came with the ship too.


   
 
 

The first step is to cut out the patterns for the shape of the hull. It was suggested to me (after the fact) that you should paste it to a card stock or cereal box to make the pattern more firm. That would have helped but it certainly wasn't necessary.
 
The next step is measuring and placing the center line on the boat. I have a laser level so I used the laser to make sure my line was fully straight. I also marked the station lines on the ship. 


 

I measured from the centerline to the edges of the bulwarks based on the drawings and drew those lines on. 


    Then I started shaping my hull. This was a slow process. I'd hone a station down until it was roughly right and then I'd move to the next, checking against the templates each tie to make sure I was taking the right amount away. Then I worked to get each station to flow nicely into the next. The toughest part there was where the hull didn't have enough material on it so I had to improvise a bit.


 
 
 
 
 
 
The bulwarks need to be really thin, 3/32"  and  to keep the boat from breaking during shipping the manufacturer really makes it thicker than needed. They also made it significantly shallower than needed so I thinned the bulwarks and also dug out the floors. This was really difficult since I didn't have the right tools.  Luckily my husband went to harbor freight and bought me a miniature hand planer. After it's blade was honed it worked like a charm. 


 
 
 

I applied wood putty to the hull to even out the couple dents that were too deep to sand out.  The wood was so soft that if I wasn't  careful it dented...even with just my little fingernails it would dent. It was truly annoying. But in a solid hull situation like this, putty is your friend.  I also used grey primer between layers of fixing dents because it helped the dents show up better.  


 
 
 
 
 
 
   
 
 
 
 
I would have been even more diligent than I was with filling in dents and smoothing the hull but my primary concern was the hull's shape since I was planning on planking above the waterline and coppering below the waterline.

Before I could get to that I needed to install the keel, stem, and sternpost. That required lots of measuring and tiny bits of cutting. The hardest part was dealing with the instructions. While this is a "beginners" kit it doesn't tell you where to get the parts from such as the figurehead stand on the bow. It really expects you to be able to figure a lot of that out for yourself...but then too they don't seem to include the optimum types of materials to craft your own pieces from.  This kit is a lot closer to a scratch build than the jolly boat was - I'm finding myself creating more parts than the kit gives...so if you are a beginner and don't have much experience either in other types of modeling or woodworking then you should steer clear of this kit.


 


In order to get a good shape for the stem I used a contour gauge against the hull. This was an old one my husband had lying around for ages, but it works just as well as a new one bought off of Amazon or from Harbor Freight.


 


For creating my figurehead stand I traced the shape from the plans onto a piece of cooking parchment paper and then cut that out and stenciled it onto the wood I used.  


 
 
 
After all these careful measurements my pieces went together perfectly.


 
 
   

Again it was time to play with the wood putty and smooth the transition between those new parts and the hull.


 
 

I needed a break so I started working on the wheel covers for the paddle wheels. I was trying to make it so I wouldn't lose all the detail of these parts but with every layer of paint I lost more and more detail.  I tried going back over the details with a knife to make them stand out more but they kinda looked horrible.


 

So I went searching for something better. I came across an old Pyro plastic kit from the '50s for "the blockade runner Harriet Lane" and realized it was nearly identical of the one that I am building of wood. I looked at the sides of the paddle boxes and realized they were indented completely differently and that whole areas were indented with other whole areas sticking out. So I went about shaving off material to let me get that same effect.  It looks better. Not perfect but much better.


 

I wasn't ready to go back to my hull yet either so I decided to work on my deck that had "precut" decking. It was basically a piece of wood that had lengthwise slats cut down it to imitate the spots between boards on a deck. The problem was they were the full length of the ship which was about 180' long in real life so I figured they didn't use 180' lengths of timber for the deck so I added little cuts every so often which, once I stained, ended up looking darker and like they were separations in the planks. Much better if you ask me.


 
 
 

Next was my intro to kit bashing. The kit supplied me with a figurehead about the size of a fingernail that was supposed to be an eagle perching. It looked like a tooth. It also showed on the plans all this beautiful detail on the side of the figurehead support that was not included in the kit. I'd read Chuck's practicums on the Sultana and Phantom based on someone's suggestion and Chuck explained how to create ship pieces out of Sculpy clay (or similar) so I tried my hand at making the scrollwork and a new figurehead.
 
 
 
 
   

I also read in the instructions that they wanted me to put the pilothouse together and then paste on the computer printed sheet of pilothouse details and paint any spots that the paper didn't cover. I couldn't take the idea of having paper as the pilothouse so I made the details as I think they may have looked out of wood. I used 5 layers of transparency paper as window glass and leftover nails from my jolly boat as door knobs. I painted the sides white (as they would have been if made from paper) and the top grey as instructed.


 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

Then I went back to my hull. I planked the side with thin strips of wood and then at the waterline filed them down until they were as thin as I dared go.  I didn't do much sanding on the other pieces as that would defeat the purpose of planking it. I would have just left it solid hull if I didn't want it to appear made of wood. I also put lines simulating breaks in the lengths of the planks and two tiny dabs of super glue to simulate rivets before painting.


 
 
   
 

Then I went to start coppering my hull.  I didn't want to just put long strips of the copper on it - again that would be like the idea of putting paper on my pilothouse. I sliced the copper in half then put fake rivets in it by first doing it one at a time with an awl and then I realized I could use my tweezers and put in two rivets at once.  I was later told that I could have bought and used a pounce wheel. (Which would have saved me HOURS of work) Then I cut each small tiles from each strip and applied them starting at the waterline.


 
 
 
 

After coppering was done I needed to cut the spots for the wheelhouses. That was scary. Measure once, measure twice, measure a couple more times, take a deep breath then cut was my formula.


 
 


Then I cut my gunports using the same methodology.
 

 

Next it was time to prepare my wheel houses. I put the four pieces together for each side, sanded thoroughly, shaped the sides per the drawings and painted it black. I made some railings out of sculpy and glued those on and also glued on my covers you saw earlier.


 

I didn't like the idea of just painting everything black so I used blacken-it on the wheels and dark stain on the actual paddles.


 
 
   

I decided that my eagle looked more like a bluebird so I tried just making the head of an eagle. I attached that and the scrolls at the bow. There had been some question of scale before the site died so here are also some shots to show the scale.


 
 
 

Then I attached the sponsons to the hull and added on some decking and some trim to make them look more complete.  I also added my decking to the rest of the boat at that time.


 
 
     
   

Next I added all my waterway pieces. which I stained in dark walnut.
 
 


Then I went about starting my railings for above the gun ports. This is as far as I got before the crash.  



Thanks for visiting and I'll have some actual updates soon!  'Till then feel free to check out my husband's swift.
   
 
 

Viva yards (or Bounty, or Scott, or Brawny....) hehehe

I was featured on Model-expo's blog today!
http://shipwrightjournal.blogspot.com/2013/04/prince-de-nuefchatel-by-jaron-schofield.html

I didn't know they were going to have a 'Modern Impressionist' section of the calendar.  'Yards on a Paper Towel' or 'Dreams on Terrycloth'. Hmmmm.

Absolutely amazing. That was, I think, the first time I saw a ship in the neck other than for fitting.

Looks like Russ answered your questions. Also, if you haven't ordered it yet, if you can use the "rain13" code and get the phantom including a tool kit and paint for only $10.00 more....
http://www.modelexpo-online.com/product.asp?ITEMNO=MS2027SP
 ($85.00)
 
If you have any other questions, just ask

Doris is one of MSW's talented artists and she has done some video tutorials on sculpting with clay. Those could potentially help you too...http://modelshipworld.com/index.php?/topic/854-royal-caroline-by-doris-card-1749-140/?p=18230
  I've done OK with sculpting my details using clay, and I'm sure with more practice I'll do even better.

And that is precisely why my canons are glued down!

Thank you Sarah,
 
I take your point re Model Slipway shipping costs and I will try to find a cheaper method.
 
Thank you, both of you, for your advice. I will be  away from home for most of the next 30 days but will mull it over and decide when i return. 
 
Mike.

I made the mast and sails, it still fits in the bottle so that's a good sign. the mast are made from bamboo and the sails are made from some yellowish paper I had laying around. Everything is held together with ca glue. next comes the rigging.
My reply box is broken making it hard to reply emoticons are broken to so I have to type them in manually

Hi,
 
once the rifle rack has always been empty, it has now become some parts.
First of all the parts of course will be some rifles, on the upper part of the rack there are placed some lamps (made of 2mm acrylic glass), at one side of the rack is put a saber and on the other side a sort of a trumpet.
(after looking to the pictures on the computer, I detected, that the rifles have to be aligned a bit better, difficult to see only with eyes, due to the small parts...)
 
 

 

 

 

 


And when I'm at it, I made some general pictures of the Amerigo, because now nearly every part is placed on the deck.
 
 

 

 

 

 
 
 
Regards, Joachim
 

You may want to submit that picture to the calendar thing.   They really are that good.  

Many folk are either intimidated by the thought of carving or have had poor success when trying. An alternative method to consider is to build up the carved work using a bakeable modeling clay such as Fimo or Sculpey. Also, some modelmakers leave off all the carved work entirely. Don't limit your horizon by fear of carving!

Uhoh looks like I've been a bad influence again! hehehehehehe
Thanks for looking in guys, and I hope your builds of this lil gal go well we'll have the smallest fleet in the world!
 
I made a little more progress before heading to work today.
I put a facia plate on the back of the 3rd and 4th layer.



 
Then I put on the next layer with it's top. It has railings so I had to bend those upward

 

 

 
Then the next layer (with more railings)

 

 
Because of the limited amount of detail due to this tiny scale this is moving along fairly quickly.
 
As far as the giant penny, I truly do feel like I am somewhere in alice in wonderland.

Thanks Sarah, I appreciate very much your script. The blue stained wood was an idea that I had without any suggestion from other modelers. So it is 100% mine, and I'm very proud of it. Thanks  again, Jack.