Richard44

I decided that I'd like to try building a card aeroplane model. Certainly not one as complex as a Halinski kit, so I searched and found that Fiddlers Green allowed you three free models (to download) if you signed up, in the hope you would buy models in the future. One of the kits I chose was the Me109. This kit comprises just two A4 sheets with a total of 25 parts, there are no laser-cut pieces, no fuselage formers and no wing spars or ribs. Instructions are minimal. This build log will perhaps be the shortest one on MSW. The two sheets of parts. The basic fuselage assembled. The forward fuselage is circular in section, so I added a former (scrap wood) to make it easier to attach the cowling and spinner. The top deck, cowling and fin/rudder have been added. I have punched a hole through the fin to allow a short length of dowel to be used as a supporting spar for the tailplane as the kit simply has this glued to the fin with a short tab. This did not seem especially secure to me. And there was a problem with the tailplane anyway, which I'll come to in a minute. The two halves of the tailplane. The starboard one is as printed and cut out. The problem here is that there would be a large gap between the fin and the inboard end of the elevator, if assembled as per kit. The inboard end of the tailplane needs to be trimmed, and the port half has had this done. The mounting tab that is visible on the untouched starboard half vanishes as a result of the surgery, making the spar mentioned above even more essential. The tailplane (plus struts), tailwheel and canopy have been added. Also the exhaust stacks and the air filter on the side of the fuselage. The front of the cowling has been butchered slightly to allow for the fixing of the propeller. The wing, fairly simple, one piece folded along the leading edge. And now for the undercarriage. As cut out. The wheel, hub plus tyre, is supposedly to be made by wrapping a length of card patterned to represent the tyre tread around two discs that are the hub/tyre. This and my attempt at doing this are shown below, though to be fair I didn't put much effort into doing this as I couldn't imagine the end result being anything like an aircraft wheel. So, I made two tyres from scrap wood and glued hubs to these to give a reasonable representation of the wheels, as shown on the right. The undercarriage legs were strengthened with strips of wood. The fuselage and wing were joined together quite easily. Wing radiators, airscoop under the nose, wing guns (short lengths of styrene rod), the propeller and spinner were then fixed. Finally, the undercarriage. This was somewhat awkward as the kit made no provision for mounting this. Some scrap card was used to support the legs and to get, as near as I could, the correct angles. Seems to have worked. There are some problems with the kit, but as it was free, I cannot complain. Interestingly, there is a notation on the bottom of one of the sheets that says "First design Spring 1987" and "Third redraw and design 9-2003". Slightly frustrating at times, but a good introduction to a card model.

Thanks for the likes. Almost finished. The tables, bench seats, BBQ (on the rear deck) etc, have been placed on the boat for the photos but are not yet glued down. The upper deck railings will be the last major thing to be done. The rudder is not yet in place either. And there is some rigging to be added. Cheers

Chris, I understand that doing this gives the sheets, ie parts, protection, but how about gluing? There will be places where glue has to adhere to an area that has been treated, so do you swap from using PVA (I assume this is your usual glue) to another type of glue, eg CA? My apologies if you have answered this elsewhere. Thanks

Chris, I've looked at the Halinski website several times, and nowhere can I find any info about a particular kit other than what I assume is the cover photo. Am I missing something? Cheers

Thanks John. Not much more to do now. Small items, including a BBQ and a carton of beer!

Thanks for the comment and the likes. The upper deck cabins, the wheelhouse and the wheel, the latter from lasercut board, all ready for fixing in place. The hull with the completed superstructure. Cheers

Thanks for the likes and the comments. One of the paddlewheel boxes as cut from the printed sheet, and the two lasercut replacements for the sides. The completed boxes and the forward side gallery ready to be added to the hull. The paddlewheels are in position but not fixed yet. The lasercut framing around the engine bay has been glued in place. The framing around the bay has been completed, the paddlewheels fixed in place, and the boxes, gallery and roof over the engine bay have all been added to the hull. The ladders on the aft of the boxes were made in place using the provided thin strips of printed card. This was one of the jobs where the quick grab of the PVA made this fairly easy. Cheers

Hi Greg, As others have said, welcome to MSW. I'll be watching your build of the Pevensey with great interest as I have just ordered a 1:100 card model of it from World of Paperships. Cheers

Best wishes for your operation Mark. Cheers

Thanks for the likes and the comments. The next job was to build the boiler. The kit actually says the boat can be built in a simplified form if you want to, and the boiler is one of those parts that can be omitted. I decided to build the boiler, even though when AlexA is completed it'll be barely visible. (As an aside, I edge coloured parts using some artists felt-tipped pens I already had that were reasonable matches for the printed colours.) The parts for the boiler are contained within an outlined box on one of the sheets. The completed boiler. The hole in the side is for the shaft for the paddlewheels, though this is certainly not how it actually was. Not all parts of the actual engine are provided, in particular the cylinders/pistons that would have driven the paddlewheels are missing, but they wouldn't be visible in the model anyway. The boiler in place. Cheers

Hi John, Thanks for the comment. World of Paperships (a Dutch company) has two other Echuca paddlers - Adelaide and Pevensey. He also has six models of Sydney Harbour ferries! Cheers

My first card model of a boat. I'm spending time between two homes, and Pegasus is too awkward to shuffle from home to home, so I needed a model to build at home2. A card model is highly suitable as it is compact, needs only a few hand tools, doesn't need painting other than touching up edges and is almost mess free. Chris Coyle's descriptions of his card models and his tutorial on building the torpedo boat, tipped me over the edge into what he has called the abyss. 🥴 So, what model. I certainly didn't want a complicated one to start with, the torpedo boat was tempting, but while browsing various websites I came across one that grabbed my interest. It is a 1:100 scale model of a Murray River (Australia) paddlewheeler - the Alexander Arbuthnot. This boat was built in 1923 and worked towing barges laden with logs to the Kroondrook sawmill on the Murray River. The mill was owned by Alex A himself after whom the boat was named. The boat worked until the 1940s but then fell into disrepair and sank. It was later raised and restored and now operates day cruises from Echuca on the Murray. The kit is one published by "World of Paperships", and comprises six printed sheets, one sheet of optional laser cut parts, five pages of instructions, one page of diagrams and one page of general info about the vessel. The designer's advice of scanning (or copying) the six printed sheets to provide backup in case of mistakes was followed. Photos of the build are sporadic as I often forgot to take them. The hull bottom was cut out, folded and the bulkheads glued in place. My first experience with using PVA on a card model. Interesting. The big advantage of using PVA was its quick grab time, just holding parts together with fingers for a minute or so was sufficient. The big disadvantage of using PVA was its quick grab time, the chances of repositioning anything is essentially zero. And so to my first mistake. Some of the bulkheads were very, very slightly mispositioned. This became apparent when I started to glue on the hull sides. Not normally a problem with a wooden model, but almost impossible to correct with a card model. So, out with the backup copies and start again. The second attempt. The hull bottom with the correctly placed bulkheads and held down on a sheet of glass by thin masking tape. The designer recommends to do this to keep the hull from warping in the early stages of construction, though he suggests paste not masking tape. The main deck, shown here on the sheet, was doubled and glued to the hull. The paddlewheels were constructed using the parts from the laser-cut sheet. The hull with part of the superstructure, the two paddlewheels and the supports for the boiler. The image is upside down, and I have no idea why. 😬 Cheers

Onto the headworks, where I immediately ran into a problem. With the figurehead in place, there was insufficient clearance for the upper prow rails (part 127) to fit between it and the prow. If I moved the figurehead forwards to provide the clearance, it protruded past the prow by a couple of mm. I therefore thinned the prow so that the total width of the prow plus the two upper rails was 5mm, the original width of the prow. Construction of the headworks then more-or-less followed the plan/instructions. The head three timbers were glued in place and the ends carefully sanded to allow the upper rails to lie flush against them. The lower rails were very delicate pieces and I broke both trying to fit them into the slots on the undersides of the head timbers. Two more were made from leftover fret and more carefully glued in place. The lower prow cheek was positioned so as to just touch Pegasus’ foot. Once finished, the prow area looked decidedly empty - specifically, no seats of ease. So two seats of ease were made, the discharge tubes made from square wood strip sanded to provide the correct parallelogram cross-sectional shape, while the actual seats were made from thin ply, glued in place then gently sanded to thin them even more. Knees were fitted between the first head timber and the bow head rail. Ledges were fitted to fill the area. These were tricky to fit given the small area in which to work. Beams were first glued across the first and third head timbers, then two curved rails (to support the inboard ends of the ledges) were glued to the undersides of these. Five minute epoxy was used and gentle finger pressure held each rail in place until the glue grabbed (I preferred to use epoxy rather than gel CA). On the inside of the head rails, thin strips were glued to provide outboard support for the ledges. The upper edges of the strips were curved to match the head rail, while they protruded below it. The grain was kept horizontal, then once the ledges had been glued in place, a sharp knife trimmed those strips back flush with the rails. The decorations, the figurehead and the berthing rail were all fitted, as was the rail around the fore deck. Cheers

Hi Bug, You may be interested in the way I made the pump cranks - Post 72. https://modelshipworld.com/topic/25331-hms-pegasus-by-richard44-victory-models-164/page/3/ Your Pegasus is looking great. Cheers

Hi TBE, The project is going OK, albeit slowly. Most of the time expended has been in trying to decide just what can I actually build in that very cramped space. I should have an update in my build log soonish. Cheers

Hi TBE, Your build is looking really good. I see that you've added the seats of ease - I'm just struggling with those myself at the moment. BE's list is actually at the end of his build log - https://modelshipworld.com/topic/15526-hms-pegasus-by-blue-ensign-finished-victory-models-164-scale/page/10/ Cheers

That's right it is. The first image, from a Pegasus plan, shows the the fascia and both counters (excuse the poor "straight" lines 🙂). In the second image, of your model, the lower extent of the fascia is shown by the red circles - not all of which are in exactly the right place, but you'll get the idea. Dry fit the fascia until you're happy with its placement. Some slight sanding of the four stern extensions may be required. For the moulding strips that seperate the different pieces, you could use 1mm square strip. I actually used 2mm square strips that I shaped using a tool made from a Stanley knife blade. I cut a profile in the blade using a Dremel with a cut-off wheel , but files could also be used. The image shows the blade with two profiles and a piece of strip with a profile cut in it. Simply drag the blade along the wood till you get the profile you want. Once you plank the decks you won't be able to remove them. Everything that you need/want on the upper deck has to be in place before you finally fix the ply false fore and quarter decks and plank them. This importantly includes the cannons that will be hidden by the fore and quarter decks. "Paralysis by analysis" strikes most of us at some stage 😁. Cheers

Probably not. Maybe the ply/walnut could be trimmed to shorten them and thus close the gap, but I certainly wouldn't force them into place. This would probably result in a disaster sometime later as the glue gives up. So long as the ply/walnut fits correctly elsewhere, then planking the deck will eliminate the gap. I'm not quite sure what you're asking. The side planking should overlap the planking of the upper and lower counters. Above those you have the stern fascia (this may be what you are calling the gallery) which itself extends out to the side and so overlaps the side planking. I would next plank the decks, only because you'll be able to run the Qdeck planks out over the stern, if the fascia is not in place, and so easily trim them to length. Then the fascia (?gallery) and finish the hull. All I can really say about the order in which you do things is - think it through and preferably several steps ahead. You're doing well, keep it up. Cheers.

Thanks for the likes. All the swivel gun mounts are in place and now to deal with the guns themselves. The ones supplied in the kit are terrible, so guns were bought from Syren, nicely turned brass barrels, brass trunnions but no yokes. I initially thought that I would do what B.E. did and bend and silver solder together two brass hooks. I tried this but was unsuccessful. I then realised that because I was not going to install the hammock cranes, these could perhaps be used. The photo shows the first attempt (on the left) at adapting one of the cranes - rather rough. On the right is the second attempt, much better. Also shown is a hammock crane as supplied and a brass nail which I will have to cut down to use as the trunnion. The trunnions that came with Syren’s guns are too big to fit through the holes in the arms of the cranes, even after I had drilled these out as much as I dared. The new yokes are perhaps a little underscale, but even so, they look quite good. A 0.5mm hole was drilled in the gun and a short length of 0.5mm brass rod was epoxied in for the tiller with a blob of epoxy forming the knob at the end. The sixteen swivel guns ready for assembly. The small washers are to go onto the tops of the mounts as sockets for the yokes. One of the finished guns on a mount. Finally, this photo shows one of the kit guns compared to my version. That’s all for now, Cheers

Thanks for the likes. The quarter deck cap rail is supported at its aft end by a simple post, and at the fore end by a pre-cut slot in the rail which goes over a post. In between these two are the five swivel gun mounts into which the rail slots. All seven points of fixing had to be aligned so that the rail formed a straight line in profile. To do this, I glued the rail to the aft post and the first and last gun mounts were similarly glued in place and adjusted so that the rail was reasonably straight - it did sag in the middle. The rail was just slipped onto the fore post, but not glued at this time. The remaining three gun mounts were then offered up to the rail and adjusted till the rail was straight. The join between the rail and the fore post was painted with glue, and after drying, the post was trimmed as it was overlong. The wheel had already been made, with a few changes from the kit. The end stanchions were simplified, the barrel was replaced as I did not like the appearance of the plywood one in the kit, and the wheel was rigged to the tiller following the diagram in TFFM, rather than the one in the plans. The binnacle was fastened in place. The Swan-class ships had two brake pumps (elm tree pumps) as well as the two chain pumps. The kit did not supply nor mention these. So, a Caldercraft kit for two pumps was bought. The instructions weren’t quite followed. The 4mm dowel supplied to form the body of the pump should have been cut into 13mm lengths and drilled length-wise through the centre (a 0.75mm diameter hole). A length of 0.7mm brass rod (the connecting rod) was to be fed through this hole, protruding through the bottom to make a locating peg, and formed into a small loop at the top to take the brake handle. I decided to cut a 4mm dowel into a length sufficient to reach the lower deck of Pegasus and to give the 13mm length suggested for the body of the pump above the upper deck level. A short hole was drilled in the top for the connecting rod for which I used a pre-formed eyelet. Caldercraft supplied 2mm dowel from which to make the outlet - I had some thin walled brass tubing which I used instead. The hole I made through the upper deck was angled as the pumps were not perpendicular to the deck. The instructions call for the pump, when in place, to be oriented so that the handle pointed aft and the outlet forwards. The TFFM says the opposite and this is the way I will install them. When looking at the space available, this is more logical as there is room for a sailor to operate the pump. Also the outlet now points directly at the scupper that the chain pump drains to. The parts to the pumps with the extra long dowel. The completed pumps, and I was careful to make port and starboard ones. One of the pumps in place. They’ll be permanently installed later. The next installment will be all about swivel guns. Cheers

Just as an aside B.E., I hope you're backing up your build log - I'd hate for you to have to try and recreate it (as you did with Pegasus) if there is another system crash. Cheers

Thanks for the likes and comments. The two ladders in the waist, the swivel gun mounts at the bow, the tiller, the cover over the head of the rudder, the pin rails and the channels were all added. The wheel and binnacle will both be added later as I think they would be a little vulnerable to being knocked at the moment. It was immediately apparent that the channels lacked something - the supporting knees. The kit makes no mention of these, but TFFM says that the fore channel has three, the main four and the mizzen two. So knees were made from suitable strip and glued in place. A Dremel with a sanding drum was used to put the curve into the knee and it was then simply cut from the strip. There is a however, however. The knees butt against the hull between the two rails that have already been installed with PE decoration between them. Removing the PE, trimming it to allow for the knees and reinstalling was never an option. Neither was trimming the PE whilst in place. So the knees are simply glued against the PE decorations. Although close inspection would show this, the knees will be hard to see behind the rigging. The Dremel and two knees that have been parted from the strip. The tops of the swivel gun mounts were sanded to an octagonal form, but this is not readily apparent. The black “iron” bands around the tops of the mounts are heat-shrink tubing. The fore channel and two of the mounts. That's all for now. Cheers

Thanks Jason, that's what I thought, but I wanted to be sure. Cheers

Chris, I've just got to ask...."starving cow" problem with card models? I'm really curious because my first card model (a Murray River paddle boat) is on its way from Europe, but more of that when it arrives. And I'm following your build log with much interest. Cheers

Thanks Phil. Cheers