Dan Vadas

As I'm going to rig the tackles for the boats I needed a Cleat on each davit to tie off the line. I cut these from 80gsm CA stiffened paper. They scale out to about 12", which may be a bit large but should look OK once the rope coils go over them. I left a tag to glue it to the back side of the davit :
 


 
  Danny

Fitting the Davits. After all my work earlier remaking the Davit Brackets to get the "fingers" on their ends right I finished up having to cut them off, because my Mk2 Davits were a fair bit wider and would no longer fit in the slots :
 

 
The first 4 davits fitted to the starboard side. I think they will be a success . As you can see in the pics below I've also fitted the Breast Deck Railings :
 


 
  Danny

Thank you Eddie .
 
I bought a sheet of generic Railings in 1:250 scale which I painted before cutting anything off. These replace the awful printed kit railings :
 

 
These are the smallest PE I've used to date, 0.15mm thick, and the railings are the same width. The piece of wire next to the offcut is 0.5mm, which looks huge in comparison :
 

 
The railings have 3 bars, so I cut off the lower one. Then I marked and drilled 0.35mm (#80 which is my smallest drill bit) holes for the legs to go into. I've drilled all 3 decks, a job which would have been MUCH easier while the decks were off the ship but I only got the railings a couple of days ago. All the holes so far have lined up perfectly, which was a bit of a nice surprise . Another surprise was that the spacings for the posts nearly ALL fit each deck with a post right in the corner - what were the odds of THAT happening ? I'm quite happy with the way they've turned out so far, the job while fiddly is a bit easier than I was expecting. The hardest part is actually finding the holes :
 


 

One deck down, two to go.
 
  Danny

Doh!! I knew that.   Age, dontcha know.

Thanks Popeye, I've used nail clippers on the odd occasion before.
 
I've made the two Gun Turrets. I used a piece of scrap Castello to make a support for the base. This is slightly smaller than the finished diameter as I want to wrap the sides under the top for a better finish on the join :
 

 
I cut two slots into the timber to house the gun barrels, which I made from some aluminium tubing I had lying around. These were painted matt black after this pic was taken, and then glued to the base with PVA :
 

 
After gluing on the side and top I trimmed off the slight overlap using a variation on Slog's method whereby I rested the TIP of the blade on the cutting mat and chopped off tiny slivers while rotating the turret. It was a bit easier to do this way as I couldn't see the piece I was cutting with the BASE of the blade on the mat due to the height of the turret :
 

 
Not too bad at all . Note the Vents have been fitted UNDER the top for a bit of depth :
 

 
One turret fitted to the deck. The ventilators etc will be fitted next - they would have been badly damaged if fitted at an earlier stage :
 
 
 
 

Here's a question, probably for Slog - I've used a Faber Castell PITT marker to edge colour the sides of the hull/deck joint. It all worked fine until I got just over one side done and the tip dried up. Any tips on getting the ink running again?
 
 
  Danny

It took me about 1/2 an hour to punch out the 1mm circles and cut the 2mm ones using Chris' tip. I settled for octagons - near impossible to see they aren't actually circles . Now to glue them on, won't take very long :
 

  Danny

Be my guest Ken .
 
The sides of the hull fitted up pretty well, but there's a fair amount of thouching-up to do where the stark white edges of the paper join the black of the sides of the deck :
 

The damage to the paint here was caused by attempting to get a hollow out of the superstructure deck :
 

 
I'm using an Archival Ink pen to fix the problem. I've done a bit around the top of the stern bulwark and it looks like it'll do the job :
 


 
Most of the Superstructure fitted :
 

 
  Danny

Welcome Grant and Rick .
 
Folding and gluing the tabs took me 2 hours on the base. I let it dry overnight. The deck only took me an hour, maybe I'm getting better at it . They look rough in the closeup pic, but it's only shadows - they are all perfectly flat, which would have been impossible or at least VERY difficult without the balsa fillers.
 
When the deck dried there was a very slight amount of "hogging" - with one end flat on the table the other end was about 1.5mm high. Very easy to bend flat, I'm sure that when I fit the side panels it'll all be good :
 


 
  Danny

Thanks Eddie.
 
I've shaped and glued in all the balsa filler blocks. I only glued them to one side of each bulkhead in case they pulled the base out of alignment :
 

 
  Danny

Thanks Hornet, John and Slog.
 
A reasonable afternoon's work, after puzzling for an hour or so about what goes where, and what to cut etc . The bulkheads are glued to the base, and all tabs are scored and folded. I'm going to glue some balsa between the bulkheads along the edges to make gluing the sides on easier. I can forsee that I'd have a few problems with getting a sharp fold on some of the deck tabs otherwise.
 


 
  Danny

HMVS Cerberus - History
 
To save a lot of typing when I'd rather be modelling, here is the page from the Kit :
 


 
  Danny

More tiny rolling. These Ventilators are the smallest ones on the ship - 8mm high by 0.8mm diameter. I was particularly happy with the way the cone turned out, especially as I used the 160gsm paper :
 


 
  Danny

Chris,  the ship I'm building now, HMVS Cerebus is at 1:250 scale and printed correctly. The NEXT ship, IJN Amatzukaze is at 1:200 . I'm looking for 1:200 accessories for my next one at the moment.
 
  DDanny

Oops, until I looked at the right pieces - $AUD100 .

It's 1:200 scale Ken. I found their Railing/Ladder set, the price ($USD50.00 plus shipping) is in the stratospheric bracket but it looks like a very detailed set. They have a Link to a distributor in Hong Kong that look like they have a more realistic approach to pricing . Of course, the link to their Australian distributor doesn't work .
 
Thanks for the tip.
 
  Danny

Hmm ... a scary thought seeing as I'm building a paper model . Thanks Greg and Nils.
 
I've made all the Bollards. Four of these, the Towing Bollards, are rectangular (1.4 x 1.0mm) and made wholly from paper. The other 9 probably disqualify this as being a Card build, as I made the round bits from wooden dowel instead of trying to roll the 17 0.8mm diameter pieces from paper . I'll let them dry thoroughly before painting them matt black:
 


 
To try to prevent losing the tiny pieces as I was cutting them I built a "dam". It worked too, I didn't lose one :
 

 
  Danny

As I'm going to rig the tackles for the boats I needed a Cleat on each davit to tie off the line. I cut these from 80gsm CA stiffened paper. They scale out to about 12", which may be a bit large but should look OK once the rope coils go over them. I left a tag to glue it to the back side of the davit :
 


 
  Danny

Fitting the Davits. After all my work earlier remaking the Davit Brackets to get the "fingers" on their ends right I finished up having to cut them off, because my Mk2 Davits were a fair bit wider and would no longer fit in the slots :
 

 
The first 4 davits fitted to the starboard side. I think they will be a success . As you can see in the pics below I've also fitted the Breast Deck Railings :
 


 
  Danny

Thank you Eddie .
 
I bought a sheet of generic Railings in 1:250 scale which I painted before cutting anything off. These replace the awful printed kit railings :
 

 
These are the smallest PE I've used to date, 0.15mm thick, and the railings are the same width. The piece of wire next to the offcut is 0.5mm, which looks huge in comparison :
 

 
The railings have 3 bars, so I cut off the lower one. Then I marked and drilled 0.35mm (#80 which is my smallest drill bit) holes for the legs to go into. I've drilled all 3 decks, a job which would have been MUCH easier while the decks were off the ship but I only got the railings a couple of days ago. All the holes so far have lined up perfectly, which was a bit of a nice surprise . Another surprise was that the spacings for the posts nearly ALL fit each deck with a post right in the corner - what were the odds of THAT happening ? I'm quite happy with the way they've turned out so far, the job while fiddly is a bit easier than I was expecting. The hardest part is actually finding the holes :
 


 

One deck down, two to go.
 
  Danny

I've finished all the davits. They were a lot easier and turned out much better than trying to cut out the kit ones :
 

 
I wasn't overly impressed with the kit's simple davit block and tackle arrangement, it looks a bit tacky. I'm going to rig the tackle "properly", so I've made "impressions" of blocks for the davits and also the boats. Here are the kit ones :
 

 
And these are mine, complete with the "blocks". The holes in the blocks are #80 (0.35mm) :

 
The "blocks" on one of the boats :
 

 
  Danny

Thanks John.
 
Cutting the seats out took a while, but well worth the effort. The flat printed interior looked very ordinary :
 

 
All the boats completed and touched up with acrylic :
 

 
I made the two Cranes as per the instructions, stiffening the doubled paper with CA and cutting them out. This operation took about 1.5 hours for the two. Despite my best efforts they didn't turn out perfectly but they are acceptable :
 

 
 I have 12 Davits to make which are similar to the cranes. I came up with a better idea of making them but still using paper. I laminated 3 strips together with PVA and placed them into a jig to dry. I'll trim them to size later. It only takes a couple of minutes to make one now :
 


 
  Danny

My first attempt at building a Ship's Boat turned out rather well. I had no idea how it would have to fold as the instructions told me NOTHING . I cut out the hull from a spare thin sheet and soon got the idea - very simple and a fairly good design .
 

 
I made a work platform by carving out a piece of balsa to hold the very slippery customer :
 


 
The completed boat. Only 5 more to go :
 



 
  Danny

Thank you Pat, Chris, Slog and Popeye. Your comments are always appreciated .
 
News on the Bismarck front - not good, it won't be happening anytime soon. Halinski's model is out of print at the moment (they are revising it and it will take some time before it's a goer again).
 
However, I just bought a (relatively) easier model from them - IJN Amatsukaze, a Japanese WW2 destroyer which will get my skills up a lot more before I tackle the big monster . I bought this kit because it's one of the few that ARE currently available, and it also comes with Laser-cut hull formers. I also got a set of lathe-turned gun barrels to suit the ship. All up cost was $USD67 (inc Shipping) which is a tad over $AUD90.00. That's pretty reasonable I think.
 
I'll probably have to source some PE ladders, railings, AA guns etc from SOMEWHERE. GPM have them, but I'm over trying to deal with them .
 
A Build Log of her will be started as soon as I get the kit .
 
  Danny

. You had me confused as well John. My Stagecoach didn't have the iron bands on the hubs. The idea of using Heat Shrink tubing on the wheel RIMS is still a valid one though .
 
Well fancy that Mike. Small world .
 
BTW John - don't throw away the scraps of the grey gasket material. If your kit was similar to mine you won't have enough of the square "nuts" to finish the job. I had to make about 20 or so by first drilling then cutting them out with a sharp blade.
 
  Danny

Mike, it's not Shrink WRAP, but HEAT Shrink. It's a special plastic tubing that shrinks when it's heated, usually by using a heat gun. Electricians (among others) use it for insulating soldered wires instead of using tape. Check out the pics where I used some on the tapered end of an Xacto handle :
 


 
After using the heat gun :
 

 Trimmed off :

John's tubing would have started out at about 4" diameter. A tube that size would shrink down to nearly 2".
 
  Danny