Dan Vadas

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

Well I've about had enough of trying to deal with GPM about my up-coming Bismarck. I put my order in for it on the 17th, checked my bank account and the transaction was marked as "Pending" for about 10 days, and then it disappeared altogether. The money never left my account, so I can only presume that the order won't be filled
 
I've sent an Email to Halinski to see if they can do any better. On their Site the Bismarck is marked as "Out of Print" in one version, but on another page under "Wrapped Kits with Laser" it shows as being available. We'll see .
 
  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 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

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

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

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

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

Hi all,
 
With my small distraction (the Concord Stagecoach) finished and out of the way, it's time to get back into SHIP modelling .
 
I've decided to go in a new direction, both in the Period of the Ship and in it's Construction. I've decided to try my hand at Card Modelling, something I haven't done since I was in my early teens when I built a number of Card models of buildings for my model railway. It was fun at the time, the models turned out OK, and it will hopefully be the same again .
 
For my first I've downloaded a freebie from Paper Shipwrights of the HMVS (Her Majesty's Victorian Ship) Cerberus. A pre-printed version is available for £8.50 plus p&h, but I had mine done at a local Photocopy shop for around the same price. They used the equivalent thicknesses of paper needed, and I got two copies of each page to cover the inevitable Oopsies.
 
I also have a Swann-Morton scalpel handle and 100 blades on it's way. The rest of the tools needed I already have :
 
A small steel rule, a cutting mat (although i might update that, I bought it 10 years ago and it's seen a bit of work ), good tweezers, Q-tips, a glue bottle of PVA, CA Glue for the PE, small side-cutters, pin-vices and micro-drills, a mechanical pencil, hairclip clamps, headband magnifier, a small awl and Tamiya masking tape :
 

 
Beats the hell out of the thousands of dollars worth of tools and machines I've accumulated over the years for Wooden Ship Modelling. And .... there's NO sawdust .
 
If I make a success of this one, I might try my hand at something a little more difficult - either a Bismark or a Yamato . The Build Log starts in the next Post.
 
  Danny

Isn't it just . In fact, I had at look at the completed demonstration models on the Paper Shipwrights site - one has the wheel with a solid centre, the other leaves it off altogether :
 


 
Remember, this is a practice ship for improving my paper modelling skills. I may as well try a few things out now before the real thing starts. Although I doubt there will be paper details this small on Bismarck - I'd guess they'd be replaced with PE.
 
  Danny

Now I'm really starting to go beyond the contract - this is the wheel for one of the three Pumps. It's 5mm in diameter, and double thickness 160gsm paper. I don't know if they expected the builder to cut out the inside pieces but I had a go at it anyway - successfully . Being double thickness and printed on the reverse side as well I couldn't use CA to stiffen the paper as it took all the print off on a test piece, so it was all cut in the "raw" state. I used the tiny chisel in the pic to cut the inside of the rim - it's not much wider than a sheet of paper . After I cut it out I dipped it in CA to strengthen it in preparation for what I thought was going to me a fairly major clean-up. All it needed was a light sand on both sides with extra-fine wet-and-dry - YAY. Then I dry-brushed it Matt Black :
 


EDIT - After thinking about it a bit more I realised that I COULD stiffen the paper with CA before cutting it out, as long as I applied it on the BACK of the piece. I'm painting them anyway, so it doesn't matter if the print comes off the back. A test piece proved that as long as I was careful it didn't affect the printing on the front side, so I still had lines I could follow .
 
  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

The Stoppers, or Anchor Chain Guides if you like, are next. Some delicate cutting and folding required :
 

 
I kept looking at the Steam Vent (?) pipe and decided to attempt a re-do. You decide if it's an improvement :
 



 
  Danny

Yeah, Crown Timber are about the best around now. I got some timber off them a while ago, good stuff and didn't take long to arrive.
 
I'll have a look if I have any Ebony left - should have a couple of sheets if you really want to go down that road. I still advise against it, but you're welcome to them as long as you pay the freight (shouldn't be much).
 
  Danny

Hi Eddie,
 
First time Scratchbuild eh? She looks a bit easier than my first one - 16 gun HMS Vulture . Nowhere near the amount of masting and rigging .
 
The only difficulty I foresee is the very bluff bow - it'll takes some serious bending to get the planks around. I'd strongly advise AGAINST using Ebony for the Wales - I used it on mine and it was a real pain to work with, dirty as hell to sand and it's VERY difficult to bend even around Vulture's sharper bow. I doubt I'll ever use it again, a better solution is to simply stain whatever timber you finish up getting. Staining MUST be done before fitting the planks though, a bit of minor touchup after fitting them is OK.
 
Ironically, my Vulture was the ship that Benedict Arnold fled capture on when he turned "traitor" .
 
Have fun with this build, I'll tag along. BTW - who are you getting your timber from?
 
  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

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

So was I Slog .
 
I will shortly, but as you say I'm not going to hold my breath waiting for a reply.
 
They sent an Order Confirmation. Where it says "Payment Status" (highlighted) it translates to "Not Paid", even though I did send the payment via Credit Card with the order :
 

 
  Danny

Well I've about had enough of trying to deal with GPM about my up-coming Bismarck. I put my order in for it on the 17th, checked my bank account and the transaction was marked as "Pending" for about 10 days, and then it disappeared altogether. The money never left my account, so I can only presume that the order won't be filled
 
I've sent an Email to Halinski to see if they can do any better. On their Site the Bismarck is marked as "Out of Print" in one version, but on another page under "Wrapped Kits with Laser" it shows as being available. We'll see .
 
  Danny

John, it's mainly for letting the PVA dry which takes about half an hour before the piece no longer springs back. Once dry it holds it's shape beautifully.
 
  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

. 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

Nicely done mate.