Dan Vadas

This week, I decided to push ahead and make some more progress. There are so many tiny pieces to cut out!
 
I decided to work on the windlass as that seemed like a good project goal. I got a little ways along and a tiny piece of paper with a bunch of parts on it went missing. I searched high and low, swearing I had just seen it hours before. Next morning, I see it on the armrest of my chair. I must have leaned on it and it stuck to my elbow and got deposited on the chair! I've never had that kind of problem with wooden ship model kit parts. 
 
Well, pressing ahead with my report here. I finished the main part of the windlass barrel, which consisted of approximately 31 parts... A 1/96-scale windlass barrel with 31 parts! Am I crazy? Well... maybe. It was a daunting task, but it actually went by fairly quickly and it IS pretty cool that I only needed scissors and knife and some glue...
 
 
Here's part of the barrel under construction and some other parts too. Sorry about the short depth of field on the macro focus.

 
When you build something, you gotta try it for size on the model immediately. It's a rule. The barrel came out just a tad long, which wouldn't be a problem except that the deck has thin black outlines where the bitts are expected to fit in place. These will show, but the lines won't be very noticeable when it's all done.

 
 
Here's a closeup of the completed windlass barrel assembly before cleaning it up.

 
 
And one of the same assembly after some touch-up painting. Again, I'm using the paints sold by Shipyard, which is fairly opaque, so I could paint it on without losing the black printed details.

 
 
Here's another view of the skylight, gratings and hatch I made last time. I went back and added a piece of fine gauge wire for the handle on the sliding hatch.

 
 
I was on a roll, so why stop? I'd cut mast hoops from brass tubing on my last model and thought about doing the same for the Alert. In the end, I decided to make my own mast hoops from a piece of a brown paper bag. I did this for another model years ago and it worked out great. So, I thought I'd refresh the skill.
 
I used a piece of brass tubing slightly larger than the diameter of the mast and wrapped the paper around it, applying white glue to it throughout the process. Once dry, I used a razor blade to cut thin rings off. It's been a long time since I've done this, and it took many tries to get even, thin slices. But, I managed to get enough for my purposes.

 
 
So, what did I learn in paper ship modeling school this week? There are a lot of frickin' little frickin' tiny little frickin' pieces that have be cut. The hardest part is really looking at the work ahead. Yeah, it's like ship modeling that way. But, once you start, all you have to do is cut, cut, cut and cut and cut and then glue. As long as you keep your head down and don't stop to count how many more pieces you need to cut, projects finish up pretty quickly.
 
Clare

The (automotive) primer is solvent based, so that paper or card is not affected by moisture, and a waterproof coating results.

Tony, that's exactly it. You almost have to build with your eyes closed so you can't see what's coming at you next 
 
I'm on a roll at the moment it seems. I decided to make a simple sliding type hatch cover for the wardroom companionway. At 1/96 it doesn't have to be that sophisticated. Needed planking, so I printed out 0.25pt lines 1/16" apart. I'm using Adobe Illustrator for a number of other tasks, so it was easy enough to fire it up and make the pattern. I'll probably add some kind of handle, either bent wire or a simple block type handle from paper. The completed piece was painted and set into place.
 
I also found an old screen in the garage. It turns out that the mesh is the exact size I need for the mullion pattern for the companion way over the captain's cabin. I pulled out a bottle of canopy glue, which I bought for another project, but didn't like the way it worked. For this one and the small glass panes, it worked great – Just squeezed a little out to fill in all the holes in the piece of screen material. Once dried it looked perfect, so I cut down to the exact size I needed and dropped it into place.
 
Lastly, I cleaned up the deck pumps after adding the "iron bands". I decided to give them natural wood looking handles instead of leaving them their printed color, which was red.
 
 
The skylight for the captain's cabin ready to trim and install.

 
 
Everything in place. The deck pumps were quite a challenge and I'm REALLY glad they're done. I will be burning incense and making offerings to the god of thin CA glue tonight. Also visible is the installed skylight and sliding hatch cover forward of that.

 
 
Small accomplishment here was adding the stern timberheads. You probably can't see it so well in the photo, but the rudder is also mounted.

 
 
So, what's next? Good question. I have no idea. Time to look at the kit drawings and get intimidated back into seclusion... But, I'm thinking about cannon barrels (make them from paper or buy or turn them?), deadeyes and chainplates, the taffrail at the stern, and the windlass assembly.
 
Oh, and I noticed that the AOTS book shows two ships boats: A 16' longboat and an 18' cutter. Don't know where these would go, but I also found that the HMS Mercury parts I'm using includes a boat that's just about 16' long. I'll look at the details of that and see if it might be useable. Not knowing where to put it, I would probably mount it as in tow behind the ship. That is, IF I decide to try building it – It seems like a whole project by itself.
 
Clare

Hi Ken,
 
I ordered direct from GPM. I've order from them maybe 3 times now and it's worked out fine. They seem to have a problem formatting US addresses correctly, but my orders have been arriving okay. Each time, I'd modified the address information I typed in so that the final address looked okay. 
 
The last time I ordered from them, it took a little over a month. That's the longest I can recall. I was about to write off the order, but then it finally showed up. 
 
On the laser cut parts, the one issue I have with them is that I painted some small parts while still on the sheet. I've been using the paint that Shipyard sells, which is an artist's acrylic. It's water based and it seems to weaken the card stock. So, the small parts fell apart a bit too easily and I lost a few. When I do get the parts free, if they are intact, I touch the parts with a dot of thin CA. That wicks into the part and holds it all together pretty well.
 
Here are a couple photos of the new gratings cut, painted and dry fitted into place. You can see the gratings included in the kit laying on the deck as well. I also found that I could slice off the bottom layer of the grating, opening up the laser etched holes completely. 
  Big improvement.
 
 
Clare
 
 

 
 

 
 
 
 

So, I managed to sneak in a little more time on this build. I'm taking it to a couple ship model meetings this weekend, so it's nice to be able to show some progress in it. 
 
Added the rungs on the side of the ship as well as channels and bolsters at the bow.
 

 
Also spent some time thicknessing some of the parts for the deck furniture, but not much to show there.
 
In order to show some accomplishment, I decided to work on the mast. I had purchased the masting kit from Shipyard. It was only something like $8. Now, it's even cheaper given the rise of the dollar. But, I wasn't thrilled about the wood quality, so I just used some birch dowels I have on hand and did the usual cutting, tapering, etc. It's nice to be in familiar ship modeling territory!
 

 
I decided to make the masts based on the kit plans and not the Goodwin book. The kit has the topmast forward of the lower mast like one of the models show in Goodwin, not like in his drawings. I'm not out to redesign this kit. Just trying to learn how to build a model from paper.
 

 
I was working on the bowsprit and got it shaped based on the kit. But then realized that the kit has a round cross-section for the full length of the bowsprit. Well, I have to draw the line somewhere, so I'm going to redo it using square stock wood. I might use basswood, but I actually have a birch board on-hand and may just cut some down for the task.
 
For the color of the masts, I used a mixture of TransTint alcohol-based wood dye. By the way, the trestletrees and the mast cap are paper.
 
Clare

Ken, pinball wizard indeed! I finished the shot racks yesterday, but pinball at least comes will a lot of bells and flashing lights, and a chance to win a free game. Loading those shot racks with 0.8mm ball bearings is quietly painful. And the last thing I want is a free game or an extra ball when lit! 
 
I ended up using the smaller 0.8mm ball bearings over the ones I originally started with, which were 1mm. I didn't measure them with the micrometer to verify their sizes, but just went with relative appearance. Here's a comparison of the two sizes in the shot racks.
 

 
The larger ones are more visible, but 1mm is well out of scale for this model. The ship originally was armed with ten 4-pdrs, for which the 0.8mm ball bearings are perfectly sized for. Later, she was armed with a dozen 6-pdrs, which should be right in between the ball bearing sizes I have, but closer to the larger size shown here.
 
So, loading up the shot racks all went pretty well, but I do expect to find tiny ball bearings around the work table every now and again. And it turned out a lot more like the game "Operation!" than pinball, only reverse. I dab a tiny amount of Insta-Cure+ CA on each position and use hemostats to pick up individual cannon balls and drop them into place. It was actually not all that painful.
 

 
When it was all done, I glued the completed racks into place and touched up the pain on the racks and cannon balls.
 

 

 
 
Progress is slow because it's not my main project. But then, what's my excuse on my other builds???
 
I'm still really enamored of these paper kits, but cutting out the really tiny parts is hard on my fingers and I'm trying not to switch to a larger scale, laser-cut kit. I remember making those Guillow's balsa airplanes and having a similar pain from trying to cut those printed parts carefully. I didn't enjoy those kits without the die-cut parts. As much as I love the way this model looks, I may have to switch kits.
 
 
We'll see – I don't want to let any followers of this topic down!
 
Clare
 
 
 

Hi Chris,
 
Funny you should mention David Okamura's models. Two modeler's I know both bought card models at the SMA's Queen Mary event way back after seeing his models on display. I've never seen his models myself, but I understand they are really nicely done.
 
Well, on the Alert, things slow down a bit as I work more on cutting small parts. The cheeks of the gun carriages take a lot of cuts to make. There are only 12 guns on this model – not so bad. I also cut the timberheads. These are really small, but I think I shaped them okay.
 
 
All these parts are listed as 1mm thick. I've found that I don't really like using 0.5mm or 1mm cardboard as it's kind of soft, so I like to use 3M spray adhesive to laminate sheets of printer paper. This seems to cut cleaner than cardboard. The paper I use is pretty thick, so two sheets of printer paper, plus the kit part sheet comes out to 0.5mm.

 
 
 
The kit parts for the gun carriage cheeks are lined up on the kit sheets very nicely, allowing me to glue up several parts at one time.

 
 
 
The parts show cut, yet to be cleaned up.

 
 
 
The cleaned up, painted parts. 

 
 
Clare

Most paper modelers are converts from some other medium, I find.  I was wooed to the Dark Side by David Okamura's models shown at meetings of the Ship Modeler's Association down in SoCal.  There are some world-class wood scratch-builders in that club, but there is something just so darn intriguing about seeing those paper wonders in the mix.  I still have HMS Fly waiting for my attention, but paper projects seem to be taking up all my modeling time these days.  I think you'll be proven not far wrong about some more card kits hitting the ways based on your NRG exhibit - a good thing, in my view!
 
Cheers!

So, I was at the NRG Conference last week, and as an NRG member, I really wanted to bring a model, but couldn't see how to safely transport one to the conference. At the last minute, I decided to bring my little HMS Alert model-in-progress so people could get a better idea of what a card model looks like, even if it's not complete.
 
Boy, did it get a lot of attention... I don't think a single person passed by the vendor table (I went to represent Ages of Sail) without stopping to look closely at the model. I can't tell you how many times I answered "no, it's all paper" and heard the comment "I never thought a paper model would feel this sturdy". Interesting to learn how many people really like the idea of paper models. Sold two of the HMS Alert 1/96 scale kits and a 1/72 Laser Cardboard version. I suspect more people will be building one shortly.
 
I didn't intend to be an advocate of card models, but I just kind of ended up as one. I was even teased about turning the NRG's wooden ship modelers into card modelers. 
 
Anyway, I've been working on HMS Alert a bit. First off, it got handled a lot at the conference, so I gave it another coat of paint on the hull. 
 
At this point, with the hull basically complete, I've moved to the task of making the detail parts. 
 
 
Below are the taffrails at left, the parts for the anchors in the middle, and the parts for the windlass bits on the right.
 

 
 
 
The transom planking didn't cover the transom completely, so I printed some parallel lines at 3/32" intervals off my laser printer and painted the paper and cut it to the proper shape. They're not perfect, but they're on the model now.
 

 
 
 
In addition, I made the catheads and mounted them. They need to be cleaned up a little, but they're on the model.
 

 
 
Finally, the side view showing the placement of the hatch coamings and mast coat. I went ahead and started shaping the mast. I initially used the dowel that came in the masting kit, but I was lazy and found a dowel I had on-hand that didn't need as much sanding down, so I'm using that instead. 
 

 
 
 
I'm now getting to the point where I'm going to have to start thinking about how I'm going to mount and display the model. My initial thought is to just use brass posts like I did with my Mary Taylor model and English Longboat. This model is small enough to where that should work very well. I have a lot of Cherry wood on-hand and it's easy to obtain, so I'll probably make the base out of that.
 
Clare

Hi Clare,
 
Thank you for the information, this is exactly what I needed. I will check out the Shipyard website. I just purchased their Caravela Pinta model from eBay.
My first paper model!
I look forward to see more of your progress.
 
- JP

Hi Clare,
 
Glad to see you decided to start a build log of your Alert. Looking forward to more..
 
 
I was going to write a spiel on what I have found about cutting out small delicate or slender parts but see you are finding your way also.  I plan my sequence of cuts trying to always cut against a good bit of waste and the element being cut is supported on the other side by more waste or the part itself.  Cutting out holes first was also an answer I arrived at pretty quickly  .
 
For small edges and holes, particularly if you have hundreds (like the spaces in tank track links I grind down old No.11, 16 & 17 knife blades to the correct width and sharpen like chisels with a Dremel and use them vertically to chop down.  Gives good clean sharp edges and corners and reduces tearing and dragging you might get doing a regular 'pulling' cut  with a blade on tiny elements.  For my tracks I was doing I had 4 knife handles each with a different width 'chisel' and chopped out 800+ holes    a lot quicker and neater than trying to do each hole in turn with a normal No.11. Also used them to cut off the staggered edges as well using 2 different sizes per side.
 
I keep them in a box and go through them to see if they are a fit when doing other stuff as well.
 
Cheers
Slog

So, here's the model as it looks, planked, but no keel, stem or sternpost. The inner bulwarks is only test fit and not glued into place yet.
 

 
I've just installed the shear molding under the gunports, laminated many of the parts to give them thickness. I also made the mast coat, hawse pipes, prepped some of the mast top hardware, began shaping the wooden dowel mast, and glued up the anchor stocks, but haven't been added yet.
 
Parts are in the process of construction, so still look rough, particularly the round ones.

 
Some deck hatches. The only thing I'm not super happy with is the gratings since they're only printed. I know I could just make scratch gratings from wood, but it would be nice to see how the final ship looks as built from the kit.

 
View of the quarterdeck. I had a bit of a white gap at the bottom of the bulwarks and tried to even out the look with paint, but I got a little on the printed deck. After cleaning, I had to give the deck a wash of paint to even out the look.

 
 
A view of the bow showing the friezes, wales, stem and bow planking. Note the horseshoe. The one on the other side tore when I cut it and it doesn't look as sharp.

 
 
Close up of the bow planking.

 
 
Everyone who’s seen this model is amazed at how sturdy a card hull can be, including me. The lapstraked planking really makes this model solid. I also get a lot of people asking me what kind of wood was used for the deck planking, right before they say “this is paper?”
 
 
This being my first card model, I’ve learned to cut carefully and to soak parts with CA to make them stiffer and to make it easier to shape them and so that the edges don’t “fuzz up”. Plus, it makes it easier to cut very delicate pieces without them tearing up. I’ve also learned to cut out the hollow portions of parts before cutting the parts from the sheet.
    Clare

Well, I’ve done it. I started messing around with a card model from Shipyard because I was really curious about them. I didn’t mean to turn this into a real project, but I can’t help it, this thing is so frikkin’ cool!
 
I’ve already described the kit in detail in the topic I started: here, so no point in rehashing that. I’ll just say that I’ve been distracted by this model more and more and now I might as well just get it over with and make a regular project out of it. Luckily, this card model seems to be progressing a lot faster than my wooden model projects. I think it’s because all the parts are already defined. I don’t have to figure out anything, I just have to build.
 
So, I started tinkering with this kit back in August and picked it up every now and again to add some more to it. Now, I’m at the point where I’m spending multiple evenings in a row on it. At this rate, I don’t think it’s going to take all that long. I'd better really get working on this or I'll never get back to my other projects!
 
 
Here’s where it all started...

 
 
Framing was easy using the laser cut parts included in the kit. Note that not all of the shipyard paper models include laser cut framing. Instead, they give you the parts printed on standard paper and you are required to laminate that paper onto layers of card stock or plain paper in order to build the part up to the proper thickness.

 
On a model this size, the frame density and the stiffeners seem to make the hull enough to work with

 
 

 
The first layer of the hull covering is made up of thin pieces that fit nicely across the bulkheads. It's hard to avoid a little overlap, but I found it important to try, otherwise it creates a wavy surface for the planking.

 
With the layer of stiffners in place, the first layer of hull planking is laid. There are two layers of planking, so I guess you can consider this a double-planked hull.

 
The first layer consist of belts of planks. It's nice that these are printed with properly shaped planks. This makes this model more accurate than 90% of the wooden ship models kits out there, at least in terms of hull planking.

 
The first problem I ran into was the in determining the proper positioning of the bulwarks piece. But, that looks like it will work itself out okay. The second problem is shown here with the laying down of the planking belts. This is a 2-D object laying down on a 3-D surface. The belts are relatively narrow, but not narrow enough to avoid creating a wavy surface along the edges. Fortunately, there is another layer of planking to go over this, so maybe I was worrying about it too much. But, what I found was that after the glue set, I could wick a tiny amount of CA into the edge and then push down on the bumps to flatten them out a bit.

 
That has it's own hazzards as you can see here the glue fingerprints that I haven't seen since my early days of plastic model building. This is the point where I decided to try painting the surface of the hull using paints sold by ShipYard.

 
 
Clare

The wheels also turn  .
 
Danny

Small update. Deck has been glued on. Dry fitting was a bit tricky, because it needed to be shaped like saddle, but once glue was added into equation it went without problems.

Keel, bow and stern were covered.
 

Until next time.
 

After first layer was finished it was time for final planking. This is how build looks currently, after first stage according to build instructions.

Until next time.

Well done!

The wheels also turn  .
 
Danny

The wagon is finished. I've given it a couple of coats of semi-gloss clear.
 
I'll have to do a modification to the bogie mountings later, when I know how high to make the the buffers sit. I have to wait on the rest of the kits to establish that. The difference is that this wagon was a narrow-gauge one and the loco and other wagons are standard (European) gauge so they are different heights. This occurs in "real life" as well - when shifting a wagon from a narrow gauge track onto the main line standard gauge the bogies are replaced with specially modified ones, which usually takes less time than unloading and re-loading the cargo. This is common practice in Europe and several other places in the world. HERE is some information about the process.
 
Here are the final pics :







 
Danny

The wheels also turn  .
 
Danny

The wheels also turn  .
 
Danny

The wagon is finished. I've given it a couple of coats of semi-gloss clear.
 
I'll have to do a modification to the bogie mountings later, when I know how high to make the the buffers sit. I have to wait on the rest of the kits to establish that. The difference is that this wagon was a narrow-gauge one and the loco and other wagons are standard (European) gauge so they are different heights. This occurs in "real life" as well - when shifting a wagon from a narrow gauge track onto the main line standard gauge the bogies are replaced with specially modified ones, which usually takes less time than unloading and re-loading the cargo. This is common practice in Europe and several other places in the world. HERE is some information about the process.
 
Here are the final pics :







 
Danny

The wheels also turn  .
 
Danny

nicely done Danny........I see the trucks move as well.    you did a super job with this one  

The wagon is finished. I've given it a couple of coats of semi-gloss clear.
 
I'll have to do a modification to the bogie mountings later, when I know how high to make the the buffers sit. I have to wait on the rest of the kits to establish that. The difference is that this wagon was a narrow-gauge one and the loco and other wagons are standard (European) gauge so they are different heights. This occurs in "real life" as well - when shifting a wagon from a narrow gauge track onto the main line standard gauge the bogies are replaced with specially modified ones, which usually takes less time than unloading and re-loading the cargo. This is common practice in Europe and several other places in the world. HERE is some information about the process.
 
Here are the final pics :







 
Danny