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Thukydides

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Everything posted by Thukydides

  1. Thukydides
    I have never heard of this stuff, do you describe the process in more detail in your alert log, I don't remember seeing that. Where do you normally find it, what is it normally used for? There is still time to add the top band and the bottom one wouldn't be seen anyways. If I went with the card option, @VTHokiEE do you do anything to the card make it look less like paper?
  2. Thukydides
    Log #28: The Rudder It has been a very long time since I updated this log. The reasons have been a combination of factors, but the main underlying reasons have been a lack of time and I was unsure how to proceed. So I was picking away at things, but didn’t have enough progress to really show here. In any case I am hopefully back on track and I hope that the next entry will not take as long to come as this one did. For the rudder I wanted to try and modify it a bit from the kit to align more with the plans in Goodwin. I briefly considered scribing the various joints, but given how my last attempt at that went, and the only alternative being to reconstruct the whole rudder from scratch, I decided to largely stick with the kit as is. The only modification I made was to the tiller and how it joined the rudder. After assembling the rudder and the tiller as indicated in the instructions, I filled in the cap on the rudder where the two were meant to join and then carefully cut out the appropriate joint. I had planned to also add the iron bands that are just above and below the joint, but shaping the scrap brass to fit exactly right was very hard and given my issues with super glue and blackened PE parts (which I will cover in my next log), I decided to skip this step. I also attempted to shape and round the tiller so it went from angled where it joins the rudder assembly to round where it would be held by the helmsman.
  3. Thukydides
    That was a really useful post. They all look great. I assume the benefit of making the rings/eye bolts from scratch this way as opposed to just using off the shelf ones (eg amati ones) is you can carry the size in line with what was historically used?
  4. Thukydides
    Looks fantastic, great job on the planking.
  5. Thukydides
    I use an iwata hp-cs (eclipse). I have nothing but good things to say about it. The main brush has a 0.3mm nozel, but you can order a replacement nozzle and and needle in the 0.7mm size which I find works better if I am using primer or want to cover a much broader area. If you want a budget option that won’t break immediately you could look into the iwata neo. It is not the same quality as the eclipse, but it does the job (i have a friend who uses one, mostly for priming and varnishing). You can pick it up for under $100 (Canada).
  6. Thukydides
    I know the feeling, I have too many hobbies (chess, model making, miniature painting, etc…) and time for less than one due to all the other commitments. Keep at it, the jig is a good idea.
  7. Thukydides
    Awesome work, well done
  8. Thukydides
    I am going to second the advice from @Oldsalt1950. I ran into a bunch of issues with my planking which directly related to me not fairing enough. You can test if things are fared properly by laying a test strip across the bulkheads at various point to make sure things are lying right. Particularly at the bow and the stern getting this right will save you a lot of grief later on.
  9. Thukydides
    Acrylic paint is made up of 3 components: pigment, binder (the stuff that makes it dry into plastic) and water. Essentially what you are doing is adding more binder. The binder is what primarily gives the paint the sheen (matte vs gloss) and so if you add a matte binder then it will make your paint more matte. Personally when painting if I need to thin my paint a lot then I add both water and a medium. The reason is that if you add too much water then there is not enough binder in the mixture and the paints starts to separate. In general water will make it more translucent and make the final dried layer be thinner. Binder will make the dried layer a bit thicker, but just with less pigment for a given area. In your case it appears that the type of paint you are using is high on pigment and low on binder and water. This means that the amount of thinning you have to do to make it look good at scale likely necessitates at least a bit of medium for best results. Ultimately as you noted the best thing to do is play around with the proportions and find what works for you as it depends a lot on what paint you are using etc… The only hard and fast rule I would suggest is don’t add much more than 2 parts water to paint without also adding some sort of medium to ensure your paint doesn’t break down. Great work, it is looking really good.
  10. Thukydides
    Great job @hollowneck everything has come together on this. The water is some of the most impressive I have ever seen. You should be very proud of your work.
  11. Thukydides
    This is fantastic Ron, you make me want to try a diorama some time. I do a lot of model painting and that pink foam stuff is fantastic, I use it all the time. One question I have which isn't clear to me is how solid your water shape is. You seem to leave a lot of space under the foil material. Is the subsequent plaster layers enough to make this sturdy or do you reinforce it in some other way?
  12. Thukydides
    Its looking really good Ron.
  13. Thukydides
    Great job, congrats on completing such a large project and as everyone else has said thanks for bringing us along on the journey with you.
  14. Thukydides
    I agree, I think it looks better without them where you are going for navy board style.
  15. Thukydides
    It looks fantastic, I will definitely be trying your method when I get to the sails on the Alert.
  16. Thukydides
    Thanks for the detailed explanation @hollowneck. I was not aware you had done an article, I may take a look at it. Looking forward to seeing this all come together.
  17. Thukydides
    It's looking really good. Is there a reason why you use normal paper for the middle of your sail sandwich? Or is it just that it doesn't matter what you use for the middle layer and it is cheap and at hand?
  18. Thukydides
    Just getting caught up on your log, I had not realized you had started another build. Good work on the anchor. It is looking good so far.
  19. Thukydides
    It looks fantastic BE. Your work is an inspiration, I hope that some day I will be able to produce work like yours.
  20. Thukydides
    Log #27: Fixing the Transom It has been a while since I posted as a combination of having Covid, business at work and then being away on vacation seriously limited my modelling time. As I discussed in my last post I made the painful decision to rip off the railing near the transom to raise the height of the bulwarks in this area to better match drawing in Goodwin and the Marshall painting. The first step was to adjust the moulding to determine the sheer line the railing should follow. Next I glued two wedges made of the leftover lime planks to serve as the core of the bulkhead. I then planked both sides with the leftover pear and carefully sanded it flush and shaped it to match the desired sheer. I also had to add small pieces to extend the length of the moulding. With this done the brackets supporting the transom now go in a more natural position resting against the beam running over the top of the ports. I also had to extend the length of the cap rail as it would no longer reach the transom. As the pieces were very thin, this proved somewhat of a challenge as I couldn’t just glue pieces on to the end. To solve this problem I found some scrap of the appropriate thickness and then used my chisels to cut a small recess in them to accept bridging piece of wood to strengthen the joint. Once dry I sanded the joint flush. This gave me enough length to be able to fit the railing to the new bulkhead sheer. I then glued them in place. Then some touchups were necessary to fix places where the paint had been damaged. In the end though it took a lot of extra work, I am pleased I went back and made the adjustments. I am much more satisfied with the result than I was before.
  21. Thukydides
    Personally speaking I think it looks better without the boats. And as others have said if you are not putting the boats on, I would leave the cradles off.
  22. Thukydides
    It is the really low walls (the solid railing part, not sure what they are called) and the fact that this forces the brackets to be almost touching the deck that made me decide to redo this. I was looking at the Goodwin book and I came across this picture which seems to indicate Goodwin put the Wales at the stern just a little bit higher. Notice how the bottom of the wales is level with the top of the tuck while in the kit the Wales extend a bit lower. This makes the sheer a bit higher at the stern which would make the run of the top plank rise to the top of the transom. Basically my fix is just to raise the moulding that runs below the frieze at the stern so it rises a bit higher and meets the transom around the same place it does in the Goodwin picture. Then using a spacer I marked a constant height from the moulding and trimmed the wedge down to that height so it rises as a curve. I definitely could have left it as it is and I don't think it looked bad, just a bit off... Yes, that is what ultimately made me bite the bullet and do it over. Even though it is a relatively minor issue, it would allways bug me if I didn't go back and do it over.
  23. Thukydides
    Log #26: One Step Forward, Two Steps Back As I was preparing to attach the catheads I noticed a discrepancy between the stern of my model and the Marshall painting I had been referencing. If you look at the stern you can see how the gap between the railing and the wales increases right after the last gun ports to rise to the top of the transom. This is what my model looks like: I went back over the instructions and I had not missed any steps that I am aware of, but there is a discrepancy between where my bulkheads end and what the image and the instructions appear to think it should rise to. Doing some further digging, I noticed in @glennard2523‘s alert build log (though as far as I can tell he never comments on this) he added an additional wedge shaped strake at the stern rising from the last gun port to the transom. Though I can find no suggestion of this in the instructions, this would solve my problem and so with a somewhat heavy heart I removed all the railings at the stern and broke out the isopropyl to clean up the paint in that area… Next log will be all about me trying to correct more of my mistakes :).
  24. Thukydides
    Looking really good. I am also fighting a Covid infection at the moment. Not a lot of fun :).
  25. Thukydides
    Log #25: The Cap Rail, Timberheads and Catheads The cap rail proved relatively simple to install. I started by painting the pieces black as this would mean I would not have to try and get a brush into the hard to reach underside and potentially spill paint on the deck. After painting I glued them on and then used fine grit sandpaper to smooth them down. I plan to touch up the paint once all the assembly of the rails etc are done. At this time I also painted and then installed the brackets at the upper counter. I used some spacers to ensure that they were level. The timber heads were done in a style that did not appear to match the Marshall painting or what Goodwin indicated was used in this period. I figured this was an area I could add a little more detail so I simply trimmed them down to roughly match the depiction in the Marshall painting. Some minor adjustments were necessary to make sure the rail joined the upper counter properly, but for the most part things went together without issue. For the catheads I decided I would try adding sheaves to them in line with what @Blue Ensign did. Lacking a drill press this was pretty finicky work, but going slowly and carefully with lots of measuring and adjusting I was able to use a pin vice to drill out the holes for the sheaves. Crafty Sailor sells these thimbles which I should be able to use as sheaves once they have them back in stock. I may have to make some small adjustments to the holes once I get the thimbles, but we will cross that road when I get there. For now I think adding the holes makes the catheads look better.

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