Ponto

All the accolades should be pointed at you for your achievement. While I appreciate builders who have the skills to achieve a look of clean perfection in a build, I admire builds that show character without looking sloppy. In some cases this may be more difficult to achieve than the "clean" look.

While my intent is not to begin a debate over decks and how to finish them, I personally was drawn immediately to the wonderful effect of this deck finish. It looks fantastic in my opinion and the small irregularities in the caulking leads to a more natural look that adds character to the  model.

While my intent is not to begin a debate over decks and how to finish them, I personally was drawn immediately to the wonderful effect of this deck finish. It looks fantastic in my opinion and the small irregularities in the caulking leads to a more natural look that adds character to the  model.

Excellent point! I failed to mention it. When I mix artists' oil paints for modeling, I keep a notebook of the final ratios I use. I measure the tubed paint by the inch or fraction thereof, as extruded from the tube. I put the artists' oil paint on a piece of brown paper bag and let it sit for a half hour or hour to let some of the oil leach out, thereby increasing the oil to pigment ration. I then transfer the oil paint with a palette knife to a small container. (I have a stash of 35mm plastic film cartridge containers, but these are getting more difficult to come by these days.) I add thinner and other conditioners to the bottle using a graduated hypodermic syringe and drop in few BBs (air rifle ammunition like small ball bearings.) I cap the container and shake it like a rattle can. I have a  stash of large hypodermic syringes and needles that I obtained from my veterinarian. Vets use the larger syringes for larger animals. This way, if I want to duplicate a color combination or conditioning, I can do so with pretty good consistency. I don't have much problem matching gloss levels because what I am aiming for in most instances is a totally flat finish.

Bob,
 
Thanks for the info. I want to emphasize one point you made.
 
I have been painting (art) with oils since I was a kid. Artists oils take a very long time to dry properly - I suspect some of Rembrandt's paintings aren't fully dry yet! Actually, the stuff I used took about three weeks to harden so it wouldn't smudge. As you said, this is a virtue for artists because the colors can be mixed and spread easily on the canvas, and can be retouched for a week or so. Faster drying paints are far less forgiving!
 
For modelers the long drying time is a nuisance. You can mix a fast evaporating solvent to make the paint dry faster. But like you said, this results in a duller finish - like satin or even flat. And this is the part I want to caution people about. If you are going to use oil paints and dilute them with a thinner, always use the exact same paint to thinner ratio if you are going to go back over with multiple layers or spot touch up. Different ratios of paint and thinner dry with different amounts of "dullness." Touch up spots or overlapping layers that are done with a different paint/thinner ratio will stand out like a sore thumb if viewed in the right light. I speak from experience!

No difference, really. Just remember you can paint oil-based paint on top of acrylics, but not acrylics on top of oils.
 
 
Paint manufacturers long ago discovered that if they created the impression that one had to use primer, they could sell twice as much paint to people who didn't know whether they needed to prime a piece before painting or not. The fewer coats of anything that you put on a model, the less detail is lost and the better the scale impression will be. (Ideally, you want the thickness of your paint coats to be "to scale" too!) I don't use primer unless I need it to make my finish coat cover with less coats or to make incompatible coatings adhere. If I don't need a primer, I don't use one.
 
The fellow in the video wasn't using primer on his plastic plane model because he was using oil-based enamel which sticks to plastic well. He probably would have used a primer on it if he were using water-based acrylic paint because the water would tend to bead up on the slick plastic surface. Oil doesn't bead up on slick impermeable surfaces like water does.
 
Primers have a variety of purposes. One essential purpose of a primer is to serve as an intermediate coating between two surfaces and/or coatings that aren't compatible. (Hence the market term: "Universal Primer," of which dewaxed shellac is one of the best.) When two non-compatible coatings must be applied one on top of the other (which one ought to avoid in the first place,) a "universal" primer compatible with both oil and water-based paints creates a common surface that "sticks" the two together. Primers are also useful for creating a uniform base color, particularly when successive colors aren't likely to cover as well as you'd like. A highly-pigmented primer coat in a neutral color is much easier to cover with a finish color coat than an unevenly colored surface. Finally, "sanding primers" contain chalk which makes them easy to sand. If you have a rough surface, a sanding primer or "basecoat" is easier to sand to perfect smoothness than finish coats.  Bare wood requires a "sealer," which some incorrectly call a "primer," although a first thinned coat of paint or varnish can often serve double duty as a sealer. The purpose of a sealer is to seal an absorbent surface, such as bare wood, that would otherwise soak up the finish coat paint unevenly, requiring additional finish coats and likely more sanding. I seal all my wood with thin shellac. ("Out of the can," which is two pound cut shellac, I'll add 25 to 50 percent alcohol to thin it well.) I keep the thinned shellac in a jar and often simply dip small pieces into the shellac and then shake off the excess. It soaks into the wood and dries very quickly. (And faster if you blow on it.) The alcohol evaporates quickly. This provides a "hardened" wood surface for final fine sanding and an impermeable surface for applying paint so the paint won't soak into the wood unevenly and leave "rough spots."  When you see close-up photos of models on the build logs that look like the parts were cut with scale-sized dull chainsaws and painted with a an old rag on a stick, they haven't been sealed and sanded before painting. (The unsightly finish is less noticeable when viewed with the naked eye, of course.)
 
 
Yes, artists' oils will take seemingly forever to dry because they contain no driers. Oil paint is made up of a pigment, the color material, and a binder, an oil that cures and hardens so the pigment adheres to the surface that's painted. The oil, often "raw" linseed oil (which can be purchased in food-grade as "flaxseed oil" in health food stores for much less than in art stores,) polymerizes over time and becomes hardened. Artists often blend color for various effects right on their canvases and a slow drying paint is desired by them. "Boiled" linseed oil (which isn't boiled at all) contains added driers, usually "Japan drier," which accelerates the polymerization of the oil binder. Adding boiled linseed oil to artists' oils will cause them to dry more quickly, or one can buy "Japan drier" and add small quantities of that to artists' oils (or any other oil paint) and that will cause it to dry more quickly. How quickly is a matter of "feel" and experiment and tests on scrap material should always be conducted before applying mixed paint to the model itself. 
 
Oil paint will dry with a glossy finish if there's enough oil in it. Thinning tends to dull the finish, but sometimes not enough to achieve the flat finish required on scale models. To achieve a flat finish, a small quantity of "flattening agent" may be added. This can be purchased wherever artists' oils are sold. Grumbacher makes the industry standard "flattener."
 
Japan drier is a mixture of 3% cobalt in naptha. Linseed oil is simply linseed oil, a natural vegetable oil. Gum turpentine is simply refined tree sap. While I am no fan of climate change, one unfortunate consequence of many environmental protective regulations is that they too often attack the "low hanging fruit" and not the larger causes of the problem. Despite the relatively limited environmental impact of releasing oil paint related organic solvents into the atmosphere, oil based paints and solvents which contain high amounts of "volatile organic compounds" or "VOCs," are no longer allowed to be sold in some jurisdictions, notably in the U.S. in California. (Hence the "Not available in California" notations in many mail order catalogs these days.) There are a few exceptions to these regulations, generally involving packaging amounts. Linseed oil, Japan drier, and gum turpentine can still be obtained in small amounts at ridiculously high prices when sold as art supplies, but you'll have a hard time in many areas finding quart cans, let along gallon cans, of stuff like turpentine, linseed oil, mineral spirits paint thinner, naptha, tolulene, and the like. In times past, these substances were staples for anybody who knew what they were doing and did any amount of painting. Now, if you find yourself in a area where they've become unobtainable, you have to resort to "smuggling" your supplies from outside the areas where they are banned or pay the huge premiums charged for the ounce-sized containers in the art stores.
 
For those who wish to use acrylic paint, tubed acrylic artist's paints are readily available, of course. They are, however, acrylic paint and, like just about everything that "mother" tells us is "safe and sane," they are no fun at all. Those of us who were building models before about 1980 mourn the loss of "real" model paint like the legendary Floquil, which was so "hot" (full of aromatic hydrocarbons) you could get a buzz on using them. They worked perfectly every time right out of the bottle. Sadly, with their demise, modelers wishing the same results today have to teach themselves how to mix and condition their own paint.
 

ahhhh nuts!!.... With all these positive remarks it looks like I'll need to add more must have items to my list.  Great news for this developer and the hobby as well!!

ahhhh nuts!!.... With all these positive remarks it looks like I'll need to add more must have items to my list.  Great news for this developer and the hobby as well!!

ahhhh nuts!!.... With all these positive remarks it looks like I'll need to add more must have items to my list.  Great news for this developer and the hobby as well!!

Today I once again felt the need to create a scene in the style of a historical postcard on the battery deck of the French corvette. The "Second Maitre" is from the book "La Marine" from 1843 after an illustration by Morel-Fatio.

... 1.7 mm x .5mm  sheaves???.....that is simply astonishing. How in the world is one even able to apply the groove to the perimeter of the sheave?

My mid Eighteenth Century longboat model was painted entirely with “homemade” acrylic paints, and I was pleased with the results.
I needed five colors:
 
Dark red
Dark Brown 
Creamy White
Black
Drab
 
I started by buying tubes of quality artist’s acrylic pigments at a local crafts store:
Burnt Umber
Black 
Titanuim White
Bright Red.
yellow ochre
I also bought a bottle of matt media fluid.
 
It pays to buy high quality pigments.  I bought a large tube of yellow ochre at a well known discount department store at a bargain price and found it to be unusable due to the large granules of pigment. You could have paved my driveway with this stuff.
 
I also bought a number of small glass bottles with screw top lids from Amazon, a battery operated Micro Mark propeller type paint mixer, and a palate  knife.
 
My understanding of scientific color technology is negligible.  All colors were mixed by Mark 1 eyeball.  The Drab color was a mystery.  A contemporary specification required the the hull interior be painted drab.  I found an old paint formula on the web that explained that drab was mixed by adding white lead pigment to burnt umber.
 
I started by mixing pigments on a small glass palate using the palate knife.  When I got the right color I scooped the mixed pigment into one of the small jars and added matt media, again by eye.  The paint mixer worked perfectly to blend the resulting mixture.  Thinned by adding water, it sprayed perfectly in my airbrush.  When I was finally convinced that my paint job was complete I protected the finish with a light coat of Dulcote.
 
The mixed paint kept in the small jars stayed fresh over the several months spent completing the model.
 
I can understand the need for modelers of modern military vessels to paint them with the “right” color matched to official color charts, but for ships built prior to the late 1800’s for which color standards are minimal my eyeball method worked well.
 
Roger
 
 

... 1.7 mm x .5mm  sheaves???.....that is simply astonishing. How in the world is one even able to apply the groove to the perimeter of the sheave?

... 1.7 mm x .5mm  sheaves???.....that is simply astonishing. How in the world is one even able to apply the groove to the perimeter of the sheave?

... 1.7 mm x .5mm  sheaves???.....that is simply astonishing. How in the world is one even able to apply the groove to the perimeter of the sheave?

A problem with cutting planks - or anything thin - between the blade and the fence is the rotation of the blade will send it back at the operator with the slightest amount of pinch or a twist of the cut piece.  On big saws this has injured operators severely as well as killed some.  I don't think anybody has to worry about a fatal injury from our model saws but don't think this can't injure you.  Using a push stick helps cancel this out but one chews up a lot of push sticks when doing thin strips because the push stick has to be real thin when doing real thin planks.  If you have ever had a push stick hit by the blade tooth you know the kind of shock that can be transmitted to your hand. 
 
It can all be avoided when using a tool to the left of the blade so there is nothing adjacent to the cut piece and it can fall away from the blade rather than come back at you and it's easier to use a push stick when one is pushing on the thicker part of the sheet.
 
This is something that is used with full size table saws but the fixtures/tools that work on the big saws will not work on our small saws.  I adapted the idea to a fixture I use on my Byrnes saws. 

The fixture is set to the left of the blade as shown above (Lefties you probably set your fence to the left of the blade so when I say left or right do the opposite).   Measure where to place the fixture as shown below - measuring from the blade to the tip of the fixture for the thickness you want for the strips.  With the sheet material moved into contact with the fixture on the left and the fence on the right.  Lock the fixture down.  This only locks the gauge part to the aluminum piece that fits into the groove on the saw table.  I cut the aluminum to be a tight fit that still slides back and forth within the groove until I tighten it a bit more and the aluminum piece locks into the groove - notice the slit in the length of the aluminum piece - there is a counter-bore on the underside so the flat head machine screw makes the edges spread a bit wider when the screw is fully tightened.
 
Move the fixture back towards you so there is a gap between the leading edge of the blade and the fixture as shown above and fully tighten the locking screw as described above.  Turn the saw on and use a push stick to push the wide sheet material to cut the strip.  When the strip is cut, it will fall to the left of the blade, move it out of the way and then pick up the sheet material and place it between the fixture and the fence - forward of the blade.  Move the fence over to bump the sheet material up to the fixture and cut the next strip.
 
On the Byrnes saw the thickness of each strip will be as close to exactly the same thickness as you can ever get.  When I started cutting strips this was I measured each strip to see the variation - if any - and found that +/- 0.0005" maximum was what I was getting.  Wood can change that amount or more from day to day with humidity changes in the shop.  A bit of practice on how tight to make the fit between the fixture and the fence is needed but by the time one cuts a dozen strips the variation will be what I listed or less.
 
The fixture shown below was my first generation tool that I used for several years before I made the one out of Plexiglas.
 

The first generation fixture below
 

 

Coronet looks nice. But then, most sea going sailing vessels look nice - but not all graceful like that one..
 
Here are the sample cannon barrels I received last week. The ones on carriages are a 9-pounder and 18 pounder. The rest are 12 pounder (lone standard and one for an early 32 gun frigate), 24 and 32 pounders. The retail versions will be in black resin, these are grey so I can more easily see the detail.

@Dziadeczek
Hello, Thomas,
thank you in advance for your compliments on the rope.
I have also made many ropes from linen yarn.
Colouring was still an issue then.
The colouring experiments with wood stain were really promising.
Therefore I would take wood stain from the company CLOU for example.
 
See the picture below.
 

 
By the way, Irish linen yarn from Barbour is said to be one of the best. 

In the end I decided to use silk yarn, which I make my ropes for the corvette. I'm very pleased with it.
The results are quite impressive, aren't they?

The silk yarns are available in many colors. Therefore, there is no need to colour he ropes. 
 

Thank you very much Mark. You know, the best thing about trying to explain in writing a fact, is that it also helps you to understand.
 
There is a groove on the back of the rudder. It is supposed to improve the efficiency of its control by maintaining the current of water in its extension.
The rudder is controlled by the tiller. If the tiller breaks, a hand controlled tiller can be installed.
 
The wood parts of the rudder are almost complete. The metal parts will be next.
 

Well, this one has been a LONG time coming. 
 

 
I mean, this lockdown seems to have lasted a lifetime, so the original notice of Amati's now almost mythical 1:64 HMS Victory seems to have been such a long time ago! A lot of water has passed under the bridge since 2013 when Chris drove to Italy with the original design model in late 2013. Amati had enough general interest about their Victory from modellers to warrant then asking me to build a production prototype for the new format instruction manuals they now use. There were a few changes from Chris' original kit too, and Amati wanted those incorporated in the new manuals. 
 
Those manuals (yes, plural!) will contain (tentatively) around 1500 build photos, and be perfect-bound, glossy productions. I've already broken down Chris' construction into a multitude of chapters, with each depicting a specific sequence/task. For example, there will be a chapter for building each size of gun, each of the launches, the stove, first planking, but also for fitting out whole decks. 
 
For this build, I will use the existing manuals that Chris made when he finished his kit.
 

 
Since Chris designed the model, Amati's laser manufacturer had changed the specs on sheet size that they could cut, so the sheet layouts needed to be rehashed for the new sizes. That was done earlier this year, but just when everything looked like it was going to plan (again), Italy, then the rest of the world, went into lockdown. So here we now are on the other side....just about.
 
DHL delivered the HUGE box not long ago, and it is fantastically heavy! What is omitted at the moment are some first layer planks that they will ship when back in stock, and the cannon and figurehead. They won't be needed for a long time. They are also waiting on the copper PE, but I do have all the sheets of brass PE here. So, we have bags of laser-cut material (MDF, ply, timber), sleeves of strip (lots of them!), bags of PE and a whole bag of various fittings. I already have the thirty-one sheets of plans. 

Remember, this isn't a review, but just a build log. I cant review something like this which isn't quite complete. That's not the purpose. 
 

 
 
Inside the box, all the laser cut parts were bagged into two thick poly sleeves. These packs were of course the real weight behind this delivery. I'll open them later to look through them but I've included a few images they sent me of the parts before they shipped out.
 

 








 
The sheer quantity of strip and dowel in this model is bewildering. The only time I've seen as much as this is when I've been in a hobby shop!

 
 
Fittings. Usually Amati pack these into trays, but for this purpose, all the stuff is in little bags and sleeves and bundled into this substantial bag. You name it, and it's in here...
 

 
Photo etch: Here's all the brass sheet stuff. I am waiting on the copper parts yet, but thought you'd like to see these.
 

 
 
 
 
As I've been promising this kit arriving for a long time, I felt the need to stick my flag in the ground and start a build log showing the stuff that I now have.
 
I won't be actually starting this until after 3rd August as I'll be away, plus I also have a project I need to take care of before that (written article, not a build).
 
So....there we have it!!!
 
**Apologies for phone camera pics too. The build will be done like my typical studio photos**

Hi🙂
 
 

Thanks Glenn and nzreg.
 
This is where I'm at on the port side quarter galleries, frieze and moldings.
The scrolls and top most moldings are Syren laser cut from cherry.
The center and lower molding were scraped from pear. They all work good together.
The roof for the galleries has been completed but is just sitting in place for now.
I still have to finish the top molding as well as the gallery fancy roof molding.
Then it's on to the starboard side.
 

 

 

There are few interesting kits pending for imminent release but this Amati product looks like it should be the flagship of kits. I hope it ends up meeting with every ones expectations once it hits the market. It will be a monster of a box and keep many patrons busy for some length of time. I hope to be one of those patrons.

There are few interesting kits pending for imminent release but this Amati product looks like it should be the flagship of kits. I hope it ends up meeting with every ones expectations once it hits the market. It will be a monster of a box and keep many patrons busy for some length of time. I hope to be one of those patrons.

There are few interesting kits pending for imminent release but this Amati product looks like it should be the flagship of kits. I hope it ends up meeting with every ones expectations once it hits the market. It will be a monster of a box and keep many patrons busy for some length of time. I hope to be one of those patrons.