popeye the sailor

Oh, but there is, my friend! Just not in the scale or medium that you usually work in. 😜
 
https://www.h-m-v.de/en/models/special-purpose-ships/light-vessel-elbe-3/

Hi Nils,
This will be an interesting project and I will certainly follow your build log! I often saw the light vessel during my active seafaring time during the 1970's and 1980's.
 
Best regards from Stade
Uwe
 
 

Today I would like to introduce my new chosen-out project :
It will be the well known lightship Elbe 1 ( named Bürgermeister Oswald), the "red Lady", since then being appointed as an German lightship and on duty in the German Bay, mouth Elbe river, Northsea. After serving for 50 years it was directly replaced 1989 by an unmaned lightvessel-robot on the former position of Elbe 1.
 
Several years ago my attention was drawn to this lightship, and to keep in mind for building a model of it someday. At that time I had purchased a special edition of the rare  1994 MODELWERFT magazine, related exclusingly to the Elbe 1 Lightship an kept it since then somewhere in my hobby office. A few days ago I remembered it and went looking for that magazine, and it seemed to be lost. After a days search I finaly found it sticking somewhere between my maritime books on a shelf.
 
This publication was issued by author Helmut Thomas, a very talented and skilled senior modelist. The incredable model he had created of the Elbe 1, the fine pics and detailed build log description shown therein was very inspiring for me and it was my "benchmark" if I ever were to build it myself, knowing that I would be pleased to get at least somewhere near to that benchmark.
The 80 page publication was comprising also 2 outfold double pages of a buildplan including lines and frameplan. I let these build plan pages magnified to scale 1:87 in my local copy-shop, and started to study all about the ship, and if I could possibly build it, ot try to do so.
In comparation to Helmut`s model that would have been too large (length 114 cm)  I decided to downscale it to an overall length of 66 cm. An apprropriate glas-case for that size would also be whithin my capability afterwards.
 
I remembered that once Billing Boats had brought out a model in scale 1:50 of this model, but it was the predecessor of this lightship with several differences, Unfortunately today there was neigther an unbuilt Billing-Kit perhaps even with fine fittings-detail-kit (lightmasts, etc, ) to be found anymore, so a scratch build would be the solution.
 
So this is what came out : .........
 
Nils 
 
The beginning

The rare "Modellwerft special" magazine of 1994 / 1

Model of Helmut Thomas

a postcard

side view overall

frameplan
 
 
 

hey there Andy........your diorama is coming along nicely     reading your ideas with the figures,  I had the thought about just embedding the bases in the foam.  but after seeing how rough the foam was after sculpting out the mud holes,  I see now it would be a terrible idea.  look'in forward in seeing this all come together    great job thus far!

hey there Andy........your diorama is coming along nicely     reading your ideas with the figures,  I had the thought about just embedding the bases in the foam.  but after seeing how rough the foam was after sculpting out the mud holes,  I see now it would be a terrible idea.  look'in forward in seeing this all come together    great job thus far!

hey there Andy........your diorama is coming along nicely     reading your ideas with the figures,  I had the thought about just embedding the bases in the foam.  but after seeing how rough the foam was after sculpting out the mud holes,  I see now it would be a terrible idea.  look'in forward in seeing this all come together    great job thus far!

hey there Andy........your diorama is coming along nicely     reading your ideas with the figures,  I had the thought about just embedding the bases in the foam.  but after seeing how rough the foam was after sculpting out the mud holes,  I see now it would be a terrible idea.  look'in forward in seeing this all come together    great job thus far!

Hi all bit more rusting done.
 

I have a story for that, a wealthy banker stored it in a barn at the start of ww11 so the Germans didn't get hold of it and maybe died or went abroad and forgot about it.

Romantic view or wish: the treasure sleeping in a barn, ready to be restored! I doubt that you will ever find a Bugatti in a barn, especially the 35B type. It is not the kind of car countrymen usually buy.
 
Yves

Started dirtying up the chassis, got so many ideas about staging this wreck, I really want to show the chassis and engine separate from the bodywork, thinking in a barn with body parts piled up somewhere, so many ideas.

Love the dirty, oily finish! I can almost smell it.....

So I'm getting less and less impressed with this kit, the instructions would have you in stages 1 and 2 glue parts 32c and 33c in then in stage 8 would have you attach the silver wire with the vinyl tube the chain is very fragile and the tube is a very tight fit, thus its an impossible task (at least without risking breaking the chain, also you have to add the silver wire to a slot in the back of parts 32c and33c which is on the inside and so can't be seen. I had to carefully remove the parts to attatch the wires then glue the parts back in with the wires already attached. They would have been better saying to attach the wires at stage 1 before you glue the parts in place, doing that would not interfere with any assy after that and would make life so much easier.

Hi all more done to this, did the exhaust with a combination of pastels and paint, quite pleased with how it's coming along, doing the corrosion on the water pipe with a combo of talc and pastels ground up (need to get more texture on it yet, may use a bit of salt)

More work on this 

Hi all bit more done to the engine.
 

I know it's the hard way round but I've decided to do it as a barn find first then do it as a full restoration.
So far I've used these two items for the start of the weathering 
And made a start weathering the engine.
And added some body colour to the chassis.
 
 

hey there Andy........your diorama is coming along nicely     reading your ideas with the figures,  I had the thought about just embedding the bases in the foam.  but after seeing how rough the foam was after sculpting out the mud holes,  I see now it would be a terrible idea.  look'in forward in seeing this all come together    great job thus far!

Hi all sorry I've not posted progress on this for a while, since I stopped building I put all my modelling stuff in the shed  ( we have the grandchildren in the spare room when we have them and don't want to take risks with the dangers of model supplies and our precious grand children) I have favorite products for painting engines and can't find any of them in the places I thought I put them in the shed.
I've filled and primed the engine but done nothing else to it so not really anything worth posting, I will find the paints I'm looking for, this is really just to say I've not stopped again.

Made a start on the bugatti I've been reliably informed that only the factory cars had the machine polishing so I don't need to replicate it as I'm depicting as a race car. 
Anyway I've made a start
I've read on another forum where someone said what a joy this was to build "the fit is sublime and the detail is exquisite " sorry I don't agree, this is a totally new mould, I think the detail is soft and I've barely started and the engine block needs a lot of fettling the sump front end sits too high if you use the locating areas it sits 1/2 a mill too high which when you add it to the engine leaves a gap at one end, I cut the locating area off which fixed that.
The 2 half's of the block when joined together have a molded pipe which is thicker on one half than the other, small details but they take time to fix so 7 bits glued together and 1 1/2 hours down, no paint yet (waiting for it to come) I will admit not building it in the order of the instructions (because I don't have the paint yet) they have you start with the chassis I have briefly checked the body molds and they do look OK but I'm not impressed at what I've seen so far, there is a lot for filling needed between the sump and the block already. I was so looking forward to this kit, now I'm dreading it.
Not a great start back into modelling. Paint won't be here till. Saturday so can't get much more done.
)

Are you trying to not spoil the finish?

Hi all well I want to start this but first problem is the bulkhead and parts of the engine are machine polished and is quite a big part of the car but it's not indicated it the model in any way, I can't think of a way to portray it

Wow, this is looking really great Andy!  Fantastic job!

Thanks Alan!

I think it depends on the depth of water you’re trying to convey, or whether it’s still or moving (wind, waves or currents). 
WS products can produce some amazing “water” in the right hands.
 
Andy

The mud looks great. I think wet mud is hard to make convincing- sometimes it just looks like gloss brown but you’ve got it this time.
i do wonder about some of the “water” products and how they compare to gloss medium etc. I was browsing for my next project and found someone is selling Atlantic water, pacific water and many other varieties. I think I’ll be sticking with the gloss medium this time 
alan