BLACK VIKING

Thank you Nils.👍
 
Post One Hundred and Nineteen.
 
 Back to the blunt end
Time to attend to the unfinished stern.
 I had figured out on the bow area how to finish the Pearwood mouldings and pilasters to be used on the stern.

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Vallejo Ochre Brown over the Pear followed by a coating of the water-based wood stain I used on the Boxwood hull timbers. This gives a fair match to the varnish hull finish.

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The stern is otherwise painted in Vallejo Black/grey.

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3084

3091

3093

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When it comes to the frames for the lights I have seen examples of white frames which look quite attractive. However, they would be the only white elements on the model so I am sticking with Ochre Brown.

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The frames are prepared on the fret, priming with Metal prep 4K, followed by two coats of Ochre brown.
 
The trickiest part of this exercise will be fitting the frames without marring the  ‘glass’ with glue smears.
 
Tomorrow’s interesting little exercise. 🫤
 
 
B.E.
18/12/2023
 
 
 
 
 
 

Here’s how the whole operation transpired:

Step 1 – Insert the hull assembly.  I made some red Sharpie markings on the bottle to help me figure out where to dab the epoxy on the water.  Then I slid the hull assembly inside, straightened it out, and lined it up on top of the epoxy.  The main concern was getting the 2 hulls squarely aligned.  No real difficulty encountered with this step.


 
Step 2 – Add the deck.  After the step 1 epoxy was set and the hull assembly securely in place, I put a touch of epoxy on the hull assembly’s connecting ribs and dropped the deck on top.  Very easy.

 
Step 3 – Insert the 2 mast/sail assemblies and drop them in their respective mast steps.  This is where things got a bit tricky because of a small blunder.  Since my original plan was to insert the deck and masts as 1 piece, I had put a hinge near the bottom of each mast.  And that became problematic.  I got the aft mast/sail inside the bottle ok.  But when I tried to insert the base of the mast into its mast step hole, the hinge kept folding on me.  Once folded, the angle made it dang near impossible to get enough leverage to push it down firmly into the hole.  At one point, I even considered trying to pull the mast/sail back out of the bottle, but fortunately I came to my senses and abandoned that dodo idea.  After maybe 45 minutes of frustration, I finally got that dang thing in place.  

 

Now it was a matter of orienting the mast/sail properly and securing it in place.  I angled the sail forward at maybe 50 degrees (similar to some of the paintings), made sure the mast was vertical, then worked up a brass wire jig to hold the mast/sail in place while the epoxy dried.   

 
 
The last step was tying off the rigging.  My standing rigging consisted of 2 shrouds on each side of each mast.  The running rigging was simply a line on the starboard side attached to a loop of thread tied to the curved spar. All lines were tied off to the small spindles or studs protruding along the gunwale.  This was a tedious process, but not very difficult.  The pic below shows the aft mast/sail with all the rigging tied off and threads cut.  

 
Here’s the completed wa’a kualua fully assembled inside its new home.


 
And with that, the easy part of this project is over.  Now it’s time to figure out how to build a Hawaiian waterfall.  YIKES!!
 

Glen, I just stumbled upon your build, and it is truly amazing.  It also brings back some wonderful memories.
 
My parents spent their last few decades living in Hawaii, and as a young adult I lived there 18 of those years.  At some point, my dad, a life-long sailor and a great admirer of the Polynesian voyagers, bought the completed model pictured below.  I think he found it in Hawaii, but it might have been in French Polynesia.  In any event, I was lucky enough to inherit it, and it now sits right beside my work bench.
 
My years in Hawaii included the initial voyages of Hokulea, the first modern replica of these amazing vessels.  One of the greatest thrills of my many sailing adventures was sailing several miles offshore on my Hobie 16 (along with maybe another hundred other boats) to greet Hokulea on her return to Kaneohe Bay, at the end of her initial voyage to French Polynesia and the island of Tahiti.  That was in the mid-70s, and I still remember it almost like it was yesterday.
 
Again, congratulations on a great build.

Hi all,
 
Another update on the Churchill tank progress.
 
This week I've been concentrating on assembling the figures that come with the kit.

 
The box artwork implies there are four figures plus the Farmer's cart etc, but in fact there are six figures included. Considering the kit only costs somewhere between £20-£30 I think it is a good value purchase.

 
I started by assembling the Cart and it's accessories. There are 6 wine bottles, two small and four larger - more on that later. And there is even an oil-lamp.  Note: there are also 6 sets of Goggles on the clear sprue....I need to find out who is carrying those.

 
Below. An example of two of the figure sprues. I'm no expert but the figures seemed well enough made. They all had mould lines down the middle but that was easily filed/scraped off. Some of the parts (eg body and leg) didn't fit together perfectly without a bit of fettling but all things considered everything was fine.

 
The chap below, leaning on the box is in charge of map reading (navigation) so there is a map layout that can be scanned, cut-out and pasted to his board.

 
This poor fellow must have been testing how much weight a soldier can carry - he only seems to be missing the kitchen sink.

 
As advised in an earlier post, diamond files make a quicker job of removing plastic (compared to engineering needle files, which clog up easily). So some cheap ones (from Amazon) were ordered. They work fine, but don't quite have the accurate geometry of needle files. So I use them for roughing out the excess plastic and finish off with a needle file as necessary.

 
The figures assembled. I will glue on the rifle, spade etc once they have been painted. Also shown is the map copy (coloured in) and pasted to the board. Again I'll wait till painting is complete before fitting the map to the figure.  And there seems to be a couple of spare pistols....someone is sure to want them!

 
Finally, a question. The farmer is actually handing a bottle of wine over, rather than milk. I'm assuming it is a Red wine rather than white. The bottle label seems to have a 1937 date on it. It's in Normandy. Anyone care to make a guess/confirm if it is a Red and from which vineyard?  😉

 
So it's time to get the paintbrushes out and get the figures etc painted. I'm also starting to have some early thoughts on what kind of diorama I could make. There are a few pictures of Churchill tanks in France on the web, but not so many of the MkVII. So I may use a background from one of the other Mk's.
 
Well, that's it for now, back soon.
 
Richard

Metalwork around the rudder has been slowly taking place, and the straps are loosely placed on the rudder.  They will be further shaped to the rudder and blackened before being permanently affixed (no idea how I'm going to permanently affix these. The wire bolts won't really have any strength long-term, so am really pondering this one).  I had quite a learning curve in learning how to uniformly fashion the straps; many, many scrap pieces throughout.   The photo also shows the bits of 30 ga wire that will be made into bolts. I'm just laying them down on the strip in the middle to see how the thickness of the wire will look from a scale perspective.  I'm thinking of having 2 bolts per plank.  The rudder is basically made up of 3 planks.

I've also been experimenting with the finish on the hull.  Goal is to try and make the finish appear to be as "real/aged" as possible, so there are a lot of green/brown washes on there now in addition to other white washes.  The plan is to have shellac on the model, and I'm thinking of extending that down all around the acrylic on the hull as well to give it a bit of a wet/shiny appearance.  Still debating that one, however.  The gouges in the hull are for the brass tubing in which the lighting will run through from the ship down into the stand where the power source will be. When the tubing has been installed, the keel will be replaced and everything tidied up.

 

In case anyone was curious about how this mess will be attached, here's a few pics of the assembled one-piece unit, the glue points will be at the base of the simulated keel/stem, along the leading edge of the deck and the rear bulkhead piece where it mates against the inside of the hull, in theory it should work. Thanks for looking.
 
Michael D.

 

Still in the process of dressing out the bowsprit, starting with the knee and top, as much customizing I've done on ships I've never fabricated a top from scratch, while not totally accurate, I think it looks ok.
 
Michael D.
 

Starting to test fit all the parts and dry assemble.
nothing is glued or forced together so a few little gaps but its fairly good, I am happy

Stern deadwood and sternposts

The Forward Deadwood minus the Stem post and cutwater

Frames 70 to 88 dry fitted and decks fitted for checks



And lastly a straight brass round to check alignment fore and aft of mast holes.

Once I have done this for all the frames its time to cut the rabbet and start gluing
 
 
 
 

Bill, those are the bowlines, used to haul the windward side of the sail hard forward when sailing "close to" (as close as a square rigger can get) the wind. They can prevent the sail being taken aback and perhaps damaged if there's a gust from a little more upwind.

Guys what are these rigging lines called and what is there purpose?  They are on each of the three sails on the fore and main mast. The course and top sail has a crows foot type of rigging where it attaches to the side of the sail. The top gallant is a simple fork. The lines go forward through blocks and eventually belay different places at deck level. 

What have I done to myself…
Washing and dry painting is extremely time-consuming.
Thousands of places that you can hardly get to and you always have to be careful that excess paint dries on places that you don’t immediately see.
 

 
But I think it’s worth it.
A nice contrast is created.
 

 
Left side up to the middle level is done.
A week of work.😵
 

Not so far away from Verrebroek 
 
 
Small "two-week" update 
location the location of the holes, drilling the holes and hammering treenails : a slow but steady work in progress 

 

Treenail update,
 
The weather forecast has been the same here for several weeks : rain and occasional showers...
So a lot of time to drill holes and add treenails...

 
After all the treenails have been applied it is time to scrape and sand. Pieces of old Stanley knives are used for scraping.

The original and the model (picture of the original is thanks to @firdajan)

After sanding, the hull was cleaned with a wet cloth.

The starboard side is ready. 
Wales still needs to be done, probably also with treenails, and bolts??.
I sent this question to the Mary Rose museum, but no response yet

Thanks for following

The engine and cowl are now mated to the fuselage. I had a couple of minor problems with this portion of the build, neither of which was due to any inherent shortcomings of the kit. First, I did not recognize until after I had finished the cowl that its three ventral openings are not centered on the aircraft's midline. This led to me improperly positioning the second of the three rings that make up the cowl. Second, I dropped the forward-most ring while I was gluing it together, and my dog got hold of it, leading to a few tense moments between master and dog, with the final result being that the ring was every so slightly, er . . . munched. I fixed it as best I could, and, happily, I don't think that either of the two errors just described will be highly noticeable on the finished model.
 

Hola fellow modelistas,

due to different reasons, I neglected my bench and MSW for some weeks and the next weeks won't be much better. Despite all obstacles, I wanted to start a new feel good build to motivate myself and so I chose my favorite F1 car for the task. Since a while, I accumulated some goodies for this project and since some weeks everything arrived at my doorstep.

The kit:
 

 
The goodies:
 

 
- Top Studio Cockpit detail set
- Top Studio PE-set
- Top Studio carbon decal set (was the hardest to find)
- TBDecals sponsor decals
- Tamiya seat belts
- PE rivets
- Colors from Zero Paints (a first for me)
I considered starting with the body, but decided to start, like the manual suggests, with the engine. Big mistake, at least motivational. As you can see on the pictures, the parts are metal plated in an aluminum finish, what's not to like about it. First of all the plating has spots and foremost it's completely superfluos, because nearly the whole engine is BLACK. You might say, no biggie, but it is, because of the plating no part fits how it should, you have to scratch, grind, and re drill all holes. Beside this, you can't use normal modeling cement, so I was forced to use CA.
That's not all. The engine parts sport all known types of plastic abnormalities, like prominent parting lines, ejector marks, burr and flash and the silver plating doesn't enhance general visibility.

Strange thing, that other versions of the kit seem to include the engine on black sprues. In all the beginning was utterly frustrating, we don't speak about an ancient short run kit, cast in some garage, it's a relatively modern incarnation, Fujimi what have you done.
This will not be a fast build, other than I sod the kit, if it continues to fight me back.
Oh, I haven't spoken about detail. The positive so far, the engine is very detailed and has a large part count. On the pictures, only half of the parts are added for better painting.
 

 
If you look at the picture above, you can see the cylinder heads with very prominent cooling ribs, which unfortunately doesn't exist on the real thing. This is how it looks, with the added PE parts from Top Studio.
 

 
Fujimi, are you the Japanese Italeri?

I'm still hoping the best for the non plated sprues and will not instantly bin the kit, but it's definitely on probation.
 
Cheers Rob

Thank you Marc. The mockup of the forecastle bulkhead is ongoing, but I'm shooting for something like on the HMS Prince of 1670 where the belfry is somewhat integrated into the bulkhead and not sitting on top of the forecastle deck, there will be single doors either side of the belfry, just giving you an idea where I'm heading with this. Also I cut in the entry port on the larboard side only, still a lot of work lies ahead.
 
Michael D.

I was looking at the pictures of the plane on the Model Expo web site today (where its been discounted another $20 from when I purchased it a couple of weeks ago). There is a picture with all the kit materials laid out. In this picture the replacement parts that I have asked them to send are not shown. I am now thinking that there may have been a quality control issue with the whole run of the model - I would not be surprised if all the kits are missing eight laser cut parts!
 
So while I will continue to hope for the best, I'm not banking on getting the rest of the parts anytime soon. If worse comes to worse, there may be enough scrap freijo to construct the parts I will need. 

Here are the finished panels in the wing jigs

The spars are 3 x 3 mm laser cut in a sheet of freijo. Not sure why Model Airways didn't just cut strips. Being laser cut, there was the residual char to clean up. The two sides flush to the sheet of wood didn't take long to clean up; the other two sides took longer. Because the spars have a square cross-section they can be released from the sheet, rotated 90 degrees and placed back into the sheet for the sanding / clean-up. This way I didn't need to worry about rounding the corners of the strips while sanding.
 
Before

and after

Notice that the spars come in two lengths. The shorter ones go on the top wing and the longer on the bottom. They have been cut to take into account the finished wing's dihedral. While labled as A1 and A2 on the sheet, unfortuately (as far as I can see) there is no note of this / direction in the instruction manual and/or plan sheet. Perhaps Model Airways will make an edit for future runs of the model!
 
I've attached the spars to one of the wings so far

The next step will be to make up and attach eight additional ribs to the wing panel. They will go where the four slots are in the jig that do not hold wing panels.
 

Log entry 10
 
I am continuing with the second planking, and managed another 2 planks on either side.
 

 

 

 

 

 
I had a small bump where the plank did not run all evenly (slightly too much taper in one location over a few planks), but I think I have rectified it now, with a slightly unorthodox plank shape. Not very visible, so I am ok with it.
 
TJM

Planking:
 
Only the top row of planks still to do:




Adding a stealer to the bow, which curves up rather dramatically. Treenails made of whatever scrap wood that came to hand.

And filling the gap on the starboard side.

But I discovered the sheer on the larboard gunwale was not correct, so I had to undo the glue and cut the treenails to move it down into a curve that worked better with the top planking:

Ah, that's more like it . . .

Planking complete on port side (old Goon show joke: Ned Seagoon, on board P & O steamer: "Purser, where's the rest room?" Purser: "Port Side". Neddy: "Port Said??? I can't wait that long!"

Antepenultimate plank:

Penultimate plank:

AAAAAND - Planking complete!

Aftercastle and masts dry fitted: (sorry about the picture quality) 

Steven

Today another 300+ nodes were added to the six wing panels - tomorrow they get painted to match the fuselage.

Thanks again for all the likes and for those who have looked in.
 
After a day or two off, I resumed working on the Sopwith Camel, painting the "wooden" struts between the wings.   That is in quotes because the pieces are in cast metal.   I painted them a medium brown then dry brushed some darker and lighter brown to try to achieve a wood look, though I kept it very subtle.  I then painted the black metal connectors at the ends of the struts, applied some "Sopwith" decals, then coated with a semi gloss acrylic.  The latter sort of reactived the brown acrylic paint, discoloring the decals just a bit.  Oh well.   These pieces are not quite done, as they have some photo etch bits that serve as the attachment points for the wing rigging and one of them has a cast metal propeller driven fuel pump to be attached.
 
I admit, though, that the siren song of the Porsche 917 model is getting louder in my ears.  Unlike some of the other cars I've built recently, I promise to do a build log if I make that diversion.

Let’s move on to mid- and high-level preshading.
 

 
Pannellining and lighting. As well as highlighting individual structures.
 

 
Now I’m back to the decals, but I’ve had enough for today. 🤤
 

 
Everything is slowly coming to fruition.
 

With the deck surgery ongoing I took a little time to rework the lower fore mast, introducing taper and fabricating the hounds, also I pulled a mold of the figures on the outside of the bulwarks and attached them to the inside for added detail and a finished look. All of this is still in the rough in stage of course and just amazed how soft and bendy the plastic is for it's age. 
 
Michael D.
 

And here is the access hatch aft, underneath the accommodation block. On the bottom is the motor and then I made a level on top for the radio receiver and ESC. I don't think I left the motor like this, I think it's aligned better, but I'd have to check. Haven't looked at that for a while.
 
You can see a small metal plate in front of the access hatch. This is part of a door magnet system, the other part is glued inside the accommodation block, it keeps it nicely in plate. Also the accommodation block fits nicely around the coaming to stay in position. For releasing the magnet, I tilt the back of the accommodation up and hinge in on the front edge, which releases the magnet from the plate. 

 
And slowly made my way aft from the forecastle. You see the mooring winch in place and the outline for the wavebreaker that protects the forward tank equipment.
 
Close-up of the detailing. A spare anchor seat, although I don't think she ever carried a spare anchor.
 
The mooring winch hydraulic lines (yes, I know, I probably overdid that...🤪)

 
Currently I'm trying to put 2 parts per day on this ship. There's an enormous amount of stuff to be placed. Which is why I stopped back then. However, by forcing myself to build and/or put 2 parts on the ship each day, I'll slowly make my way. Some parts take a long time to build, some less, however when time is too limited, I shift from a larger, more complicated piece, to a smaller one that's manageable within my available time. In the end, all parts have to be made after all...