BLACK VIKING

Well, some days later, it´s about time to actually do something with my planned Kampfanzug. 
I built up arms and legs and parts of the body, which is only fit loosely, to determine, how to line up the extremities for later positioning.
The fit of the kit is very good so far and the limbs are connected via vinyl elements to keep everything moveable. I got two different left hands to choose from, but found this one perfect, to hold the squeezed empty PE-bottle.



I have to plan the painting of the interior and figure - ahem - the remains of it, to be precise and started to mask the side windows, which unfortunately have to be mounted at a very early stage. That said, many parts are intersecting and depending on the right sequence to be build in.

The outer side of the windows is protruding, so I adhered a double layer of Tamiya kabuki tape onto it, sharpened the contour with a fingernail and cut around with a fresh blade. One layer was left on the outside, the other went onto the inside of the opposite pane and vice versa. Inside and outside masking done.

 

Cheers Rob

So today I received the collection of Punch magazine from July to December 1918 (it’s the original prints). If you weren’t aware it was a satirical magazine. I’ve included a few photos. My plan is to have this as part of my display for the dio

Hot on the heels of my Trial build, I'm starting a log for my next build, @chris watton's latest kit the Gun-Brig Adder.  Though I will be building it as one of the others in the Acute class - Sparkler!  
 
The Admiral and my daughter looked through the list of fifteen names available in the class and said "Make it as Sparkler!" so this is what was decided and I mentioned this on Chris's Vanguard news and updates thread a while back, little did I know someone was was taking note and I received a lovely surprise inside the box when I opened it and it contained a custom nameplate emblazoned with the name "Sparkler" 😁 .  Thanks again Chris! 
 
I won't do an unboxing as such as there are already three other Adder logs on the go by @DB789, @ECK & @Glenn-UK so I will try to avoid repetition.  I will however try to build on what I learned on building Trial and will be adding sails again.  The scene I want to have a go at recreating is of the Brig hove-to and handling a boat.  There are some wonderful drawings and sketches available as references; a few below to give you a flavour of my ambitions for this kit (whether I get there time will tell! 😉)  The last two are taken from E. W. Petrejus's book "Modelling the  Brig of War "IRENE" " (one of my favourite refrences.)
 
Enhancements planned and bought so far include pear blocks from Vanguard and an 18ft. cutter, I also think @BenD at Ropes of Scale will be getting an order for more of his fine products....
 
Updates in due course for those interested. 👋

A small update, but one worth posting for me. Back on track with the Mayflower build. It is full speed ahead as I work on the interior planking of the bulkhead templates and redo the metal work for the door handles. The first planks on the templates are basswood, as they will not be seen on the model. The remaining planks will be cherry. 
 
I had a small surgery in the last few months, but mainly I have been procrastinating on this metalwork. It’s good to be back. I ordered a cheap optivisor and some thin CA glue. Hopefully it will be easier to work with than the medium CA that I have. 
Steve

It’s been far too long since I last posted an update. The model didn’t make it to this year’s village show, but there’s always next year. The photo below shows the current state of play - please excuse all the loose ends etc which will be tidied up in time. The tiny deadeyes were a particular problem, even after stiffening the thread with glue, and sometimes in desperation using a very tiny drill to enlarge the holes. One major difference in appearance from what seems to be the common approach is that I have used black rather than pale thread for the deadeye lanyards. My argument is that it’s unlikely that the lanyards would have been constantly adjusted - it would have made sense, surely, to use tarred rope for them. Steel suggested that lanyards should be ‘well greased’,which is not all that helpful. I don’t think that contemporary paintings show light-coloured lanyards.I think that a dark brown might well have been more accurate, but I like the look of black.

The current state of play
The question of sails or no sails has been on my mind. It seems on the face of it somewhat odd to have a model of a sailing ship with no sails, though obviously there are innumerable precedents for that. I have seen photos of fine models spoiled to my mind by their sails bellied-out, with heavily-marked seams. I have tried various solutions in the past. Some 65 years ago I bought the finest cloth I could find in Elliston & Cavell’s department store in Oxford, to the puzzlement of the sales assistant. I avoided hemming it, for sewn hems look horribly out of scale. Instead, I glued the bolt rope to the edges of the sails, which worked fine, and looks as good now as it did then. The seams for the individual cloths making up the sail were simply marked in pencil, a practice I think some still follow. The trouble is that they do just look like pencil lines, and be warned - it looks from one of my models from the late 1950s as if they  do fade in time. Nor do I think the lines should be dark. Steel says that the twine used to sew them should be of beeswax with a 1/6th part of turpentine, which suggests to me that they were quite pale.
 

Cloth sails, on a small model built c. 1960
Recently I tried a very different tack, for a very small model of PS Britannia. I used kitchen foil, folded and then unfolded to mark the seams, and then painted. I’d used foil for flags previously, and it worked fine, with the only problems being that the sails have no translucency at all, and of course hang stiffly. I don’t think it would well on anything more than a miniature model.
 

Kitchen foil sails on a tiny model
Then I tried another way for a model of the celebrated ship drawn by Matthew Baker(see photo above), often thought questionably to have been the Revenge, and equally questionably identified as the Elizabeth Jonas by the Science Museum. I’d read about the use of ‘Modelspan’ (which sounds like the tissue I used in the 1950’s for KeilKraft aircraft models), but instead of buying some, I tried the kind of tissue used for nose-blowing. Soaked in a very dilute mixture of paint and glue, this worked reasonably well for furled sails. So, for this Agamemnon model, I considered kitchen foil, but in the end bought some tissue paper intended for model aircraft, coloured it with dilute paint, and used it for furled sails (well, one furled sail so far). Much tidying up to do, of course.
 

OK, I now have a price for the Harpy. I wanted it to be less than £400, but I cannot due to the sheer amount of materials in each kit (24 separate laser cut sheets and 3 PE sheets), plus the time taken to produce each kit. So the price is:
 
VM/17     HM Brig Harpy    (November release)             £425 
VM/17/XL     HM Brig Harpy (PE copper and machined blocks)      £490 
 
I am expecting a very large shipment of PE copper next week (45kg worth), so PE copper options will be back for Indy and Speedy too, with Speedy having a dedicated sheet for rudder and keel copper plate, as well as the standard sheets, and also Indy and Harpy will have a small sheet for the rudder patterns. This is the first time in over two years I have been able to order the copper PE.

Mmmmm, beefy!
 

 

Update #1
started doing the sides, boy this part was stuff especially the curving part of the sticks (if that is what it is called)
hopefully the filing of the bow and stern to round them, was pretty tough to determine how much to file and not to file too much

final reveal
Halfords Grey Primer for everywhere
Halfords black stain for chassis
Halfords S9-070 Beige - body work
Halfords British Racing Green - crane, wheels
green stuff World for the Chrome
 
i give the kit 7/10, for quality, very heavy tabs attach parts to sprues
i give 3/10 for my attempt to build it
 
 
pain to get the glass in place on the front of the cab
i never dealt with seam lines properly
to much not allowing primer to dry propely before adding top coat
 
an enjoyable week, with a finished kit 
 
 
 
 

Objection your honor! Not Ship-Shape! Not Bristol Fashion!

Somehow I remembered that the free ends of the deadeye lanyards were tied up that high. I searched for a while to see what reference I had for the high-tie - but I couldn't find anything that had got me there. The old section model didn't look like that either. That's why I got protest elsewhere, which I had nothing to counter except for: Demolition!



Fortunately, I only use very little glue thanks to my fine glue nozzles 🙂

It was still a fiddle to get the stuff out of the rope. But now it actually looks much neater.

XXXDAn

This help?

The lanyard is hitched in the space between the bight of the shroud and the upper deadeye.  That's what basically ties it off.  the remaining is given a few wraps around the shroud, and the tail seized to it just to do something with the loose end.  There's good chance of a lanyard breaking or being cut on a warship, and having that excess can save time in repair, not to mention the method of taking up tension on them requires a bit of length to set up.
 
I'm sure Victory was kept very prim and proper, being an admiral was aboard
At least you didn't do this...

 

Working on the engine. I question whether the real 14 Bis could have supported the Antoinette engine with the flimsy bracket arrangement modeled in the kit.  Mine couldn’t support the model engine for sure.   I had to glue the kit engine to the firewall and put in the brackets after the glue had dried.  Also, using the plan’s placement for engine mounts I found that the drive shaft would not line up with the propeller.  It took a lot of fiddling to get everything lined up and I think the engine is still a tad crooked.  

The standards, channel en extra supports on the port side are ready
 

Next, standards,channels, etc. at the bow area.
Almost nothing remains of the original.  So, first i do test setups before building.
 
step one, 3 extra standards and a wale 

If you have been following my Constitution build log, thank you for taking a detour over to this one.  If you are just tuning in to this one, thank you for being a part of it.

My short attention span and ever-dwindling brain cells do not usually allow for simultaneous projects.  But I had to put Connie on a brief hold while I wait for delivery of some parts that I ordered.  So I figured I’d get started on another bottle project I’ve been mulling over for the past couple of months.  

When I was working on my Kraken SIB, @O.B.one made a reference to one of the Pirates of the Caribbean movies.  So I did some digging on the movie series and came a cross an image that caught my eye and has been sitting in the back of my mind ever since.  It’s a scene from the third installment of the franchise, At World’s End.  Calypso summons a maelstrom and the Black Pearl and Flying Dutchman do battle on opposites sides of the whirlpool.  Here’s the pic:

 
 
 
Last month, I was wandering through the woods of my ranch, trying to find an ornery steer, and I spotted an interesting branch sticking out of the base of a cedar tree.  The branch had a sharp curve and grain that swirled around.  It reminded me of a whirlpool.  Then the lightbulb flickered in my head and I thought the branch might make the perfect backdrop for a project – recreate the scene from At World’s End with the Black Pearl, Flying Dutchman, and a whirlpool inside the bottle.   Here’s the piece of wood.  It was dead but had weirdly grown upward from the base, made a u-turn, and dove back into the ground.  Never seen anything quite like it.

 
 
 

To have room for all the action going on inside the bottle, I needed a bottle that was more wide than long.  A Paul Masson bottle of brandy had the perfect shape and it fit almost naturally into the piece of wood. 

 
 

The last bit of planning was finding good images of each ship to fashion my build after.  I decided to take on the Flying Dutchman first and use this pic as a basic guide.  I certainly won’t be able to match all the wonderful imagery and eerie ornamentation at my scale, but will do my best to give a good impression of it.

 
 
The biggest challenge I think will be figuring out how to make a realistic looking whirlpool inside the bottle.  Not sure how I'm gonna do that, but I'll build the ships first and give myself time to figure that out.
     
I will likely be bouncing back and forth between this project and the Constitution.  Hopefully I don’t get confused and try to put some of those humongous Connie parts inside the bottle here!
 

Thanks everyone for all the tips and links! I’ve been going through them and will answer in the coming days. Things with my new job have been fast tracked so instead of waiting till next year I’ll be starting in just over a month! But I should finishing this project before then!
 
A little update.
been working on the cockpit and wheel wells and they are both coming along well.

 

 
Quite a fun part of the kit and is an effect that looks really nice too I think. 
 

A lot of debate about what was painted and when and what colours but this seemed to be a scheme that came up a lot and as far as I could tell fit in with the time period I’m building.
 

Dirtied up a little and I won’t add any more details or piping even though the extra details really look nice, they are just hard to justify for how little it will be picked up and looked at.
Now it’s just the cockpit to complete before the internals are done.
 

There will be a copper PE option for Harpy, as I have just been told my copper PE order is ready. This includes the copper plates plus a special sheet for the rudder, as shown. For the finished kit version, the treenail count on the outer bulwarks will be doubled.
 
Jim is doing a very nice job!

This took my eye when I was ordering the last figures from Art Girona. I'm not sure its a wise choice; at least to me, it seems hard to capture dynamic motion in static figures which is why I like the A-G casual poses. The little scene appealed so I ordered it and will see how it works. I'm not sure the Spanish civilians were always enchanted with their French invaders so I have thought about adding a knife hilt to the back of the dancers skirt to make it a little edgier but we shall see. There seemed to be a lot of spare time while other things were drying so I opened the bag and started fiddling
 


I decided there was no good reason to leave the dancers arm separate so I glued into place and the fit was good enough to not need a pin. Similarly the way the guitar and arm fit onto the soldier they seem self supporting and didn't seem to require a pin. The soldiers head was pinned as is becoming standard practice for me.
I plan to build the bases into a single piece at the end of the painting.
The shaded primer has been applied and shows another nice set of A-G castings.



I've started with the initial glazes on both figures. I'm trying to generate two different skin tones. The painting notes describe the dancer as a gypsy so I am trying for a darker tone than the French soldier. His rather agonising posture is because he will be sat on a stool in the fullness of time which should make him a little more relaxed.


Now I am at a point where my lack of knowledge about Napoleonic uniforms runs out and I'm not helped that for this kit A-G only provide a front view (and I also think some of the details are shaky)
The French soldier is described as a Line Infantry Grenadier and the uniform looks right for that. I believe that epaulettes, facings and cuffs would be red, cross belts White with red borders possibly. Any information on these items would be very gratefully received
Thanks for looking in on yet another miniature.
Alan
 

Alan   this  might help  with  the  French  Grenadier Scheme  of the  time   - 
 
OC.

A small update for you, and I apologise for the dusty model. I need to do a blast over with some canned air.
 
The tiller is now fitted to the rudder and then rigged to the wheel using a series of 3mm single blocks. A lot easier than it looks.
 

 
 
The strops and deadeyes are now completed and secured to the channels with chainplate linkages. 


 
 
Then onto the boomkins which are rigged down to eyelets on the prow. 

 
 
Harpy will now be supplied with TWO boats. An 18' cutter will hang off the stern and this new 22' cutter will now sit on the deck. 

 
 
She's looking very, very pretty.




 
 
Lastly, the bowsprit. I'm now currently on masts, but that's for another update!

Nice! Once we get into the rhythm, they go more quickly than annoyingly slow. 😁

Started the ratlines. 10 out of 60 done.  They are a simple hitch on the outer shrouds and clove hitches on the inner shrouds.  Once I got a good routine going on the clove hitches they went on fairly quickly.   There is a touch of diluted PVA on each knot.
 

I’ve been on a few days road trip up to the north cape of NZ so this gave all the oil paint a good long time to dry in the hot water cupboard.
Before I left I painted the exhausts aluminium and gave them an oil wash.

These dried well while away and then I did many light misty coats of a red brown mix.

Until it was enough to still have some aluminium coming through. Then I added some rust pigments and abit more highlighting with some soot pigments. 

Happy with these I managed to get them on the plane with only slight damage! They blended in with the whole plane which was what I was after, I didn’t want them to be super obvious and jump out in a bad way. I wanted them to look the part and just add to the over all feel. I am really happy with how they turned out!

Something to occupy idle hands while paint is drying elsewhere. Another Thirty Years War subject from Art Girona. This time a Spanish Officer.

I assume every war has its rear echelons but with his little shoes with violet bows this chap doesn't look like someone who plans on charging through the mud and unpleasantness of the front lines😄
The figure is the usual very nice sculpt from Art Girona. I added brass wire pins at the raised arm and neck to locate the head and hand.
 
The usual black primer and the directional white shading before starting the colour glazes.



Thanks for looking in.
 
Alan
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

Yeah, Etsy's kind of an odd space. I love the fact that little hobby level makers have a global market. I hate the fact that it is true caveat emptor. Especially in regards to intellectual property law. Human nature, I suppose.
 
Anyhow... she's done:

AND lastly.
 
3D printed chimney is glued in, as is the capstan and pawls.
 


 
Might as well add all those guns too!

 
 
The channels are now fitted, and the belaying pins added.


 
 
Pumps etc. fitted.

 
 
And Harpy now looks like this...

 
 
Now I need to add the finishing touches and move onto the masts.