BLACK VIKING

Aquitania In fancy dress 

Evening all,   bit more work done to my pile  - vests and trousers  done.
 
OC.

Aquitania comes to the end of her days as a Hospital ship. Soon to be converted back to Trooping then back to Civie Street!.
w/c 16" X 10"

And I am glad to share my build with you! Then, please find a small addition to the color build up which now looks pretty final after few additions of paint.

I have saturated a bit more the coverage. You have to consider that the darker grey zones will be added to the wings and to the back of the fuselage.

The bottom looks ok, some weathering will complete its final look. Transparent layers that will be added for decals and inks usually tend to smooth the contrast.

That's all for now,
best regards,
Dan
 

Evening all,   more details painted  including painting some of the Dark Blue jacket details  inside the pile up.
 
OC.

This begins the journey. Hull floor, transmission, and drive shaft. Lots more to come.
 
 

So, after  some touch ups  and weathering to mr injured man, he will be put aside  and I will tackle the mess  (I mean pile of injured/dead)   my admiral is real keane  for me to start this  - as she has no clue how I will be able to pull it off  "I have my ways"  lol.
 
This is were  they are going to be placed  after I have doen some more groundworks - scenery at the back of the farm.
 
OC.

Main deck planking begins. I applied a simple planking method this time and after finishing it I regretted a bit. A 3 butt or 4 butt shift method would have looked better. I will apply at least 3 butt shift in GH2 and GH3.
 
For the deck material, I used 4 variations of the same wood - 1.plain, 2. dyed with tea, 3&4, dyed with slightly different colors.

Final photos - done
 
 

Update:
 
Strongback is ready, mast and spars are laminated, and all "plywood" parts are cut out. Everything is temporarily collected together for a group photo:

 
I used a jewelers saw (Knew Concepts jewelers saw) with a jewelers blade to cut the shapes out of mostly 1/16th inch basswood sheet material. A few pieces are Cherry. This was my first time using a jewelers saw, so all this cutting, especially with the details has been very instructive.
 
Everything is pretty rough right now and needs to be trimmed and sanded, but I'm overall happy with the jewelers saw. I was able to get much more detailed than I expected. There were a couple of interesting things to consider when using the saw. For example, cutting across the grain was an entirely different experience than cutting parallel to the grain.
 
Cross-grain, the saw ripped through the material incredibly fast even with a very fine-tooth blade (I used #3/0). It was very easy to cut too much material in one stroke. I found that, in this situation, using very short, relaxed strokes with virtually no pressure against the material gave me the most control.
 
Additionally, the saw has a 5" throat (I believe that is the correct term?), and the material I was cutting from was 2 feet long. It was fun to plan the cutting to try and preserve as much scrap material for future use as possible while also accounting for the 5" limit of the saw.
 
Next Steps:
 
-Refine the cut-out shapes with files and sandpaper. 
-Positioning of frames and chine logs for fairing.
-Shape and sand the mast and spars. These will remain mostly rectangular, but will be tapered in some cases and the edges rounded.

Spartan

Evening all,   right  - the 2nd KGL  group was  flat coated  and are now waiting to harden.
 
So next  on my little mission  - I  decided to to make some  casualties including the mass  that built up by the barn,   I have made one who will be placed  fallen back  into the private.
 
OC.

Nicely detailed. Can you get a tougher resin to print this or will that affect the printable detail. Are you doing any of the external plumbing, like the bleed air lines?

Well, my first, self designed, 3D print...
 
The first step was reducing them in SW to 1/32 scale.....

Five parts scaled by just clicking a few buttons with the mouse..... Saved as .STL files which converted them to mesh files..... Then loaded into Lychee Slicer...

Everything set to automatic, supports, angles with Anti-aliasing turned off.. A simple draft print.... What's happening here is the grey parts are fine, the red part has errors that Lychee is unable to fix... So while it was printing, (3.5 hrs) I went back into SW and stepped thru the compressor center section and fixed the error... But, Lychee fixed enough of it to allow it to print...
Once Lychee does it's thing it created the slice files for the printer and copied them to a USB stick which gets plugged into the printer for printing.... Now there is no connection to the printer from the computer so I was following along on the computer watching the progress as it printed... the white layers in the pic is the print progress at this point, just a bit over half way.... (about 3/5ths done)
 
And a printer view...
 

And when it finished printing....

Next step is to wash and cure them.... so the build plate goes into the Wash N Cure machine for a 6 minute alcohol bath and a 10 minute drying period before they are separated from the build plate....
 
Dried, ready to separate....

Separated from the build plate and from each other ready for curing....

4 minutes curing time, which is a bit long, I just wanted to make sure, 2 minutes should be sufficient...
 
So lets see how they turned out... Are they going to mate up? How much detail came thru....
 
I'll let the pics speak for themselves, remember this was a draft print, just to see if it actually works as expected...




And yeah fragile, you have to be careful in how you handle them, they break fairly easily....

 
Well, most of the detail came thru, but at 1/32 scale you do need to adjust your design for greater thickness for strength or be very very careful when you handle them.... I need to adjust the mating parts so they fit easier in the future, but overall, I think it is a success!
 
A little fine tuning and I can work with this especially if I'm careful in how I set up Lychee slicer... The print settings I used are the generic ones for Anycubic Basic Resin that came with the printer...
 
Overall I'm very very pleased....
 
Tell me what you guys think and don't be bashful, everything is welcome at this point....
 
EG

So close to the finish line…and my back went out. Couldn’t refuse a day of planting with my mom, but a stubborn root-impacted hole I dug for the Coral Knock Out Rose bush did me in. I can barely get out of bed. Getting dressed is an adventure - even with enough meds to knock out a horse, and I walk around like Quasimodo. I shall return! 
 
The 1st pic was the culprit that did me in. This will give me more time to ponder the dying, or not, of my sails. I may experiment with using the coral rose petals as a dye. 

Trooper Aquitania, Tanker Deecher Island and Trawler Milford King. 
W/C 11.5" X8.5" 

I've added Black and Light Beige cable-laid rope to my shop. They range from 1.1mm to 3.8mm like the last ones. As usual they are sold by the meter. The next product to be worked on is left-hand/S-laid variants for Black and Dark Brown.
 
For those of you that didn't see @James H did a great review of some of my Polyester ropes. Check it out here > product review / Rope and cable - various sizes - Ropes of Scale 
 
https://ropesofscale.com/products/polyester-black-cable-laid-rope
https://ropesofscale.com/products/polyester-light-beige-cable-laid-rope

Morning Departure. another w/c 'Postcard' 6” X4”

HMS Sultan

 

It's been awhile since I posted - I've been doing  a lot of fiddly stuff. First, the mizzen shrouds:
 
Threading the lanyards between the upper and lower deadeyes and fixing the assemblies to the channels - 

 



 Threading the shrouds through the bottom of the fighting top. (Yes, I know I should be threading through first and then adding the deadeyes at each end of the doubled shroud, but at this scale it wasn't realistic. However, it's more accurate than the way I did it on the fore and main.
   
 

Pulling tight, with tiny pegs as weights to maintain tension, and a dab of glue at the back to keep them in place.,
    

I seem to have forgotten to take photos of putting on the lower ratlines. But what the hey, you saw me doing it on the other masts. So here instead are the topmast and topgallant shrouds and ratlines going on -
   
 
  
 

I hadn't been happy with how the fore topmast and topgallant shrouds came out - I cut the ends off the ratlines while they were in place, and it didn't work too well (looked untidy). So I've since been using a different technique - I add the ratlines in place, remove the shroud/ratline assembly and trim off the ratlines with a scalpel blade on the cutting board, then glue the shroud/ratline assembly back on.
 
So here are the new shrouds and ratlines for the fore topmast and topgallant.
 
  
 

At this point the shrouds are removed and the ratlines trimmed.
   
And put back in place. The tiny pegs used again to tension the shrouds while the glue dries. Then the shrouds are trimmed to length.
      
All done!
 
Now for the bonaventure mizzen!
 
Steven
 

Indeed Edward,   there will be a pile up of dead  near the barn entrance  - from the  heavy fire  from the KGL  inside the barn, and the others  around  the other sides of LHS.
 
OC.

Another Dawn
Corvette based on HMCS Eyebright passing anonymous hard worked merchant ship.
w/c 16" X 11"

Evening all,   more work  (with pics)   haversack and straps  done, the guys  head hanky  - done,  shakos  detailed, cloth hat  painted then some washes.
 
OC.
 
 

Painted today HMCS Blairmore J314  awaits as her charges leave St Johns at the start of their Atlantic crossing w/c 16" X11"  

Paddle tugs 'Cracker' and 'Grappler' early 20th century 
w/c postcards 6" X 4"