RadMan
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Everything posted by RadMan
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Everything looks great... don't worry about progress, all this micro work you are doing takes time. -
Whew... time to paint now.
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The white stripe: I have spent way, way, way too much time taping the sides of the hull. The curves around the aft windows were especially hard to tape. Even when I think I got it right, the next day, the tape would lift...ugh! I started with Tamiya tape, then I completely taped off the rest of the hull as well as the interior cannon door windows, to be sure that the white spray paint only goes where its suppose to. We will soon see whether it was worth it.
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March 23, 2012 The interior white and green is finished. Starting prep for painting the white stripe on the exterior. Note: I have not painted the copper hull yet because I knew I'd be handling the ship a lot and didn't want any fingerprints or scrapes on the paint. I will probably paint it after the white stripe is finished. I will paint it in parallel with the AndyMech method of wood-graining the gun deck.
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March 23, 2013 After regrouping, I decided to experiment with different brush heads. I also cut the brush handles short so I could maneuver my hand better inside the ship. I also thinned the white paint, and laid several more coats of white. Seemed like this took forever. I also finished the green bulwarks. The result turned out pretty good considering my start. Also, it is of note that this interior will be mostly out of site...so no harm done. The flat brush worked best, the big fat round brush was worst (what was i thinking?!?!?!) the final result:
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March 13, 2013 I have been in the process of painting the white interior bulkhead for the gun deck. What a PIA! I really should have painted this before cementing the hull together (I noticed that a few guys who are building the Constitution for their second time did exactly that). It was a complete disaster. I should have thinned the white paint more and I should have put on thinner coats...I did neither at first. Here is my "3rd grader" paint job: and another view
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February 19, 2013 I painted the gold trim and lettering for the ship's placard. The gold enamel is so thick that I had quite a bit of trouble with the fine detail. I tried to thin the paint a bit, but it seems like its not mixing well. I mixed Humbrol enamel thinner with Revell gold enamel paint. I think I just need to use a power mixer, so next time I'll put a small wire in my cordless drill, bend the wire a bit, and mix. I think the gold will need to be much thinner to paint the gold trim on the ship and gallery. I need to do some touch-up on the "U" and the "C".
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Looks like you're getting ready to glue the gallery to the rest of the stern. When I dry-fit mine, the alignment doesn't look good. I have quite a good gap where the bottom of the gallery fits to the two halves of the hull. Did you have a similar fit issue? I think I may just need to do some aggressive trimming, still it doesn't look like it will be easy, because its not obvious why it isn't fitting. I will take some photos later.
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Hard to believe you got that detail with a marker. Nicely done. Though you have inspired me a bit... but instead of painting or using a marker, I may try to printout a small half-naked photo of my wife on nice photo paper and glue it over the existing frames. LOL, I hope my wife isn't reading this....its just an idea at this moment.
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btw, how did you do the detail for the framed painting above the couch in the Capt's stateroom? with a microscope? and is that a real mirror I see in there? I am really curious how you are able to do this micro work. Can you explain how you accomplish it?
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The cannons are now completed. I must say that the cannons lambsbk sent me were superior to the existing ones in my kit. Maybe the US kits are better (I am using a German kit), or if these cannons are from his 1970 kit, maybe they just made stuff better back then.
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Well, regarding my cannon problem... a member of this forum has graciously come to my rescue. lambsbk, generously sent me 7 new cannons from his extra parts... they arrived to me here in Bulgaria last Monday. Wooo who!!! How great is this!!!!!!! (note: the yellow spot in the photo is a mystery...the cannons were in perfect condition)
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(1) The kit was missing a piece for one of the 33 Gun Deck cannons (I swear I didn't lose it! and yes I know there are only 32 on the gun deck and one topside). Anyway, I started with 32.5 cannons. (2) Gluing... there is a pin-and-hole arrangement which are suppose to align the two halves. However, in many cases they misaligned the halves. I glued several together this way before deciding to just cut off the pin and align the halves myself. (3) Painting...I massively FUBAR'd some of the first cannons I painted. It took me probably 6 cannons before I figured out how to paint them. (4) Un-painting... I decided to use some brush cleaner and wipe off the botched paint job on my first 6 cannons... to my HORROR, the brush cleaner started to melt the plastic and broke off one of the trunions!! (5) Re-painting: I repainted the 3 cannons I doused with brush cleaner, they still look crappy. I put a secondcoat of black on the other 3...they too look crappy. (6) Conclusion: I will hide the crappy cannons on one side of the ship. The photo below shows the difference between the 'good' (right) and 'bad' (left) cannons (sorry for photo quality because it really doesn't show how badly I painted the (left) cannon). Note on the left cannon how the paint fills in the area between the knob and the base of the breech... its suppose to be round but mine forms a 45 degree angle... oh well.... what to do. Any suggestions??
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bleed-thru.... happened in a couple of spots, but obviously not a problem because I will paint copper over this.
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Here you can better see the "molded line", which is above the bottom of the cannon doorways. Did anyone else paint their white-line this way???
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another view
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After taping with the Tamiya tape, I used aluminum foil to cover the bottom and standard masking tape to attach the foil to the Tamiya tape. I got some minor bleed through at one or two places but was generally ecstatic with the overall results.
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Next was taping off the hull before painting. I used Tamiya tape. I had to trim the tape in small sections especially around some of the curves for the hull plating. It was a huge P.I.A. and much more time consuming than I imagined. Another note: There seems to be a bit of controversy about the white line. In photos of the real USS Constitution, it spans the entire height of the cannon doors. However, the model has a molded line about 1/8" above the bottom of the cannon doors...this seems to imply you should stop before the bottom of the doors. I did not. My white line will span the entire height of the cannon doors.
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Cannons: First of all, I am missing half of a cannon. I am not sure what I will do about this yet. Secondly: many of the cannons had bad injection marks. In addition, there is an alignment pin which in most cases, if used, MISaligns the cannons. Unfortunately, I glued a lot of them this way. The last half of them I just cut off the alignment pin and they went together perfectly. I wish I could start these over. Some of the better ones are shown below.
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another view
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04 JANUARY 2013 Cannon time!!! I decided to start assembling the cannon's because....ok, I was influence by others on this site including AndyMech. I also think it's a good place to practice painting. I had trouble with the first few red carriages...brush marks were bad. Later, I discovered that one big juicy coat of enamel was far superior to light coats. You had to just keep moving and let the paint flow. Doublebrushing over the same spot left big brush marks.
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Another view
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04 JANUARY 2013 The hull is primed. I fitted the cannon doors in place because it seemed a good way to prime them and it also prevented flow-through drips. I also taped over the windows. (I have not fitted the plastic windows yet)
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03 JANUARY 2013 Cementing the hull: I trimmed and cemented the hull. I used ordinary binder clips for clamping. The hull fit together fairly well, but I wouldn't say it aligned perfectly. I dry fit it a few times and came up with the strategy to apply glue to the stern part first, snap that together and then proceed with the rest. Snapping the stern together first seemed to help the overall ease of alignment...still i was nervous as hell doing it!
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03 JANUARY 2013 Painting - In general I am crappy at painting. I believe the painting will be more challenging for me than the construction. I am going to try to brush paint as much as possible. I decided to brush paint because it is somehow "more personal" than to spray everything. I believe it will be more technically challenging to brush paint. With that said, I do intend to spray paint the black part of the hull and the white stripe on the hull... LOL. I could only find one can of Tamiya spray in Black (TS-14 Black) and (TS-45 Pearl White). I could not find any copper spray paint. Dilemma... to prime or not to prime. I decided to at least prime the big parts. For primer, I went with Tamiya Fine Surface Primer (gray). Since I am in Bulgaria, my Revell kit had German instructions (in addition to the English). The German instructions seemed to have some better details for some of the riggings, especially the sail riggings. I also have the exact Revell of Germany paints.
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