hexnut

Very nice work. vaddoc! Are you using Rhino? First of all, I understand the pushback from the "ship's curves and paper" fans, but at the same time, I think part of the frustration some experience is that CAD offers a LOT more precision, and old boats simply were not that precise. Go down to the drydock on a nice, salt-spray-blowing November day in Bristol, crawl around a large hull taking measurements, dodging teams of workers doing sheathing and caulk, go back to the office and calculate the offsets by candlelight--Or during the initial build, lay out the stations with splines, ducks and chalk on the lofting floor, then have wrights rough the sections out of wood with a pit saw and broadaxe.... It's enough to give a quality assurance/risk mitigation director nightmares... I think the historian in all of us can't help but have enormous respect for primary sources, or high-profile scholars working at an earlier time (Chapelle, Longridge, et al.), but the reality is that by CAD standards, the original plans often weren't all that accurate. One of the biggest problems in lofting a hull in 3D is getting the stations and WL's to line up and meet while being fair in both directions. I have yet to trace a vintage plan where that happens, because the original was never fully-resolved until wood started coming together. There is a bit of an 80/20 rule--what is good enough to start construction without wasting too much material? When doing it in CAD, every tiny surface imperfection is abundantly highlighted; where on the model, it's an issue that may be solved in 30 seconds with some 120 grit. vaddoc, the truly good news is that now that you've put the work in to make a faired hull, once you make it solid you can boolean ribs and even planking out of it, setting up shiplap profiles at a station and extruding single-rail surfaces using the planking curves projected onto the hull. You can also offset the polysurfs to accommodate whatever you choose for wood thicknesses... Great-looking hull!

I do love my set of mid-60's Camco's (The predecessor to DW) --The Slingerland kit looks wonderful--I hope you have another set for gigs... 🙂

Cool! Is that a Heller P3 next to it?

They had rubber pads on the tracks... Graf Z looks amazing!

I fully endorse the Iwata/ Paasche combo, I bought mine for an illustration job in 1987, and they are still going strong...

What a magnificent beast! Love the details! I remember making a little 1/72 plastic one years back in Hungarian air show display livery...

I tape a cut length of plastic straw to the nozzle to decant into the airbrush...

Tamiya also makes a pearl clear (TS-65) that is pretty nice--helps even out coverage... https://www.amazon.com/Tamiya-85065-TS-65-Pearl-Clear/dp/B0006SG21C

Great work! I've also had good luck with Vallejo paints, both w/ brush and airbrush. They go on thin enough to keep detail and permit layered glazes, but also cover well enough so that too many coats aren't needed... https://acrylicosvallejo.com/en/producto/hobby/sets/war-games-en/french-infantry-napoleonic-wars-en/

Epoxy for structural patches, but good ol' Bondo automotive filler works great for cosmetic fill/surface coating, with Nitrostan/Red Lead as a final skim coat. Additionally, cabinet scrapers and box cutter blades work well over PLA for knocking down the FDM print lines...

Brilliant work, as always! Reminding me a bit of some of Charles Sheeler's great artwork... 🙂

Completely concur w/ the advice to print the barrel vertically, redesign the assy. to be 3-4 parts w/ interior lap joints (YMMV, but .3mm clearance should yield a press fit after a quick clean-up), size the i.D. so you can press fit the parts over a dowel and chuck it into a rotary tool--spin on slow speed while gently scraping w/ a blade to knock down the steps. (I use a small Olfa blade in a pinvise) --don't worry about getting too undersized--a coat of filler, primer and paint will make up the difference. If the printer has a GUI like Ultimaker Cura, it's pretty straight-forward to change the settings to slower speed/max rez. I would also turn off the auto supports and build them into the model only under the trunnion section; use about a 5mm raft under the barrel sections so everything sticks to the platform. I would also do the logo as a couple-layer flat (make a few copies) sand it to thickness and mount it to the barrel w/ epoxy...

You could also try a dark grey colored pencil--I like Prismacolor. The "lead" is soft, but an electric pencil sharpener will help keep a fine tip, and putting them in the refrigerator helps to keep the lines crisp (seriously).

This was so much fun to watch, and the results are terrific. Thanks for sharing!