Paint a copper keelson into wood

[MESSIS]

Can anybody give me some knowlage how I can transform a copper fitting of a keelson to a wooden one?

[allanyed]

Rather than just painting the copper, and alchemy aside, can you measure and draw the piece you have, then use the drawing as your guide to make the piece from wood?    If you can post a picture of this piece  to give an idea of what you are trying to copy I am sure you will get some useful responses.  If you are just wanting to paint the copper a wood color, be sure to clean the copper with acetone or some other solvent to be sure there is no mold release residue still on the copper and maybe even give it an acid bath to give a little texture to the piece before painting.  As to painting itself, you can mix some paints to try to match the surrounding wood on the model.  Not sure what paint would be appropriate to go over copper though.   Making a wood copy would probably  take no more time than treating and painting the copper and no worries of paint chipping off.

Allan

Edited September 24, 2016 by allanyed

[MESSIS]

Havent thought of it! O yes! Thx

[Jaager]

To be totally pedantic:  there would be no reason to copper a keelson.  The keelson is a a large timber or group of timbers on top of the frames at the midline of the vessel on the inside.  It is a mirror of the keel - which is the part that you are asking about.  While a model with a solid copper keel would be very resistant to warping, I would think that bonding it to the hull would be difficult and prone to failure after a decade or two has passed.

Copper is a reactive metal. The surface layer - even at the glue interface - may become the oxide, carbonate, or acetate salt of copper which would have the glue bonding to a powder rather than solid metal. Depending on what is used, the glue may have components that facilitate a chemical reaction.

 

I suspect that a lot of models with metallic copper plates that are only attached using adhesive will experience bond failure after time has worked its magic.

[MESSIS]

Yes Jaager u r right. It seems Amati uses a cast piece because its cheapper than a wooden one, deu to the complicate shape.

 

Still am going to use it... its easier than making a wooden one. Ionly have to give it a realistic wooden paint... ofcourse after I prepare it accordingly.

 

About the.glue.part am not worried.because it going to press fitted on the ship

[MESSIS]

Cheapper in terms of the manufacturing prosses and may be of the material it self as well, because a strong and hard wood is needed

[Jaager]

You mean that wide center support that holds the moulds/bulkheads is copper?  That would solve the warping problem. Is this a small model?

I am imagining what a 2 foot long and 6 inch high piece of copper would weigh?

It is not really corresponding to any single part of a ship. Most of it occupies a space that is open in a real vessel . Backbone would be about as

close a name as any.

I guess you could try glueing as thin a piece of veneer as can be had over any part that shows-  very thin 2 part epoxy or CA.

[MESSIS]

Πok jaager u inseaston beeing one sided.... ok but u have to know thats not helpfull..

Ok thx

[MESSIS]

Sorry

[jbshan]

We have here, as carpenters' tool, a 'contour gauge'.  It is a long row of metal fingers lightly clamped between two flat metal plates.  You push it against a shape and the fingers slide between the two plates to reproduce and record the contour.  You can then transfer the shape by drawing the shape with a pencil onto a board or something.  You could maybe use one of these to make profiles along the mast fish, like the frame sections of ships' plans.

Here is a pic of one in use:

 

[wefalck]

Messis, could you post a picture of the piece you are referring to ? It seems strange that a kit manufacturer should use solid copper pieces. Copper is expensive as such and not so easy to machine or cast ...

 

Metals (and plastics) can be quite convincingly painted to represent wood. There are various examples here on MSW (including my own ). More difficult it would be to match existing wooden parts.

 

Show us the part and we can give you more detailed advice !

[MESSIS]

Thanks for helping me out... thats the piece. It looks like copper it can be something else... it seems to be a cast puece.

[wefalck]

I gather, you are talking about the mast-fish, this massive piece of wood the Vikings et al. used to step their masts in.

 

I would suggest to carefully degrease it with acetone or similar and then to (spray-)paint it in acrylic 'wood' colour. This light coloured 'wood' colour can be found in the range of several paint manufacturers, such as Vallejo. The next step would be to apply washes of burnt umbra acrylic with a brush. This has to be done in several layers with a lot of water as a diluant. With these washes you simulate the wood structure, so don't try to get an uniform coverage. You can also use black washes to deepen the colour. If you want to have weathered look, you might give a light wash with white.

 

I have shown this example from my own production in a similar thread a short while ago (apologies for copying it again):

 

Base coat

 

After washes with burnt umber and weathering with white

[MESSIS]

Thx welflack u have been very helpfull! Do I need a primer after aceton?

[druxey]

Primer is a good idea.

[MESSIS]

Thx again

[Robin Lous]

After the base wood colour you can also use Vallejo transparent wood stain acrylic paint.

 

And there also transparent woodgrain waterslide decals from Ushi van der Rosten, but you need to be familiar with decals and Microsol to make that work.