V108 by catopower - Digital Navy - 1/200 Scale - CARD - Torpedo Boat - MSW Tutorial Build

[amateur]

You should also have a look at some of the build-logs of Dan Vadas. Lots of usefull info there.

This one for instance, but there is more to find.

 

https://modelshipworld.com/topic/16864-bismarck-by-dan-vadas-finished-gpm-1200-card-and-pe/

 

 

Jan

Edited October 11 by amateur

[catopower]

After our local ship modelers meeting down in San Jose today, I've been inspired to make some more progress on the V108.

 

First, I decided to try working on the funnel support guy wires using fine EZ Line. This is the first time I've ever used the stuff. Turned out to be a lot easier than I'd thought. I wasn't positive where these guy wires would attach to the deck. But, I've looked at various destroyers and noted that the wires mostly ran down to the raised deck of the superstructure. Given that, I just had to figure out how to keep the wires clear of the ventilators and reels.

Very happy with how that part turned out.

 

Next, I added the rudder and also added the crane at the bow. It's raised up too high I think, but it'll do.

Finally, I decided it was time to finish up with the bridge wing supports. I cut and glued the "folded" edges into place, then I glued pieces of wire onto the backside to stiffen the girders.

I trimmed the wire and painted the backsides gray, then glued them into place.

Following Chris' example, I set the support structure inboard a bit, so that it will clear the area where the deck railing will go.

There's still a lot of doo-dads to go on the ship, but I feel like I got a lot done, and really want to get the bridge finished.

[Nirvana]

That is an amazing, finished model.

[catopower]

Hi Nirvana, still a ways to go yet!

[catopower]

Little bitty progress on the V108. At this point, I guess it's all "little bitty" progress...

 

Made some of the bridge instruments. I guess this is the compass and the engine room telegraph. You can kind of make that one out.

I'd actually just mounted the ship's wheel on its pedestal, but had to step out of the room while the glue dried. I got distracted by other stuff, then thought about it again, went to look for it. It complete vaporized... not a trace... not even a smooshed part! Have to make a new one. At least I have the spare parts sheets to work from. 🤨

 

With that, I decided to finish assembling the aft mast. Turned out okay. Most of it is all thin wooden dowel, except for the yard, which is 0.020" brass.

 

The masts aren't permanently fixed yet. I think I'm going to pre-rig the aft mast before I permanently mount it.

 

Thinking now about how I'm going to deal with railings. The one's around the direction finder platform, aft, lean out from the round platform, so they're conical. Chris made his railing from stiffened thread. I was just going to use PE brass for all mine, but I can't do that around that platform. Whatever I make there isn't going to match the PE railings elsewhere. I'm considering just using the printed paper part, which mimics the look of canvas backed railing. If I do that, I would probably want to do the same for the bridge railing.

 

I'm not sure how that will look, but that IS the way the kit was designed, so maybe it'll be okay. The aft platform and railing are simple enough to make, so I think I'll make the aft platform and see how it looks with the kit part. If It doesn't look good, I'll consider alternatives. 

 

But, I think I'm ready to finish the deck guns next.

 

Edited October 18 by catopower

[catopower]

It's two steps forward, then another one step forward, then one step back, and another stop forward. Let's see... that's a total of three steps forward. So, we're doing well here.

 

I started rigging the aft mast. At this scale, there's really no place to tie off lines to. Also, it's not really clear from the instructions what lines are needed. There are a few small diagrams that include the run of lines, more or less So, I did what I could to pre-rig the aft mast. When I'm ready to permanently install the mast, there will be more rigging line.

 

I decided not to use the EZline stuff here, and just went with fly tying thread, since I felt the EZline would pull the booms out of position. But, in order to keep the regular thread taut, I just ended continuing the run of the line, so it wouldn't put a strain on the part. There's a lot more rigging to go, and for other things I may need to go back to the EZline for those.

I also tried out the railing and covering on the platform where the rangefinder will eventually be located. I think it looks okay, and I'm happy with it. So, I decided to move forward with using the kit parts to make the coverings of the bridge wings as well, which I added after I finished adding the new ship's wheel.

 

You'll see the mast that runs up the back of the bridge is in place here, but I'd originally made a hole for it in the superstructure that was a little too far aft. To cover it, I cut out a spare rectangular hatch and glued it into place. It's not supposed to be there, but nobody will notice. That mast isn't permanently in place, but I think I can fix it permanently now.

 

I don't know if now is a good time to do this, but I also went ahead and mounted the flagstaffs at the bow and step. I also managed to mess up the anchor crane at the bow, so I removed it and will have to make a new one. Note the forward 88mm gun in place.

 

Below, is another view aft showing the gun now in place, along with the aft flagstaff. Propeller guards are now glued in place as well, but I still have to add the wire supports.

Rigging and a few detailed assemblies remain, plus some stuff to put on the bridge wings, the anchor crain, and then the railings.

Edited October 24 by catopower

[catopower]

While I'm working on building the searchlight, rangefinder, and a new anchor crane, I added the remaining bridge detail, which included the navigation lights and the wooden grating platforms.

 

 

I also decided to go ahead and rig the ariels on the masts and mount the masts into place. This work might get a little bit in the way when dealing with the railings, but I just felt that I needed to move the project forward a little more. Also, those radio ariels that run down to the bridge wings in the above photo is not glued into place, it's just an extra long, weighted line that runs through a pinhole I drilled into the bridge deck. So, I can move those out of the way to add the top most railing. 

 

The aft mast stays needed a place to secure on deck, so I just drilled pinholes for those. For now, I weighted the stays with binder clips in about the location where they'll need to go.

 

As for the ariels I ran between the masts, that's just "un-educated" guesswork, as this part of the instructions didn't seem detailed enough. I'm happy enough with for this model

 

Next, I'll need to secure the aft mast stays before I start adding the main deck railings. 

 

Oh, forgot that I still need to add the supports that run up from the propeller guards to the hull. That shouldn't be too difficult, and I'll probably do them next.

 

 

 

Edited October 31 by catopower

[catopower]

A few weeks ago, I paused on this model, and started working on rigging a friend's ship model, as a shoulder problem and shaky hands have prevented him from working on his model for the last few years. I'd done quite a bit, but there's a lot more work required on the his model. So, I decided to see if I could make some progress on the V108 again this week and work towards completion.

 

I've gotten just about as far as I plan to with the the bulk of V108's rigging. This week, I secured the guy wires or stays of the aft mast, then started the process of adding photo-etched railings to the model. This is something I've never done before, and it's proved to be a bit of a challenge, but I'm making progress.

 

The hardest area, so far, is the first that I took on, the top of the bridge. This took a lot of shaping, cutting, and gluing together of the railing pieces, but I think I managed okay.

Once that was in place, I decided to pause to finish adding the propeller guard supports. These, I cut from steel wire, I don't recall what gauge.

 

After that, I added the railing to the forward part of the main deck. This is partly hidden by the raised bulwarks, but that seemed to make it pretty easy to add the railings and to secure them pretty well. The railing aft of the bridge support structure was simple enough in that I used a full length piece of railing. I mean to start the railing closer to the bridge support structure, but ended up with a larger gap than I'd planned on. I suppose I could rip up the railing and redo it, but I'm afraid I'll do more harm than good. So, I'm just leaving it alone for now.

Putting the long railing pieces into place turned out to be more difficult than I expected. I found it a challenge to keep the railings sitting vertical, they tend to lean a little bit inward or outward. Also, I'm using Aleene's Tacky Glue. It seems to work pretty well, but as I keep playing with the part to get it to sit correctly, I'm kind of whipping up the glue, so it's not as transparent or as smooth as it should be.

I'll need to look at this again and see what I can do to clean it up a bit. After that, I'll add a final piece that fits the curve of the stern and connects up with these other pieces. Then, I can look at mounting railings on the forecastle, which has a curved slope to the sides, so I'm expecting that are to be a little tricky.

 

Below, you can see how wavy the railing is, still. I'll be seeing if I can do anything to minimize that waviness. I need to consult with my plastic ship modeler friends about this.

Note that the insides of the funnels show the pieces of the guy wires and some ladder rungs poking through. I decided to use a little bit of dyed cotton stuff down inside, like smoke from the boilers.

 

Anyway, the light at the end of the tunnel is looking quite strong now...

[catopower]

Tiny bits of progress. That's what this paper model project is down to.

 

I did manage to finish the remaining pieces of photo-etch railings. These were the harder pieces I decided to save for last. 

 

There were two pieces remaining. The first was to finish the curved rail at the stern. It took a little doing to create the correct curve, and to cut the railing to the correct size. The ends of this piece had to be cut, so that I ended up with three "free floating" rails that just slightly overlap the existing, mounted rails.

 

This worked pretty well, though it took me a while to glue the piece into place, as I couldn't fully achieve the right curvature, and had to get the glue to hold it in place and to hold the right curve.

I think this turned out pretty well, as it's difficult to see where the rails are "spliced" together.

 

The hardest piece to add was the one on the forecastle, just abaft the gun mount. This required a double-curve which took me quite a bit of work to get close to the proper shape. To help out, I cut an extra forecastle deck piece so I could work out the curvature off the model. Again, I got the rail curvature close, but not quite. It was close enough to allow me to cut the ends, again with the three free-floating rails sticking out.

 

Once the curve was close enough, I glued it down on the model, holding it into place with tiny scraps of wood, coaxing the piece into position with the right curve. The ends were glued to the vertical "stanchions" of the existing railing, being careful to get the rails to line up as closely as possible. After the glue dried, I carefully snipped off the excess. Again, it seemed to turn out pretty well. It's not perfect, but at this scale, except until zoomed photos, it's hard to see any issues.

Lastly, as you can see in the above photo, I finished assembling the searchlight, and mounted it on top of the bridge.

 

Just a few things left to do on the model now. I have to assemble and add the anchors and a new anchor crane. I still haven't added a ladder that leads up to the bridge, and then I have a couple more radio aerials to add.

 

Oh, and then I have to add the rangefinder on top of the little platform just fowards of the aft mast. THAT piece, is going to be a challenge...

 

Still, completion shouldn't be long now!

Edited 23 hours ago by catopower

[ccoyle]

3 hours ago, catopower said:

Tiny bits of progress. That's what this paper model project is down to.

 

That's what my current Hien project is like -- a seemingly never-ending sequence of tiny cockpit parts. I wish I could say the end was in sight, but I think it's more like one of those "not even the beginning of the end, but perhaps it is the end of the beginning" things. 

[catopower]

17 hours ago, ccoyle said:

 

That's what my current Hien project is like -- a seemingly never-ending sequence of tiny cockpit parts. I wish I could say the end was in sight, but I think it's more like one of those "not even the beginning of the end, but perhaps it is the end of the beginning" things. 

Or, perhaps, it's beginning of the middle? 😁

 

No pics this time, but the ladder is done, I think... the steps aren't as even as I would like. It's hard to line them up as marked on the paper.

 

The anchors look better, and I just need to add the stocks, which will be wire. Also, I'm almost done with the rangefinder – that's a tough assembly(!), not to be viewed too closely. 😕

 

With luck, my next post will be my last on this... soon!