Revenge by FingerSticker - Shipyard - 1/96 - CARD

[Richmond]

I look forward to see how you go with it.

[thibaultron]

Well dang! Painting with the old dope got quite interesting half way through. Won't be quite so fun with the new stuff!

[FingerSticker]

Good evening, all!

 

Hope we all survived the holidays as well as can be expected and I hear this year that last year Richmond didn't get a white Christmas ..... again! If it makes you feel better, Richmond, neither did I .... again! 😢

 

To make matters worse, this new dope didn't make it fun at all, as Ron predicted, but more about the dope-situation later.

 

There's a lot to show about the work that's been going on in Leicester, so without further ado ...

 

I hope you all remember that i was going to check to position of the first planking layer with regards to the inside wall pieces. Most of them were quite spot on, another show that the design of this ship is A**!

Using the windows in the inside card as datum points I got almost perfect fit on the aft section of the planking card. 

 

The front section was already in place and fitted well too. Just the middle section was out. Way out even. It was so bad, that I decided to perform some corrective surgery on that section, even though I said in the past that the fit would not matter that much. But if the windows are badly out of whack then the above lying railings will be out of whack too and it would be much easier to rectify the situation as soon as possible. So a quick flick with the knife in the right position and the offending section was cut away.

You can see on the right, where the bottom of the red card lined up with the glue line, that there was a discrepancy of 1 to 2 mm. Using the windows as guide and glueing down the red card (after careful bending) gave a much better looking situation.

It also gave an improved situation because the wall was slightly bigger than the red card so it would give a little ridge to use when glueing down the section to the forecastle area. That worked so well, that I decided to do the same for the right hand side, i.e. glue down the red card in the correct position before glueing the planking card into its position on the right hand side. But more about the right hand side later.

 

This was the time that I thought it best to try out this new dope on the now completed left hand side.

 

As I had no experience with this new fan-dangled dope that doesn't smell but is water based, I decided to create a little platform to try it out on card.

A simple box with the sides kept free combined with a slightly oversized piece of standard card. Since it IS card and the dope is water based, I thought it best to try it neat, i.e. undiluted. The liquid was quite thick and opaque and smelled of nothing. So, at least that part was as expected. But it brushed down without a problem and stayed basically on top of the card.

Since this is the strongest I can use this liquid, I was interested to see how much pull this would create on the card after drying. Which was  not nearly as much as I expected or hoped for.

I must admit I found the distortion underwhelming. When tapping the dried card with a pen it pinged slightly like a drum but nowhere near as much as I remembered from the old dope on my balsa aircraft. So, is this new dope like all the other replacements for environmental reasons, and not work as well as the intoxicating and 'dirty' old stuff? Or did I not use it correctly?

(To be honest, not having tried the old dope on a card model like the one I am working on now, it could also be that dope (either version) doesn't work that well with card and cardboard.)

I decided to follow the manufacturers ,made a 30% solution in a little tray and used that on a piece of card as well paper. Well, that worked!

The card piece still showed a little amount of distortion as before but sounded a lot 'pingier' when struck with a pen, whereas the paper behaved as expected and rolled itself up during drying. I reckoned the dope needed the water to be absorbed more, i.e. get more into the card rather than just lay on top.

That would be good, because I tried some filler onto the neat dope card.

After drying I could rub off the filler just with one finger! Obviously this filler doesn't work on dope and to use it I would have to sand down the dope layer, which would probably also remove the strength improvement that I was after!

 

Seeing the limited distortion on the card I felt confident to trial the 30% solution on the left hand side of the model. 

Well, it's not an unmitigated disaster. 😢 And the surface is tougher so that at least worked. It was only now that I realised that I did all trials with 0.3 mm card and the bottom pieces were 'only' 0.16 mm thick, so more like paper (0.08 mm) than the card and would therefore want to roll up more like the piece of paper in the trial. It should still be fine, since I needed to fill that side anyway to get rid of ridges and gouges. It will just need more filler to also fill the card depressions.

 

I decided to continue the planking for the right hand side whilst considering what to do with that side coating-wise.

 

I fitted the middle section this time first after glueing the red inside piece to the planking piece as I did on the left hand side, then offered it up to the side of the ship, bend the pieces by hand to get a snug fit then glued the piece down.

I let that dry thoroughly before adding the forecastle front (part 62), which required a little more finger bending of the front of the planking sides to fit with the angles on the front piece.

During the placing of the planking piece on the right hand side I found a number of frames that had been completely covered by the bottom planking pieces and left the ridges of this planking pieces unattached. Next time I will not use horizontal strips alongside the side of the ship but glue down a 1 cm wide strip of paper vertically along all frames which should give all sections a wide enough area to attach to on either side of the frame.

And since both sides need a relatively heavy filler load anyway, I decided to learn a bit more about the dope. Was there a magic concentration that would work? I decided to try a new concentration, one that would lie in the middle of the ones already trialled (i.e. a 100% and a 30% mix). For the mathematically interested followers, I decided on a 65% solution, which I mixed up by transferring 13 ml of dope and 7 ml of water with a 5 ml syringe into a little container, mix it up and slap it on.

There are still distortions after drying, less than before but still clearly visible whilst leaving a shine on the card, showing that there was too much of the dope being left on top of the card. The card is stiffer than it was with the 30% solution (the ping was higher in pitch) but stiff enough?

 

We will have to see how this will affect the placing of filler but that is for later.

 

On the whole, I am not impressed by this 'eze dope', even though I do not have a reference to place against it apart from some memories from the past when using 'stinky' dope on tissue paper. As said before I do not know whether it would work at all with thicker card so I might have just barged through an open door. That wouldn't be the first time, I can assure you! 

 

I am relieved that my 'desire' to experiment didn't lead to a total destruction of the model that I have been lovingly working on. And will continue to lovingly work on. First i will need to add the poop deck aft wall (part O) from way, way before, then I will trim the planking cards to lie flush where needed and then it will be a glorious battle between me and a pallet knife against a ship and a tub of wood filler with plenty of sanding during the rest periods.

 

I'll be in touch once the smoke has lifted from the battlefield!

 

 

Edited January 4, 2019 by FingerSticker
Extra pictures removed

[etubino]

On 11/20/2018 at 7:00 PM, FingerSticker said:

Good evening, all.

 

I thought it was time for a bit of colour! Having glued all the pre-cut parts, and boy, have they made life easy, I started laminating the next parts to be added. Shipyards wants us to work in numerical order, so start with part 1, then part 2, etc. But before that there are the structural parts mentioned with letters. Some of them were already done as they came as pre-cuts so I used my spreadsheet to locate all lettered parts and cut them out. I also started on cutting out the first of the numbered parts, since they would all go onto 1 mm card and I had sufficient parts laminated to last me a while.

 

Since there was still a question about whether laminating would give the right thicknesses, especially considering the fact that some of the parts were on paper and others on thin card, I decided to forego the correct sequence and try out a part that was originally on card of 0.16 mm thickness. Part No 1, the Captain's Cabin Floor was chosen.

 

Shipyard also recommended to cut along the  wood slats on pieces with wood on them to give a better effect, i.e. make them more 3D. Since I didn't like to sound of cutting, which could easily go too deep, I took my awl and decided to score the card with the awl, twice along the black lines with the awl held at about 30 degrees to make a nice round depression and then once with the awl at about 60 degrees, to get a score in the middle of the depression. It worked! It worked quite nicely in fact. I can see a clear demarcation now between the 'slats'. Unfortunately photographing it is a completely different matter.

 

 

It didn't take me more than a couple of minutes to do the deck so I'll do this on all other wood as well. I am sorry that it isn't really visible for you, but you'll have to trust me on this.

 

I also looked at where the deck was going and noticed that all decks are curved. That created a little bit of bother when I tried to insert the tabs on the deck into the slots of the former. I could get the front end curved by basically forcing the deck into the slots but the back end was still flat. So I used the biggest diameter that I could find to pre-curve the deck on.

And the result?

 

Luffly!

 

Treated this way, I could quite easily slot the deck into the frame. And since this was the thickest a part could be, it confirmed that if you laminate the part onto the prescribed thickness, the end part will fit perfectly! Well, thickness-wise anyway. Success!

 

I took the deck out again and started on the small gun-decks that are scattered around the ship. I cut them out, letter by letter, curved them as I did the deck and then tried to slide them into the corresponding positions. Which didn't go too well. A size issue? When I investigated the piece, I noticed that the part had a ridge at the underside where the card had been cut. Two small strokes with a file on the bottom of the tab removed the offending ridge and gave it a minute bevel, which slid into the corresponding frame slots without a glitch. Bit of glue on the tab and the edges of the deck and in they went!

 

I did this with all the gun decks and added frame N (stern part with 4 windows) before I glued down Deck 1, my first COLOURED piece!

I also cut out frame O which will go on top of the cabin deck but I will not glue that until I have some more contact points there.

 

For now, the scores are:

Yes, I added a colour code to my spreadsheet to show the different states of parts. White means they are still on the sheet, yellow means they have been laminated onto card, red means they have been cut out and green means that they have been glued on.

 

That should keep track of everything, I would think.

 

But that's all for now. Have a luffly evening, all!

 

Adrie.

 

Amazing a extremely detailed building process! Thanks for sharing!

 

[Richmond]

I agree with Etubino - this is a very detailed and interesting log, thank you Adrie.

2 hours ago, FingerSticker said:

Hope we all survived the holidays as well as can be expected and I hear this year that last year Richmond didn't get a white Christmas ..... again! If it makes you feel better, Richmond, neither did I .... again! 😢

Even more worrying is that we didn't get any rain either!

Edited January 4, 2019 by Richmond

[FingerSticker]

Good evening, all!

 

The smoke has cleared from the battlefield. I fear I must admit that upon the advice of my Commander In Chief, also known as 'Ur_who_shall_be_obeyed_at_all_times' I have withdrawn from that particular battlefield so that I can fight another battle another day.

 

But first, many thanks for all the faithfuls, who continue to read my musings and give me at times a nudge in the right direction, just as I need it it most! Thank you, all. It IS most appreciated. It is why I show you all with the most detail I can muster. I believe that you don't learn as much from the best as you can learn from the worst.

 

Secondly, I have come to realise that experience gained from constructing a card model of a 'modern' vessel, like a World War 1 battleship, does not guarantee that the skills learned there will be usable in all builds. When I worked on the HMS Iron Duke, adding horizontal strips worked wonderfully well prior to planking. With the Revenge, though, it didn't.

 

It probably would have if I hadn't considered that card would need to be strengthened before laying down a second planking layer and used a water based dope for it. Water based dope not only softened and distorted the already installed first layer, but it also was made the card quite resistant to adherence of a filler. Which I thought I needed to use BECAUSE of the distortions.

 

Having had some time to reflect on my thinking, the second layer of planking is going to be backed by 0.75 mm thick cardboard. 0.75 mm cardboard is pretty thick and sturdy. I actually don't see the need anymore to use a filler of any kind as long as the generic shape of the ship is good. And with 0.75 mm backing, the second layer is not going to sag so much (if at all)  that you HAD to fill the distorted areas. In the same way, I don't think that the first layer needed additional strengthening.

 

So all in all, not my finest hour on offer here at the moment, I'm afraid.

 

But never the less it is my hope and expectation that even I can't screw up a well designed model so much that it can't be fixed!!!

 

So onwards and forwards, then!

 

Lesson one: because of the adhesion problems you deposit filler much thicker than you would normally do. And because you have thicker layers, you need to spend a lot more time sanding it down. Which creates more stresses on the card underneath to the point that the card comes away from the frame and is pushed inwards. On the left is a rescue attempt where a piece of paper is glued on top of the created hole, only to find that the section next to it is as badly stressed and will sink in too if you handle the model too much during sanding several times. Which would require more filler to fill the holes and more sanding and then you may have plugged that hole.....

... but then another one appears because of the additional handling. Note that if I had originally used the vertical supporting strips along the frames, this would have been prevented as the card is supported along the whole frame, not just in a 5 mm section. So mental note made: Use VERTICAL strips next time!

Also the additional handling played havoc with the unprotected card at the top. Not a serious problem as all white area is going to be covered with one or two layers of card, but still. It would be nice if the covering card had something to cover/adhere to.

Although by no means perfect, the overall shape of the model is decent enough to stop filling and sanding (or so I think) because I don't want to create more damage, in fear that it might have become irreparable. 

 

So I close off this section of the build (with the tail between my legs) and look forward to the next stage, the construction of some more gun carriages! Yay!

 

Well, as an Austrian man in the US once said: "I'll be back!"