RMS Titanic by fifthace - Academy Limited Edition - 1/400 - PLASTIC

[fifthace]

Good morning.

It's been quite some time since I posted on here. I have taken a long break from ship builds, focussing mainly on cars/bikes. However my partner wanted a Titanic built, and has been nagging me for about 2 years now.

So I snagged Academy's 1/400 Premium Limited Edition, c/w PE, wooden deck and lighting. If you can call it lighting. It's just 4 LED strips, but it does come with a nifty touch sensitive switch, and the contacts between LED's are conductive so I can, and plan on, adding to them.
Came in a nice double sleeved box:





The first thing I wanted to address was the rather plain stand. I had planned on planking the entire thing but I decided on just the upper surface, it was sprayed black and glossed using a 2K clear.





 

And a quick check to see how it was going to look...

 

OK so, moving on, the prepainted hull. I absolutely despise prepainted plastic, especially when they also get the colours wrong, as well as leave an awful mold line. So that got rubbed down, and a coat of primer applied. That was followed by a dull red, which was then masked and the black for the upper hull applied. Academy molded the kit so the white sections are seperate so no need to mask those. Interesting side note, I cannot seem to find a definitive answer as to whether or not the gold sheer stripe was present or not. Most of the advertising images show it there, but any photographs suggest it wasn't. At this point I am undecided, but for now, it's being left off.

 

 

I tackled the spinners and anchors next. Gold plated plastic. Ugh, no, just no. They were stripped using a foam oven cleaner, then painted black and overcoated with a brass/bronze. I think the anchors were probably black or even an anthracite colour, but I think this is more visually appealing. I also at this stage, permanently attached the hull to the stand, and installed the power source and switch in the stand, and the first two LED strips into the hull.

 

 

Things get a little scatted from hereon in. I wanted to check my ability with the PE before I started hacking off parts of plastic I couldn't then replace. I am not that great at working with small fiddly photoetch. I started doing a few benches, with one painted up. I made a crude tool for bending the slats which was very effective. They didn't turn out too bad, so I don't think they will be a problem.

 

Now that is out of the way, I can start actually moving forward. The first task is making the cargo cranes, which also involved more photoetch. This didn't turn out as neat as the benches, but with the naked eye they look quite good. Close up camera photo's say otherwise. Also, this was the start of adding some further lighting. This being done with fibre optics which I will later drive from a 3 or 5mm LED.

 

That's pretty much where I am upto now. I have since painted the lower half of the 4 well deck cranes in a shade of brown.

I should probably point out, I rarely build for accuracy. At times certain things are either beyond my abilities or I simply don't like reality, so forgive me if a few things aren't quite right here and there.

Back soon...

 

[Ryland Craze]

Very nice build.  That photo etch is really small.  Your stand is a great improvement over the kit version.  This is going to turn out to be a very nice model.

[fifthace]

Very slow progress on this.

I've got the forecastle about half done so far. A lot of it doesn't get completed until later in the build, but so far so good. I have a few areas I need to touch up on the PE parts.

 

Back soon...

[fifthace]

Starting to get somewhere now with this.

Fo'castle deck fitted into place, managed to get a good seal with little or no light bleed, the well deck section isn't yet sealed though.

I added the lamp to the look out post. Really it should have been a warm white led rather than a bright white but it still looks fine. I disguised the wire for the LED as rigging, and then connected it inside to the contact points between the LEDs on the strips.

Fibre optic cables for the porthole lamps on the well deck cranes worked well, as did the ones for the forward potholes that weren't pre drilled.

Some light bleed on the cargo door covers but I believe these were canvass so not entirely unrealistic.

 

Back soon...

[Javlin]

Nice start!! Kevin

[clearway]

welcome back dominic looks good, in a moment of madness i bought the trumpeter 1/200 and its hugeeeee🤔, wont start it til i finish my victory though.

 

Keith

[fifthace]

2 hours ago, clearway said:

welcome back dominic looks good, in a moment of madness i bought the trumpeter 1/200 and its hugeeeee🤔, wont start it til i finish my victory though.

 

Keith

I have that being bought for my Christmas this year, along with the Addon set. Looks an amazing kit.

The LED's are a little lacking OOB, a bit like this one, so I will probably add to it as well when I do get it. Might even see about getting a steam generator too...

[fifthace]

This is very slow going. But some progress made on the stern section and the bulkhead lamps.

I need to tidy up those windows. It's not actually the plastic part, but the aluminium tape I used for light proofing.

[lmagna]

Great work Dominic.

 

I kind of have the same kit atarted for pretty much the same reason as you. it will be for my long suffering wife. I didn't get the delux version though so it took almost two weeks just to drill out the 800+ portholes in the hull! I think the lighting kit was made by VooDoo at some point and I found it on eBay a few years ago. I also bouight some chinese fairy lights that I will either add or use instead. Did you just add foil to the hull as a reflecter or did it come with the light kit?

 

Again nice work, I will be following along for obvious reasons! 

[fifthace]

Thanks Lou.

I'd personally not use fairy lights, especially chinese ones. They tend to get warm and, well this is plastic and all that. The foil is actually aluminium tape. It doubles up as increasing the light and also to light proof the plastic, especially the white and tan parts, as even with layers of paint and the wooden deck, under light they become very transparent.

This is also acting as a trial run for the Trumpy 1/200 version, and what I have learned so far on this I will be able to add so much to the larger scale.

[fifthace]

Hello

Stern section is complete, well for now anyway. Not happy with several things, mostly PE and lighting bits, but it will do for this one. This felt like I just did an entire kit from end to end just in itself.

 

Back soon...

[fifthace]

Hello.

Been a while since I have been able to post any updates, but this is how things look at the moment.

Most of the superstructure is complete now, but not yet permanently fixed in place. Currently working on the boat deck. A few things I am not happy with but the result still looks pretty good.