HMS Winchelsea by Greg M - 1/48 scale

[Greg M]

Thanks Frank and everyone for the likes.  I think you nailed it on the head that the prints on the galleries have a bit more green than the ones on the back.  I'm taking the approach that the color behind the columns should be consistent and something that will complement the differences of the friezes without trying too hard to match either one.  I think I've found a color that works well, but I'm still going to take a day or two to sit on it and move onto the roof and moulding above the windows.

 

I'm going to test edge bending the boxwood moulding above the windows and hope it responds the same way as cedar.  The thinner mouldings worked well with brute force, but that extra 1/64" adds enough rigidity to make me think it will break if I get too aggressive.

 

Edit: turns out it wasn't so much edge bending as application of heat and  a bit of twisting.  Regardless, I was impressed with how easy the boxwood bent with the application of heat. 

 

 

Edited August 12 by Greg M

[Greg M]

Window Installation time.  I’ve been looking forward to this and stressing in equal measure. There was a little curveball with the acetate that ended up making things simpler for me in the long run.  When I pulled the acetate sheet for the windows out of the bag, I discovered a long scratch all the way across the center.  $10 and 24 hours later, I have enough .005 acetate sheets to last me 4 or 5 lifetimes.  I started to think there’s a greater than 0% chance I may have to replace a window at some point in my lifetime, so I tried to put this part of the build together in a semi-permanent way so I could replace a window without needing to rebuild the gallery if I had to.

 

Before I started this step, I grabbed a can of compressed air and got every little bit of dust I could out of the galleries.  I then donned some gloves and started by cutting a piece off acetate almost to the height of the roofline and then set it in the groove without any glue.  I tack the window in place with a spot of wood glue at the upper right, upper left and bottom of the window.  Once set, the window is solidly in the groove and there’s no chance of an accidental glue smear on the acetate.

I cut the acetate long to act as a guide for the filler piece which I cut out of 1/32” cedar.  This is the same thickness as the windows.  I shaved the filler pieces to height rather than sanded as I didn’t want any dust to get in the galleries through the little gaps in the top.  I also cut a little dust cover and taped the doors to the gallery.  I think I spent a bit too much time trying to get the perfect bend on the moulding and it really marred the finish on the uprights, but this gets hidden.

Mouldings went on smoothly once I stopped fighting with them and focused on a straight run along the filler pieces.  It looks like it’s drooping at the front, but it’s the camera angle.  The moulding is only held by a dot of glue at both ends and it sits flat.

The ends of the columns had a bit of a learning curve.  The funky angles kept throwing me off thinking I was doing something wrong.  The bottoms are floating a tiny bit as well., but It isn’t noticeable at a normal viewing angle.  I’ll wait until I finish up the other side to see if I will have the same issue there and then determine if I should add a little bit extra underneath the columns.

Added the column bodies and then carefully gave everything except the window frames a brush with WOP.  

Finally, a little cleanup and poster tack for the figure and the drop to make sure everything is lined up properly.  It’s not perfect, but I’m pretty happy all the same.

I'll finish up the columns on the other side tomorrow and then on to the roofs.

Edited August 16 by Greg M

[scrubbyj427]

That looks really good Greg! 

[Greg M]

Thanks JJ for the encouragement as well as everyone for the likes.  It’s been quite the ride the last couple weeks as applying the friezes and closing up the galleries really shows how far off the mark from the plans the build is going.  Luckily, issues have been cosmetic rather than structural.  It dawned on me today as I was finishing up  that the digital adjustments I made to the upper counter friezes directly aligned with the gaps underneath the column bottoms.  Building a template using the upper counter frieze would have made a really easy way to align the aft ends of the gallery framing.

 

There’s  a lesson here to stop working when you are tired and not try to get one last thing done.  The upper moulding has a small edge bend and I did it in the wrong direction.  Luckily, it popped off very easily.

A few minutes and a little bit of heat and a much better run.

Poster tack back out for testing the drop and figure.

 

Onward to the roofs.  Other than the fiddly rails on top of the roofs (that I may ignore for a few chapters more ), the rest of the chapter seems pretty straightforward.  I also realized I never faired the deck to remove any high points, so I'm going to work this in over the next week.  

 

 

 

 

 

[Chuck]

Lovely work

[Greg M]

Thank you all for the likes and I hope you have had an amazing weekend Chuck.

 

I spent the better part of the last week constructing the roofs.  I still can’t get over how much easier it is to work with boxwood than any of the usual kit woods I've worked with in the past.  It's sanding, cutting and durability make It feel like working with a high quality resin rather than wood, but without the brittleness of resin.  I can’t believe with the amount of sanding and handling needing for the roof tiles that not a single one chipped or broke.

 

I thought I had a great idea where I would use my calipers to scribe the lines for where the tile ends would rest.  Worked great for the first row, but things went off the rails for the second row.  That line below did not stand.  I found starting from the fore end created a much cleaner run.  One thing I noticed after the fact was the instructions had 11 tiles for the first run and I used 12, which made for a tight squeeze for me by the 3rd row, but I managed.  

I bought a pen sander thinking it would be useful for fairing the inside of the frames and it was pretty worthless on the heavy plywood I used.  It has been one of those tool purchase regrets that has had very little use until now. I feel like it was designed for just the purpose of sanding the roof tiles.  It only took a few minutes to consistently thin out a row of tiles. 

One thing I didn’t discover until I was almost done is it was a lot easier to sand the tops of the tiles flush and then worry about thinning the tile overall rather than trying to thin them first and then sand the top flush.  

I painted them black, then dry brushed with a couple shades of lighter grey.  I found after I applied WOP, I needed to hit the roofs with a coat of Dullcote as there was a lot of shine coming from the shadows between the tiles, which made them look odd.  I added the trim and sanded them down a fair bit.  My run on the right one was a tiny bit off which is why there is a small gap on on the far right side; I may add some filler and paint, but I didn't want to force the trim to conform to the run as I'm sure that would make installing the fiddly rail more difficult.  

Test fit - starboard

Test fit - port

I’ve made a list of a few things I want to do before I start on the hull friezes and moldings, so it will be at least a week and maybe two before any major progress from here.

 

First and foremost I want to fair the bulkheads for the decks.  It looks like my cuts were pretty good on most of the bulkheads, but there are a couple that are a bit high as well as the false keel is high in a few places, plus I need to take down the bow fillers down a bit more.  Luckily, it looks like I should be able to set up outside and use a mouse sander for the bulk of this, which shouldn’t be too bad now that the days are a bit cooler.

 

I also didn’t spend a lot of time early in the process getting a good finish above the wales.  I also used Elmer’s white school glue figuring to attach the black strake and this appears to have been a bad idea, because it looks like it the glue turned white over the last couple years and there are some tiny spots along the seam that I need to remove.  This should have been easy to remove, but the WOP covering it makes it much more durable.  The good news is I only applied a coat or 2 of WOP so I’m going to test stripping the finish with 320 grit in an area that will be covered by the friezes and see if a full refinish will be needed  or if I can just do some spot work.

 

Looking way ahead at the finished model, I figure now is a good time to paint the stem and bollard timbers black (plus install them finally) and assemble the channels; debating whether to paint those as well as I rather like the contrasting black/natural look.

 

Edited Saturday at 11:54 PM by Greg M

[Greg M]

Thank you all for the continued likes and motivation.  I managed to work through my list above a few days earlier than I expected and there were no big surprises or gotchas.

 

When I brought my Winnie outside on Sunday to fair the decks with the mouse sander, the natural light showed just how bad the finish looked above the wales.  I think in hindsight I only sanded to 220 and applied a single coat of WOP expecting to clean it up before chapter 3.  I realized I had to completely strip the finish and start fresh.  I also had the problem with the Elmer’s school glue that had turned white. The picture is a good example of what I had to deal with.  I used 320 grit sandpaper to remove the finish, giving special attention to glue stains, rough patches and scratches.  I followed this up with a lot of acetone on the seams, patience and scraping with a piece of cedar to remove the glue. 

Then I applied 3 coats of WOP and the finish looks quite a bit nicer.  That's one item off the list.  

Moving on to fairing the decks.  I decided to color code the work I would need to do thinking it would make this process much easier.  Pink is high, yellow is low and blue is about right.  I figured the mouse sander would make short work of the job and I got hold of some 40 grit sanding pads which is where I made a bit of a mistake.  I really only needed 40 grit for the pink areas which are for the most part the bow and stern and pretty beefy pieces of plywood.  What I should have done is used 40 grit on the tip of the mouse and 120 for the rest of the sanding pad.  The 40 grit absolutely rips through the aircraft plywood including areas I didn't want to take much off.

The mouse faired the deck in about 5 minutes what would have taken me a full day or more by hand.  It did a wonderful job of smoothing out the stern and waist, but the bow was a bit of a struggle and the 40 grit chewed up some of the builkheads a bit.  The orange bulkhead is because it did such a great job at the stern and waist, that bulkhead is now a little bit high.

120 grit on just the tip of the mouse and no sandpaper on the rest smoothed out that frame in no time.  Some 1/32” basswood filler strips and a sanding block were all that was needed to smooth out the low areas.  I might need to fine tune a spot here or there and tested the false decks.  They'll require a little trimming, but there shouldn’t be any surprises come chapter 4.  

Finally, I installed the bollard timbers.  Painting the stem and bollards took a while as all the time I had spent giving them a nice smooth finish also made them resistant to the acrylic paint.  I should have scratched the finish with some 400 grit first.  It also solidified my decision that I'm going to leave the channels natural color.  

 

All the prep work that I can see is done, so time to get back to moldings and friezes.