Vasa by kriss - Revell - 1:150 - PLASTIC

[kriss]

Matti: Them lions were a bit of a drag, yes. Got sort of meditative after a little while, which helped. Well worth the time in the end, methinks.

Ulises: Thanks. Yeah, part count is pushing 3x the original count now. I'm glad I'm not on a deadline or this would suck.. ;-)

 

Spent some more time over the weekend gluing the gratings in place proper, making sure they're level with the deck. Figured it'd make sense to add a little extra detail to bring it a bit more in line with other models (the 1:10 museum model, the Clayton Johnson model). 

 

 

Also started working on the aft castle structure. Lots of woodwork with very poor definition that needs some additional Xacto lovin'. The doors as cast don't look good, so I'll have to redo those too - thankfully not an overly tricky job. Need to figure out if the big doors at the bottom should have three wider planks or four narrower ones. If anyone has authoritative info here, I'm all ears.

 

Additionally, I need to figure out whether the iron bars on the door exteriors should be very plain or somewhat ornate. All the models I've seen sport plain bars (or no bars), but it seems strange that they'd make the whole bloody ship into a gaudy floating pimp palace, while leaving some of the iron detailing plain. It was certainly possible to make more ornate bars back in the 1600's - whether they ever did for ships, no idea. Research time...

 

[kriss]

First update in a bit over a month - I'm apparently getting lazy. Lots of small and uninteresting work getting done on the model. Figured I had about 1/4 the amount of hull joints I should be having, so I took a while to scratch some new ones. Not very interesting in terms of pictures. 

 

Also did some painting. Feels good to actually get started there, and it's a bit more.. visual - photo worthy. Still a lot of work left, especially in detailing and highlights. That said, I'm somewhat happy with the wood thus far. Will be interesting to see how it turns out with the gunports and cannon in place. 

 

[TheDutchShipBuilder]

Hi Kriss

Your built got really my attention. In the past I have built several revell kits, but i didn't knew there was a Vasa.

 

I think your paint job on the hull is just great, as well as the modifications you did. Go along with your built, you are doing a great job, and I will follow you.

 

Cheers,

Nick

[kriss]

NickvN: Thanks for the encouragement :-) The Vasa model kit is semi new, by plastic ship model standards. 

 

Figured I'd get started on painting the transom. Got derailed when I realized I had forgotten to do all the necessary trimmings, which brings us back my love/hate relationship with Revell. Allow me to illustrate:

 

 

What you're looking at is the top third or so of the transom.

 

The outward facing side, or leftmost picture, is pretty neat in terms of the casting quality. Good detail, the tradeoffs are understandable. It's bloody murder to get the spray primer to reach every crevice, but that's fine.

 

The inward face of that piece, however, is pretty damn flat - besides for the casting artifacts (sigh). Considering that the top half of it will be visible when mounted, I'm not at all happy with that. Granted, it's not one of the most eye catching pieces of the ship, but it'd nevertheless have been pretty damn nice of Revell to make it just slightly sculpted rather than totally flat. 

So I had to swap the painting session for a knifing session. Middle picture, in progress. Right picture, done (mostly). Contrast isn't great, but you get the gist. 

[kriss]

Transom painting. Work in progress (if all that black wasn't evident.. ), but it's getting there. 

 

[md1400cs]

Hi Kriss,

 

Just discovered your Vasa. Super nice. Your paint details are so excellent, these will help to make all of the difference by adding super special touches. Your stern paint work is beautiful. Nice work. It will be a pleasure to follow.

 

Michael

[TheDutchShipBuilder]

Great work on the painting. Nevet seen such detail and neatly paint work. Well done!

 

Cheers

Nick

[NAZGÛL]

Nice painting! Will you remove the plastic between the heads of the lying tritons on top of it? Or maybe it will not be noticeable later in construction.

 

I get the work it must be to give tthe primer a good surface. i skipped primer on my build, I dont want to mess up the tiny details, so I went straight to the acrylics to avoid the extra coat.

 

/Matti

Edited December 29, 2013 by NAZGÛL

[kriss]

md1400cs, NickvN: Much appreciated! I feel I'm missing out some on the joy of actually building the ship - on account of it being plastic and all - so I guess I take that out in brush hours instead. At least Vasa is well suited for that.

matti: Thanks! I think I'll leave the plastic be. Ideally I'd get rid of it (and all the other flat plastic background above the G A R S bar - i.e the stuff surrounding old Gustavus himself and the griffins), but it'd be a decent amount of work to do so, require way smaller files than I have and I'm not sure that the end result would look all that good. Seeing the scale, even doing it with a scalpel would be somewhat tricky; any mistakes would be hell to repair and easy to make. 

 

It's not often that I duck out of doing a reasonably sized detail, but this is one of those times 

 

On the topic of primers, there's primer and primer - anything from the automotive world is designed to expand when setting, covering scratches / minute detail and generally making you miserable, indeed. Then there's primer specifically made for miniatures that rather contract ever so slightly when setting - whole other ballgame. I use Citadel's Chaos Black for a combined primer and basecoat, mostly out of habit and ease of access. There are other brands (P3, Vallejo) that are a bit cheaper and I'm told equally good. 

 

The lions on the transom are somewhere along the lines of six coats of paint, counting the primer. 

[kriss]

 

The Vasa transom is one of the most time consuming paint jobs I've done in quite a while. You need to mix up a ton of colors, the scheme isn't very uniform, the detail is minute and there's a need to double check the color references (plural) ever so often, which doesn't stop you from having to second guess some of it anyhow. 

 

The combination of all of the above makes for some very slow progress. That said, it's one of the iconic bits of Vasa, warranting some attention. Still need to fix the posts, do some cleanups - and oh, the other three parts of the transom... 

 

Having had the chance to sit down with all the detail up close and personal, I must say that Revell did a bloody excellent job modeling this part of the kit. Out of the available kits that I've seen (Airfix, BB, Sergal, Corel) it seems like the most accurate representation of the real thing out of the box. Very impressive, given the scale. 

[DiKri]

Incredible paint work! You must have a very steady hand

[NAZGÛL]

Very nice, you nailed the look! The curtains has a tricky color to mix.

 

Yeah it's the best model when it comes to the sculptures. And to that price... Great kit.

 

 

/Matti

[Blue Ensign]

Impressive paint job Kriss, a great model in the making, look forward to more progress.

 

B.E.

[docidle]

Kris's,

That is some seriously nice painting! She is looking good so far and cannot wait for the next installment. A couple of pictures (post 32and 34) did not post and I'm not sure if it is my iPad or what.

Steve

Edited April 26, 2014 by docidle

[dgbot]

Nice paint job. Plus if you have ever been to an IPMS SHOW you wuld appreciate how impressive a well made plastic model can look.

David B

[Brenticus]

Your painting of the stern carvings makes me want to go cry in shame. Looking forward to seeing how this kit goes!

[historyguysteve]

Kriss

   I agree with everyone else- your painting skills are amazing and will surely go a long way toward transforming a so-so kit into a masterpeice!

  keep up the good work and the posting

  Steve

[GuntherMT]

Very nice painting.  Look forward to more updates as this progresses.

[NoelSmith]

Hi Kris....I am new to this thread and afraid that I have also become a fellow masochist and doing a build of this kit.. So far it has been a slow old slog to sort out some of the simplification problems that Revell have presented us with. I happen to also have the old Airfix version that is 1/144th scale that I bought after visiting the Vasa museum a couple of years before the Revell kit was issued.

Having learnt that Revell were working with the museum to produce their kit I was looking forward to something special. Overall it is not bad, but don't ask me why Revell could not have done a lot better with this kit. For example the carved figures on the old 1970's Airfix kit have much sharper definition than anything on the Revell kit. In fact the Revell carved detail looks a bit rounded and undefined. I am using the Airfix kit as a 'Sacrificial Lamb' and retro fitting as many of the Airfix carved details to the Revell one that is feasable to do.

The moulded in gammoning had to go, just like yours. A real pain in the butt the reinstate the carved detail under the beakhead. I found it easier to cut it out of each hull half with a fine exacto razor saw, glue the two parts together, remove the gammoning bit and rework the carvings. This will be refitted when the two hull halves are joined. Revell have made both top and bottom cannon ports all the same size. Looking at the Stolt drawings from the museum the lower ports are slightly larger than the upper. The old Airfix kit had this feature correct, so I have carefully enlarged all the Revell kit lower gun deck ports, and Airfix to the rescue as I will utilise all the hatches from their old kit to replace the Revell ones. All the treenails on the kit look like the rivets on the Titanic, so these were rubbed down gently so that they were flush with the hull but I could still see the position of each. I then used an aircraft modellers tool for marking rivets on 1/48th scale aircraft. Perfect for making a small slight circular indent that looks far more realistic than the raised 'rivet' style. Another thing was that the kit had no scarfe joints engraved where the hull timbers meet. Airfix one just the same. Would plastic sailing ship kit makers have us believe that timbers ran the full length of a 200 ft long ship? Revell were working with the museum on this kit so the omissions and errors are disappointing.These are the things to do that I have found so far, and I expect that there will be more!

Like Kriss, I agree that the hatches look wrong. Scale Warship make some photo etched stuff for the Revell Vasa. They make a full set of PE Shrouds/Ratlines as one set. Also they make a smaller detailing set with PE Hatch Gratings and Window Frames. I will be having a look at these to see if any good or not.

When I start painting I will be looking to use artists acrylics on the model. What paints did you use Kriss? You have obviously honed your painting skills on the Warhammer figures. I will also be looking to use similar techniques that I have used on 54mm figures in the past.

Look forward to seeing more of your progress on your model. If I end up painting mine half as well as yours I will be pleased.