Flower-Class Corvette by king derelict - FINISHED - Bensworx Virtual Kit - 1/48 - a log for the less gifted

[king derelict]

Some small progress and a bit of a re-do today. I used tan washes to weather the rafts and the life belts.

I air brushed the extra depth charges and wondered why they were taking so long to dry. I had picked up the Tamiya X-1 instead of XF-1 so I had painted them gloss black. They will get dulled down tomorrow. 

The rafts got placed on the racks and I spent several attempts trying to get something like the lashings I have seen in photos. Eventually I used some small sections of 1/8" styrene tube cut in half and glued onto the racks. I then threaded the cords through and glued them. I'll tidy up loose ends tomorrow and do teh same to teh second side. 

THe pelorus finally snuck into place on teh bridge

Thanks for looking in

 

Alan

 

[king derelict]

Still creeping slowly forward with the small stuff

The raft lashings were completed.

The oars were added to the ships boats and the lashing put in place.

I added the manropes to the first of the printed life belts and put it on the bridge wing. Three more to go

The bridge screen was made up and added. Its a cut down section of a spare printed ladder with a bit of old overhead projector transparency added

The stretch cord arrived from Amazon and like its earlier friend is not stretchy. Different vendor but exactly the same stuff. Its labeled sewing machine thread made in Japan on the spool but its in packaging that says Stretchy Bead Cord - Made in China. So much for globalisation.

Thanks for looking in

Alan

 

 

 

[king derelict]

The depth charge racks were painted, he depth charges were added and lashings applied

A lot of time looking at aft deck plans and as usual no two Flowers seem to have the same layout. In the absence of any definitive images of campanulas aft deck I decided to go with one hatch placed in what seems to be a poplar place for a lot of Flowers and the spare depth charge racks adjacent to the hoist which seems to make sense.

This afternoon was spent looking for stretch 0.3mm thread on the web (no luck) and touring HL, Wally World, and Michaels (also no luck). 0.3 mm would have been a bit over 1/2 inch at full size. I have 0.5 mm thread which scales at just under an inch. I may try a few lines to see how it looks. Alternatively, I could use 0.25 non stretch and try to keep it all taut.

I'm getting less happy about the falls for the boats so I spent some time looking and the nice people at Cornwall Model Boats have brass sheaves at about the right size at a decent price along with more hooks. I caved in and bought another set of stanchions and a possible white ensign. Their shipping cost to the US is not bad and they are prompt in sending it off.

I may do a little touching up while I'm waiting but I want to finish the falls before rigging. The Lewis gins are going to be absolutely the last thing to be added. I don't trust my fat fingers even though the rigging goes nowhere near their location

Many Thanks for looking in

Alan

 

[king derelict]

I've been playing around with the rigging and finally settled on using 0.5mm elastic thread for the main mast rigging and 0.25mm thread for halyards and aerials. The information I have for Campanulas rigging is sketchy; the photos are not detailed enough and I have only a side view in drawings. My 1/350 Pennywort kit has a good rigging diagram - but in true Flower tradition - its completely different. So the finished rigging is a little basic and maybe rather generic too.

Now I'm waiting for the package to arrive from Cornwall Model Boats with the bits needed to finish her. Its been a long journey from three spools of filament and a certain amount of shockingly bad language.

Thanks for looking in

Alan

 

 

 

 

[Old Collingwood]

Now you know you need a crew for her  - would be criminal not too   - she is coming on  so well.

 

OC.

[king derelict]

Thanks for the kind words OC. Figures? But then I would showcase my terrible figure painting abilities. 😉

Although you have me thinking. I could paint the figures white as "ghost" sailors. I have seen that done effectively on a few builds. Or try and paint them and ghost them if they are horrible.

Alan

[king derelict]

Out of curiosity I weighed Campanula and it is about 0.5 kg / 1.1 lbs lighter than the model made by @yvesvidal

I'm wondering what I forgot to build.😃

 

I think it will be another week before the finishing bits come from Cornwall so I'm going to start something new. Plane, tank or ship' I'm not sure but it will nice to be back working on my bench instead of the kitchen table,

 

Alan

[NavyShooter]

Visited the Halifax Waterfront this afternoon with the family (in a non-RC boat) and snapped a picture of the Sackville as we passed by.

 

[king derelict]

5 minutes ago, NavyShooter said:

Visited the Halifax Waterfront this afternoon with the family (in a non-RC boat) and snapped a picture of the Sackville as we passed by.

 

 

Thank you very much. She looks like a great ship to visit.

Alan

[king derelict]

A small package arrived today from Cornwall 

Sheaves, hooks, stanchions and an ensign so I can try to improve the boat falls and finish off the last details,

EXCEPT = I now have @Old Collingwood thought about adding a crew rattling around in my head. I'm looking for suitable figures in 1/48 to turn into Atlantic convoy sailors.(ie wearing anything as long as its warm

Alan

 

[mikegr]

if you shop overseas you can try Amati's website as well as Polish RB Models through Polish websites at good selection and prices

[Old Collingwood]

23 hours ago, king derelict said:

A small package arrived today from Cornwall 

Sheaves, hooks, stanchions and an ensign so I can try to improve the boat falls and finish off the last details,

EXCEPT = I now have @Old Collingwood thought about adding a crew rattling around in my head. I'm looking for suitable figures in 1/48 to turn into Atlantic convoy sailors.(ie wearing anything as long as its warm

Alan

 

I have  found the link  for  Shapeways   they  have  these   - 

 

OC.

 

https://www.shapeways.com/product/QBU98A2QT/1-48-royal-navy-sailors-set1-2?optionId=62345108&li=marketplace

 

https://www.shapeways.com/product/HEP96LJEL/1-48-royal-navy-seamen-set111-05?optionId=65517292&li=marketplace

 

https://www.shapeways.com/product/DSEHSYKE2/1-48-royal-navy-seamen-dc-no1-set205-01?optionId=69593027&li=marketplace

 

https://www.shapeways.com/product/Y5RKPCWN3/1-48-royal-navy-seamen-set111-06?optionId=65517828&li=marketplace

 

Edited August 28, 2022 by Old Collingwood

[king derelict]

On 8/28/2022 at 2:29 AM, mikegr said:

if you shop overseas you can try Amati's website as well as Polish RB Models through Polish websites at good selection and prices

Thanks Mike

I'll look into that. I'm not seeing much in the local online stores. ICM have some 1/48 USAAF crew figures that it might be possible to modify but they would need a lot of work.

Alan

[king derelict]

23 hours ago, Old Collingwood said:

I have  found the link  for  Shapeways   they  have  these   - 

 

OC.

 

 

 

Thank you very much OC. Two of the sets look promising. I want the sea boots, duffel coats and caps look rather than flared trousers and bibs.

Alan

[king derelict]

I was keen to see how the new parts for the davit falls would work out so I made up the 3mm brass pulleys which were very nicely made. 

The finished article

These were then blackened rather than painted. It was a little nerve wracking removing the davits from the model but they came of very cleanly and I removed the old fake pulleys and hooks and replaced them with the new parts. They were reinstalled on the ship and allowed to dry before rigging them. The result in my eyes is considerably better. I'm not sure whether the lines are a little overscale. They are 0.5mm which is an inch diameter at full size. I'm not sure I would have wanted to be swung out over the Atlantic held up by anything much smaller. I like the new set up and I will complete the starboard side tomorrow

I added a flag staff to the back of the funnel and rigged it. Then the happy moment of raising the White Ensign. Its been a long time coming!

There is a lot of paint touch up and the Lewis guns need to be added but we are approaching the final touches. There is plenty of room for improvement.

As noted by someone else in their log I think its acceptable to a blind man on a galloping horse (as long as its a dark night and he's looking through the wrong end of a telescope)

 

Thanks for looking in

Alan

 

 

[mtaylor]

Nice work and raising the ensign is a good sign.

[Old Collingwood]

7 hours ago, king derelict said:

Thank you very much OC. Two of the sets look promising. I want the sea boots, duffel coats and caps look rather than flared trousers and bibs.

Alan

Glad I could help mate.   (Hemp  where did that come from)

 

OC.

Edited August 30, 2022 by Old Collingwood

[Old Collingwood]

Spendid work  -   really  like how she has turned out.

 

OC.

[gjdale]

Looks great Alan, although to be a little picky, your Ensign does appear to be flying at half-mast......

[mikegr]

the printing lines on the lifeboats is a great success

[CDW]

Wow Alan, she came out beautiful! Such a testament to your modeler's spirit to have endured through a project of this magnitude. Congratulations, you have produced a very fine model.  

[king derelict]

20 hours ago, mtaylor said:

Nice work and raising the ensign is a good sign.

Thanks Mark; its been an adventure

Alan

[king derelict]

19 hours ago, Old Collingwood said:

Spendid work  -   really  like how she has turned out.

 

OC.

Thank you very much OC. I was hoping for a corvette coming home at the end of an Atlantic convoy and I think its more or less there

alan

[king derelict]

15 hours ago, gjdale said:

Looks great Alan, although to be a little picky, your Ensign does appear to be flying at half-mast......

Thank you for spotting that Grant. I was trying to mirror the images which show the ensign just below the halyards peak but I rather overdid it. Luckily it was easy to slide it up to the correct spot.

Alan

[king derelict]

15 hours ago, mikegr said:

the printing lines on the lifeboats is a great success

Thanks Mike

It was worth reprinting them

Alan

[king derelict]

9 hours ago, CDW said:

Wow Alan, she came out beautiful! Such a testament to your modeler's spirit to have endured through a project of this magnitude. Congratulations, you have produced a very fine model.  

Thank you very much Craig. That means a lot. I was in over my head with this one. There were a few times when this nearly didn't get finished but I'm glad I carried on. I learnt a lot and enjoyed most of it. As always there is more that could have done but I'm generally happy with it.

Alan

[king derelict]

With Campanula in the finishing stages I wanted to take a moment to think back over the journey and what I discovered.

When I saw what @yvesvidal was doing I was fascinated. I had long wanted to build a corvette, 3D printing interested me and the thought of a big model was an attraction. So these are my perspectives and no criticism of the kit or the printer is implied.

Firstly the kit. It is a generic Flower class (long forecastle mod) corvette. As such certain basic features don't match the ship I chose HMS Campanula. The engine room length is too short but is fixable but the portholes are wrong for example and harder to rework so this is a Flower class corvette in paint scheme and configuration of Campanula. Anything else would involve a serious carve up to the kit prints. The kit parts are comprehensive and generally work well for a FDM printer but some of the small parts would be better on a resin printer. The assembly is based around a working RC model with the decks set on a bed of caulking. Possibly because of this and possibly because some thermal stress in the hull prints results in the open side being wider than designed I found the decks to be a very loose fit in the hull. With hindsight I should have measured the hull width at the deck height and checked it against the deck print files and widened the decks to fit better.

The kit has some excellent details in places but is very bland in others. You could spend a lot of time and money buying resin parts to replace the guns, boats and bridge fittings. But underneath you still have a somewhat inaccurate base model

The printer. The Creality Ender 3 V2 is a great hobby printer at a great price. Being a complete novice I didn't realise immediately that upgrades like bed springs, Capricorn Bowden tubing, metal extruder are almost essential. I was expecting to be able to assemble the printer, check it out and launch straight into prints for the model. The reality is the printer requires setting up to a very fine tolerance and skimping this results in poor quality or unusable prints. I plan to get an automatic bed levelling set up 

The PLA filament makes a very robust print but it is horrible to work with. Sawing, filing, drilling and sanding are all hard work. Diamond files are your best friend for smoothing the hull pieces.

Me. I really didn't realise that I should have spent a lot more time learning about the vagaries of the printer. If I had this log would have been about a third of its size.

I usually work on models less than a foot long so I wasn't prepared for the consequences of working on something four feet long. It way too big for my work bench so the kitchen table has been used extensively. Unfortunately the light is not too good there even with an LED desk light. I have some vision problems which require a bright light for detail work and use of magnifiers. This is so big that I had problems working within the focal distance to the lenses. This was fun but in the future if it doesn't fit on the workbench its not going to be built. A 1/200 Bismarck is thus likely to be going for sale soon.

I haven't tried scratch building or heavily modifying a kit so this was quite an adventure for me. I had thought to just build the kit as a demonstration of the print capabilities  Making and adapting parts has been immense fun 

The following books have been excellent for reference and an understanding of how the corvettes operated.

The Lambert / Brown book is full of very useful drawings, photos and colour schemes for the Flowers and much more besides.

The RN museum book is a series of unedited interviews with men who had been on the corvettes along with some great photos which were very helpful. It also gives a vivid insight into the living conditions on board those small ships in the middle of a big sea. At times it wasn't much better than Nelsons sailors experienced.

Well worth reading; it also explains some of the working of the ship and the weapons which I found helpful when trying work out how to place things.

I hope this post hasn't annoyed anyone. I was trying to illustrate my limitations and my thoughts on working on the project. 

Alan

 

 

 

 

[king derelict]

A day of final details and the modelling gods were smiling on fools it seems. The White Ensign has been adjusted to its proper position and it slid up the cord easily and no damage resulted. The starboard davits were rigged without problems. The stanchion and railings by the radar room were made up, painted and added and it all fitted well. I used a focused LED flashlight to check all the railings and touch up any glints of brass and added a final wash to the decks to break up the uniform colour. The Lewis guns were added to the engine room roof to complete the build, The cats have checked and seem to approve so here are the photos

A stand is needed and I have no idea what to make for one. And the big question. Where on earth am i going to put it!

 

I want to try to find some crew for it so I don't think this is completely finished but probably no updates for a while. Thanks to everyone who has looked in, encouraged and made helpful comments. I was way out of my skill levels with this one and getting a good result has been a team effort. Thanks to all.

Alan

 

 

 

 

 

 

[Old Collingwood]

Absolutley  Superb  Alan,    I would put her in a prime location  and so begs to go in a case  to keep  her  protected.

 

OC.

[mtaylor]

Very well done, and I empathize completely with your agonizing reappraisal of the ups and downs.   You've learned a lot in a short period of time and that will carry you through the next project.  For those of us following along, we've learned a few things also.  It's all part of the journey and thanks for sharing yours.