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

[king derelict]

After a bit more putty and an overall sanding down I put the first coat of primer on yesterday evening and this morning rubbed it down. It is going to need more primer coats but it looks quite good already and its hard to pick the section join lines from the printed weld lines. One coat used an entire 12 ounce can of primer! I bought two more cans tonight.

 

 

In parallel I have been printing the sections for the chartroom. The mouse ear brims seem to have been working well and I set up and ran each print without any issues. Either that or the Gods of Modelling have found someone else to torment.

 

 

I plan to pause updates for a few days while I print more of the chartroom, bridge and engine room and get a sense of how the deck and its superstructure are going to assemble. I need to sort out plastic shims and how to set the decks to the correct levels, find some wood strips etc. That's probably going to require some on-line shopping but I need to work out shim thicknesses first. I also need to decide on a ship and get the paints for the appropriate scheme.

None of this is going to be terribly exciting unless the printer really gets out of hand so i won't trouble you with the daily progress until we start moving into the next step

Have a great weekend and thanks for looking in

I'll be back with the next installment soon

Alan

[yvesvidal]

Great progress Alan. Yes, I did use two full large cans of primer on the hull. Then three large bottles of Tamiya acrylic paints ( 2 whites and 1 black).

That model requires a lot of investments.....

 

Yves

[king derelict]

Thanks Yves. Yes the logistics for this one are quite an issue. A lot different from using tiny amounts of paint on a five inch long ship. 

I got the second coat on this morning and I think I may need a third. Its a whole different aproach from 1/700 where a couple of ounces of paint will last for several ships.

Alan

[king derelict]

Printing process remains steady. The mouse ear brims continue to stop the corners warping and I seem to have hit a working combination of variables. I've printed about twenty parts without needing to do anything more than wipe the build plate down with alcohol between prints. A major change for the better if you compare with the first page of the log. Hopefully I haven't jinxed myself.

The hull has been sanded and primed again. It needs a last coat but its been a rainy day today so that's on hold.

I've been spending a lot of time researching options for the actual ship to be the subject of the build. Given the nasty nature of the PLA plastic when it comes to cutting and sanding I don't want to stray too far from the kit of 3D parts being generated. So the subject has to be a long forecastle and mast behind the bridge configuration. The John Lambert book I am using also shows the wooden deck arrangement and the number of ports in the engine room skylights as other obvious differences. I suspect that there are many others but just these four variables make it interesting enough.

It is hard to confirm all the details given the limited number of photos of many of the corvettes. I have it down to two choices that I favour. HMS Campanula and HMS Poppy.

Campanula is the better documented and is also the model for Monserrat's Three Corvettes ship. 

It has a nice WA blue, black and white camouflage but it may have the wrong engine room skylights. There are a couple of nice photos showing the wooden decks on Campanula.

Poppy seems to have the right skylight configuration and has photos showing a 507a / 507b grey camouflage scheme as well as a WA scheme that is hard to see clearly. Poppy looks like she was carrying minesweeping gear when she had the WA scheme. The wooden deck layout is not shown in anything I have found.

I suspect that either direction is going to have in consistencies with the real ship but given that this is a first dip into 3D printing as a model medium and the limited reference material I think there will have to be some license. I did look at getting the book Warship Perspectives for the Flower Class Corvettes but at $118 for 96 pages secondhand I decided that was a bit steep, especially as it may not show anything new.

I'll decide which appeals most and get some paint ordered and some plastic strip for shimming the decks - the next part of teh build.

Thanks for looking

Alan

 

[Louie da fly]

Starting to take shape nicely.

 

Steven

[king derelict]

On 9/21/2021 at 9:30 PM, Louie da fly said:

Starting to take shape nicely.

 

Steven

Thanks Steven

Its good to see a whole hull after the initial rocky road. I was regretting getting into this project for a while😄

Alan

[king derelict]

A minor end of week update.

The printer is churning out parts without needing any adjustment. I completed the large bridge piece without issues. I'm still nervous about talking about this too loudly though. I'm convinced there is some voodoo in there somewhere. I'm still using a combination of brims and corner brims and so far no warping

In between the thunder showers I got the final primer coat on the hull and sanded down. The finish has come out quite well and i think I like the slightly subdued panel lines

My local Ace Hardware is now out of Automotive primer

 

After wandering around the web and buying another corvette book I have decided to go with HMS Campanula as the subject. The paint scheme is the better defined of the two choices (HMS Poppy was the other) and she was an early Flower but had sufficient refits to justify any artistic license with the wooden decks, engine room skylights etc. I found a view of Poppy showing the foredeck wooden section but teh paint schemes are hard to nail down especially as I don't want to build the minesweeping gear.

Campanula is the nearest I'm going to get to Compass Rose so I'm happy with the choice.

Accordingly I put an order into Sprue Brothers for supplies and now realise I forgot the dark grey deck. I'll have to put another order into Freetime Hobbies to spread the load around; it gives the chance for a few other things to fall into the shopping cart.

Thanks for looking and have a great weekend.

Alan

[Old Collingwood]

She is coming along  nicely  - that primer  looks perfect  Alan   - weel worth  the initial  hick ups.

 

OC.

[king derelict]

15 minutes ago, Old Collingwood said:

She is coming along  nicely  - that primer  looks perfect  Alan   - weel worth  the initial  hick ups.

 

OC.

Thank you OC; the support from everyone has been a great help. Now its starting to feel like fun.

Have a great weekend

Alan

[mtaylor]

Looking good and I'm glad the problems are sorted.  If it's voodoo, keep a chicken nearby for sacrifice.  Maybe extra crispy?

[Haze Gray]

2 hours ago, king derelict said:

 

My local Ace Hardware is now out of Automotive primer

 

 

 

Hi Alan, how many cans of primer did you end up using?

[king derelict]

20 hours ago, Haze Gray said:

Hi Alan, how many cans of primer did you end up using?

Hi Mr Gray

I used two and a half cans for the hull and stocked up on a few more ready for the decks and superstructure. I probably could have managed with less but the first coat showed up more areas needing attention than I thought. It worked out at nearly a can (12 oz) per coat.

Alan

[king derelict]

21 hours ago, mtaylor said:

Looking good and I'm glad the problems are sorted.  If it's voodoo, keep a chicken nearby for sacrifice.  Maybe extra crispy?

Thanks Mark

There is definitely as much black art as science in this I think.

Alan

[king derelict]

After successfully printing over twenty prints without an issue today the voodoo ran out. The prints started to fail to adhere to the bed and then the nozzle just pushes a ball of filament around. I ran the alignment print and closed up the nozzle to bed gap by an eighth of a turn on all four screws and the current print seems to be working out okay.

Ace hardware seem to be out of black cockerels as well as automotive primer so hopefully the fix is good.

Tomorrow the care parcel from Sprue Brothers should arrive. I put my biggest nozzle on the air brush in anticipation.

Alan

[king derelict]

The hull painting didn't happen. Instead the day was spent going down a series of rabbit holes researching likely deck configurations for HMS Campanula in particular the wooden decking.

My reference book has a plan view of Begonia which was one of the same batch as Campanula. This shows the short aft wooden decks and the asymmetric wooden fore deck. The plan is from her time with the short forecastle so I don't know if the decking survived the refit unchanged.

They aren't in an area that changed so I plan to go with the early deck configuration. At some point I think I have to accept that this is a generic Flower and some inaccuracies must be accepted. I think the number of port holes is wrong for Campanula (and most other Flowers I checked) and I am not going to mess with that.

I think I can use a piece of a scrapped deck print to sit behind the wooden section (behind the pencil line) and compensate for the extra thickness of the wooden deck

In the course of my roaming online I did find this nice cut away illustration of a Flower class corvette and it shows why the meals for the ratings rarely arrived hot or without a shot of seawater.

inside the navy flower corvette - Bing

Thanks for looking. Slow progress but a lot of learning going on. The voodoo for the printer seems to have been restored.

Alan

[king derelict]

Still moving slowly forward with Campanula. I had planned to paint the port holes black and then cover with gloss carnish to give a glass effect. In the event I didn't like how it looked. It just looked like black paint. 

So I drilled out the 44 port holes and the PLA is tough to drill. One ended up a little ovalised but was repaired with a ring of thin plastic strip and CA glue.

I put the first coat of white on the hull. I added a little light grey to take the pure white down a bit. After air brushing 1/700 scale destroyers this was like painting the house with a tooth brush. It took the first bottle of paint to get the base coat down.

I have a couple of cheap air brushes and my usual one with a 0.2 mm nozzle seemed to be doing better than the other with a 0.4 mm nozzle. It may be time to go up market and get an early Christmas present from the Spraygunner people.

I plan to leave the white looking a bit tired. I want to try to get the Atlantic Convoy look if I can. The white has shown up a few imperfections in the hull which will work as weathering I think.

The printer has been behaving and knocking out prints consistently during the last few days. I started working out the plan for the deck pieces and the necessary shimming to bring all the pieces flush and level.

Thanks for looking

Happy Weekend

Alan

[gjdale]

Nice work Alan. For painting that size of hull, you'd be better off with a mini HVLP spray gun. The Iwata LPH-80 would be a good choice, although you will need a compressor that can provide enough air flow - your typical hobby airbrush compressor won't, but your average garage/workshop compressor will. I have the LPH80-082G, which has a 0.8mm needle/nozzle and it requires 1.8 cfm airflow. It's wonderful to use too!

[bruce d]

Alan, that really is a good looking model, a tribute to one of the escorts of convoy SC118.

You probably already have it, but just in case here is the other side:

 

 

The date was December 1942.

 

HTH,

Bruce

 

[king derelict]

On 10/2/2021 at 7:08 AM, bruce d said:

Alan, that really is a good looking model, a tribute to one of the escorts of convoy SC118.

You probably already have it, but just in case here is the other side:

 

 

The date was December 1942.

 

HTH,

Bruce

 

Thanks Bruce

That will complete the paint scheme layout for me. I have immense  respect for the men who served on those convoy escorts in terrible conditions.

Alan

 

[king derelict]

A quick update. Work continues but progress is a bit slow. I seem to spend a lot of time reading and researching more than progressing the model.

I finished the white paint on the hull after three coats (two 34 ml bottles) and spent the afternoon grappling with masking for the lower hull paint and boot topping. I had immense difficulty trying to achieve what I wanted by scaling off the HMS Begonia plans. The model is a generic corvette and doesn't scale well in some respects and working off distance below the deck edge or the panel lines produced unsatisfactory results.

I tried the hi-tech waterline tool

With the hull pitched up or down I couldn't produce a sensible boot topping. The photos and the plans suggest it curves up at bows and stern which may be the reason using a waterline is not effective. In the end I looked at the photos and plans some more and marked the bow and stern points and then masked between the points by eye using the photos as a guide. It looks about right relative to the port holes and is about the right distance below the deck edge. 

The boot topping and lower hull paint will go below the blue masking tape

 

Although the tape is burnished down the surface is still a bit rough and the tape crosses several panel lines so I painted a line of white paint along the edge of the tape to seal it and hopefully prevent the new paint from leeching under the tape. I suspect I don't have enough Hull Red so I ordered some more from Freetime Hobbies who were having a 20% off Flyhawk sale and this fell into the shopping basket

Thanks for looking in

Alan

 

[Old Collingwood]

25 minutes ago, king derelict said:

A quick update. Work continues but progress is a bit slow. I seem to spend a lot of time reading and researching more than progressing the model.

I finished the white paint on the hull after three coats (two 34 ml bottles) and spent the afternoon grappling with masking for the lower hull paint and boot topping. I had immense difficulty trying to achieve what I wanted by scaling off the HMS Begonia plans. The model is a generic corvette and doesn't scale well in some respects and working off distance below the deck edge or the panel lines produced unsatisfactory results.

I tried the hi-tech waterline tool

With the hull pitched up or down I couldn't produce a sensible boot topping. The photos and the plans suggest it curves up at bows and stern which may be the reason using a waterline is not effective. In the end I looked at the photos and plans some more and marked the bow and stern points and then masked between the points by eye using the photos as a guide. It looks about right relative to the port holes and is about the right distance below the deck edge. 

The boot topping and lower hull paint will go below the blue masking tape

 

Although the tape is burnished down the surface is still a bit rough and the tape crosses several panel lines so I painted a line of white paint along the edge of the tape to seal it and hopefully prevent the new paint from leeching under the tape. I suspect I don't have enough Hull Red so I ordered some more from Freetime Hobbies who were having a 20% off Flyhawk sale and this fell into the shopping basket

Thanks for looking in

Alan

 

That will be another cracker.

 

OC.

[king derelict]

Today a package arrived from the nice people at Spruebrothers. The most important item in it was a bottle of Tamiya Hull Red. Figuring that the USPS had probably already done a good job of shaking the paint I loaded up the airbrush and laid the last coat on the hull. I was then able after two weeks of anticipation able to peel off the masking tape. Given the rough surface of the hull along with the panel lines I was highly nervous of this step but I was pleasantly surprised. I have a couple of very minor spots at the stern where the paint got under the tape a little but generally I am very happy. I think sealing the edge of the tape with the base colour really helped.

Sorry about the dubious photos; this one is a bit bit to give the usual photo treatment to.

 

 

Now I can start masking for the WA blue bits. I have two bottles waiting to be used so no problems there but I did start shimming the decsk to match up with each other and the hull and found I need a lot more plastic strips so another package is on teh way from Spruebrothers. I'm still getting used to the industrial level of logistics here

Thanks for stopping by

Alan

[king derelict]

Well, I stared at this for a couple of days and looked at more photos of the real Flowers and decided that the hull red doesn't extend far enough up the hull at the midships and is a touch low at the bow. I re-masked the hull and I think this is better; its more in keeping with the photos I have checked against. I've painted the masking tape line with white to seal the tape down and once dry I can spray the hull red - again. Its probably easier than going the other way and trying to lower the height of the red paint.

 

 

Thanks for looking

Alan

[yvesvidal]

The cat seems to approve of your decision.

 

Yves

[king derelict]

On 10/22/2021 at 7:45 AM, yvesvidal said:

The cat seems to approve of your decision.

 

Yves

They are tough critics so its always good if they approve.

Alan

[king derelict]

The revised waterline makes me quite a bit happier so I have moved onto the light blue sections. The first element was masked up. I decided to break the painting into two parts to keep the masking a bit simpler. As usual with this build a it was a puzzle to lay out the camouflage on the hull. I used the IWM photos and a painting done by one of the crew along with the Campanula drawing in the Lambert / Brown book. I think I fell foul of the generic nature of the model because relative to a lot of the modified Flowers the kit has the forecastle extended ever further although it still seems to line up roughly with the funnel. Maybe I put the hull sections together in the wrong order 😄

So my initial plan of scaling off the photos and prints had to be modified a little especially at the sternwards section which is largely placed "by eye". The edges of the masks were sealed again; it seems to be effective. I switched to using a matte sealer now that the masks touch multiple colours.

 

I used Tamiya XF-23 Light Blue and I think its a reasonable look. The masks were removed and after a pause for teh paint to harden I will mask the final sections.

Compared to my usual 1/700 world the consumption of material for this is impressive. The ball of used tape is an example. I doubt if I used twelve inches for a 1/700 destroyer but that's the different between four inches and forty-eight inches.

Thanks for looking in

Alan

 

[CDW]

Wow, that hull looks awesome, Alan! No trouble seeing what you're working with at that scale, she's huge.

[Old Collingwood]

I agree  - really nice job  on the masking/painting.

 

OC.

[king derelict]

22 hours ago, CDW said:

Wow, that hull looks awesome, Alan! No trouble seeing what you're working with at that scale, she's huge.

Thanks Craig

No, I'm not going to drop this one and lose it in the rug😄

Alan

[king derelict]

1 hour ago, Old Collingwood said:

I agree  - really nice job  on the masking/painting.

 

OC.

Thank you for the kind comment OC.

It feels like progress at last.

Alan