WARATAH 1902 by ccoyle - FINISHED - HMV - 1/250 - CARD - Steam Tug

[ccoyle]

Moving right along, next up on the bench is the steam tug Waratah 1902. I did a review of the HMV kit back in April of this year. But before I go on, allow me to share a little bit of sad, sad backstory -- the story of why I have never actually completed an HMV model (surprise!).

 

On a shelf in my man cave sit two unfinished models. I call this the "shelf of shame."  I just made that up, honestly, but it is appropriate.

 

 

The two ships are USS Maine and SMS Emden, both from HMV. Maine never got finished because I used the PE brass detail set for the kit (which is very nice), only to discover that I don't enjoy working with PE parts all that much. I set Maine aside to work on some other long-forgotten project and subsequently lost interest in it. For Emden, I used the laser-cut card detail set, which is much more user-friendly. Sadly, I hit a couple of build snags late in the construction of that model and thereafter soured on it.

 

One thing that both of those kits have in common is that they are both rated either difficult or very difficult, and truthfully I was in over my head on them. This is partly why I chose to build a smaller HMV kit -- just to see if I can actually complete one. Waratah should, I say cautiously, be within my comfort zone.

 

As nice as the kit is, I'm still going to tinker with the construction methodology a bit. The parts have been separated from the booklet and given their usual coat of matte clear spray, and construction photos should follow soon. Enjoy!

 

[Jim Lad]

Nice to see 'Waratah' being built, Chris.  There are heaps of photos on line as she's part of the Sydney heritage fleet collection.

 

John

[Captain Slog]

Looking forward to following along. 
 

cheers

Slog

[Canute]

I'll be tagging along, too, Chris.

[thibaultron]

I'm in!

[raysven]

Been thinking of getting this one. Good luck with the build, fingers crossed for the compeletion

 

 

 

[lmagna]

Back row nice comfy chair.

[amateur]

I should restart building myself: the only thing I do is looking at very nice models of others

Having said that: I'll put up a chair here (not back row, as my eyesight is not sufficient for that anymore )

 

Jan

[Egilman]

3 hours ago, lmagna said:

Back row nice comfy chair.

I'll be joining ya...

[CDW]

Hi Chris

 

Happy to follow your build thread for the Waratah.

 

May I ask, what specifically makes the two models on your special shelf so difficult in your opinion? You appear to be very proficient with your builds I have seen. I am curious because being entirely new to card models, it doesn't yet occur to me what makes one kit more challenging than another. In reality, all of them appear challenging to me. 🤔

[ccoyle]

40 minutes ago, CDW said:

May I ask, what specifically makes the two models on your special shelf so difficult in your opinion?

 

It's not just the difficulty of the kits by themselves, but rather a combination of factors. As I said, I purchased the PE brass detail set to use with Maine. HMV was not yet offering laser-cut card detail sets at the time, so PE brass or, in some cases, nickel-silver were the only options -- or just to use the card parts provided in the kit. I don't like PE metal parts all that much, though I know that they work wonders for plastic kit builders. I don't like the prep work, the painting, and the meticulous folding that is required, even if the final results do look awesome. I much prefer the laser-cut card sets. The Maine kit also had a number of small but niggling design issues, such as coloring that didn't match up on adjacent parts and vague positioning of some parts in the diagrams. Neither of those is a deal-breaker by itself, but I just kind of lost interest in the kit, and it hasn't come back yet. Maybe it will at some point, but I don't make a habit of working on kits I'm not enthused about in the moment. BTW, the Maine kit is no longer available from HMV, which means it might be undergoing a revision, which would be both good and bad. Good, because a revised kit with a laser-cut detail set would be awesome (I love pre-Dreadnoughts), but bad because that would probably kill off any residual desire to finish the current iteration!

 

Emden is a sad story. I started building her as part of a book project, but I really should have chosen a less ambitious subject -- Emden is rated sehr schwierig (very difficult), and the rating is thoroughly deserved. The book project died (sorry, Bob) for several reasons, one being that I had talked Danny Vadas into working on the project with me, and he subsequently was unable to contribute as he would have liked due to his deteriorating health; I was depending on him for writing the material on rigging, which is a real weakness in my skill set, and Emden has a lot of rigging.  I also lost most of the early in-progress construction photos thanks to computers dying and my penchant for packing up and moving every few years, including a cross-country move smack in the middle of construction. The final nail in the coffin might not seem like a big deal, but it was the laser-cut railings for the forecastle; the diagrams did not present their locations clearly, they did not fit correctly, and I ended up damaging them while attempting to mount them on the model, a construction failure for which their is no easy fix. If you damage a part on a wood model, you simply make yourself a new part; you can't really make a new laser-cut railing. I also discovered that the present location of the bridge superstructure will interfere with the placement of the foremast. So, add those all together -- the long build time, the difficulty of the model, the momentum for the book project waning, and the significant obstacles to completing the model after so much effort had already gone into it -- and it drained away any remaining build mojo.

 

So, there you have the whole story. One final thing I will say about the Emden tropo version kit (HMV also offer the same kit in gray) is that upper works color is really much closer to straight-up orange than to buff. I don't know if the actual color used by the German Navy was that shade or not, but it is a little off-putting on the model.

 

I do have the HMV SMS Undine kit in my stash, with both PE and laser-cut card detail sets for it. Undine was a Gazelle-class cruiser, very similar in design, layout, and armament to Emden, so if I ever feel up to the challenge someday, she may yet wind up on the workbench.

[CDW]

Chris

 

One thing I noticed when visiting the GPM card model store, they list all the recommended accessory items below the main page for each particular model. In the list of items, often there will be photo etch as well as laser cut details. It's never clear to me whether one set replaces the other. I would be interested in trying the laser cut details rather than the photo etch, but am never sure if this completely eliminates the need for photo etch or only partially eliminates it. Because of the cost of postage, I want to avoid a need to order twice. Any idea on this, or does it vary from one kit to another? I am guessing the laser cut parts will be easier to work with in more than one way, not the least of which is the painting (of lack thereof) needed.

[ccoyle]

Craig, with the HMV kits laser-cut card has generally replaced the earlier PE detail sets. I'm not super-familiar with some other publishers. I believe that JSC offers laser-cut details for some kits, but most of the other Eastern European publishers I know of are still sticking mainly to PE..

[BobG]

I'm following along too, Chris. I'm fascinated by these card models especially after seeing the astoundingly beautiful card models that Doris has built.

[ccoyle]

2 hours ago, BobG said:

I'm fascinated by these card models especially after seeing the astoundingly beautiful card models that Doris has built.

 

Nautical art by Doris be like:

 

Nautical art by Chris be like:

[CDW]

Doris is like a unicorn.

[ccoyle]

So I finally got some time to work on this project, and here's what I've done so far.

 

Base plate, longitudinal profile, and bulkheads. As is my habit, I cut the glue tabs off of the base plate. I laminated the bulkheads onto card stock and wicked thin CA into the edges so that I could sand them. Afterwards, I began to think that this might all be overkill for a model that is only 113 mm long, but oh well, too late.

 

 

Here are the deck parts. Many of the parts, including the deck itself, are doubled, and a few of the parts will be replaced by laser-cut details. One nice feature of this kit is that all of the deck furniture will be mounted on form-fitting card bits that will be glued down to the main deck; this will eliminate both the usual glue tabs and the need for my furring strip technique as seen in my Tijger build. Another thoughtful feature, though I haven't needed to use it yet, is that many parts that don't have enough room for a part number to be printed on the face side of the piece have the number printed on the reverse side, just in case the modeler forgets which part is which after cutting it from a parts sheet.

 

 

Next will be cutting and dry fitting the hull sides before gluing the deck and sides to the hull skeleton (shudder) -- this is where the dreaded "starving cow" look might crop up. Fingers crossed!

[ccoyle]

The last 24 hours have been a trying time for the construction of poor Waratah. First of all, I had to double some rather large parts (including the deck in last night's photo -- this actually happened prior to the previous post), so I went to the garage to give them a shot of 3M 77. When I came back to my man cave, the AC kicked on, which flipped one corner of the paper towel I was carrying sticky parts on. The deck and some other parts landed sticky sides together. 🤬  Happily, I was able to get everything apart without too much obvious damage. Then, I left my desk for several hours, and when I came back the deck had warped significantly. So I did my best to straighten it out and then left it under the glass sheet overnight.

 

Fast-forward to today. Once I got the deck glued down, I was treated to the dreaded STARVING COW look. 🤬  I still haven't figured out how to defeat this particular card modeling nemesis. So I spent most of the day cutting spacers from bits of scrap plywood veneer and using those to shore up the sagging areas. I now have the run of the deck edges sufficiently straightened, to my eye, and am ready to tackle the hull sides. That task will require some trial fitting to see if I need to remove bulkhead material anywhere.

 

 

One unintended side effect of building such a small model is that simply cropping a photo of the hull properly results in something like an enlargement. Hmm.

[Jim Lad]

Never tried a card model, Chris, but could the 'starving cow' syndrome by overcome by fore and aft stiffeners under the deck?

 

John

[Richard44]

Chris,

 

I've just got to ask...."starving cow" problem with card models?

 

I'm really curious because my first card model (a Murray River paddle boat) is on its way from Europe, but more of that when it arrives. And I'm following your build log with much interest.

 

Cheers

[Beef Wellington]

1 hour ago, Richard44 said:

I've just got to ask...."starving cow" problem with card models?

 

I suspect Chris is referring to the fact that the deck droops in between the bulkheads so there is no clean deck sheer line...looks like the prominent ribs on a starving cow's body.

[ccoyle]

1 hour ago, Beef Wellington said:

I suspect Chris is referring to the fact that the deck droops in between the bulkheads so there is no clean deck sheer line...looks like the prominent ribs on a starving cow's body.

 

Yes, that's correct.

 

3 hours ago, Jim Lad said:

Never tried a card model, Chris, but could the 'starving cow' syndrome by overcome by fore and aft stiffeners under the deck?

 

That's essentially what the spacers are doing. On my next small card model (whenever that should be), I'm seriously considering using a plywood underlayment for the entire deck and removing the requisite amount of material from the hull formers.

 

For the HMV USS London kit, which I reviewed a few months back, there is actually a 3D printed hull available to which one affixes the hull skins. It costs about $55(!), but I think it is worth adding to my Christmas wish list.

[Richard44]

2 hours ago, Beef Wellington said:

I suspect Chris is referring to the fact that the deck droops in between the bulkheads so there is no clean deck sheer line...looks like the prominent ribs on a starving cow's body.

Thanks Jason, that's what I thought, but I wanted to be sure.

 

Cheers

[thibaultron]

What about putting foam blocks between the formers? It would be easy to then sand in both the deck shear and hull sides. No more starving cows!

[ccoyle]

I've thought about that, too, Ron.

[ccoyle]

Okay, today I got the hull sides on -- quite the trial, as it usually is for me with these things. The worst booboo that resulted was a gap of about 2mm between the two side pieces at the stern. I filled the gap in with card stock and touched everything up as best I could, but the ship's name will forever appear as "WAR ATAH." I also replaced the printed cap rails and stanchions with the optional laser-cut parts -- the entire cap rail, from stem to stern, and the amidship stanchions are a single part, one on each side. That bit was not as difficult as it may sound, and I like the finished effect.

[Jim Lad]

Looking good, Chris.

 

John

[Old Collingwood]

Can't beat a bit of Steak .......sorry.

 

OC.

[ccoyle]

10 hours ago, Old Collingwood said:

Can't beat a bit of Steak

 

Ya lost me on that one. 🤔

[CDW]

13 hours ago, Old Collingwood said:

Can't beat a bit of Steak .......sorry.

 

OC.

Starving cows don't make a good steak. Tough meat.