USS ENGLAND (DE-635) by ccoyle - FINISHED - HMV - 1/250 - CARD

[ccoyle]

3 hours ago, EricWilliamMarshall said:

it's careful photo taking or you got it!

 

I might be an expert at skillfully selecting photography angles. 😏

[ccoyle]

 

3: Hull

 

It dawned on me that a good way to track these updates would be by linking them to the numbered construction diagrams, of which there are 27, plus an optional 28th. The printed hull allowed me to skip diagrams 1 and 2. With this update, I am now done through diagram 3.

 

 

Forward we have the hawse pipes, hawse pipe lips, capstan, and platform for the forward 3"/50.

 

Amidships are the solid bulwarks and their stanchions, which I assume are frame extensions. These are the laser-cut replacement parts.

 

And aft we have various hatches. For parts that are only one card sheet thick, I'm using an ordinary gray felt-tip marker for edge coloring; at pretty much any viewing distance, it's indistinguishable from the mixed paint color. For our foreign friends, an American penny is 19 mm wide. This photo shows assemblies 32-35 in place on deck. Note the spot marked "143."  😮

 

Cheers!

 

 

 

[Keith Black]

5 minutes ago, ccoyle said:

I'm using an ordinary gray felt-tip marker for edge coloring

 Chris, there's a shadow line giving the illusion of depth, Is that the result of the marker or is that the kit design? 

[ccoyle]

1 hour ago, Keith Black said:

shadow

 

Not sure what you mean

[Louie da fly]

I had to look this one up on Wikipedia (the Source of All Knowledge). Why would an American ship be called "England"? 

 

Of course, it was the surname of a naval war hero. Makes sense now.

 

Steven

[druxey]

You still use pennies, South of the border???? This looks like an interesting build, Chris.

[EricWilliamMarshall]

9 hours ago, druxey said:

You still use pennies, South of the border????

Only for photos and making noise in the dryer. 

[Beef Wellington]

Love it Chris.  Don't know how you do it at that tiny scale.

[ccoyle]

4: Superstructure Framing

 

Short update today, but this takes care of diagram #4. All of the superstructure profile former and bulkhead parts are doubled. This is a departure from the usual HMV practice, but I hope it will become a standard for them -- the resulting parts are of course much more rigid than single-layer card. The framing is built in the usual egg-crate style, but it must be done atop the hull, because the superstructure is not perfectly flat lengthwise but slightly curved. Once the frames were set, a small box for the lower mast was added, then the top was glued on. There are tabs to help situate both the superstructure top to its framing and the superstructure itself atop the hull. You can see that the actual superstructure surface will be added later.

 

 

 

Next, the superstructure sides will be constructed, and they have quite a few bits and pieces that must be added to them, e.g. doors, grab rails, hose reels, etc., etc.

 

Total sidetrack issue for the day: I came across a batch of old X-acto Z blades in my tool supplies and then subsequently rediscovered why I never used all of them up. Although they are advertised as sharper and more durable than ordinary blades, they have one very bad attribute for card modelers: their tips are too flexible. When downward pressure is applied to a Z blade, the tip bends slightly, causing the blade to want to wander away from the line being cut. This is obviously an undesirable trait in a card modeling tool. I quickly switched back to my el cheapo Excel blades.

[druxey]

Try surgical blades, Chris.

[ccoyle]

3 minutes ago, druxey said:

Try surgical blades, Chris.

 

I actually asked for a Swann-Morton handle and blades for Christmas, and even provided a link to the exact Swann-Morton products. But, instead, I received two (!) Chinese-made knock-offs. And since it's bad form to whine about Christmas gifts, I gave the knock-offs a tryout. I have the same issue with the blade tips flexing. But it's not all bad news -- I find the scalpel a better tool for chopping tasks, since the blades have a narrower kerf and therefore produce a less-beveled cut.

[BrianK]

Chris, I found my Swann-Morton handles on ebay. They have both metal ones for ~$25 and also $7 "disposable" ones.  I am guessing they are called disposible handles because they are possibly made of a material that can't be easily sterilized (plastic maybe)?? If I were buying again, I think I would look at them....

[druxey]

Handles are handles (one I have was made in India) but the blades should be the real deal. A box of 100 will last a long time!

[ccoyle]

5: Superstructure Sides

 

The superstructure sides have been added, but since then construction has proceeded very slowly. Part of that is due to the sheer number of elements that must be added to the sides -- WWII sailors in the Southwest Pacific were obviously unconcerned about how much electromagnetic radiation from enemy radars bounced off of their ships. Even the tiny gongs and electrical boxes are included as doubled parts. The second reason for the slow progress is that options are provided for replacing some of the flat paper parts with more 3-dimensional upgrades; these add a bit more detail but take more time to construct.

 

In this first image, showing the still incomplete forward port-side wall, there are already thirteen elements in place. Two of them are optional replacements, including the steam pipe in the foreground, which is made of five individual segments (the piping around the funnel will eventually consist of far more).

 

In this shot is a scratch-built rack of pipes shown with the original flat paper parts being replaced. The pipes are 11 mm long. I played around with some washes to bring out the details. As usual, they look way better in real life than in this sad cell phone image. Note the electrical box beneath the left-hand bracket.

 

That's it for now!

[Canute]

The Japanese radars were very primitive, so reductions to angles on surfaces were an esoteric concern. Stealth wasn't yet a concept for surface vessels.

 

Your details are coming along nicely.

[ccoyle]

1 hour ago, Canute said:

Stealth wasn't yet a concept for surface vessels.

 

Yep, that was kind of my point. 😄  On the flip side, I find these older ships much more visually interesting than, say, a Zumwalt-class destroyer.

[lmagna]

14 hours ago, ccoyle said:

much more visually interesting than, say, a Zumwalt-class destroyer.

Almost anything is more visually interesting than the Zumwalt class destroyers! She was here a couple of months ago and other than looking odd when passing in the morning mist didn't reflect back much to look at either. 

[RGL]

Ha!! They will be releasing one this year! We can do it (make it interesting) 

[RGL]

Sorry, got a bit excited as I’ve pre ordered one 

[lmagna]

I had no idea. At least you now have a chance to weather it a little:

 

All that rust caused a bunch of comments even though it was after several months of being up here in the PNW and the Bearing Sea environment for sea worthiness testing.

[ccoyle]

Hey, get that eyesore outta my topic! 😆😛

[ccoyle]

5,6: Superstructure Details

 

I added all of the flat elements to the superstructure first, then moved on to the grab rails -- still a work in progress at this point. I ran into a teensy issue. See if you can spot it:

 

Yeah, the color of those laser-cut details doesn't match the color of the printed hull parts. I'm going to have to paint them, as I did with the far right grab rail in the photo. Oh, well!

[Bill Morrison]

On 1/27/2022 at 8:39 AM, AJohnson said:

I shall have to look out for these Polish "Card Ninja's" 🧘‍♂️  do any post on MSW?

I recommend that you check out www.papermodelers.com and click into the section on ships and watercraft.  You will see many outstanding models there!  I have tried a paper model kit, converting the JSC German battlecruiser Goeben to her sister Moltke.  I still haven't been successful with the secondary armament.  The kit's directions are woefully lacking.  I also have a few of HMV's kits which are of much higher quality.

 

Bill

[ccoyle]

24 minutes ago, Bill Morrison said:

The kit's directions are woefully lacking.

 

Some of JSC's designs date all the way back to the 1960s, which is old for a card model, though perhaps not for a card modeler.

[AJohnson]

56 minutes ago, ccoyle said:

Hey, get that eyesore outta my topic! 😆😛

Well unlike your builds Chris, that thing 'looks' like it's made of card! 😆

[druxey]

Unkind remark about card, Andrew!  

 

Those 3D details of pipes and rails give a lot of visual interest to your model, Chris.

[lmagna]

6 hours ago, AJohnson said:

Well unlike your builds Chris, that thing 'looks' like it's made of card! 😆

Looks more like LEGOS to me. Especially with the rust showing. I think that I might have wanted to be on that deployment. She was up there in the Bearing Sea for over two months during the worst weather time of the year with only quick trips down here to Everett to refuel and resupply. In and out only.

 

I am not certain on your description Chris. Are you installing all of the "optional" super detailed parts or only a selected few of your choice? Also, is it cheating in card models to substitute say metal rod for things like the handrails etc. like using PE on a plastic kit or is only paper allowed to be considered a "Card Master?"  

Edited February 2, 2022 by lmagna

[ccoyle]

3 hours ago, lmagna said:

Are you installing all of the "optional" super detailed parts or only a selected few of your choice? Also, is it cheating in card models to substitute say metal rod for things like the handrails etc. like using PE on a plastic kit or is only paper allowed to be considered a "Card Master?"

 

Nearly every card model that I have ever built calls for some parts to be made from plastic rod or wire, even if they are subsequently sheathed in paper. Landing gear strutsare just one example.

 

Some of the parts in this kit are indeed optional, e.g. parts for doubling, such as the electrical boxes and such, which are already printed on the parent part; doubling just adds depth. Laser-cut parts either replace paper parts that are less detailed (e.g. radar) or that would be very difficult to cut out neatly. As an example of deciding whether to use certain optional parts, just this evening I completed a "chest of drawers" (I don't know what this would be called in WWII naval parlance) -- it has three lids on its top, plus three large and twelve small drawers on its front. All of those features are printed on the basic structure, but parts are provided to double all of the lids and drawers. If all of the optional parts were to be used, the resulting tiny structure would consist of nineteen parts! The small drawers are each only 0.5 mm square. In the end, I decided that the hassle of cutting out, edge coloring, gluing, and properly aligning the small drawers wouldn't yield an appreciable increase in the visual interest of the model. Big drawers yes, small drawers no -- a kind of "law of diminishing returns" thing.

 

Cheers!

[Keith Black]

 Chris, do you think a vac pen would be helpful in card modeling? There are several models out there, below are a couple of links as examples. 

 

https://www.amazon.com/Vacuum-Suction-Chip-Pick-Up-12000pa/dp/B07Q12CZWR

 

https://www.virtual-ii.com/product-category/pen-vac-vacula-3-no-hoses-or-batteries/pro-series-pen-vac-vacuum-pen/

[Veszett Roka]

3 hours ago, Keith Black said:

 Chris, do you think a vac pen would be helpful in card modeling? There are several models out there, below are a couple of links as examples. 

 

https://www.amazon.com/Vacuum-Suction-Chip-Pick-Up-12000pa/dp/B07Q12CZWR

 

https://www.virtual-ii.com/product-category/pen-vac-vacula-3-no-hoses-or-batteries/pro-series-pen-vac-vacuum-pen/

 

You asked Chris, so sorry for barking in. I do use a spot of blu-tack on a toothpick, it is much cheaper. Cons to have to wait till the glue fixes, to release the grabbed part.