Display After Completion

[Dave_E]

Good Saturday Morning Everyone,

 

As I get nearer to completion of the Lady Nelson… the thought of display now looms large in my head (Admiral is also constantly asking “where you going to put these things”?) 😆 My home with forced air heating and cooling is dusty. No explanation, ducts are clean, Hepa filter being used, register filters being used, bla-bla-bla. Maybe something to do with living in the PNW and all the trees?  My choices are: build an enclosure or not. 
 

Question for the masses. Those of you who did not build enclosures: what does your ship look like 1, 2, 3 years or more regarding dust (airborne particles)? I fear mine would look like it was in a snow storm after 4 or 5 years. I can’t even imagine trying to “dust” a completed ship. Discussion?

[BenD]

Cleaning these ships is a real pain in the behind. It requires lots of gentle brushing and damp cotton swabs. Riggin line can catch dust and never really get clean.

 

I got a custom case from https://www.acrylicjob.com/ and it has looked great for years and keeps my HMC Sherbourne dust free.

[jlefever]

Even with good filters, there are plenty of sources of dust in a home, carpet, furniture, skin and hair, pets... notwithstanding the exterior sources such as northwest trees or here in southern CA, winds, traffic and your neighborhood brush fire.

 

If you want to keep your model in good shape, some sort of dust cover seems a good investment. In my case, the case also affords extra protection from the family cats.

 

I think a nice cover can even enhance the model presentation a bit.

 

...of course, unless you are really handy with plex or glass a case can be pretty expensive.

 

My general sense is that with a decent kit the orders of magnitude cost are about equal thirds:

 

The cost of the kit.

Paint, glue, added modeling materials and so on.

The case 

 

Hope this helps a bit.

 

Jim

[Reggiemon]

Hi Dave,

Here's my experience with that.

Many years ago I built a couple of boat models for 2 daughters. 

I finished a Corel "Flying Fish" Market Schooner in 1998, complete with sails.

I mounted it on a large base with edging to accommodate an acrylic cover.

When I finished the acrylic cover I did seal it to the base with silicone.

A year later I finished a kit of "America" (don't remember what brand) for the 2nd daughter.

This was a smaller model, painted instead of shellacked and with no sails.

I did not make an enclosure for that one.

Thru the years both daughters had several moves to different houses and across the country.

The one with no case got to looking worse and worse even with some cleaning and eventually did not survive one of the moves.

The one in the acrylic case, after 24 years, looks as good as when I put the case on it.

Cheers,

Reg

[mtaylor]

I'm alsoi in the PNW and I'd recommend a case.  With smokey summers (even if it's just prescribed burns) and the winds coming in off shore do stir up a lot of dust... volcanic dust it seems.   Go for a display case.  You won't regret it and the admiral will also appreciate not having a dust magnet on the loose.

[Roger Pellett]

The last step in building a model is to build a wood framed glass case to protect it.  My system for building these produces a neat case but not one that would win a cabinetry contest.  I have models that have resided in cases that I have built for over 30 years that are dust free.  My house has gas force air heat and we have a very long heating season.  My preferred wood for building these cases is Native American Black Walnut but I have also used Cherry, Mahogany, and Teak.  I use a table saw to rip wood, cut grooves for glass, cut mitered joints, and with a set of moulding heads to shape base mould inns.  Here are. Some pictures:

 

 

 

 

 

[Cathead]

Protection is a near-must, especially for anything with rigging or other delicate details. No matter how controlled your house, dust and spiders and other things are going to accumulate on a model and be nearly impossible to remove without risking damage.

 

There are some places online that sell pretty cheap clear acrylic cases of various sizes; experiment with search terms. Some areas may also have local businesses that work with glass or acrylics and could make you a pretty simple clear display top. It's possible a woodworker or furniture builder could make you a case as well, anyone that frames pictures can, in theory, make a case.

 

Another display/protection option, though initially more expensive, is to purchase a larger multi-model display cabinet, like this one I had made by a Mennonite furniture maker in my area. It now holds three large models and five smaller ones, along with various other items of interest:

 

This has had several major advantages:

 

1) It's a lot more space-efficient than individual cases for each model; the on-floor footprint isn't much larger than the individual case would be for either of the largest two models but it holds far more.

2) Even though it cost ~$2000, it was far more cost-effective in the long run than acquiring individual cases for each model.

3) It provides all the same protection from dust/damage as individual cases, and indeed is somewhat easier to open and clean as it has a sliding door, rather than having to carefully lift a glass case up and over a delicate model.

4) It's more resellable or transferrable in the long run than individual model cases. If/when I have to move (retirement to a smaller house, say), this could easily be resold to someone with no interest in models but a desire to display any other collectible, whereas model-specific cases have little use other than for their intended model. 

5) It's more flexible for display purposes. If I decide to move on from any given model (for example, donating one to a public space or simply deciding it's no longer good enough for display), there is immediately open space for another, whereas to reuse a dedicated single-model case would require sizing the new model for that case. The shelves are adjustable, making this especially practical.

6) It allows balanced display of many interests. For example, note that much of the bottom two shelves is dedicated to natural materials that are of especial interest to my wife, a naturalist. This makes the case an investment for both of us. A spouse who has interests apart from models can share a case like this, perhaps even in an integrated way as we did with the shells and smaller nautical models on one shelf. One can easily imagine ships on some shelves and, say, china or antiques on another in a way that complements both.

 

This one's especially large but they can be had in many different sizes. The key search term here appears to be "curio cabinet"; that will bring up all sorts of online results for premade options and businesses making such things at all sorts of scales.

[rudybob]

I made my own single ship display case. I bought some cut to size sheet acrylic and Weld-On brand solvent, watched a few video's. I used half of a small mahogany table top I had in the garage. I finished it off with some quarter round I also had.  Very cost effective and satisfying.  Two grand is not too much to spend on display. Dust is the enemy.