The Flying Dutchman by ObviousNewbie - OcCre - Scale 1/50 - Some bashing planned

[ObviousNewbie]

Hi all,

 

After some running around and a lot of searching and discovering, I'm settling into my new (temporary) home in Norway. I managed to bring the shipyard over, and found some space for it:

 

As the moving company did not want to take my current build and my materials (aka the wood strips), Endurance is in storage back home in Belgium, waiting to be finalised when I return there next year. This is how far I got before I needed to pack:

 

 

So most of the hull is done, including painting, just need to add the rubbing strakes. And then everything else of course 🙂

 

Meanwhile, I managed to order and receive a new kit, to cover the long Norwegian winter nights: The Flying Dutchman, by Occre:

 

 

In a way, I'm very happy getting this, as it was the Pirates of the Caribbean movies that resparked my interest in model building, and made me take the jump from plastic to wood two years ago.

 

Having said that, there are some points in the build I think I can improve on, after studying the plans:

 

First of all, the model is delivered with the starboard side opened up, exposing the gun deck. From what I can see, there's not that much extra detail added, and frankly I'm not excited about the way the gun deck itself is split into three pieces of plywood, so the deck does not follow a curve.

 

 

To me it just feels wrong having the hull opened up, it takes away the feel of the curved line of the hull. So I decided to close her up, plank both sides of the hull. Which of course means the plans needs to be adjusted.

 

Here's what I'm planning to do: build the basic frame, ensure the the frames are properly secured by temporarily fitting the decks, plank partially untill I reach the gunports, use the plywood with the gunport cutouts for the port side as a template to position the ports, and cut them out. Then build the gun carriages (12 go in the lower hull), position and secure them on the still open gun deck (thinking of using a brass rod from the base of the gun carriage into the deck), and after installing all of them, put the top deck on. My reasoning is that as the gun barrels are not fitted, the chance of accidentally hitting them during the next build phases and possibly losing them in the sealed deck will be minimised. What do you think, is my reasoning sound?

 

Also, the ship is delivered as a single planked hull. No issues there, I single planked before. But in the plans, Occre builds up the bow by using plywood filler parts, which then are not covered by any kind of planking. In the pictures on their site and in the plans, that looks a bit awkward:

 

 

So according to me I have two options: double plank the hull with any leftover 0,6mm Sapelli strips I have, OR single plank but omit the plywood fillers and bend the strips to cover the bow of the ship (I will need to add some blocks to ensure I have enough space to attach them to the keel). Not sure which is the best way forward, so I'd appreciate your expert thoughts on this.

 

Thirdly, as said before, some parts of the hull are cut out from plywood, with the gun ports not being planked, according to the plans:

 

 

Again, when painting this, the different approach to hull shaping would be visible, so decided to not use the gun port pieces, only as a template to cut out the ports in the planked hull.

 

On the other hand, the metal castings for the gallery and the gun ports seem top notch, although I'm not sure why they went for metal instead of using plastic. Instructions are clear, but a general overview plan of the ship is missing, so I need to guesstimate positions of certain deck items and channels.

 

In short, a number of firsts again on this build:

 

• Build up full hull
• Templating gun ports
• Install lighting in the gallery
• Weathering the ship to get that spooky look

 

Other changes I'm planning to make: use dark thread for the running rigging (historically inaccurate, but from the pictures it just seems too clean to use light thread, and hey, it's a fictional model to begin with), darken the dead eyes, paint the deck in a slightly different shade of grey (a bit lighter) than the hull, as the Occre approach for a dark brown hull doesn't look right to me. And plank the inner bulwarks, as according to the plans, these plywood pieces are to be stained only, doesn't look right to me either.

 

So a lot of customisation, fingers crossed I'll be able to pull it off. Again, I'd appreciate any feedback on my processes I described above, as this is my first time attempting to kitbash (a little) I'm sure I'm overlooking potential pitfalls. Thnx in advance for your comments!

[Baker]

interesting model.

Norway is a beautiful country, we have been on holiday a few times in Norway.

In which place do you stay?

Groetjes 

Edited October 17, 2022 by Baker

[tararasik]

Wow, looks like a great model to build. I'm building my Black Pearl and was looking on this model. But at the moment will just watch your build.

I'm a little bit disappointed by the issues that you've mentioned about this kit: single planking, plywood gunports and bow fillers. Looks like you have quite an extra work. I guess double planking could fix all of this issues, but I'm not sure is there enough material for it. As for overall plans or references, I know about two scratch projects, one from Japanese guy and another from Russian that could help.

[ObviousNewbie]

On 10/17/2022 at 7:45 PM, Baker said:

interesting model.

Norway is a beautiful country, we have been on holiday a few times in Norway.

In which place do you stay?

Groetjes 

Hi Patrick, Staying in a town between Oslo and Drammen, called Asker. Not too big, quiet, and very friendly. Of course, get in the car, drive around for 10 minutes and you're in the middle of nowhere surrounded by mountains, forests and lakes 🙂 . Simply majestic, I've been wandering around for hours already, trying to get it all in. Just stunning!

[ObviousNewbie]

On 10/17/2022 at 9:41 PM, tararasik said:

Wow, looks like a great model to build. I'm building my Black Pearl and was looking on this model. But at the moment will just watch your build.

I'm a little bit disappointed by the issues that you've mentioned about this kit: single planking, plywood gunports and bow fillers. Looks like you have quite an extra work. I guess double planking could fix all of this issues, but I'm not sure is there enough material for it. As for overall plans or references, I know about two scratch projects, one from Japanese guy and another from Russian that could help.

Hi, thnx for your feedback. Indeed, there are some challenges ahead. First part will be to get my head around painting and weathering. As stated before, I don't consider myself a painter, more of a smearer, so I'm going to have to up my game, especially concerning the technique of dry brushing. Not to worried abut the single plank, but I will need extra wood to cover for the modifications I intend to make, and as my favourite supply shop is roughly 2000 km away, I need to check out the local offerings. Just another part of the adventure, I guess 🙂

 

If you'd happen to have links to the scratch builds you mentioned, I'd be happy to have a look. Thnx for the hat tip already!

[clearway]

Ahh i wondered what you were up to these days Obvious- i would double plank the hull but use 4 or 5mm wide planking strips like on my Terror build. Out of interest the part of England (originally Scotland till the 1100's) i live in was largely settled by the Norseman and we still talk a la'al birra  ancient norse, "as fra Cumbria- oos it gaan"  😁 and all the place names are viking in origin- we still call our hills Fells and the mountains pikes (Englands highest mountain which is about 30-40 km from where i live is now called Scafel Pike but locally in West Cumbria we still pronounce it the old viking way which in english would be spelt Scawfell.

you can see why the Norwegians liked our locality!

 

Keith

Edited October 29, 2022 by clearway
missed info

[ObviousNewbie]

On 10/28/2022 at 9:06 PM, clearway said:

You can see why the Norwegians liked our locality!

 

Keith

Hi Keith, Good to hear from you. I just added Cumbria to my Destination list, indeed, I can imagine the Norwegians feel right at home there 🙂 . Thnx for the tip on the strips, I admit I had a bit of a look at your Terror log before committing to these changes.  Meanwhile, deck planking continues, slow but steady:

 

Very focussed work, it seems a bit stupid getting all that effort in for a deck nobody will see, but I want to use this as a test bed for dry brushing and weathering techniques.

 

Stay healthy and safe,

Robert

Edited October 31, 2022 by ObviousNewbie

[Funkingonuts]

Have been looking at this model for the winter. Had similar concerns and thought on closing the hull. Taking the deck that would become otherwise useless and giving it purpose…for trial runs of finishing.. It will be most enjoyable to follow your  progress. Cheers! 

[ccoyle]

On 10/17/2022 at 3:41 PM, tararasik said:

I know about two scratch projects, one from Japanese guy and another from Russian that could help.

 

Please be advised that the plans produced by that "Japanese guy" constitute an unlicensed reproduction that he is not legally entitled to distribute and thus violate our site's intellectual property rules. I'm not familiar with the other set you mention, but the same rules apply if his work is an exact BP likeness.

[ObviousNewbie]

t's been a while, things have been.. Well, they could have been better. On the build side, I obviously massively underestimated the rethink needed to build the Dutchman closed, been going over the plans several times, changed my mind as to the approach, changed it back after another review, slowing down the actual build to a crawl.

 

In the end the process flow I orginally devised still seemed to be the best: plank and install gun deck, cut gunports, then first planking, then install guns on gun deck. I changed the sequence a bit as I wanted to avoid turning the hull upside down with the guns installed, just in case.

 

Planking the gun deck finished, tested some wood stain sourced locally, and applied to the deck. The result was, well, not what I intended:

Contrary to the samples I tested the stain on, the gun deck has a bit of a satin finish, which I did not want. Also, the colour seemed to move more to the brown than to the grey. This area will be completely covered so I lfet it as is, but my staining solution for the upper decks went right out of the window.

 

I almost threw in the towel there and then. The setback of the stain, the seemingly lower quality of fitting and construction design of the kit itself, which at each step seemed to throw me a curve ball, the continuous re-evaluating of my methods, all of this took a lot of the fun out of building.

 

Decided I needed to take a step back and get some fresh air. Lucklily, there's enough of that around over here :-). Ended up in Tønsberg, south of Oslo, and the oldest town in Norway, going back to the Viking era. Little did I know that this town also held a fully functional replica of the Oseberg longship! It was even open to visit:

 

Needless to say, that little visit brought some of the spirit back and I continued with the build.  First up: planking the hull on the gun deck level. As the curve was significant, reverted to soaking each strip and clamping it into place, so it would keep it's shape after drying.

 

Slow but steady progress,  eventually I reached the point I could use the part Occre provides for the closed port side of the ship to draw a template of the gun ports on paper and transfer them to the hull

 

Then, after reviewing my build process again, started on the garboard plank. I hit an issue here, as in previous builds the bulkheads would reach the edge of the keel, planking the bow was relatively easy. For one reason or another Occre decided to not follow that practice and design the bulkheads so the planks are level with the keel edge. That left me in a bit of a situation, as I could not see how to use the supports on the bow to attach te garboard. Decided to split up the plank, partly install this, then another strip, and use the third strip to cover bow to stern, allowing me to attach the front parts of strips 1 and 2 to the full strip.

 

That went better than expected, continued working on planking the hull until complete:

 

Some sanding still needed, but overall the shape is there. While pondering the placement of the guns on the gun deck, I noticed 2 guns were dummies. Decided to order the 12 remaining dummies to make up a fake gun deck, as I'm trying to make sure the hull can be moved safely back to my home country at the end of my assignment, and the fake gun barrels can be added at the end of the build. Bought some 4mm plywood, cut it to size and drilled the holes, ready to be fitted now.

 

 

Then, on to the bow. After fitting the required pieces, saw that some part of the bow was still uncovered, so decided to add a piece to the tip of the bow, cutting it from some spare wood. After sanding the curvature came out right

 

After a lot of testing and doubting, decided on the colors for deck and hull. Went for Vallejo Medium grey for the deck, German panzer Grey for the hull, as black seemed a bit too dark for my liking. Repainted the bulkheads from black to Grey, and did my first drybrushing:

 

Gave the doors a bit of extra detail with some surplus strips, inpired by the build log of Fubarelf. After that, I painted the deck, glued the superstructure pieces to the frame and added some details on the edges for the upper decks. Also made the helmsman's cover, ready to be drybrushed as well

 

 

Next up: drybrushing and varnishing the decks, and then planking the inside of the bulwarks. As they make a bit of a warp decided to plank only up to the top of the gunports off boat, and finishing the job after they've been installed. Wish me luck!

[clearway]

Nice to see you back with her- i would 2nd plank her with 4mm x 1mm planks which when tapered in the bow area will curve around the built up bows easier- as you are weathering her i would just use softwood strip.

 

Keith