Ranger type yacht by Mark Pearse - 1:12 - SMALL

[KeithAug]

Top left - looks like someone had an accident! Excellent detailing Mark.

 

 

[Jim Lad]

Great weathering, Mark!

 

John

[Mark Pearse]

thanks all, & off theme for a minute, a couple of photos from sailing last Saturday - the subject yacht on the start line:

 

And it got quite gusty later in the day:

[Rick310]

Amazing!!

Rick

[KeithAug]

Hmmm! lee rail in the water, better reduce sail.

[Jim Lad]

Great photos, Mark.

 

John

 

[Veszett Roka]

19 hours ago, KeithAug said:

Hmmm! lee rail in the water, better reduce sail.

... or ask the guy who wearing black baseball cap to come up from lee. Reducing sails in a race? Thats nonsense!

Edited December 12 by Veszett Roka
typo

[KeithAug]

6 hours ago, Veszett Roka said:

Reducing sails in a race? Thats nonsense

Hmmm, it might go faster and point better without the rail submerged. 🙂

[Mark Pearse]

7 hours ago, Veszett Roka said:

or ask the guy who wearing black baseball cap to come up from lee

Hi Veszett, it's worse than you thought.....you can't see that here is a fifth crew to leeward of "the black cap", for safety we always have someone stationed to leeward.

 

1 hour ago, KeithAug said:

it might go faster and point better without the rail submerged

Hi Keith, I agree with that, but on balance over that race we were faster not reefed. Certainly for racing you're always looking for a way to get an advantage, & we tend to set the sails for the average breeze & do what we can in the gusts. 

[KeithAug]

On 12/12/2025 at 10:00 PM, Mark Pearse said:

tend to set the sails for the average breeze & do what we can in the gusts. 

Yes Mark. I remember being very keen on changing sails up to the age of about 50 and thereafter being much less fussy about being over or under sailed. With advancing years "spilling wind" became the preferred strategy. Fortunately roller reefing provided some relief.  I do remember my sailing pal commenting frequently that "I see keith is over sailed again". I guess with more traditional boats sail changes are somewhat more time consuming.

[Mark Pearse]

Thanks for the interesting exchange.

 

Also interesting has been the recent work on the model. I painted the underwater paint, in matt acrylic paint. Initially I bought some Tamiya paint & there were 2 issues: I chose the colour poorly & the paint itself hasn't got good brushing characteristics. I found the paint wanted to gel within several motions of the brush, I'm used to being able to spend more time spreading the paint. I then recalled that the last model I used Vallejo, & also revised the colour. There is no doubt that Vallejo is superior as a paint, the brushing is beautiful & the overall result is excellent. Below if the paint samples I did - the initial ones were too green (Tamiya paint, on the right), & colour is such a subtle thing it just looked wrong. The final colour is the top left: colour number 176 mixed with white at 1:4. All the left board are Vallejo, using a combination of just white & a plain grey. 167 wasn't added to any of the samples.

 

It's like silk, very impressive paint....

 

I decided to start putting metalwork onto the hull, starting with the rudder gudgeon / pintle. But first I needed to experiment a bit with this new wonder product - tinning solution. Eberhard (Wefalck) gave me some detailed & very helpful advice, I read it carefully & did some samples: on the photo below the vertical lines demarcate 4 different surface finishes on the brass, full height of the brass piece; A is plain brass; B is 3 minutes in tinning solution then rubbed with a natural fibre cloth; C is 6 minutes in tinning solution & rubbed; D is 9 minutes in tinning solution - & then because it wasn't visibly different to 6 minutes I used an all-purpose metal polishing paste to buff it. It was clear at this point that a nice silver shine which would closely replicate stainless steel was achievable & that the brass finish would be visible through the tin unless it was very smooth. Until this point I hadn't been sure what the tin colour would actually be, so i was happier than a dog with two tails....

 

Although I could see that the finish level on the brass did impact the finish on the tin, I wanted to know if a greater level of polish was possible & whether it was better to polish the brass before tinning, or the fine polish could be done after tinning over a fine but unpolished base. So the next test was one piece of brass half finished to a fine sand (1, to 1500 grit or similar) & the other half to a near-mirror finish (2). E is brass, F has been well rubbed with a natural cloth & G has been polished. The level of scratches that appears below isn't nearly as visible in reality, but the main point is that the polish level was very similar between the two 'G' samples. IE, a fine sand would be adequate, & then polish the tinned piece. **phew**

 

So here's the rudder gudgeon & pintle, plated & polished:

 

And installed (nb: the pin is like a nail that goes into the timber stock of the rudder & won't be removable - but it won't be visible that it is that detail):

 

The black paint isn't looking great in the photos, it might have to be recoated at some point. One detail that was difficult to achieve is that the rudder blade has full 90º swing - usually for traditional boats you can't remove the tiller on a picnic day because the rudder stock being swung around by the waves will damage the boat's transom - so even if you tie the rudder off on one side, it's still takes up space otherwise useful for laying around... The 90º swing allows the rudder to swing without damage. It was difficult to calculate it out, but I managed it:

 

Next, I came to accept that something more would be needed to give the model a very definite position on the struts, both fore/aft & also athwarts - a system that was simple, obvious & reliable. So, I made a 4mm brass pin & glued it into the underside of the rudder, & it will be pinned to a small hole in one of the timber blocks. The hole (visible in the timber block) will be stained, then glued into place. Note how the silky smooth matt finish on the underwater paint really shows in the keel photo.

 

 

So, an overall photo with all this progress, the rudder blade really helps to complete the hull shape, & the antifoul paint looks nice:

 

 

bye for now

[wefalck]

Well, these Vallejo guys started off supplying the (Spanish) art world, so I would suppose that they do know a bit about brushing paint ... I always struggle brushing on acrylics, but you achieved a really good finish!

[Jim Lad]

That just looks magnificent, Mark!

 

John

[KeithAug]

Beautiful paint job Mark.

[Mark Pearse]

thanks all, 

 

Some more tinning, & I am very happy with the look of it. And also the adaptability, you can polish it to a mirror finish, or to a finish below that - & the impression is different with both. Also, metals are different - colour-wise silver is very warm, nickel is warm & stainless steel is cooler, more grey. The tin plating when polished has a colour similar to stainless steel. 

 

The propeller plated, & with a washer as the visible face of the bearing. Note the difference between the polished blades & satin anode, (the rounded cone). To achieve this, I gave the anode a sanding with 120 grit before the tinning.

 

And installed:

 

And the headsail tracks, now with brass pins on the back for fixing to the plywood deck:

 

And installed:

 

[KeithAug]

Must remember the tinning process, it works really well.

[druxey]

Impressive results from the tinning process, Mark.

[ccoyle]

I am always so impressed by guys that can do their own metalwork!

[Mark Pearse]

NB I have been using 10 minutes in the tinning solution for all of these parts.

[Jim Lad]

Looks very nice indeed, Mark.

 

John

[Mark Pearse]

On with the various details:

 

Chain plates plated & installed with glue, nb: with a 1mm diameter brass rod below, into the deck structure.

 

The traveller is from 2mm brass rod, & the details from brass rod centre drilled to slide on. I made a cardboard template to bend the shape over, although it didn't work fully as the shallow curve had to be done by hand as the metal didn't take the shape on the template. The legs extended down into timber take give a good glue fix. Tinned & polished.

 

The purchased scale winches were plated, & with the spacers for the smaller ones - kindly made by Bedford - fitted, they look good. Also, small bevels to the lower outer edges, to look right they must have a small gap to the timber they sit on.

 

The mast seal was made from 4x 2mm acrylic layers, laser cut into sized doughnuts & sanded to give the rounded edges, painted etc. The actual fitting is a roofing rubber seal with a rubber piece that can be trimmed to suit the size of the pipe (or mast).

 

And the portholes...I had some brass washers & started by enlarging the centre holes to suit. 2 small & 4 large. The washer is on the right, on the left are the washers with the ID adjusted, by hand with the rat tail file & finished with sandpaper wrapped on some dowel.

 

I then had to reduce the OD, & for this I made another version of the home-made lathe. This time using a piece of timber dowel with a centre cut & a timber wedge to lock the washers in place, Crude, but it worked well. I held sandpaper against the spinning edges until the diameter was right. The washers got extremely hot, so actually it was some rags below the sandpaper, & you can see the dowel is slightly scorched.

 

Then soldered the thin wall brass tube pieces to transform them to the portholes. The lip created by the tubing is a small but visually significant detail. In this case I won't show the fixings (6x c/sunk bolt heads on the flanges), as I believe they would be visually much more noticeable than on the actual boat, so in this case they will be left off.

 

There are some flaws, & of course I didn't photograph those ones....but not significant enough (I think) to be an issue. 

The hull the portholes sit on is jet black, & won't put 'glass' into the porthole apertures. But after considering it, I will paint the part of the hull visible through the portholes - but a slightly lighter shade than full black. In reality, glass will reflect surrounding light more than the hull paint & so will appear paler. I'll do a v dark brown/grey, just add a small amount of tints to some black base.

 

thanks,

 

[wefalck]

Your tin-plated parts look very good and simulate stainless less very well. Just the right shine for a model.

 

Personally, I would glaze the windows e.g. with some acrylic glass or microscopy cover glasses.

 

[druxey]

More nice smithing!

[Jim Lad]

More beautiful work, Mark. I agree with Wefalck that you might consider glazing the ports. The glazing would give a more realistic reflection than painting.

 

John

[Bedford]

That metal work is looking brilliant Mark and it's a very good demonstration of the effect of tinning solutions

[Rick310]

Mark, I agree.  Glazers the ports while you still have the option.  Afraid you might be disappointed later if you don’t.

Rick