Spartacus by Javelin - FINISHED - 1/2000

[Glen McGuire]

7 hours ago, Javelin said:

Unfortunately it's not possible to make a recognizable scale-penguin in 1/2000. 

@Keith Black tried to get me to do that at 1/500 on my Aurora build, but I could not pull it off!  1/2000??  Whoa!

[Javelin]

Now, now Glen, do I hear a challenge there? 1/500 is definitely doable 😁

 

In any case, time to continue on this one as I want it finished by next week. 

I started with the acrylic sea on top of the epoxy. Normally I'd add some acrylic paint with the gel, but I don't want to lose too much light to the bottom and since the epoxy is already colored, I just went for regular gel. 

 

First was to determine something of a swell. Considering the scale, I need to keep it low. I mixed the acrylic gel with some water, as the heavy medium is otherwise very difficult to handle. I made some raised edges that would be the tops of the swell, they'll help to hold the rest of the gel in the next phase. 

Once those "lines" were dry, I started filling the area in between with pure gel. At first I made strokes in the opposite direction from the assumed wind, to fill up the "shadow" zone of the swell. Afterwards, I reversed. Due to the raised edges, the shadow zone stayed nicely filled while the top of the next wave could be raised a bit. Once that was done, I made small raised ridges representing the wind waves. 

 

Due to the thin layer of acrylic, you can already see that the starting point was drying quite well by the time I reached the other side. I also made a slightly different pattern in the lee of the vessel and floating line. 

 

And by this afternoon it was nearly fully dry

 

Still some opaque areas that are drying, but the general idea is there. The streaks are a bit too deep, but I can live with it for now. I only need to add the neuring buoy near the anchor of the floating line and perhaps some "dirt" on the floating line as well. 

 

 

In the meanwhile I've also made the rescue boat and lifeboats. I will still try to add some windows to break the even orange. They'll be a nice contrast on the ship as well. I've been adding some masts as well. We'll see how far I'll go with the detailing, but after the cutter platform and crane, I think I'll consider it finished. 

 

 

 

[Glen McGuire]

1 hour ago, Javelin said:

Now, now Glen, do I hear a challenge there? 1/500 is definitely doable 😁

From @Keith Black on my Aurora log - "As close as I can figure......According to Mr Google, Antarctic penguins are 24 to 30 inches in height.  A foot at 1:500 scale is .024 inches, correct? That would make 30 inches = to .060 inches."   I wave the white flag on that one!!

 

Regardless of penguins or no penguins, your water effects turned out really nice!  Well done, Javelin!

[Keith Black]

46 minutes ago, Glen McGuire said:

 I wave the white flag on that one!!

 He who thinks they be cowards all, raise your right hand.

 

 

[mtaylor]

Hmm.... emperor penguins can be a tall as 5 feet so double the size of a "normal" one.   But they'd still be tiny on the model.  I'll go stand in the corner now and penance for that.

[Javelin]

On 12/6/2023 at 12:51 AM, mtaylor said:

mm.... emperor penguins can be a tall as 5 feet so double the size of a "normal" one.   But they'd still be tiny on the model.  I'll go stand in the corner now and penance for that.

 

Well Mark those were exactly the ones I had in mind. I'm sure Glen can build them in 1/500, but I'm just starting to think he doesn't like penguins... Pretty sure if you asked him to model longhorns in that scale, he'd do it! Wait a second, didn't he have longhorns in one of his projects??? 

 

I noticed it's been a while since the last update. 

 

I'm actually at a stage where I consider the build complete. I've installed the lifeboats and fast rescue boat as well some masts (left off some detailing as it would be overscale and clutter the build), and eventually the yellow buoy that marks the anchor position of the floating line, and which holds the line that they use to retrieve and move such anchors. 

Here is a close-up of the lifeboat. I first made the davits, with their boarding platform attached, then attached the lifeboat to the platform and eventually used the davits to anchor the thing onto the vessel. 

 

For the rescue boat I used a more conventional approach and I first built the cradle with davit, and then mounted the boat inside of it. 

 

Here is a top view of the result. You can make out the small yellow buoy on the edge of the diorama near the floating line. The acrylic gel still allows you to see the side wires from the top, but the thinner anchor handling wires have become nearly invisible due to the distortion. 

 

This whole diorama measures 14cm x 14cm (around 5.5 inch x 5.5 inch).

 

I just need to make a case for it, as I really don't want to dust this off too many times...

 

Time for the Chaconia tanker to take center stage again in my workshop. Although I have some bottle-projects in mind, I don't think I'll do any side projects as I'm likely to get caught up in those by curiosity with the likely result of me abandoning the big ship again...

[Glen McGuire]

3 hours ago, Javelin said:

Wait a second, didn't he have longhorns in one of his projects???

Yes, for my Archimedes' claw project.  Actually, historians were undecided on whether Archimedes used longhorns or penguins to pull the ropes on the mechanism.  I ended up going with longhorns.

 

 

Really impressive work all around, Javelin!  The main ship, the multicat, the water, everything!!  Well done.  

[Canute]

The rare Sicilian longhorini hornusmaximus. 😁

[KeithAug]

Amazing miniature model. Fantastic work.

[Javelin]

Thanks for the comments and likes. 

This one is running to an end. 

Although it started as a bottle build, which, in retrospect would probably have ended in complete failure, it is still a project for my son. I therefore needed to make something solid as a base and protect it, you know what boys rooms can be like... 

I'm not necessarily happy with this base, but I kind of took what I had available, taking into account that it needed to be sturdy and heavy, capable of taking a hit of I-don't-know-what-he-can-throw-around without immediately flying off the shelf. 

It's not the first case I made of the transparent Vivak plate, but it will be the last one... I probably don't have the right tools to handle this, but all in all it's a very tough material to work with. Cutting is extremely hard, scouring it with a blade, pressing it and snapping it over an edge certainly results in cracks and it's difficult to glue (only MEK seems to work). In the end it will serve its purpose of keeping dust away on top of some shelf. It's also not a top model, as I'm still heavily annoyed by the air bubbles. 

I was also thinking of making a small cutterhead model to place in a corner outside the casing, but I'll first see if he would want that or not. 

Additionally you can see the base of the dio was bent. I'm still not sure what caused it, I'm pretty sure it was still straight after the application of the sand-acrylic mixture, but I'm not sure whether it was still flat after application of the pure acrylic gel over the sand. Could also have been caused by the epoxy I guess. 
Another lesson learned, take a sturdier base (for example a glass bottle) if you want to use epoxy. 

That said, I've painted the edges ochre and will put panels outside the casing, following the contour of the diorama inside and then work up to those plates with acrylic-sand mixture to make it look like the bottom continues outside the casing. This will then also hide the bent base plate. While I'm at it, I might also drop some of that sand over the black sides of that base plate, again following a curved pattern, but I don't consider that strictly necessary.  

 

It'll also get a nameplate, still considering making it flat on the base, following the curves, or screw in a flat, sturdier name plate, some distance off, just touching the curved forward side of the dio.

 

Here you have a better view of the neuring buoy of the floating line. Unfortunately one of the air/gas bubbles attached itself to the line, completely screwing up the effect 😭 You also see the bent base plate.

 

 

[Glen McGuire]

31 minutes ago, Javelin said:

I'm not necessarily happy with this base, but I kind of took what I had available, taking into account that it needed to be sturdy and heavy,

I like your choice of base, Javelin.  Very unique and the colors work well with the build. 

[mtaylor]

From where I sit, it looks great and your son will hopefully be very happy with it.   

[Keith Black]

Javelin, this is a neat little model and I'm sure your son will treasure it forever. Happy Holidays. 

[64Pacific]

Incredible! Just had a quick browse through but will have to read in detail.

[Vinoth93]

On 6/5/2023 at 12:44 AM, Javelin said:

That depends. Preferably a floating pipeline is used, this ranges from a few 100m till several miles. Occasionally, when distances get long and traffic needs to pass, the floating line is connected ho a sinker line on the bottom, so traffic can pass over it. You do still need a floating line to give flexibility to the dredger. The pipeline is connected to a swiveling connection on the stern of the vessel.

Spartacus Stern Connection

 

In cases where this not possible, the dredger can either load barges using 1 or 2 barge loading pipes, T shaped on PS on Spartacus, or pump it in trailing suction hopper dredgers using the stern connection and a pontoon. 

On Spartacus, the pipes are 1.2m diameter and she can pump between 14 and 19km depending on material density and pipeline diameter. 

I still need to build the barge loading towers, I'll have to hinge the inwards to pass the bottle neck. 

Hi, is it possible for you to share images of barge loading T-shape pipes on Spartacus, I am working on a similar project and it would be of great reference

[Javelin]

Hi Vinoth, are you talking about the real ones or the model ones? 

[Javelin]

As you may have noticed, those last bits really are tough for me... 

Finally took a decision on finishing this one. 

As you can see in one of the last pics, the epoxy seems to have lifted the corners of the dio, not entirely sure where that shrinkage came from, since in older pics you can see it was nicely flat on the bottom. 

That said, I had a few options, one of them was to place the casing, then follow the edges of the dio bottom while applying acrylic-sand mixture on the casing walls. 

The other option, the one I actually used, was building up a border around the casing, with the border following the contour of the dio bottom and then filling up to that edge with acrylic-sand mixture. This option would be a bit more difficult, but would allow the casing to be removed (and replaced if required, not too happy with the whole thing, few glue accidents etc. on that case). 

 

 

So once it was decided to go for that border, I built it.

 

Then painted the inside brown (ochre with some black) and applied a mixture of acrylic gel with ochre-black mixture. The reason for the difference is that I didn't want to put the sand/acrylic on paint, with the shrinkage of the acrylic, it might loosen the paint from the border. By mixing the paint with acrylic, it would be an acrylic-acrylic adhesion which seemed less risky to me... 

I wanted some colour on the border as I'm not sure the sand would cover everything, and with a white styrene background that would be too obvious. 

 

And then applied the mixture around it. 

 

And now the curved bottom is a lot less obvious and the case is still removable.

 

I'm already a lot happier than before. One or two more coats of the sand mixture to blend the whole thing in and then a nameplate. I decided, with help from my better half, to cut a negative stencil to apply on the forward black edge of the base. Not sure which colour I'll use for that, probably yellow-green or blue, with, due to the background, black letters. The curve on the forward part are not that extreme that would interfere with the readability of that text. 

 

As you can see in above picture, the case has caught a lot of dust already since it's still standing in my workshop close to the Chaconia, which I'm currently building. 
Hopefully soon a set of final pictures. 

[Keith Black]

 Such a neat little model. 

[Landlubber Mike]

Very cool diorama!  Very clever for sure!  Thanks for sharing your experience with using epoxy - good to know what to look out for whenever I finish my SIB build.

[Javelin]

She's finally finished. I put some pics in the gallery. 

 

Thanks Mike. Hope somebody can learn from my experiments. 

I guess in most cases it's not such an issue since the epoxy stays in the sturdy box/bottle in which it is poured. I removed the bounderies, which was perhaps done too early, creating this bending. It's not a disaster as I could still hide it with the base, but I'll take it in consideration for future builds. 

 

[Mirabell61]

Congrats Roel,

super work at that small scale, and the sea looks great as well

 

Nils

[Glen McGuire]

Hey Roel - I think it turned out fantastic and I really like what you did with the borders.  The added sand mixture blended in perfectly.  Well done all the way around.

 

This was such a unique and interesting project to follow.  Congratulations on a fine addition to you collection of interesting builds.