Golden City by Louie da fly - Scale 1:50 and 1:25 - solid hull - Paddlewheeler

[Louie da fly]

A bit of progress. Hulls, decks and awnings for the 1:50 models.

And on the 1:25 model I've finished planking the 'verandah' area (now it needs to be sanded)

and I've masked and painted the blue and red stripes on the lower hull. The first coat of red was very thin, so I had to do a second coat. I still have to do the black for the bottom.

Paddle wheel covers done and painted.

Steven

[Jim Lad]

Crikey, with all that going on I'm surprised you don't have a conveyor belt running through your workshop! 😀

 

John

[Louie da fly]

Continuing the paintwork on the hull. Taking the masking off - there were a few spots where the red bled through into the blue, but they were easy to repair. Next is to paint the rest of the hull black.

And I made a jig for the seats to keep the parts square and properly located. Here is the main seat structure within the jig.

And here is the seat structure removed from the jig. It should save a lot of fiddle and swearing.

I'll still need to add "feet" to the uprights - maybe I'll need another jig - then that will complete the parts of the seat to be painted red.

 

Steven

Edited July 4 by Louie da fly

[Jim Lad]

I'm glad to see that I'm not the only one whose jigs look like that - rough as guts but they do the job intended! 🙂

 

John

[BANYAN]

I thought they were the only type of jigs to build John   Noice work Steven.

 

cheers

 

Pat

[Louie da fly]

Yep, just a bit of scrap plywood and a narrow length of balsa which conveniently had right-angled sides. Glued together with PVA (white) glue. Doesn't have to look good - just has to do the job.

 

Steven

[Louie da fly]

Latest bits and pieces. More seats - there are 4 configurations - 5 if you count mirror-imaged seats on port and starboard sides, but only 3 configurations for the uprights. Most have 2 uprights and are 1.03 metres wide. Here they are all completed.

One has 2 uprights and is 1.5 metres wide, and two have 3 uprights each. So I had to make 2 more jigs for the different ones.

 

I have yet to add the 'feet'. Then the structures have to be painted red.

 

Painting the black section of the hull. No 'bleeding' this time, fortunately.

The bottom is left as-is - it will be screwed and glued to a flat rectangular stand.

And the planked decking of the 'verandah' sanded smooth, ready to attach to the hull.

Steven

[Louie da fly]

I've been working on the deck furniture - painting the seats and the deck structures and assembling the seats. Still in progress, but these photos should give an idea of how it's going.

 

The thingy that looks like a roll-top desk contains sliding-door compartments for storage, and is also where the wheel is to be mounted. The thingy with handles at the top is also for storage as far as I can make out. And you can see the substructures for the benches (on the right, painted red), the seats (left, cream colour) and the backs of the benches (behind the rolltop desk thingy).

Benches in the process of assembly. Note that several of them are asymmetrical - apparently the owners were required to shorten one side of the seat and the backrest because of some regulation or another.

More to come in due course . . .

 

Steven

 

Edited July 27 by Louie da fly

[KeithAug]

On 4/15/2024 at 11:12 AM, Louie da fly said:

It's a little rough and ready because it's a prototype, but that's OK.

You are underselling her Steven. I think she looks rater cute.

[BANYAN]

That looks pretty sweet from my vantage also Steven.  

 

cheers

 

Pat

[Louie da fly]

It's been a while since I've posted in this build. I've been recovering from shock. Everything was going swimmingly until I glued the "verandah" to the lower hull, then - DISASTER!

 

I hadn't lined the two pieces up properly and they were out of alignment - not just a little, but enough to stuff everything upcompletely. And as I'd done such a good workmanlike job with the gluing and clamping, I couldn't get them apart without brutalising them.

 

Which I then proceeded to do. As those who've been following this build are aware, it had taken months to plank the verandah, and all that had apparently gone completely to waste. I prised the two pieces apart with an old chisel, breaking off bits from both pieces and ripping up the lower layer of the plywood deck.

I thought I'd ruined both pieces, and it took me awhile to recover and regroup. First I cleaned up the lower hull, removing fragments of the upper part that had stuck to it, and bogging up the breaks where I'd wrenched it with the chisel.

 

I still thought I'd have toi make a new upper deck, with all the extra work entailed in re-planking. But after awhile I realised that if I removed the worst bits and made sure it was smooth all around the outside of the area it joined the lower hull, the central section didn't matter, so long as it was clear of the join. I did that last week, and VERY carefully lined it all up and (heart in mouth) glued it up again. And it worked! (sigh)

 

So with a restored hull and deck, I was able to move ahead and start adding the deck equipment and the seats. I added the wheel (see an earlier post) to its housing and stuck down the paddlewheel covers and other deck equipment, as well as quite a few of the seats.

 

So here it is in its current manifestation. The forrard seats aren't yet glued in place, just put there. I have to work out their exact placement before I can stick them down. You can see the holes for the posts that support the awning roof around the outer edge of the deck.

  

She's looking pretty good, I think.

 

I've now cut the posts for the awning.

And I've also come up with a solution to a problem I had with the smaller version - location of the posts so they'd line up top and bottom and the awning would stay at the same height throughout. I realised there are three places where there are three posts going across the breadth of the vessel, and if I make three strips of wood to go across the tops of these with holes to locate the tops of the posts, I can get them all the same height and just place the awning on top and glue it down.

 

 I haven't done it yet - watch this space! 

 

Steven

 

 

Edited September 2 by Louie da fly

[Snug Harbor Johnny]

Fantastic save, mate !  Just shows what one can do when working in wood.

Edited September 2 by Snug Harbor Johnny

[Mark Pearse]

happy days Steven, a great save

[Glen McGuire]

Epic save, Steven! Looks great.

[Baker]

A bit late to start following this interesting build with apparently ups and downs.

great work Steven 

[Jim Lad]

Great to see that could bounce back from that disaster, Steven. 

 

John

[BANYAN]

Ah the joys and tribulations of redos   Very nice recovery job though.

 

cheers

 

Pat

[Cathead]

Oh, man, I actually felt nauseous for a minute when I started reading your post. So glad you were able to work it out. Looks really cool!

[Louie da fly]

Yes, I thought I'd completely ruined the whole build over a moment's inattention. I'd taken so much care to make sure the two pieces were rigidly glued together, and then to find that I'd got the alignment wrong (checking it would have taken all of a minute!) and I couldn't get them apart again was heartbreaking. I had all kinds of ideas about making a complete new upper section, and ways to duplicate the look of the planking without having to do it plank by plank all over again. 

 

Took me some weeks to realise that with a bit of ingenuity and the fortunate quality of wood that it can be almost infinitely repaired that I could re-use both pieces after all.

 

And here she is after staining the deck.

And a colour comparison with the real thing.

Steven

Edited September 9 by Louie da fly

[Jim Lad]

That's funny, Steven - it looks exactly the same colour as the original! 🙂

 

John

[Louie da fly]

Yep. I really wasn't sure it would turn out that way. I used river redgum (I think! I bought it from the guy across the road who used to own a farm and got the timber off trees growing there - some Aussie eucalypt,anyway) and the combination of that and Danish oil turned out exactly right, fortunately.

 

Steven  

[druxey]

You must be living right, Steven! Coming along nicely now.

[Louie da fly]

I've left this for awhile, but it's really time I got back to it. I got held up by not knowing how I could duplicate the chrome pipe of the rails that divide passengers from storage areas. Fortunately, a member of my local modelling club put me onto a paint that actually does the trick - not just like yer usual 'silver paint' look, but actual chrome. And this was on bamboo like you get in kitchen skewers, so it's quite an achievement.

And I've put in the uprights that hold up the awning, and solved (I hope) the problem of the keeping the awning piece horizontal throughout, avoiding it sliding down the uprights getting all askew. I just glued the uprights, into holes in crosspieces, so the top of each upright (they're all the same length) is flush with the top of the crosspiece. Simple solution, really, and it'll be invisible when the model is complete. Still in progress.

And here it is with the awning dry fitted. 

 

Steven

 

 

[KeithAug]

18 hours ago, Louie da fly said:

s. Fortunately, a member of my local modelling club put me onto a paint that actually does the trick - not just like yer usual 'silver paint' look, but actual chrome.

Are you going to let us in to the magic paint secret Steven? Good to see more progress.

[Jim Lad]

Your 'chrome' looks very realistic, Steven.

 

John

[Louie da fly]

Keith, it's an Australian brand, though I'm sure there'd be equivalents elsewhere, and apparently used by automobile modellers. The one I have is SMS brand and is called "hyperchrome", and it's alcohol-based and is to be used with an airbrush, though I just used an ordinary watercolour paintbrush and it worked.

 

The guy who put me onto it said to put down an undercoat of black matt, then another coat of black gloss before applying the chrome (which needs several coats). I didn't ask whether the undercoat was supposed to be acrylic or enamel, so I experimented - enamel is the way to go.

 

Now you know as much about it as I do .

 

Steven

[Baker]

Revell has chrome paint in a spray can (expensive) but also in a regular jar for the brush.

https://revell.de/en/shop/product/chrome-spray-150ml?srsltid=AfmBOoogGk3qsx-Qh53CITe_fct7Ysy0_VkL5CZVw2KTfprmXiImrFtn

 

[Louie da fly]

A small update. First, I hadn't mentioned how I'd done the logo on the paddlewheel housing. I had a photo of the vessel side-on, but the definition was pretty bad - certainly not good enough for the model. So I printed the photo out in colour, photocopied it up to the right size, then traced it onto white paper (up against a window in daytime), then re-did it as a new painting. Then colour photocopied it twice, so I had one for each side.

And here it is on the model. Pretty happy with that.

I've also made the little gates that stop people walking off into the water when she's under way.

And I'm working on the painting of the awning roof. Red and white stripes. I've completed the white and just started on the red. First a coat of cheap acrylic - the colour is rather too pink, but it makes a basis and I'll be putting on extra coats with an enamel paint (Humbrol) that is the right colour.

Steven

 

Edited November 8 by Louie da fly

[Jim Lad]

Looks really nice, Steven.

 

John

[Louie da fly]

I've finished painting the awning. Still have to put the wavy fringe along the edge - not sure how I'm going to do that - paper? Card? Thin aluminium sheet?

And here are the paddlewheels, as promised. I used my usual technique to make them - wet the wood and 'roll' it around a (cheap and nasty) soldering iron. Note that I've only made a segment of each, because the rest of the wheel is supposed to be hidden by the housing attached to the hull.

 

Lining up pairs of "wheels" with each other so they would all be nice and square. Didn't really work all that well . . .

And trimming them to remove excess.

Adding the paddles.

Putting the two halves together.

 

It took quite a while to get these acceptable - the tolerances are very strict, the construction is quite frail, and warps and mutates when you look at it, and it was hard to get everything square, particularly the paddles. I eventually put an extra panel at the bottom of each assembly (top, really, as they'll be turned up the other way) to give them rigidity and keep them square. Not perfect, but adequate. 

And removed the side pieces which had kept everything together up till then. And painted.

And here are the registration numbers on the bow, done with a fine watercolour paintbrush. A little wavery, but overall not too shabby considering the difficulties.

Steven

 

 

 

 

Edited Friday at 06:01 AM by Louie da fly