Scheldt River by Javelin - 1/1250 - Bottle - Dredger

[Keith Black]

 That's really cool, Roel. The cloud turned out great, very realistic. 

[Javelin]

Hi Keith, 

 

on the home stretch now. For me the epoxy was something of a critical point. Everything past that should be easier. 
For this build I planned to make acrylic waves, so that was the next thing to do. The superstructure and rest of the vessel would complicate this if I did it later on. 

The main hurdle was of course getting around the hull and the pesky unicaenis, which I had to move around to stay out of the way of the paintbrush and other tools used for the acrylic gel application. 

The easy part first. I did most of this with an angled brush (I saw this trick from @Glen McGuire, but if I remember correctly he actually cut and glued the brush handle). I didn't cut and glue it since I was expecting to change the angle during application to get to all spots. This assumption was correct. Later on, when the angle became too steep, I actually had to cut the hair short to be able to pass the neck without getting all the gel stuck to the bottle neck... 

 

Further down the road the brush really became too short, so I took it with my long straight tweezers and used masking tape to keep it in place (you don't want to open the tweezers by accident, crashing the brush onto the ship or in the applied gel). 

 

Then came the drying process. I used the same method as I did for drying the acrylic-sand mixture on the Sea Installer build, using a long pipe connected to the air compressor to insert the fresh air in the back of the bottle and let the moist air escape through the neck around the tube. 

 

So when it looked hazy like above, I blew air into it untill the bottle was all clear of condensation again. Then I let it rest again and blew again until clear. 

 

As promised before, a picture with all blocks in sequence. So construction sequence will be from left to right on below pictures (or from aft to forward on the real ship). 

 

Due to the compressor and the thin coat of gel, it only too a few hours to dry the gel. So I started finalizing the ship. 

 

And that's where we are with this update. Hopefully complete tomorrow. The most difficult part will be the long part with superstructure in the front, since I don't really have a good hold on that one. I also shouldn't forget to pass the unicaenis through the bow connection before I put that block inside the bottle. 

 

[FriedClams]

Nice work, Roel - looking very good.

 

22 minutes ago, Javelin said:

using a long pipe connected to the air compressor to insert the fresh air in the back of the bottle and let the moist air escape through the neck around the tube

 

Interesting - never thought about that.

 

Gary

[Glen McGuire]

4 hours ago, Javelin said:

but if I remember correctly he actually cut and glued the brush handle). I didn't cut and glue it since I was expecting to change the angle during application to get to all spots.

You are correct, Roel.  I have cut and glued wooden brush handles to reach behind the ship and other annoying places.  I also have found some brushes with longer metal ferrules where I can bend and rebend the ferrule to change the angle as needed.  Of course you can only do that a few times before you end up breaking the metal completely.  I but cheap brushes and go through quite a few!  As far as getting gel on the inside of the bottle neck, I will sometimes adhere some strips of blue painters tape to the inside of the neck to help keep things clean.  Usually, however, I'm lazy and just decide to clean up any mess afterwards.

 

Your waves are very well done.  Just the right amount of texture.   

[Javelin]

22 hours ago, FriedClams said:

Interesting - never thought about that.

Takes a gas carrier guy to think of such things ;). Changing atmosphere in gas tanks is done in the same way, except that those pipes are fixed of course. 

 

@Glen McGuire, I didn't put too much pattern in those waves since I knew it would shrink that much. In this scale, the shrinkage of the gel is actually an advantage. 

Time to finish this up, there really weren't that many manipulations to do anymore. 

As mentioned yesterday, shouldn't forget to pass the unicaenis through the bow connection before inserting, otherwise it would get really hard to pass it inside that bottle. 

 

There was a slight bend in the main part, with either the accommodation or the aft end wanting to come up. So eventually I glued the forward part first and had to get creative to hold the aft part down while the glue was setting. What are you looking at? Well the aft end of the tweezers is resting on a cup, while the bottle is resting on the center of the tweezers in way of the bottle neck and the open end of the tweezers is pushing down the aft end of the main deck on both sides using the weight of the bottle... I'm not good at holding such a position manually for longer periods of time, I'd probably crush the model or release too early! Hence this idea to let gravity do the work. 

 

 

After some testing when still outside the bottle, I found out that mounting that bridge without knocking the forward crane boom off its support was quite hard. So I decided to glue that boom quite well to its support and I also found out the correct way to mount the bridge to avoid getting stuck on that support. 

Luckily my ideas worked out the way they were supposed to. 

 

And the last action was adding a dab of glue to that bow connection, pulling the unicaenis tights and eventually cutting off the unicaenis inside the bottle. 

 

I don't like shiny bottle caps, certainly not with this kind of working vessels (shiny on a vessel like that means it's probably damaged). So I decided to make the cap white. I wanted to put the logo of the vessel on the cap, but apparently that ship doesn't have a particular logo. 

 

Here are some pictures taken from below the surface, where you can see that light breaking effect. 

 

 

 

 

Together with her predecessor. 

I don't have time to make a name card etc. I'm currently thinking of making a partially submerged bomb in the sand below the bottle, with the scale and name written on its side. Not too large, not too small. Not entirely sure though. A basic piece of wood seems too easy... 

Edited 6 hours ago by Javelin

[Keith Black]

 Congratulations, Roel. A very neat little SIB. 

[Glen McGuire]

That looks FANTASTIC!!  What a cool project and a nice complement to the Sea Installer. 

 

Regarding the bottle cap.  I agree that the white looks better than the shiny silver.  Now if you wanted to get a little crazy, you could make the bottle cap look like some kind of piping cap.  I don't know how much piping there is aboard one of these vessels, but it's just a thought (sorry, that's just the way my mind works!  😃).  Something along the lines of the caps on the ends here:

 

Regardless, I say again what a fantastic job you did here.  I congratulate you on the uniqueness of your subjects and the quality of your builds.  

  

 

Edited 4 hours ago by Glen McGuire