Arkadion by GeorgeKapas - FINISHED - 1/72 Greek blockade runner for the Maritime Museum of Crete

[GeorgeKapas]

Good evening all! So once again I have not posted for a while, but this year was different. Many projects were finished, and many more are on the way. In fact I have been modeling quite a lot, including commisions. 

 

Arkadion was originally ordered by the Confederate states as CSS Dream, but the end of the American civil war in 1865 found it still at the stocks in Liverpool. The following year, 1866, the Cretan revolt began, and the Greek state bought several of these unfinished confederate blockade runners in order to supply the revolutionaries on the island. Arkadion was the first such ship, and managed 23 such supply runs until the Ottoman navy managed to intercept it. 

 

It is indeed a historic ship for my island, and I wanted to make a model of her, donating it to the Maritime Museum of Crete. The museum has a large collection of post WW2 vessels, but no earlier historic ships. The plans of such ships are extremely rare. In fact none I could find of Dream. Never the less, the plans of CSS Hope, the next "class" of blockade runners were abailable, and so I modified them to approach Arkadion as best as I could. 

 

The lines were re-formed to match Arkadion's dimensions, the deck arrangement and superstructure was moved around to match the only depiction of her that we have. Obviously all these were done respecting the opinions of the Museum's curators, since I had informed them of my intention to donate the finished model. Here is the early version of the plans

[GeorgeKapas]

Today and tomorow I'll slowly post all the built. My building method is rather unique, similar to that of the brig Ares, but it suits me, so it is what it is. The museum insisted on a a large model and not the kit-sized ones I prefer. We found the middle road at 1/72 for a meter long model, which was at the upper limit of what I can do with my methods. 

The frames are made out of 1 or 2 mm balsa sandwiched between two sheets thick paper. It strengthens the balsa amazingly a lot, while i can still cut and shape it with the modeling knife. In fact the entire ship was done with the exacto knife. 

[GeorgeKapas]

So this is the ship talking shape. It is not solid balsa all the way through, I just put plugs between the frames (which are hardened with superglue) and sand them down 

[GeorgeKapas]

Above the balsa, just like the rest of my projects, I "plank" it with stripes of thick paper and coat it with thinned woodglue that hardens and protects the balsa underneath. Then a coat of filler.