Armed Virginia Sloop by GuntherMT - FINISHED - Model Shipways - scale 1:48

[themadchemist]

...... Xtreme bulwark sanding...brought to you by NO FEAR

Just my opinion, and this comes from doing auto body sanding.
As it looks that the edges are getting hit hardest... are they high or curved.... are you using a block or hand sanding.....either has issues if the surface has a compound curvature. I remember a molded in hood scoop on a '68 Mustang that I shaped into the blinker light bezels in the hood and the complex curvature made symmetry and smoothness a real pain to get right.
 
I would go with the voice of experience and go with Alistair's method. Rubbing one out can make a world of difference and not just on paint. The ebony domino's, which are my DSotM's stand, shine like crazy and its just from 1000 grit sanding then a hard buffing with soft cotton. I was quite happy with the finish and never expected such a shine from just raw wood, but then ebony is very tight grained.
 
It is always these little detail tasks that seem to take so much time in grasping them, It makes them more precious when we acquire them.
..... but I like a steep learning curve.
 

Edited November 15, 2014 by themadchemist

[GuntherMT]

Thanks for the input gentlemen.  I always struggled with painting before I got the airbrush when I was doing plastic modeling in my teens and 20's, so it comes as no surprise to me that I'm going to need to expend a lot of time and effort into figuring out how to do a good job with painting now.

 

I'll continue to work at it and see what sort of results I can get.

 

Cheers!

[dgbot]

My sympathies, I have the same problem when using a brush.

David B

[dgbot]

Brian, have you experimented with cheese cloth?

David B

[GuntherMT]

Brian, have you experimented with cheese cloth?

David B

 

Nope.  I had to Google what exactly cheesecloth is

[GuntherMT]

I'm getting pretty good at making mistakes!  I realized this morning that I forgot to cut the scuppers into the black strake.  I've done a bit of work trying to cut the scuppers in after the fact, but I think I may end up just ripping the black strake out and re-doing it correctly as shorter planks with the scuppers cut into them in advance.

 

Oh well, it's a two steps backwards day I suppose.  I did get a couple more coats of red on the inner bulwarks and have now put on the first coat of clear.   I had already begun the outer bulwark planking when I figured out that I'd forgotten the scuppers in the black strakes, so that will complicate the removal and replacement of those pieces.

[aliluke]

Brian before you rip off the black strakes consider forming the scuppers with them in place. Use a small drill bit to form the basic shape and then file to get the final shape. I don't think the scuppers need to go right through the hull. To do so and get inside/outside alignment for a full penetration is extremely difficult and in the overall context of the build is not necessary. I've seen modellers do this and the scuppers end up being far too big and ugly. The scuppers in my black strake are mere hints and give an indication of their existence rather than anything else. It does not detract from the model - they are there. As I just said, getting full penetration through the hull could end up being a bigger mess and getting a useful hint of them being there is a better approach in my opinion. I certainly won't try to get the scuppers on my Fly from the hull all the way through to the waterway. Almost impossible and far too risky.

[GuntherMT]

I'm working on that Alistair, so far with mixed results.  I plan to finish them all, then do some repair work around them from my clumsiness and see how they look before making the final decision on complete removal or not.  Thanks for the suggestion.

[aliluke]

To illustrate I just took some pictures of my model - man it is dusty and notice how much the deck has yellowed - not unhappy with that! External scuppers and internal scuppers - each just finished with some black paint and no full penetration. Attached - taken just a minute ago. Keep them small I reckon. Same applies to the sweep ports.

 

Edit: Also worth noting the use of getting the definition of the planking joints through the paint - inside and out?

 

Edit: Deleted the photo attachments to avoid confusion.

Edited November 18, 2014 by aliluke

[grayarea]

Brian, 

I'm just catching up with your build; it's beautiful so far. Your pace is certainly faster than mine and you've documented a lot of details - so I'm looking forward to using your own experience to solve many of the challenges I know lay before me. 

Unlike you, I'm not thinking very far ahead about processes like treenails and decking material. My brain power is fully occupied just to make sure I'm taking things in the right order to make each subsequent step as easy as possible.

Thanks for sharing and the great photos.

[dgbot]

If you did that  photo with a background I would have bet even money that it was real.  Good job.

David B

[GuntherMT]

Thanks for the pictures Alistair.  After the filling and sanding, I added paint, and I think I will be able to salvage this without removing the strakes.  I am not completely happy with the outside scuppers, as they aren't terribly consistent, but oh well.  I'll try to get a photo or two up tonight.  Got home very late from work so we'll see how it goes.

 

Unlike you, I'm not thinking very far ahead about processes like treenails and decking material. My brain power is fully occupied just to make sure I'm taking things in the right order to make each subsequent step as easy as possible.

 

 

If I was thinking ahead, I probably wouldn't have put the black strakes on without cutting the scuppers!  I really should do more thinking and planning ahead, and I really should have built at least one gun carriage to test the height of the gun ports, but I didn't, so I'm just crossing my fingers there.

 

 

David - I think you are probably referring to the lovely photo's in Alistair's post.  Those are from his AVS build, not mine, and yes, he did a great job on that build, it's one that I reference quite a lot while messing with mine.

[GuntherMT]

Photo update.  Went out this weekend and got some 'real' paint brushes instead of the cheapo's I've been using.

 

Did one last holly planking test.  This test was for two things - when I bought the brushes I also got some artists pencils, so I wanted to test the caulking with the pencils instead of the tissue.  The top two caulk lines have 4B pencil on both sides of the joint (i.e. I penciled both planks on the facing side).  The bottom four have pencil only on the upper plank.  Before doing any sanding, the top two were more pronounced, but after sanding down the filler for the nails, I can't tell the difference.  The pencil caulking is not as sharp or dark as the tissue paper (old sample to the left).

 

The three rows of tree nails are using the 'new' filler, and .031, .028, and .024 holes side by side, all applied at the same time, so they have the same finishing treatment (scraped and sanded, 2 layers of Poly applied and buffed).

 

I'm likely to go with the 4B caulking (single side) and .028 filler tree nails on the final deck.

 

My camera refused to get a good focus on the black strake showing my post-installation scuppers, but hopefully you can get an idea.  The first picture is the 'bad' side, where they are larger and more uneven.  The second is of the 'better' side.  If I could do it over again, I'd place some sort of filler block between the outer planking and the spirketing plank, and then be very careful not to drill all the way through, as it's quite clear that my inner and outer scuppers don't line up in several places when you line up and look through them.

 

And a few photo's of the current status of the inner bulwarks.  I somehow have a few tiny spots that the red paint appears to have a 'hole'.  No idea how that happened, but I may go back and try to touch that up when I do the final painting of the gunport sills, which I'll need to do after I get the outer planking on because of final trimming/sanding of that layer of walnut.

[Grimber]

those tiny holes, air bubbles in the lower paint coats that eventually pop as the paint dries

 

I get my brushs from McGills Warehouse

allot less money than retail for professional paint brushs

Edited November 18, 2014 by Grimber

[grayarea]

 

If I was thinking ahead, I probably wouldn't have put the black strakes on without cutting the scuppers!  I really should do more thinking and planning ahead, and I really should have built at least one gun carriage to test the height of the gun ports, but I didn't, so I'm just crossing my fingers there.

 

Hmm. Build a gun carriage before I sized the gun ports. That would have been a good idea. 

The consolation for the trials involved in this hobby is knowing that the real boats built during this period were notorious for being less than symmetrical. And I've raced on a few modern boats that were always faster on one tack than the other - no matter what anybody did to tune the rigging and straighten them out.

Edited November 18, 2014 by grayarea

[GuntherMT]

those tiny holes, air bubbles in the lower paint coats that eventually pop as the paint dries

 

I get my brushs from McGills Warehouse

allot less money than retail for professional paint brushs

 

Air bubbles.  Huh.  The more you know.

 

Hobby Lobby had single brushes for 50% off that day, so I didn't do too terribly on the brush price, but thanks for that link, saved for the future.

[augie]

Good investment on the brushes and an equally good choice on the treenail/caulking to move ahead with.  Experiments pay off.

[aliluke]

Hi Brian

Those scuppers look just fine to me - exactly the right scale to my eye. Much better doing them that way than the potential damage caused by taking off the black strake. As a detail, in the long run, they pale into insignificance amongst all the other details. You should be fine on the gun ports as you have followed all of the other relationships correctly. It is worth checking now though. Are you adding the little gold moulding along the top of the black strake? It makes a nice touch and slightly raises the gun port as it needs a sill liner in the port to compensate for the height of the moulding above the strake.

 

Your caulking choice is a good one and looks good too. One advantage of the pencil on one side is that if you get a gap for any reason you can fill it with a sawdust/white glue mix and get rid of it. If you have pencil on both sides you get a caulking line on both sides of the filled gap which looks worse than the gap. Danny demonstrates this somewhere in the forums - I'll have a look for it and post a link. I penciled (HB) both sides but won't do so in the future based on his advice.

 

P.S. I deleted those photos from my post to remove any confusion about whose ship is who's. Can P.M. them to you if you'd still like the reference.

 

Edit: Brian - Here is that link for fixing gaps and the advantage of ONE side only caulking  - http://modelshipworld.com/index.php/topic/814-how-i-fix-boo-boos-and-oopsies-mistakes-by-dan-vadas-share-your-own-fixes-here/

Edited November 18, 2014 by aliluke

[themadchemist]

DanV's Boo-Boo thread is a must read.

I agree in the scuppers, they look great. Also on the gun heights, remember wood thickness will play a part. If I'm remembering correctly you upgraded to holly, which will raise the cannons if its thick. Seems I read something in Alistair's logs on this, as I've been enjoying his build logs.

 

Oh and BTW, you mention Hobby Lobby, if I haven't already mentioned it, there is a phone app that gets you 40% off the most expensive item and it renews daily. Hobby Lobby is a great source for materials.

[GuntherMT]

DanV's Boo-Boo thread is a must read.

I agree in the scuppers, they look great. Also on the gun heights, remember wood thickness will play a part. If I'm remembering correctly you upgraded to holly, which will raise the cannons if its thick. Seems I read something in Alistair's logs on this, as I've been enjoying his build logs.

 

Oh and BTW, you mention Hobby Lobby, if I haven't already mentioned it, there is a phone app that gets you 40% off the most expensive item and it renews daily. Hobby Lobby is a great source for materials.

 

I do have holly for the deck, but I got it in the same size as the kit decking, so should make no difference in height.  I've never really shopped at Hobby Lobby before, as I always thought it was more about 'craft' stuff (which honestly, it really is).  However, there are no traditional hobby stores at all on this side of town, and Hobby Lobby at about 30 minutes from my house is the closest place to get really anything hobby related that I can't get at a Lowes or Home Depot.

 

Made a little bit of progress since my last update, and learned another lesson about using clamps on painted surfaces (the lesson is - "don't do that you idiot").  I ended up having to do quite a bit of cleanup work on the inner bulkheads after leaving some divots and black marks on my nicely finished red bulkheads, so now I'm doing this when I need to clamp the outer planks:

 

I've got the three .030 planks on the outer bulwarks now from the aft gun port to the stem.  I need to trim them off at the gun ports now, and then paint the gunports again.

 

I also got a serving machine from Alexey and played with it a little bit this afternoon.    It will allow me to properly serve the rigging whenever I get to it - pretty slick machine, and the ability to fully serve the shrouds where needed in just a couple minutes will be amazing and awesome.  I need to find some slightly thicker thread though, the regular sewing thread I have is so fine that the 'serving' is sort of lost unless you are looking at it with a magnifying glass.

Edited November 20, 2014 by GuntherMT

[aliluke]

Brian - You remain totally in control - great work. Really like those photos which show the sweep of the hull - nice, I asked earlier, but is that little gold moulding going to be put on above the black strake? It is worth it - full run of the hull but a nice addition.

 

I am envious that you have a serving machine - this must be next on my list of non-power tools.

[dgbot]

Nice planking job Brian  The reason I use an airbrush is because I am heavy handed and usually get a bad looking job using a brush.  I do have decent brushes too.

David B

[GuntherMT]

Thanks gents.

 

Alistair - I meant to answer that question last time and forgot, sorry about that.  I tried an experiment and painted the gold line on using India ink, and it looked great, but because the wood was already sealed it never dried, and 2 days later I could just wipe it off.  At that point I had already added the lower line of outer planking.  I also found that the black ink I'd been using for the strakes, even after adding 3 layers of poly was still bleeding off on things when wiped, so I ended up doing a light sand and adding several layers of black acrylic when I did the scuppers (since I didn't have a way to get the ink into them, I was sort of stuck anyway).  I'm not sure at this point what I'll do with that gold line.  I may go ahead and add it back in later, but I have not decided for sure yet.

 

David, believe me, an airbrush is on my list of tools I'd like to add to my collection, but it's not in the cards for this build.

[aliluke]

Brian

No need for sorry! The little gold band I did as a separate strip - 1mm x 1mm or so with a rounded top edge - and painted with gold paint from Admiralty paints. It is a nice touch but no biggy if it isn't there. The top plank under the cap rail and above the three outer planks you have on should be slightly thicker than the planks below but I guess you know that. I painted it Sky Blue with Citadel Paint - very nice paints by the way, mostly used by war gamers who paint those little metal figures.

[Grimber]

Thanks gents.

 

Alistair - I meant to answer that question last time and forgot, sorry about that.  I tried an experiment and painted the gold line on using India ink, and it looked great, but because the wood was already sealed it never dried, and 2 days later I could just wipe it off.  At that point I had already added the lower line of outer planking.  I also found that the black ink I'd been using for the strakes, even after adding 3 layers of poly was still bleeding off on things when wiped, so I ended up doing a light sand and adding several layers of black acrylic when I did the scuppers (since I didn't have a way to get the ink into them, I was sort of stuck anyway).  I'm not sure at this point what I'll do with that gold line.  I may go ahead and add it back in later, but I have not decided for sure yet.

 

David, believe me, an airbrush is on my list of tools I'd like to add to my collection, but it's not in the cards for this build.

 

I may order an airbrush myself  probably from  http://www.tcpglobal.com/

Harbor freight does carry a couple also

[dgbot]

Go with a Badger been very happy with the item great quality and easy to work with.  At the moment I am using their 360 internal mix. double action.  There is a learning curve but worth the hassle.

David B

[GuntherMT]

Thanks Alistair, and yes, the next plank up is a 3/64" thick plank instead of the .030.

 

I may order an airbrush myself  probably from  http://www.tcpglobal.com/

Harbor freight does carry a couple also

 

The reason I don't have an airbrush at the moment Grimber, is that I've experienced cheap airbrushes (like Harbor Freight type) and I have had unpleasant results with them.  When I do pull the trigger on one it will likely be a good dual-action Iwata, and I'll also get a good silent compressor with tank at the same time with all the proper regulators and water traps, and that will add up to a fair penny or two.  Since my actual need for an air-brush right now is really fairly limited (no paint at all on the Carmen, and somewhat limited painting on the AVS), it's just not high up on my spending priority list at the moment.

 

David - I had a nice dual action Badger the last time that I had an airbrush (i.e. 25 or so years ago), and I was pretty happy with it, but the research I've done so far (admittedly not exhaustive at this point) is pointing me towards Iwata as the 'top dog' in the field at the moment.  Whenever the airbrush percolates to the top of my 'buy' list, I'll take another look and Badger will certainly be in the mix for the research.

 

No work on the AVS tonight, had a charity thing at work this afternoon, and afterwards a bunch of us went out for dinner & drinks, and I just got home a little bit ago.  So tonight is catch up on forums and get to bed!

[Grimber]

i know what you mean on cheap airbrush .  My first one was cheap and I payed for that.  but you should look into CO2  or an O2 tank vs a compressor when planning on buying one.  cheap to refill and don't have the moisture issues a compressor has.  5lb tank use to last me a couple years.

[Mahuna]

Hi Brian:

 

I have both Badger and Iwata airbrushes.  Why don't you plan to stick around for a while after the 11/29 meeting and we can look at both - maybe even spray a little paint around.

 

Frank

[GuntherMT]

Sounds like a plan Frank.  I'd have responded to the emails, but apparently Cox email servers are down now, so I can't!  I'll bring over some stuff for the seizings too.

 

Hope you had a wonderful vacation.  I'm off now until the 2nd, although I don't plan on going anywhere.