Eilean Mor

[BanjomanParticipant @banjoman]

With the maiden sail under my vest, I've gotten back to adding a few more touches to the build.

One such touch is a newspaper, more specifically the Evening Times from Saturday, June 2nd 1951, which I've been able to find a complete set of scans for in the Google News archives.

I've managed to copy these scans as screen shots, which I've then cleaned up a tad.

Here are a few examples – first the front page …

… then an inside page …

… and also the first page of the sports section … I dare say that although 14 quid was a decent bit of money in 1951, I'm sure, football player's wages may have gone up with a little more than just inflation since then …

Anyway, the resulting images were reduced to scale size (standard tabloid format becomes roughly 12×17 mm in 1:24) and printed out on both sides of the thinnest printer paper – 50 g/m2 – I've been able to lay my hands on…

… then cut out, and turned into a complete newspaper, folded up a bit haphazardly to look like one that has been read a couple of times already, and handled in the process.

Finally, I daubed the whole thing with some watered-down PVA glue, and put in press to dry, to get a sufficient flatness to the whole thing – otherwise the edges of the paper will stick up in an unrealistic manner – and finally threw the paper down on the lavatory seat, where it has thus been left by a previous visitor for a coming one.

To be continued …

/Mattias

Edited By Banjoman on 23/04/2015 20:23:17

[Bob Abell 2Participant @bobabell2]

Hello Banjo

For extra realism,,,,,,

Cut the newspaper into squares…..Thread them on a string……and hang them up in the petty!

That`s all we had, during the war years!……..And maybe a candle at night time

Petty is a Northern name for the Loo!

Bob

[BanjomanParticipant @banjoman]

Hello Bob!

I did indeed consider that possibility quite a while ago, while building the petty (and thank you very much for this extension to my vocabulary) but in the end decided against it. In my scenario, it is early June 1951 (cf. the date of the newspaper!) and from what I've been able to ascertain, toilet rolls where avialable, so in the optimistic spirit of the Festival of Britain, I decided that the crew would have the benefit of this creature comfort (look just inside the petty door). Another reason for my decision was that even with the very thin paper I found, those squares would still look much too thick when hung up on a string like that.

/Mattias

[Bob Abell 2Participant @bobabell2]

Excellent explanation, Banjo

Petty door?………I like it!

For your amusement…..

Mek a big `un…..Nex` time?

Bob

[BanjomanParticipant @banjoman]

Cor blimey, Bob – that'd be summat!

The next little detailing job to be tackled was stowing away the anchor light somewhere on the foredeck.

I'd early on decided to use another empty beer crate, like the one in which I'd thrown the battening wedges from the opened-up part of the hatch, but to fill out things a bit and create more interest I wanted something more than just the light to go in there.

I therefore rolled some Milliput in roughly cylindrical shape around a short length of 3 mm brass tube.

Once the Milliput had gone off completely this was set up in my micro lathe …

… and turned and sanded to outline shape.

I then began some more detailed turning …

… to produce this object …

… to which was added a handle from some flattened 0.8 mm soft brass wire …

… and a cap made from a short slice of aluminium tubing and some more Milliput.

I also filed some grip slots onto the top of the cap, and made up a screw-on spout from another slice of aluminium tubing set around a Zap CA-glue Flexi-tip into which a short length of 0.5 mm brass wire was inserted to create a permanent bend towards the end of the spout.

The whole thing was then painted grey …

… and dry brushed with "oily steel" colour paint, to hopefully look like a tin container with a screw-on spout (note that the inside of the spout has been threaded with a 2.5 mm die tap) for the lamp oil.

I then made up an empty beer crate of the same model as the previous one …

… which looked like this …

… complete with its contents.

The crate still needs to be painted a translucent orange …

… and a couple of ringbolts added in front of the companionway shelter to which it can be tied down, but the general look of the thing should, I hope, be clear already.

To be continued …

/Mattias

Edited By Banjoman on 23/04/2015 21:53:34

Edited By Banjoman on 23/04/2015 21:54:25

Edited By Banjoman on 23/04/2015 21:55:26

[BanjomanParticipant @banjoman]

Another wee project with which I've kept myself amused lately is the construction of a launch cradle. As it turned out, one isn't really necessary at the pond of my Club, but sooner or later I dare say one might come in handy for launching and/or retrieving models from waters where there is a bit more of a distance between where one has to stand and the surface of the water.

Anyway, I began construction by getting out the mitre saw to cut off suitable lengths from a piece of 34×34 mm wooden lath …

… that were drilled for the necessary holes, after which I cut of two lenghts of 12 mm threaded steel rod.

The steel rods will eventually form the core of the handles, but right now they were inserted to help ensure proper alignement while the pieces of wood were all glued together.

The resulting frame was then given a coat of primer …

… followed by a couple of coats of nice, bright orange — this is one item that will not get lost in the tall grass

Next, the hardware was added: the handles, made up from the already mentioned threaded rod with grips from pieces of reinforced hose pipe, reinforcing nuts-and-bolts where the timbers cross, and eyelet bolts through the ends of the crosspieces.

The actual cradle to hang from the frame was in its turn made up from a strong, synthetic rope, covered with soft hose pipe, with distance pieces from aluminium lath (at the top) and more hose-covered rope (at the level where a hull would be resting). The cradle is secured to the lifting frame with eyelets, snap hooks and thimbles.

This contraption still needs to be properly field-tested, but I hope and think that it should considerably faciltate launches and retrievals from jetties and similar structures.

To be continued …

/Mattias

Edited By Banjoman on 24/04/2015 09:18:21

Edited By Banjoman on 24/04/2015 09:20:28

[Amy jane SeptemberParticipant @amyjaneseptember49770]

Congrats on the sailing, sir..

A jolly fine sight indeed!

I hope you congratulated your self well…

[BanjomanParticipant @banjoman]

Thank you very much indeed, Amyjane! And yes, I will admit to having extended a couple of pats to my own back …

Anyway, since yesterday I have tinted and varnished the beer crate, added two ringbolts to the foredeck, lashed it down …

… and added the anchor light and lamp oil container …

… to the crate.

To be continued …

/Mattias

Edited By Banjoman on 24/04/2015 18:00:09

[BanjomanParticipant @banjoman]

Well, well, well … the last time I wrote "to be continued" in this thread was on April 24th! Since then, the usual busy spring-and-early summer gigging schedule plus some holidays and other distractions has pretty much kept me out of my workshop, but over the last couple of weeks there has finally been time to return in a proper way to model building

As previously mentioned, next up on the list of remining jobs on this model was adding the bottom boards and thwarts to the dinghy, and as it seemed logical to me to do the bottom boards first, well that's what I did!

First the two central boards …

and then the third and fourth next to these. So far the boards are (obviously!) only lying loose at the bottom of the dinghy …

I also decided to put in a small grating hatch in the bottom boards, so that there would be access to the keelson for bailing when underway in the dinghy. I therefore sent off for a Caldercraft grating set …

… and set about putting it together.

Obviously I am only going to use a part of the finished garting, but it was of course just as easy to build the whole thing first, with a view to cutting out the needed piece afterwards.

To be continued …

/Mattias

 

Edited By Banjoman on 21/07/2015 09:32:51

[Dave MilbournParticipant @davemilbourn48782]

Mattias

I really ought to know better than to look at one of your posts before I go out into my own workshop. I shall feel clumsy and rather depressed all morning now! Truly wonderful stuff, sir.

Dave M

[BanjomanParticipant @banjoman]

Thank you ever so much, Dave – you are far, far too kind, and all I can say is "aw, shucks" …

At this stage it was time to start glueing together (some of) the bottom boards with the help of stringers on the underside. Although the two outermost boards have not yet been given their final shape, I used the two blanks for them at this stage to be bale to give the central, full length stringers the right dimensions.

The stringers where then glued to the thirda and fourth boards only …

… the joints weighted down and left to set under pressure …

… with this result.

The two central boards were once more dryfitted …

… and the grating given a first application of mahogany stain.

Next, I measured the two central boards for the opening for the grating …

… and, with a razor blade saw, cut through the boards approximately 3/4 of the way.

The two central boards where then glued in place, and the remaining wood cut through with a scalpel to create the opening. At this stage, I also cut out the necessary notches in the stringers to fit over the keelson.

I then added a frame …

… around the grating opening, including a ledge for the grating to rest upon. The frame has not yet been sanded down to be flush with the boards, here, but that did of course soon follow …

To be continued …

/Mattias

Edited By Banjoman on 21/07/2015 09:51:15

[BanjomanParticipant @banjoman]

Next, the two outermost boards were cut down to size, given their final shape, and glued in place too.

The grating likewise was cut down to the right size, and sanded down from both sides until it fitted flush with the upper side of the bottom boards.

The bottom boards now looked like this at the bottom of the dinghy.

They were then taken out again, and a series of 0.51 mm holes drilled from below through the stringers and boards, into which 0.53 miniature doll's house brass nails were a tight push fit.

At this stage, the nails were pushed through but not all the way down …

… as the main purpose of adding them at this stage was to help hold the structure together during staining. I have learnt from experience that the amount of water that is invariably added to the wood during staining will inevitably make the wood expand, with different bits expanding at different rates and in different directions, depending on the grain direction and the dimensions of each part. If one is unlucky, this can lead to glue joints being broken open, but with the nails in place I'm happy to say that eveything remained stuck together.

Once the couple of coats of stain had fully dried, the whole thing was given several coats of gloss varnish. The nail heads were then cleaned and polished with a cotton bud, dipped in methylated spirits, before being driven home and cut off, flush with the underside of the boards.

To be continued …

/Mattias

[BanjomanParticipant @banjoman]

With the bottom boards sorted, it was time to get on with the thwarts. As in previous stages of the build, I decided to discard the screen-printed plywood blanks that came with the kit, and instead dug out a piece of 1 mm maple sheet, which I cut into suitable strips on the bandsaw.

My initial idea for the aft benches was to cut notches into them so that they would fit around the (false) frames on the inside of the hull …

… like this …

… but in the end I abandoned this idea in favour of a set of stern thwarts and benches that would just rest on top of the thwart stringer, up against the inside of the frames.

At this stage, the stern thwarts and benches were just a mock-up, anyway, as I wanted to put such a one together against which to measure the final version, which could then be built flat on the table, completely off the dinghy.

A new set of components were therefore cut to size and fitted together with the mock-up as guide. Given that the dinghy hull is not perfectly symmetrical between the port and starboard sides, I found this approach much easier than trying to measure the two quarters of the dinghy and then build from that.

Once the main pieces had been shaped to fit against each other at the appropriate angles, the aftmost thwart was fixed in place with some masking tape, while the front thwart was glued in.

Next, the aft joints were cut out to make room for a couple of knees, and the aft thwart then glued onto the bench ends.

Two knee blanks were made up, and also glued in position …

… and, once the glue had set, filed and sanded to their proper, rounded shape. A 0.5 mm stringer was then glued onto the fore-and-aft outsides, in part to fill out the shape to fit just so between the frames, but also in order to create a nice and smooth profile line.

Finally, after sanding down the outside stringers and the upper and lower surfaces, two reinforcing stringers were glued into place on the underside.

The thwarts and benches now fitted quite nicely in the stern …

… with the cut-out joinery creating a made-up look to the whole thing that would have been missing, had I used the one-piece plywood blank that came with the kit.

A fore twart was also made up, and the whole given the usual couple of coats of mahogany stain …

… followed by the equally usual four or five coats of gloss varnish …

… to finally look like this on my work top …

… and like this …

… in the dinghy.

To be continued …

/Mattias

Edited By Banjoman on 21/07/2015 11:57:22

[BanjomanParticipant @banjoman]

With the joinery work for the dinghy sorted, it was time to get on with some of the detail work, the first one of which was to clean up the white metal rowlocks. Lucklily, it was mostly swarf, which is fairly easy to remove …

The bulwark capping was then drilled through in four locations …

… and short lenghts of 1.6 mm thin-walled brass tube inserted for the rowlocks to turn in.

Speaking of brass tube, I noticed that I'd managed to knock off one of the gudgeons from the stern, so a new one was produced and glued in place.

I also added a stopping pin to the top of the rudder shaft for the tiller to rest upon, and filled in a small part of the hole in the tiller with some Milliput for a nice and tight fit over the rudder shaft.

I have noticed that many dinghys have the rowlocks secured to the hull with a short line or chain, and thought that this little detail could look rather nice if reproduced.

I therefore went through my scrap box, and found half a sheet of very small, etched brass eyebolts from a previous build of the Caldercraft HMS Pickle. These had been painted black at the time of the Pickle build, and here I wanted them to be bare metal. An overnight soak in methylated spirits did the trick, and the paint then came off quite easily.

The eyes of the eyebolts were then cut open with the tip of a scalpel, a short lenght of 42 lpi chain was attached …

… and the eyes closed again, to produce four securing chains for the rowlocks.

0.35 mm holea ere then drilled in the shanks of the rowlocks (and also on the inside of the hull); here the chain is only dryfitted, though.

Finally, I made up a ringbolt for the stem to which I shall attach the painter.

To be continued …

/Mattias

Edited By Banjoman on 22/07/2015 07:35:26

[Bob Abell 2Participant @bobabell2]

Hello Banjo

Nice little dinghy, with such lovely attention to detail

How do you protect your model from gathering dust?

Bob

[Ralph PinchParticipant @ralphpinch41762]

Hi Banjo, only one word comes to mind when describing your modeling skills "stunning" a college in work is building a puffer, his is very good but he would weep if he saw your build,

[BanjomanParticipant @banjoman]

Hello Bob and Ralph,

And warmest thanks for your kind words! As for keeping the dust off, Bob, I don't, really, all that much – instead I dust the model off regularly, with a special, narrow attachment to the vacuum cleaner or by raising the dust with an ultrasoft brush and then blowing it away with the airbrush (obvisouly with no payload in it!). The only exception is when I'm paintiing something else with the airbrush – then I will cover the model with a bit of plastic sheet, to avoid a build-up over time of paint dust, which does rather tend to spread (and is one of the reasons I always wear a proper half mask when spray painting).

Anyway, back to the build! And to painting, actually, as that is what I've been doing over the last four or five days.

Having given the rudder, tiller and rowlocks a coat of primer, bands of red paint where sprayed around rudder and tiller while the rowlocks where given a thin coat of a very dark grey.

On both rudder and tiller I then masked off thin lines with 1 mm washi tape …

… after which the remainder was first sprayed white. This white paint was in its turn masked off outside the red lines, and the still exposed parts sprayed wood brown.

Once the brown paint was dry, it was time to break out the oil paints and a vario-tip brush …

… and paint on an imitation wood grain. Oil paints are really the bees knees for this sort of job; the only drawback is that they dry very slowly indeed, so it will be at least a week before I dare touch these parts again.

To be continued …

/Mattias

Edited By Banjoman on 26/07/2015 09:59:38

[BanjomanParticipant @banjoman]

With rudder and tiller set aside for the coming week to dry properly, I turned my attention to the rowlocks. For these I got out some Vallejo Model Color metallic paints – gunmetal blue and bronze to be precise – together with my own verdi gris-green mixture of Vallejo RC Premium-paints, and also a stiff synthetic brush.

The rowlocks where then dry brushed with in turn bronze, gunmetal blue, bronze again and finally the verdi gris green, to (hopefully) look like they might be made from cast bronze that has taken a fair bit of patina … ?!

Next, one end of the securing chains where attached to the rowlocks …

… and the other ends to the inside of the (false) frames.

This secures the rowlocks to the dinghy, and they can thus be left out of their rowing positions while the boat is towed on the Puffer.

In principle, though, they would work (although the white metal would of course, even at this scale, be to soft to make useful rowlocks) and with two of them in place in the brass tube holders the dinghy looks like this …

…

To be continued …

/Mattias

[BanjomanParticipant @banjoman]

Next job was the painter; I began by opening up the strands of a piece of 0.8 mm line, at the same time dipping their ends in different colour paint, to be able to keep them apart while splicing.

I then put in an eye splice around the ringbolt, and glued the ringbolt in place on the stem.

I had also decided to add a rope contraption for hoisting the dinghy in and out of the ship, and to this end selected the necessary hardware and chemically blackened it.

The two ringbolts were inserted into holes drilled into the keelson, fore and aft.

Next a piece of 1.2 mm rope was put with its middle around a thimble, and the thimble then seized fast in the bight.

Two more thimbles, with shackles through them, were added to the outer ends of the rope, and also seized fast. Later on, I shall probably change the seizings for splices, but this was good enough to test the principle of the thing …

… which produced the following.

The two shackles were then made fast in the ringbolts, and the dinghy could now, at least in theory, be hoisted in and out of the Puffer on the derrick. Obviously, the dinghy will not be left hanging from the derrick, but as it would in real life probably have been hoisted in and/or out if not every day then at least very frequently, the hoisting arrangement would very likely have been left in place inside the dinghy for much of the time, in the dsame way that the rudder, oars etc. would have been just stowed in the dinghy when it was not in use.

To be continued …

/Mattias

[Bob Abell 2Participant @bobabell2]

Wonderful work, Banjo

I like the immense detail in the shackles, for instance and the row locks etc

You seem to have found a secret method of posting an unusually large number of photos per page?

What size are your photos?

Bob

[BanjomanParticipant @banjoman]

Thank'ee ever so kindly, Bob, for your kind words! I cannot really take that much credit for the shackles, though — they are of course some of those excellent fittings from RB Models in Poland that most specialist shops sell these days. I agree, however, that they look very nice indeed, although they are perhaps not exactly to scale. That is to say, they are not too large for the scale as such, but in at least certain positions I think slightly smaller ones would have looked even better, but as these are the smallest ones available, well they'll have to do. Actually, if I've understood things correctly, they were originally developed by RB Models for 1:35 scale armour modellers, to represent the often quite heavy duty towing shackles found on e.g. tanks.

As for the photos, I have indeed noticed that there is a limit to how long an individual posting can be, and have occasionally had to split a post in two after writimg it up and being told by the system that it was too long. Anyway, I don't post the photos at full size, but get my computer to resize them for me, usually to 1280×784 pixels at which size they tend to weigh in at around 1 MB each.

/Mattias

[BanjomanParticipant @banjoman]

As mentioned in a previous post, I thought that splices would look nicer than seizings for securing the thimbles at the ends of the dinghy hoist rope, so I cut of the ends, and began my usual preparations for a splice job, i.e. unraveling and colour coding the strands.

Splicing then commenced …

… with this as a result. I use the short piece of wood to roll the splice against, both during the job and when it is finished, to help even out the result and, in particular, together with frequent stretching to make sure that the strands are pulled back in as much as they wan't to go; otherwise they risk coming loose after their surplus is trimmed off.

Anyway, when reattached to the dinghy, the hoist rope now looks like this …

… and as the rudder was finished, too, it could go in the bottom of the dinghy as well.

The whole thing now looks like this; the oars still remain to be added, and here I shall at least have a go at making my own, as I'm a tad underwhelmed by the shape of the white metal ones that came with the kit. The kit ones are still a fall-back option, though, should I fail to make my own attempt look good enough.

To be continued …

/Mattias

Edited By Banjoman on 29/07/2015 20:12:07

Edited By Banjoman on 29/07/2015 20:12:45

Edited By Banjoman on 29/07/2015 20:13:14

[Bob Abell 2Participant @bobabell2]

I like the splice, Banjo

Nice!

Are you making any fenders, by any chance?

Bob

[BanjomanParticipant @banjoman]

Thank you, Bob! It is good fun, splicing rope, and actually rather less difficult than I though it would be before I tried my hand at it …

As for fenders, the jury is still out on that one, but if I do, I'd be more inclined to go for some tires, as that it what one mainly sees in old Puffer photographs.

/Mattias

[IAN_IParticipant @ian_i]

Hi Banjo…

Fantastic detail and a great build log.

Best regards,

Ian

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