Todays Boating

[Trevor HollowayParticipant @trevorholloway99134]

Dragonfly out for a quick test after a lick of paint and a small Police boat ready for conversion to Fire service.

[ashley needhamParticipant @ashleyneedham69188]

Great morning Sunday. Titanic, BFB3 and lm(T) sailing.

​Titanic leaking somewhat from propshafts, they all seem to be a bit loose and need adjustment. In no danger of sinking. Others running as usual of course.

​Trevor's Dragonfly, now windowed and painted looked a treat and on its first zoom off from the jetty showed what it was made of. Shame it never made it back, as the prop fell off… OO er, loose nuts mrs. Retrieved by Titanic (!) However the police boat, soon to become a fireboat, was performing well if unrealistically (fast).

​Ian down with Corvette (nice weathering), Dragon and that old favourite, Hippo, and Chris with the Daring and Anchor layer.

​Good crowd of bystanders, phrases such as "professional model makers" "awesome" and "fabulous" banded about, the usual. We take it in our stride.

​Today more fiddling with Sans. Most of the boats shaped yesterday and look good, a bit of deja vu, after making the Nelson ships boats the same way. The ship carried a third class steam torpedo boat amongst its compliment of boats, along with a similar gunboat. They thought of everything these Victorians. Looking forward to making a couple of torpedoes about 10mm long now….

 It has got to the stage of making loads of little bits and painting them ready for sticking on. This of course has a delay while the paint dries. All the little bits need painting first as there just no way to adequately paint them once stuck on. The deck needs a couple of coats of matt varnish before some of this happens in order to make sure there will be no water issues when sailing, the freeboard being 16mm…

​Mast made and 1/2 painted, looks better than expected!!!  Mast was drilled for 1mm brass rod, onto which 2.4mm styrene tube has been added for the actual booms and so on. The brass being the attachment method, It is flexible so hopefully I will hot have any breakages in service. I will stick the side 6 inch battery on today and hopefully tackle the upper battery of 6 or 12 pounders (cant remember what was fitted at the moment).

​Ashley

Edited By ashley needham on 14/08/2017 08:06:24

[ashley needhamParticipant @ashleyneedham69188]

Pic. Mast. Not sure quite what to do about rigging. There is not a lot on the mast itself, mostly it is bracing and so on. As I want the mast to be detachable, and at this small size (mast 180mm high) I am a bit loath to try the elastic method, as the rings and hooks would be horribly visible. I may bite the bullet and have no btacing….see how it looks.

​Ships boats drying, topcoat white gloss. Sundry other bits drying. Boat walkway hacked about a bit to aloow the two largest boats to sit side by side. It does appear there was NO walkway on this side, but I need a bit there to connect the structure together. Slimmed it down a bit.

Ashley

[Ian JopsonParticipant @ianjopson21383]

The adapted fighting top doesn't look out of kilter, probably even less when it's out on the water. I wish my little gunboat project was moving as quickly.

[ashley needhamParticipant @ashleyneedham69188]

Ian. Given the small size, the likely view of the boat is always from the top, so the adaptation should go unnoticed!! I may even fill in the spaces with a light filler, and get the correct round look, later on. SO SAYING, the top does look round at all angles from a few paces away…. The lower platform has a combing and will eventually get a couple of guns on it, and the cheat on this is hardly noticeable as the support is much shallower. I did try to make a proper round top but the small size defeated my efforts on the wood lathe.

​I have been fiddling with the side (12? 6? pounder) guns and should be able to make something reasonable.

Ships boats have been white glossed and look good. Anchor stuff on order (20mm anchors, 1mm chain), and also gun barrels. Aeronaut fittings do a range of German warship items, among them some barrels for larger guns. They are very cheap and probably cheaper than buying brass tube separately. I have 3mm and 4mm sizes on order to see which will look best (base diameter, I am hoping). They are to 1/200 scale but I wanted to hedge my bets by seeing them on the turret first.

​Motor fixed in place and the dumb-bell connector has been de-noised (hopefully) using a spot of silicone sealant which will/should stop it rattling so much.

Ashley

[ashley needhamParticipant @ashleyneedham69188]

Not much to report on the Sans front. Some cotton thread has been added to the mast, the ships boats have had a black line applied/black top depending on the type. There are two side bulges possibly lookout positions?? which I have made from suitable sized dowel cut almost in half, and these look quite good. Am sticking the upper white ones on now.

​Dropped a steel ruler on the deck and put a small dent in one of the black semicircle bits…filled…will need re-painting.

​Still have not tackled the 12 pounders yet….need to do these items before applying the boat deck walkway.

Unlikely to be boating Sunday as playing in Guildford castle grounds wi `t Brass band.
​Ashley

[ashley needhamParticipant @ashleyneedham69188]

After a lot of humming and harring, the 12 pounders have been made. Nothing complicated, 2.4mm styrene tube, 0.5 (or less probably) styrene rod and 6mm squares of styrene sheet, held together with Humbrol model cement. Now painted a fetching shade of grey and drying. As I say, not a work of art but will look ok when done. OBVIOUSLY the guns need trimming but I wont mention that.

Other snap is the boat deck walkway. This is on its fourth revision regarding widths of walkways and so on, and additional stays have been put in to support the boats. These were on cradles of some sort and ther appears to have been varios tubes and so on to support them. Its all a bit complicated, but this will look ok once the boats are in place.

​Talking of boats, who left the boats outside in the garden to "dry" last night eh?? and did it tip down last night or wot. Two boats chucked, two wet through but surprisingly solid still and drying after sanding the nice gloss white paint off……

Ashley

[ashley needhamParticipant @ashleyneedham69188]

No boating tomorrow. Trevor if you want to borrow a prop adaptor to test the dragonfly pop round. Shall be up!

​Stuck boat walkways on after sticking 12 pounders on. Have just stuck the side 6 inch guns on, and yesterday had looked and seen that there was a yard arm on the rigging so a cocktail stick was duly sourced. Great size and they are tapered at the ends !! Rigging line a bit…er…"stout", but I am ham fisted and cotton would start to sag and be easily caught and broken. In theory the booms (not really, they were derrick apparatus for boat handling) should be able to be repositioned courtesy of the brass wire and springiness of the styrene tube, but you know what that's like. I hate saggy rigging.

​Notice the 0.5mm black tape line round the white bit….a tricky feat and on par with the TITANIC wording on my titanic, at 3mm high (in gold).

​Anchors ordered even though they are 20mm are too big, Plan B is make some from copper wire and bash them flat, or at least, so they look a bit square section and not like electrical earth copper wire.   Am I giving away my trade secrets here??

​Progress seems rapid, but that's only because I have made and stuck on loads of small bits. I made 16x twelve pounders as they are spread throughout the ship and spread liberally about.

Of interest, for those that are bothered, the ship had Nordenfelt "Machine guns" on board later, and from various accounts of actions in the Crimea and so on, were used effectively as they had a similar range to the main armament (at least, at the fighting ranges they used), and were used to keep heads down and kill gun crews. Biggish calibres, 1 inch or so, chunky.

Boats still ongoing, and placed on superstructure for effect only. Unfinished and in insufficient quantity.

​Ashley

Edited By ashley needham on 19/08/2017 19:38:39

[Colin BishopModerator @colinbishop34627]

Looking good Ashley.

Colin

[Bob Abell 2Participant @bobabell2]

Looking very nice, Ashley

It would make a nice Free Plan for ModelBoats Magazine?

Bob

[ashley needhamParticipant @ashleyneedham69188]

Thank you Colin. |Such a nice man.

Bob, sadly todays free plans need to be CAD drawn, and then I would have had to do serious research to get things right. This is a fun build only, and not a project (or it would be secret)(!) and |I would not have made such a silly error.

​I think it will look good on the water, if I say so myself because a) it is small and there are a lot of bits on it leading the eye into thinking the model is highly detailed, and b) They were such good looking ships these Victorian battleships, such a wonderful palette of colours, Black/White/Buff. Classic, Unbeatable.

​The book I purchased for info regarding Project W states that (and I cant remember which class of ship it was) was the last to be painted black/white before they changed to grey all over.

​Early Grey ships were of a much darker shade of grey (50) than that used by the first world war, as it was seen that stocks of dark pigment were unlikely to last for the estimated shipbuilding period during a war, so the grey was toned down a bit. There. Pub quiz stuff.

​SIMILARLY the Germans were running out of green and grey at the end of the war, Hence the late war camouflage was changed to basically red oxide primer and beige (cant remember the German word for it now)
​Ashley

[Boiler BriParticipant @boilerbri]

I like this model. You call it a stand off which I would call semi scale. I think this would be more deserving of the skill to achieve a model that represents its class without having to be too fiddley to make. You have certainly done your reasearch on it to achieve the look. Years ago there was a free plan in model boats all made from balsa wood of a German destroyer. I enjoyed making that.

Brian

[ashley needhamParticipant @ashleyneedham69188]

Brian, thanks for that. Semi scale would be about right I suppose.

​A fair amount of detail has been left off as it is too small to make at this scale. This morning the rest of the 12 pdr`s were glued in place (so 16 now), as was the top of the armoured conning tower and its top. I have noticed there are three binnacles dotted around, which I will tackle, although they will be massively oversize (a 1/200 person is about 8mm?? tall… a binnacle would be then about….6mm??), and also a rear conning or boat handling box/shed.

​It has reached the stage now where a moments innatention is going to break something. I will make another dozen guns for just this eventuality.

​I have some 1/200 people, which never set foot on the Titanic as intended , but which will make it on the Sans. The trick here is placement. Some items are too small, others too big, so putting the men where the differing scales do not notice will be the thing. The bridge is about right, as are the side 12 pdr`s. There will be 5 figures in all.

​Ashley

[ashley needhamParticipant @ashleyneedham69188]

1/200 sailors painted. Boats ongoing, as I have made a bit of a hash of them, what with leaving them out in the rain earlier….. Still, they will get there eventually.

​The carry/storage box is sorted, with a place for the mast to be safely stowed. The boat deck struts need a bit of adjustment as a couple are slightly off, but I think this will not show at all once the baots are on..they cover all the struts up.

​2mm anchor chain painted, drying. Might tackle the anchors today.

​Some of the 2.4mm styrene tube appears to be the choice for making binnacles from, and several have been trimmed at an angle and topped with a blob of polystyrene glue and painted green (for a splash of colour on deck)

Ashley

Edited By Colin Bishop, Website Editor on 22/08/2017 10:57:53

[Colin BishopModerator @colinbishop34627]

You are an example to us all Ashley.

Colin (still struggling with Revell Queen Mary 2)

[Bob Abell 2Participant @bobabell2]

Excellent Ashley!……….That`s you AND the model

Recommend two slings for extracting a delicate boat out of a small space?

Bob

[Ian JopsonParticipant @ianjopson21383]

A beautiful turn-out and an example to all we ditherers. I draw your attention to the old book "War Ships and Navies of the World – 1880" by J.W.King; a leading engineering officer in the U.S.Navy of the time, that covers many capital ships of the era in some depth (but not many pictures). I don't think it has this one, but there are a couple of pages about your 'project W'.

[ashley needhamParticipant @ashleyneedham69188]

Thanks chaps. No excuse Colin, as the bits have been made for you already!!

​Ships Boats now coming together nicely. Will have three steam launches with little brass funnels!

​One side 6 incher already fallen off, looks like it wasn't glued on very well (UHU).

​Bob. I will post a picture of the boat next to my hand and you will see why I will not need slings to remove. I have left a bit of room either end for this.

Ian, thank you….will look this up.

Ashley

[Colin BishopModerator @colinbishop34627]

Yes, bits have indeed already been made although some of them don't fit as well as they should. Plastic kits are not my scene, I am only building QM2 as we have travelled on her and the kit has been clogging up the workshop. Converting to a working model has complicated things a bit but it will appear at Bushy at some stage.

Colin

[ashley needhamParticipant @ashleyneedham69188]

Cant wait to see that Colin! Presumably a flat calm sunny day??

Ships boats coming on, pics..undercoat…2nd, pulling boats almost done.

Men attached to deck, 2 more to be added.

​Main 16.5 inch guns made, shoved in and undercoated. It is a quirk of the build that the rear 10 inch open mount gun is the same calibre as the 16.5 inch guns, but there we are….

​Lastly who can believe I have toiled so hard to make a special ships boat that is only 2 inches long??? what a hero..

Ashley

Edited By ashley needham on 24/08/2017 10:57:28

[ashley needhamParticipant @ashleyneedham69188]

I have decided the men look a bit big, but will leave them on there for interest.

​On top of the rear "shed" (on the back of the boat walkway, possibly a boat control position or…?) there is a searchlight. One of the first to go to sea I believe. Have made same, looks nice, a splash of gold (brass) on the ship.

​The anchor chains are on, and I have tried fixing them in place with matt varnish rather than glue. They are 2mm chains, and a bu**er to glue on straight without getting glue everywhere. As I was going to vvarnish the deck anyway, I had that bright idea. Mat apply a couple more coats.

The cowl vents purchased are metal and I am not sure I like them. I will surf a bit more for smaller plastic ones, ditto anchors. A home made anchor this size may look just a bit that…home made.

​After making sure the boat derrick arms were fore and aft, it appears the forrard arm was slung to one side a bit, as there was a compass binnacle on a platform dead centre stopping the forward boom from being tidily central !

​I made a pair of 3 barrel Nordenfelt guns (should be 5 barrel, but I have no 0.25mm rod) and need to re-do them

At the stern, the admirals walkway has caused some head scratching . I need a wire mesh fence around the platform…but at this size??? I am going to try something seen on a card model, and put a white screen up with the cross-hatched wire on drawn in fine black felt tip. Will look ok at a distance and be a touch more robust for knocks. Unfortunately I will have to be very careful when sailing and not come alongside the jetty or I will wipe off all the 6 inch guns on that side!!!

​Ashley

[Bob Abell 2Participant @bobabell2]

Hi Ashley

Can we have a picture to go with your 1000 word description, please?

Bob

[ashley needhamParticipant @ashleyneedham69188]

Will snap away today. Ashley

[ashley needhamParticipant @ashleyneedham69188]

Most of the 1000 words in last post were saying what I WAS going to do,
​However….anchors and chains on. Decided to go with the anchors I bought rather than waste money….the actual problem is the anchor flats are a touch small but there we are. Anchors to be painted dark grey later so you see that there are anchors there. I know the dangly chain is less than shipshape but there again you can see it.

​Tested controls using the garden pond. The rudder linkage is ski-wiff so that I have some built in adjustment. To get more or less rudder bias either side the wire can be bent a bit more to shorten or straightened a bit to lengthen.

​Motor coupling quiet, so the silicone is working, for now.

​Snap of my hand and superstructure showing relative size of this item.

​Close up shots do not look very good as the bits are small and the paint relatively very thick. I would never let a boat twice this size get away with less than a perfect close-up capability.

​Ashley

 

Edited By Colin Bishop, Website Editor on 25/08/2017 14:47:46

[Bob Abell 2Participant @bobabell2]

Many thanks Ashley

What's with the blank area of your post?

Didn't realise your model was so small?……..But you have done very well

We now need a picture, showing both boats together, please

Afloat if possible

My GE was 84" long at 100 to 1 scale…….What length would your model be, at 100 to 1?

Just for a size comparison

Bob

Bob

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