Maritime Content

NOTE For those of you outside the UK who may not have heard of him, Paul Hollywood is a minor celebrity (very) judge from a programme called ‘Bake-off - and it’s usual celebrity spin off) one of the many inane reality/baking/cooking/dating/endurance programmes that have inundated the the television channels of this ‘sceptered isle’😝. As they invariable do, these people immediately push out a vast quantity of merchandise in an effort to max out their 15 minutes of fame, and my daughter bought into it!!!!! Rant over.🤬

Meanwhile, in a parallel universe! By some unexplainable mystery of intergalactic serendipity this Black Cat kit (HCMS Sackville) arrived on my doorstep at the same time as the ‘Admirable’ kit. So in an attempt to convince you all that I am a little bit organised I decided to prep this kit, sort out the sea base and prime it alongside this build, wartime mass production?????? WIP for this will arrive afree another time warp!

G'day @PieterC, thanks for the quick reply. I agree, styrene outer sheathing would probably make attaching extras easier than to balsa. I've done three scratch-built hulls to date, all in 1/600 scale, the most recent being the German WW2 light cruiser DKM Karlsruhe. The next I'm planning is the WW1 battlecruiser HMAS Australia. She's the same length as Karlsruhe but has about 80% more beam so I was going to use 1mm thick styrene. Karlsruhe was done with 0.75mm styrene and the earlier Fletcher-class destroyer was done out of 0.5mm. I think I'll still use my method without balsa for Australia as I have a hull diagram with a reasonable number of bulkheads. But in future I want to do some small ships too and if I can't get hull diagrams with sufficient bulkheads I think your balsa in-filling will be the way to go, followed by thin styrene cladding. I'll look around and see what glues are available in my part of the world. Many thanks again. Now get on with your model, I want to see what comes next. 😁 Regards, Jeff.

Great work! Moving turntables sounds great for future posing options, hopefully painting them doesn't lock them up. I had a lot of fun with the amount of movable/posable stuff on my Chikuma build. I'm afraid I'm in the camp that dislikes the hull plating detail. Even if accurate to plans it's visually overdone, but I'll be watching to see how well your paintwork tones it down. In any case enjoying this build the kit looks fantastic as does your work on it.

Hey Jeff, thanks or your comments. The balsa is glued between the frames/bulkheads as by wedging you might move the bulkhead. The balsa is shaped by sanding it back to the bulkheads and decks while checking the form from prints of the relevant sections. Theoretically you could leave it there and fill the balsa and paint it. Plating with styrene gives you a better painting surface though and makes it easier to glue on other parts . I am using zap-a-gap medium superglue for both filling and plating. Maarten Schönfeld who taught me this technique tends to use normal plastic glues. As Maarten is originally an aircraft modeller I think the technique comes from building free flying aircraft models. The technique gets better with practice. Start with a simple hull without sheer and accept that the first one wll probably be a failure. My most complex hull, mv Straat Clarence, took four hulls to get it right. Styrene and balsa are cheap though.

Finally some progress on "Popov". Added the propellers, rudder, davits, anchors & chain as well as the variuos poles and masts. Now to the boats, followed by rigging and flags. I like the look of her.

Hi All, Update, more resin/3d printed parts going on, I know it's apples and oranges, but compared to yamato she is tiny granted one is a heavy cruiser and one is a super battleship but the picture doesn't really justify just how small the cruiser looks by comparison, and she was not a small ship at over 600ft long, Look photo etch! @Jerry L it took me about two hours each side to put all these little plastic bits on, this is only about a third of it, word to the wise the instructions ask you to drill two holes for each part, but the nubs on the back of the parts is so small that the holes are always going to be too big and spaced too far apart, in the end I drilled one small hole just as a locator for the part and removed the two nubs and stuck them on that way, Really chuffed with this first bit of etch going on, I've managed to do it so that the turntables still move beneath, there's a lot more to go on so if that will stay the case I don't know, Everything black is resin/3d printed, the dimensional coordination is really quite something, the small range finders at the front of the tower sit onto a small plastic protrusion, and the resin part that supports the rangefinder slides on top of that protrusion, and includes the gussets, fit was absolutely spot on and lined up perfectly with a small recess on the front face, And further proof there is now a little more etch on her, lot more to go yet though, Thanks for stopping in, Sam

Thanks Rob, I'll confess I am rather pleased with how the sea fury came out, she's painted in humbrol 15, I did one coat by brush, sanded out the imperfections and bits of dust etc, then did a second coat by brush again and then did the same getting rid of bits etc, then sprayed the third coat, mixed it about 3 parts paint to 1 part thinner, then quickly put it on the cupboard to dry for 24hrs, I'm doing the G-fury one in red as well, I'll share that when I'm done with her, Edit, in not on the cupboard lol

G'day Jon @Faraway, the photos are visible here. Re photo hosting, yesterday arvo Flickr wouldn't show all of my photos but decided to behave itself later in the evening. The photos were visible on the forums though. HTH. Regards, Jeff.

It often surprises me what kit producers miss. All looking very good. Jon

Rob The HD foam was nearly as tough to roll out as my pastry😝

I'd guessed that but had difficulty reconciling this with the ?"frame" that the ship rested on in the first pic - it must be the heat Rob

I'm definitely in a colour mode at the moment. First it was HMS Burdock in her Blue and Yellow, then the midget sub in grey, white, black and brown and now this, which is by far and away the most colourful so far. And it'll make a nice change to use gloss paint, that will make applying decals SO much easier. So, here are the obligatory prebuild photos. (which I hope you can see, as I can't see them on the photo host site) Very colourful decals I've even bought the recommended Humbrol colours, never sprayed Humbrol enamel paint before, so that might be a challenge. Jon

G'day Pieter, it's an interesting method of hull construction you've used. Is the balsa simply wedged in between the frames/bulkheads or do you glue it in? And if so, what do you use to glue balsa to polystyrene? Thanks. Your method here looks a lot quicker than the plank-on-bulkhead method I've used on my scratch-built hulls. And it looks very nicely done, too. Regards, Jeff.

Another lovely build, looks superb to me 👍 Love the colours and the still waters👏👏👏

On we go. Plating the hull begins with the bulwarks as a starting point in .3mm think styrene. Note the stem has a loose 'fold', I will come back it that later. The rest of the hull is filled using evergreen strip and sanded back to match the earlier wood shape. And the bulwarks are made larger as pictures of the real ship show larger and deeper bulwarks than the original drawings. And this is the fold mentioned earlier. It is cut and sanded back to the balsa ad carefully built up again in 1 mm wide strip in order to get he outward curve that makes 50s and 60s ships so nice to look at. The coming few days will be about filling, sanding and filling again and after that the hull is set aside and I'm starting the superstructure.

Hi Rob When I first retired I went through a ‘home baking life crisis’ and my daughter bought me a Paul Hollywood branded rolling pin which turned out to be a total no-no. it now lurks in my workshop and I use it to manipulate the HD foam into a vague replica of a sea swell, the way I used to roll my pastry out, lumpy and uneven🤬

Superb Norse Longboat taking shape here. And you describe it simply as a 'fill in' model between more serious big subjects Kevin ? Considering when the originals were built the lines are brilliant both for a seagoing vessel and due to the low freeboard able to go way up river estuaries. The kit looks really good and the finished will be a lot larger than I expected to see. It's a beautiful thing you are building and I will certainly be following this thread. The laser cut frame pieces with the shapes cut in them to locate the strips of wood for the clinker build looks well thought out by the kit manufacturer. I recently built the Artesania Latina Titanic's Lifeboat as my first wooden boat kit. What a (expletive) nightmare that turned out to be. Had to correct the keel shape to start off with and the supplied strips for the clinker build were quite thick. In fact too thick. If only they had thought to step the frame pieces it would have made the clinker build a lot easier and supplied much thinner strips. I ended up cutting very thin plywood strips of about a third of the thickness to replace the kit ones. After that it was plain sailing if you will excuse the pun.

Sitting back to watch this with interest - those turrets look good. I'm mentally limbering up to begin my HMS Valiant soon Rob

Great choice and nice start - Graham. I still haven't quite workd out the "Paul Hollwood" "tool" works??? Results are good, however Rob

How nice is that hull and deck finish !!!! That looks really (wood) authentic Rob

Great looking Paravanes - you thoroughly deserve that lie down!! Rob

Whoa - that Sea Fury is a Beaut!!! If I may ask - how did you get such a Fab gloss finish? The funnels on Takao are bonkers!! Looking good Rob

A very nice little palate cleanser

Hi Steve A bit late to this build as Japanese warships don’t really do it for me, but with all that PE I plan to follow this build. Think that much would ‘brass me off’. i also notice that your kneecaps had another starring role in the early build photos 😝. Cheers Graham