Maritime Content

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 cruise are looks by comparison, and she was not a small ship, 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 comma 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 to hat 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 tough with this first bit of edge 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 comma 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,

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

Totally stunning work again Rob, really top notch. Especially love the way that mooring buoy is tilted in towards the ship. Absolute authenticity! T.

That's excellent! The paint. The rigging. The calm anchorage. Everything!

23.5 hours, 1st post to last. I managed to get the chassis on a Bandai 1/48 kit built in 24h. I did this twice, so I have a population whence to draw statistics... Seriously though, well done.

Acrylics, sprayed the grey and then brushed the black, white and brown. It was a minor diversion. Without wanting to belittle submarines, they are easy to build, compared to the complexity of surface ships. Jon

Wow - even by your standards Jon - that was............................................quick! Looking top -notch - I think Jeff called it right Acrylics or God's own? Rob