Bangseat

A few updates on Peresviet (I am going with the old fashioned transliteration, it may help the non Russian speakers - like me - pronounce it right). This was a copper bottomed boat - another charmingly old fashioned feature. This would have been fixed to wood on the base metal, so would have presumably shown a slight step in the hull. Combrig's kit shows this, but it is very hard to verify it in the grainy photos. Anyway, I'm going with it. There is a strip of .5mm styrene around the waterline and this is faired in with isopon: You can also see a torpedo hatch there. I am preparing the hull for paint by attaching non delicate fittings. There will be so many eyelets, torpedo net boom mounts and keeps, footsteps and all sorts on the hull eventually, but anything in danger will get painted separately and superglued on. I had no idea what shade of green to paint the hull, but have settled on Brooklands Green (left). Aurora, a good source of inspiration for this ship, has a much more virilant shade of green, which is why i tried the green on the right: but even assuming it was chosen by the conservators with some regard to authenticity (big assumption) I can't quite love it! Meanwhile, I need to repaint my funnels and vent cowls. It seems these were a classic Victorian funnel yellow buff. I originally painted Tamiya buff, but this I now learn is not supposed to be a "funnel buff": I'm now veering towards Trainer Yellow, with a Smoke filter. Anyone for a paint call out..? Happy Thursday, Harry

Yes, that hawse hole is the height of 2 sailors, I can only assume for eye candy reasons, after all the anchor doesn't draw right up (no stockless anchors here!) I think I do this stuff to avoid going even madder 😉 Good question. I am thinking that less may be more. With so much potential for artistic distress, I fear if I went full Warhammer on it the viewer wouldn't see the actual features. I love builder's models, all gleaming brass turnings, but I think i want to steer slightly more to the realism side - fresh in service look.

I think it was a reasonable sea boat on account of the high focsle, and it took a lot of punishment at Port Arthur. But yes, a bow only a Tsar could love. Steampunk, exactly! But very much real. The temptation to fit impulse ion engines is considerable.

Oh my I'm at it again... I have held off on doing any WIP for this as I was initially unsure if this would end up the shelf of doom (or rather become a shelf - it is furniture size). But - it seems to be now viable. The choice of subject is driven by wanting to make a 72nd battleship but still fit it in the house (this is 1.8m). Also, with tumblehome, gun ports alla HMS Victory and funnels out of a Lowry painting it is a particularly curious relic and amazing to think it came just 6 years before Dreadnought. This is not a distinguished ship - it sank twice... Some pics... The major work has been constructing the hull from I think 40 odd 3d printed sections. Sticking them together and filling - soo much isopon - was just graft and I'm sure you won't have missed 6 months of fortnightly updates reporting yet more sanding. I had already made some superstructure components however and although I'm a long way off fixing them down it is pleasing to pose them in place. I've also made the stern deck and there are 2 more funnels, I just didn't have enough Duplo to stack them on. I'm probably a month off painting the hull, subject to having a nice day in the garden and finding a suitable green spray for the hull (white and buff above the waterline). Phew!

Perfect, thanks!

Hello all - I am looking for some pointers. I was surprised I couldn't answer this myself with some intermediate googling. I'm looking for a body plan of HMS Dreadnought (1906, the famous one), or one of her near sisters, without recourse to the NMM plans service. I wonder if it is in a book - maybe the Dreadnought Haynes manual? I'm not looking for a freebie of course, just a tip for a reasonably priced source before I get in touch with their lordships.

Thanks @Donald, there are untold stories behind all these vessels. The knowledge of the seamen in these craft must have been considerable. I am re-reading Denis Rayner's autobiography and his description of his first ex-trawlerman skipper - Rayner was an RNVR Commander but not the captain of the ship - was very evocative, being able to fix a position without a working compass and predict the weather by observing the rust streaks on a passing buoy. A trawler - now there's a thought...

Thanks all! Onwards and upwards to the next project. I've just spent a lovely morning communing with the models at the National Maritime Museum and the mojo is set to 11. Particularly enjoyed HMS Doris (below) and SMS Dresden, and as for those 17th Century Admiralty models - even if I don't know a topgallant from a spanker - be still my beating heart...

Evening all! I'm calling this finished after 15 months. Quite an escapade. I did a rather fitful WIP linked below, but a brief précis. Me want make first ship, me want big ship, me choose quite simple ship with family connection, me use 3d printers but also cave man tools. It's now up on my wall and cats can now be swung in my workshop. It's not perfect - I did a lot of guesswork on this - so if you have a doctorate in steamships and spot a doozie, don't be shy in the comments and I'll learn for next time.

Well, I have singularly failed to keep an up to date build log. I have so much lost track of time that it is only by looking at my posts here I can see that this will probably be a 15 month build seeing as I am steaming towards mounting this on my wall sometime next week. It is nearly there in all its shabby finery. It is a probably a "don't look too close" model, but all in all for a first attempt at a ship I am satisfied. Many lessons learnt although in quite a few cases I have left the mistakes in this ship is based on nothing more than a 100 year old photo and conjecture so they are all probable rather than certain mistakes! I'll try and do a better photo sesh for an RFI next week...

Another update as I meander through a myriad of new modelling experiences in an attempt to get a first foot on the ratlines of ship building without falling in the scuppers or braining myself on a davit. Hull painting has commenced. The red and black are on, and I am getting into the weathering. The ethos here is dirty, unpampered, third owner (and name), coal carrying and in wartime to boot. It seems to me that a ship, especially in this scale, is possibly weathering nirvana. Here is starboard, which will be wall side when I display so I am at a bit more liberty to experiment. The red had been broken up with oils and a wash, and the black has had a light grey wash to highlight the plating. In order to get a tide mark with a hint of fouling, I have applied a broken line of masking fluid and am applying buff and black oil on top. This is the look I am going for: (from Classic Coasters, (Boot/Fenton) And this is what i have got: It's bold, but I think with a bit of a light filter it could be a goer. So many other sub projects going on, including the planking, but special mention must go to the masts: Many thanks for demystifying this artform @Bertie McBoatface, in the end it was a doddle with the drill mounted in a vice. In fact, it was rather pleasurable, and put me in mind of the famous movie scene...

@Bertie McBoatface good call on that, I will give it a go. Less capital outlay than a lathe, which i don't have the foggiest clue how to use anyway! [Update - just given it a go - principal sort-of mastered!]

A brief update as I stagger from crisis to crisis outside the serene world of ship modelling. Entire family laid low with Norovirus this week… The hull is taking shape and the long process of scribing and riveting the hull (Quinta Studio rivets thank you very much) is about 60% through, once finished the hull can be painted and the wood deck can be laid. The details are the most fun as ever, so I have a head start on these even though I could clearly wait until I have a finished hull to stick them to… The impaled carbon fibre rod in the pictures is not a final mast rest assured (there are 2) so I’m going to have to put my big boy pants on and learn to do this properly. It turns out, these cannot be 3d printed… Anyone got a hack for masts, or is this the domain of the master woodcrafter with a mini lathe? A fascinating project so far. What I have concluded is that resin printing, even if you have giant machine, is probably not the way to go for hulls, masts and anything big due to the tendency for warping. If I get into this in a big way, I’ll be in the market for a giant FDM printer – I’m already making day-dreamy calculations around what can be done with the biggest hobby printers (pre-dreadnoughts yes, Lusitania still a stretch!) Happy Friday all

That's exactly what I'm after! Great stuff. I ordered some rivets last week, they're currently en route from Kazakhstan.

Yes it is 🤗 - I've only got one of those books (Blue Funnel) but I'm always looking out for them on fleabay. That is a great call. A ships rivet is probably ca 0.5mm in 1:72 scale, so they really ought to be there. At this rate, i expect to be painting in mid 2025...

Bertie - I'm VFR Models, Cessnas, Pipers and the like in 72nd scale.

Ha - at this scale, if I knock it I reckon I'll come off worse than the model...

Update time - much delayed, but this is a 1 hour pw project at the moment with everything else going on. Hull is substantially complete, and pieces of superstructure are starting to appear: The hull plating is done with masked stripes of filler primer and scribed vertical lines (this bit still very much progressing) I envisaged scratch building most of the non-hull, but 3d printing is working out very well so I have expanded the scope of the digital design: Once the hull has at least the basic black and red oxide on it, I'll be planking the deck, a fun first for a plane builder like me. I've got my planks ready and waiting... Then its a case of gradually filling the deck with various nautical detritus and making her look a bit lubberly. No references here, I'm just learning as i go and trying to use a bit of semi informed imagination... Cheers all

Having great fun here slapping on P38 and watching my copious sanding dust dancing in the gentle breeze.. Here for scale is Jack (actually an Airfix U Bootmann) Next task is a plasticard deck onto which I will apply planking. Also, I want to make some effort to render the plating and riveting. Here, I am on a learning curve. I'm looking at pictures of plated hulls: (SS Robin, covered in patches of course) (Lusitania, looking brand spankers) Anyone got any tips - a handy web page primer maybe on how ships were plated in the 1890s?

Well, as ever, time marches on. This weekend however transpired to be a good window to actually print my hull. The hull is in six sections, each a 12 hour print on a large format printer. Luckily I have several, so in the end it was 36 hours on 2 printers. I also realised I had accumulated some spare resin; some old elegoo grey that seemed to be a bit unreliable making delicate stuff, some translucent resin ordered by mistake, and some E-Sun hard tough - good stuff, but didn't solve the problem I had originally envisaged. So, I made my witches brew, and 36 hours and 3 litres of resin later... So yes, huge. Sticking it together will be fun. And, scale excepted, rather different to my usual stuff:

Oh, bravo!

After a couple of printer false starts, I got a good print of the bow a few days ago: I'm saying this is my prototype - I have actually adapted the design since printing, so I'll be doing this all over again! It's an all night print, about £5 worth of resin, and there are 6 sections in total so this will take a while, probably printing on weekend nights as my printers work on my kits Mon-Fri, but I hope to have a hull by the new year.

If I wore a pair of underpants constantly for 4 years I would expect the elastic to give eventually. There are surviving 17th/18th century ship models with original rigging, I wonder if there are any lessons the old masters could teach us?

You are right - a bit of family legend getting in the way of the truth as it turns out. It seems she was sunk in convoy (from the caption of the photo I inherited) but due to accident: https://www.wrecksite.eu/wreck.aspx?65647 Also some stats on the ship. 63 m rather than 57, and now I have the beam as well!

I should say, I clearly have no plans for this ship. I don't know whether they would be likely to exist or not, but I would guess if they did it would be a job for a very diligent historian. I have based the hull form on this commonly available plan, and taken inspiration from SS Robin which can't be a million miles off.