Bertie McBoatface

Good points, well expressed. Please accept my apologies for my earlier impertinence.

He's right Jon. We have all been applauding your speedy builds but maybe we did you a disservice. Did we unknowingly encourage you to rush? (It's what happened to me, as you know, and in my case with a definite decline in quality of the finished models.) Looking back at your builds from a year ago, about the time of HMS Mourne, there seems to be a lot longer between the start of the WIPs and the start of the RFIs. I have two questions for you to consider (answers not required by me). 1. Have you merely learned how to build to the same (or similar) standard, faster and more efficiently? b. Would you be more fulfilled if you learned how to build to a different/higher standard instead (maybe including weathering etc), taking a lot more time over the models? Also these resin ships aren't cheap and you don't half burn through a lot of them...

I have contoured this hard material with a cigarette lighter with some success. Perhaps that might work for you but I fear the wavelength will be too long.

I said last week that I wasn't doing any more large figures. Then (go figure) my son gave me a bust he'd printed. Two sessions saw it finished and I could have done it in one except that I thought there was a need for some drying time before I switched to oils. It's from the TV series Stranger Things but, not having a TV, I was free to interpret the bust as I liked. I saw it as a man under attack from a horrible parasitic plant somewhere in the swamp... Including the pedestal it is 100mm tall. My lad cleaned it up very well but there were still layer lines visible under the primer on the skull so I added some texture with Vallejo Thick Mud, re-primed and went for it. It's all brush painted including the priming and varnishing. Great fun and a break from trying so hard to get things 'right'.

What do you need in order to weather better; knowledge, skills or materials? For knowledge I suggest YouTube. I just searched 'weathering ship models' and the tutorials are out there. Skills require practice. I suggest buying some cheap plastic ship models in your scale for that. As to materials, the YouTubers will recommend commercial products which might seem expensive but in 1/350 you will use so little that they will last for years. Alternatively, cheap oil paints are widely available and other stuff like washes are easy to make from enamels.

I think that turned out well Jon.

The hull looks fabulous.

Not "alas". It's a challenging read to a native English speaker, you are wise to read a translation.

My planks were all pre-cut, pre-shaped, very flexible - all very clear right up to the point when I tried to use them.

And now the update. That's a brilliant Jeep model that I took up while 'resting' from BM. It's been a welcome distraction and though it has 150 pieces, you don't have to make them all for yourself! I've also been painting monsters. This is David Hasselhof as he looks first thing in the morning, at least in my imagination. What have these to do with the whaleboat? The distraction they provided was damaging to the boat building. I more or less forgot what I was doing with the planking, and worse still, I didn't realise it. When I returned to the job of planking the outer layer last week I failed to notice that the planks should have been ending like this: See how they terminate as though they enter that vertical timber stem? Somehow I missed that simple fact and clear diagram. I terminated my planks laying alongside the stem, pointing forward (or aft). I had thought there was another piece to go on the front which would be wide enough for those planks to terminate behind and here it is in diagram form: But when I came to make it I discovered that part 33 is supposed to be narrower than the plywood which you see in my photo above. Narrower by two whole millimeters. And then there's that 2mm gap on the starboard side of the stern. I believe I've said before that the clinker-building geometry had me baffled? Well, I understand it a little better now. Learning by doing is very effective, eventually. Looking at photos of clinker built boats, I note that at the ends, the planks often become carvel built. Somehow, by boatwright's magic, they stop overlapping and lie flat as they enter the stem and sternpost. I'm going to do that here with modelmaker's magic - I will bodge it with filler. First I made certain that all of the ribs were securely glued to the top plank. I need max strength for what I have in mind. Then I filled that 2mm gap with some hardwood and clamped it up tight. That's where I am right now. The plan for the futile, sorry, the plan for the future is to reinforce the outer planking by inserting more 'ribs' between it and the inner layer and then take the boat to the sander. I'll sand off the plywood planks until I get closer to the intended profiles. This will mean going right through them in places. I hope that with the additional ribs, the boat won't fall apart. I'll fill any holes with filler, milliput, CA/baking powder and/or concrete, sand it smooth again, prime it thickly, sand it smooth again, and paint it all with the most opaque, thick paint I can find. Then I'll make piece 33 according to plan and be back on track. I expect to end up with a slightly punt-like blunt front so don't be surprised if the RFI photos are all taken from the side. Stay tuned for next week's exciting episode...

Yes, I just mentioned the film in the previous post. On first watching it, I found it a little melodramatic, but there are chapters in the book which are written in play format and that's what we see on the screen. It's almost Shakespearean in the language and the intensity of the acting. Maybe Houston used a real ship and crew to balance that in the same way that Melville used the documentary chapters in the book (see my comments above). That's something that hadn't occured to me until I read your post, so thanks for that insight.

I guess you will be reading it in translation? It's a great and famous book for sure. I hope you enjoy it. It's certainly varied in styles. In my opinion Melville swaps between documentary and novel forms in order that the 'facts' lend verisimilitude to the drama. Imagine the book without the 40 odd chapters of whalemanship training and you'll see what I mean. I think it would be overly melodramatic. In fact, exactly this effect is present in the films. It's old but it's also very odd. Melville is an equivocator. He tells you both sides of the story, all of the stories, sometimes in the same sentence. He will throw in a couple of double negatives just to make his meaning(s) obscure. He wants you to decide who is good and who is evil, who is mad and who is even madder. Even his original title, 'The Whale' was equivocal as it might have referred to Moby Dick or just as easily to Jonah's whale, which we meet first in the novel. Jonah's whale is another odd fish. It swallows Jonah (bad fish) on the orders of God (good fish). Is Moby Dick a monster? Ahab and all of the crew apart from Starbuck think so. There's a whole chapter on the Whiteness of the Whale which confused me utterly as Melville played with my judgement of good and evil. I wonder how much of Ishmael is Melville. Ishmael is a biblical character against whom all hands were turned, an outcast. That's something a nineteenth century reader would have known instantly. But the character is a friendly, tolerant, well-liked member of the crew. More of Melville's mysteries. I'm beginning to suspect that Melville might have been one of those fractured personalities, the creative manic-depressive, because the two-sided stories aren't confined to this book alone but are all over his writing. In this sense maybe Ishmael and all of the other characters are Melville? Oh no it isn't! (in pantomime voice) see below... I'm calmer now. I had to back away (run away and hide) for a while. Then I came back with RULES to protect me from getting obsessed again. Now I'm as normal as I get so I'm writing updates only when I have something to say, or something to reply to, and passing comments on other people's work again, only when I have something to contribute. My posts per week which peaked at 420 are now about 20. Modelmaking is back in its proper place, behind exercise, the dog, the kids, reading, cooking, learning and in front of hoovering, ironing, and so forth. During the winter, modelmaking had become more important to me than almost everything. Kinda reminds me of Ahab...

Actually, I'll be more interested to see how it works out for ME. (I have a resin and brass boat on the way to me right now. My first.) Thanks for confirming your use of CA.

Railings first makes sense to me. Good clean contact surfaces for the glue and nothing in the way. The possibility of working on smaller simpler shapes is also a possible advantage. I'll be interested to see how it works out for you. Do you use CA glue for railings or something else?

Without the shield, and camouflaged and weathered like that, it almost looks alive. I like it for that and for being somewhat unusual.