Bertie McBoatface

I just received one of these. I like the display team colours a lot better than the plain yellow of the period. What did they look like on top and below?

Your cockpit is very convincing. It makes me nostalgic anyway. (Four tours on dear old Wally)

Rescribing panels is a tedious and unforgiving process, I think. Good luck with it. 🙂

I disagree. I think we have to exaggerate a bit, use bright colours etc, in order to overcome the black hole effect of these tiny cockpits. That sofa looks just right to me. 😃

You made a very good model from this basic kit. Very nice. I wonder what the noise levels were like with the engines directly outside the cabin windows?

Well, this is something else again!

I took delivery of a ‘Maggie’ today; a Miles Magister. The Novo bagging. I can’t believe how tiny it is. In fact the parcel was puzzling me as it seemed too small to be anything I had ordered. 1/72 is still rather new to me. 😁

That’s only half the quote. It should read “Less is more, but more is better.” 😉

I had a lot of loose springy line/rope around my whaleboat before Xmas. I used shellac on it which initially softened it and then stiffened as it dried, giving me time to tease the ropes into the loops and swags I wanted.

Well you certainly love your acronyms. I just wonder what you’re talking about 😃

That radar is unbelievably big. It looks more like an astronomical radio telescope than anything that should live on a ship. You have given it a proper sense of mass, even before the painting. Excellent !

Hear hear! I’m just discovering the old pleasures of 1970s plastic kits plus a bit of ingenuity. I find it far more satisfying than aftermarket ever was.

Nothing you see on a reality TV show is real. My niece produces these shows and assures me that everything you see is adjusted, ie made up, for dramatic effect.

Planking the Hull Session one of planking is complete - the first key plank is fitted and drying. It's not something I've been looking forward to, to be candid. It's not easy and causes me some stress. This is what I wrote about the process soon after the first time I did it. "How difficult did I find planking? Tons easier than learning a three chord song on a guitar. About the same as a MiniArt full interior kit. Easier than cooking a romantic dinner when you are trying to impress. Harder than any Tamiya kit. Easier than sewing anything. Easier than fitting a new kitchen. Easier than all but the simplest PE. About the same as weathering a plastic kit." That was two years ago. With two hulls completed since then, I'm a lot more relaxed about it now but I stand by what I said then. The difference this time is that I am going to take my time. If I only fit one of the hundred (?) in a session, that's OK- provided that it fits as well as I can possibly make it. The first ones are particularly critical though, if I get them wrong and carry on and it's going to be awful by the end, so I'm proceeding especially slowly right now. I will undoubtedly speed up in the middle, but then then slow right down for the almost as important final few. First a survey of the timbers. They are very good. It's lime, as usual, because that's an easily bent wood type. Dimensions are 1.5mm thick. That's brilliant. I've done 2mm planks and they were too thick and stiff to bend well. On the other hand, on a different ship, 1mm didn't give me enough material for sanding it all smooth and I sanded right through once or twice. It's 5mm wide which seems wider than I'm used to but it will get the job done a little quicker, I guess. The sizes are consistent and so is the wood. It all sags about the same when I hold it by one end. Mostly, it's the same colour so possibly all from one piece of wood. There's one odd thing, as you see in the photo, the strips of wood are not as long as the boat. I haven't seen this before, usually the instructions suggest laying one strip from bow to stern and the planks are therefore a few inches longer than the length of the hull, the long way round. These are about four inches short. If I hadn't already experimented on Le Renard, where I used scale length planking on the second, outer layer, I'd be freaking out about the short strips. Now I'm OK with it. I'll just arrange for the joins to be in sensible places, and they don't even have to be perfect because this layer of limewood is the 'underwear' of the hull. The pretty wood goes on top and will hide any gaps. Incidentally, Mamoli acknowledge in the instructions that since you can choose to paint the hull, the second layer can be left off entirely. Personally, I like to show off my wood. It's a wooden model and the more I can leave exposed, the more I like the look of it. I might even copper the bottom, which will be another gorgeous natural material on show. The bending zone. The small soldering iron like thing is for the tight bends at stem and stern, formed in the small wooden jig in front of it. The domestic iron is for the longer curves of the hull. The clamps and curved former are for edge bending the strips. The basic problem. Wood is straight, boat is bent. That's a gentle curve. I'll heat the wood with the big iron against the table while lifting one end. I hold the curve in my hands while it sets again as it cools. I aim for a curve slightly tighter than the boat so that when I clamp the middle down, the ends will be pressed in tightly too. This 'key' plank is supposed to follow the line of the deck exactly. The deck has a gentle sheer all along its length, it curves upwards from amidships in both directions. At the aft end of the deck the curve is too much for the natural spring of the plank to follow so her I'll need to bend it edge-wise, side to side. The difficult direction. The double line tells me where to bend from and the arrow tells me the direction. It is extremely easy to bend a plank the wrong way, believe me. You can either clamp it down and iron it until the lignin in the wood melts and deforms, or you can iron first and then clamp. The first is perhaps more precise and relaxing but I wanted to iron right to the end so I did it the other way. It only needed to bend 2mm so it's bent here about twice that because it will always spring back a little. That's a mock up of how the side bends are applied. Note that usually I'd be holding the iron in my camera hand (and it would be switched on). That's just about right except at the stem. It's going to be difficult clamping a wedge shape like that and I really need the extreme end to be in very good contact because that's where any glue failure will begin. "First call for the small bender!" That's better. The end has been chamfered on the disc sander to match the keel-plate. If I had cut a rabbet, I wouldn't have needed to do that as the groove would have accepted the end of the plank. I'm glad I didn't do it that way because I now realise that I would not have profiled the groove correctly and would now be in tears. I did a dry rehearsal of my clamping arrangements as usual. It seemed fine but in the event I had to quickly improvise something to hold the plank down at the lower edge, where it crosses that bulkhead. That's always fun, one hand only and the glue setting fast... The rest of the clamping was straightforward on this slab sided ship. The red clips line it up with the deck edge and the paper clips hold the wood gently against the bulkheads. Unfortunately It doesn't go all the way back to the transom but that will be attended to later. The small patches of thick carpet are boat supports for use when I'm picking it up and putting it down repeatedly. It also stops me accidentally hurling it to the floor with a careless elbow. I don't intend to go into such detail about every piece. I'll just tell you when things get interestingly different or go spectacularly wrong. The fitting of this first layer of planks will take, I guess, four weeks, plus or minus a week.

You'll have noticed that I begged the question of whether my philosophy is consistent with me writing WIPs? I did give it some thought and came to the conclusion that provided I keep it honest and tell the stories of my disasters; repeatedly warn people that I'm not to be used as a reference and periodically rant as above; it's still OK to write for our collective entertainment. I do still feel uncomfortable when people lionise me as the 'expert wooden ship modeller' but maybe it's not my fault that folks over-praise. They forget that if I finish L'O, she will only be my third wooden kit to be completed. I'm still a newbie enjoying my learning. On the matter of toes, this is the corbel as supplied... ...and as I imagine it trimmed down. The red line is where the threaded securing rod will pass through and the blue is the approximate placing of the keel. I think the trimmed version is more appropriate to the size of the finished boat. I have plenty of time before the since I won't be doing anything with them until the hull is fully planked up. And I'm no longer in such a hurry. 😉 ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ I have another WIP going in the FROG Classic GB where I have rediscovered the pleasure of building an ancient 1/72 aircraft kits from the 1960s and trying to bring it up to the standards of the 1970s. 😆 It's a Blackburn Shark, the lesser known alternative to the Fairey Swordfish. See HERE if you are interested.

Weaving is a skill I hadn’t seen used in modelling before. 10/10 for creativity Jon. 👍

I wasn’t sure whether that was supposed to be sea on the second one, or just a freshly and badly painted tabletop. the models are nice though.

Thank you Mr Johnson. 😊

she was just waiting for for me to throw the big stick.

Nothing done today except this. Is it worth improving the engine as well as the cockpit? At first sight, the kit seems very crude but then I checked my references I think I'll be content with the original. Spray it silver, wash it black, bish, bash, bosh, and the job's a good 'un! .

I bought this pair of corbels from a decorating shop in town today. They are hardwood of some kind, almost certainly rough carved in India. I'll be improving the shape later. I didn't know that I wanted them until I saw them. Can you guess what I intend to use them for? Answer at the bottom of the update. ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Now, what's been occurring in the boatyard? With some very heavy sanding, carving and swearing in the offing, we thought it best to protect those bat ears before I broke any more off. The plan was to use my airbrushing spray bay, mounted on its side between my knees as a dust extractor, with the ship resting in my lap. It was very likely that my clothes would catch on the ears and remember, I've already sawn them half way through. Next time I'll leave that particular operation until later. Using a dust extractor was a good idea and I was sure to use my respirator too. This is all 'learning by doing' based on recent cock-ups. And now, Here cometh the Rant. The Rant I believe that learning by doing is the only good way to learn how to make models. You have to make the darned things, lots of them. You'll make lots of mistakes at first and it's handy to give yourself permission to throw a few away when they really get FUBAR. The point is to learn from what you did wrong. You can learn from what you did right too, but probably not so much. It's possible to pick up some hints from 'content providers' on YouTube or modelling forums but if you base your practice on someone else's stuff, I think you end up making inferior versions of their models and don't build your own style. Also I don't think it's very good for your confidence to be always looking to some guru for the answers. And that's the 'trick' to planking a hull, or rigging a biplane, or improvising a cockpit. Just do it! Have a go. (Maybe even write your own WIPs - I find that helps me to think about what I'm doing more consistently, in order to explain it in good English prose. That's why they made us do exams at school. 😆) Or, as the great philosopher and educationalist Charles Drake put it in 1961, My boomerang won't come back My boomerang won't come back I've waved the thing all over the place Practiced till I was black in the face I'm a big disgrace to the Aborigine race My boomerang won't come back. Don't worry, boy I know the trick And to you, I'm gonna show it If you want your Boomerang to come back Well, first you've got to throw it. Oh, yes, never thought of that.... Back to business. I was lazy when I made the balsa infills. Lazy or in a hurry, which actually comes to much the same thing. I could have made them a better fit to the desired profile instead of leaving so much material to be removed by sanding. I'll do that next time. Fortunately, I stole this from a Dalek during the Battle of Canary Wharf. It's great for carving balsa - but only with dust protection. It got me close to the desired shapes and then I reverted to sandpaper. I used good quality wet and dry 120 grit for manual sanding because it cuts faster and cleaner and at the end I hoovered the clogs out and it's almost as good as new again. Cheap sandpaper is so expensive when you add the cost of your time and frustration. Eventually, I found the shapes I was looking for. It's quite difficult to photograph these curves which change from outies to innies and back again, not only as you move forward and aft but also up and down, and not necessarily in the same places! No wonder the Mamoli draftsman had problems. I couldn't even see the shapes properly and when I had to mirror them port and starboard, I found the best way was to close my eyes so that I wouldn't be distracted by those occasional gaps and changes of wood colour, and rely on feel to find the irregularities. That's something I learned while sanding seams on plastic aircraft. And there are those 'buttocks' that were so confusing to me. Now it seems so simple to run planks up there. (Come to think of it, tomorrow I might widen the crack slightly to emphasise the twin hills. I have a 16th century galley in stock which has a similar, though much exaggerated form.) That all took rather a long time but I'm happy with it now and there's a good chance that the next photo-update will show a start on the planking of the hull. And about bloody time too. ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Quiz answer: They even have a Fleur de Lys carved into them for the French connection. I may remove the 'toes' and 'instep' and just leave the breaking wave which will be mounted on another plank of wood, of course. Before that plank, I have several hundred smaller ones to play with. The game's now properly afoot!

A good base is a great asset to a model. Beware of making the base more interesting than the Falcon though. Oops, too late! Excellent creativity on display here . Marvellous.

It's dark skin tone from Vallejo GameColor. That's the leather you get when you skin an elven princess. 😆 Apparently the MPs in our Houses of Commons say "Hail the Speaker" on formal occasions. 🤪 Thanks Mark. It's far from being a replica but in the smaller scales I think we can get away with a 'suggestion' of an interior. Thanks for the tip, Adrian. I must include a flask of cocoa somewhere. 😁

🤣

Thanks Dave. All that time spent hunched over my tweezers has rendered me hors de combat for the day but it was worth it. What’s a bad back between friends when there’s models to be made? 😁