1:147 HMS Surprise

[Sgt.Squarehead]

Cheers Lars, I'm finding this whole build fascinating, it's way outside my usual field, but it's just such a charming model.....Pleasure to follow. 

[Kris B]

Wow. That all. I can say. 

[lars_opland]

Thanks again, Sarge, Kris & All,

 

I'm down to trickling out these short posts now because that's how this project is going now. It's almost summer in Alaska &, with so much daylight & such a short warm season, we tend to head outdoors & take on "other projects"...1:1 scale garden sheds & such, like the one on MY "Honey-do" list this year.

 

So the crew is beginning to shape up. The Medieval-looking crew figures from the old Lindberg Wappen Von Hamburg & La Flore kits are dressed in tunics & tights, with odd Sou'wester style hats... (hat already trimmed back to more of a knit cap here)...

 

 

...so I shaved down the hems of their short "skirts" a bit & started building up trousers & shirt sleeves with acrylic artist's gesso. This took several passes over as many evenings, adding extra heavy blobs from the thickened stuff on the inside of the bottle cap to the backs of the ankles & knees, kneecaps & arms. The guys on white sprues are from Preiser figure sets, both N gauge & 1:144. The Preiser figures have so much smaller heads that I also built up the sides & backs of their heads to better match the Lindberg figures. The 6 deadeyes I'll mold are also here:

 

 

Here are the 2 climbing poses derived from the first photo above. There's another, sitting, that hasn't gotten "the treatment" yet:

 

 

Here's the rabble so far. The 2 figures in upper left were Preiser 1:144; the other white sprues indicate Preiser N gauge, which is called 1:160 on the box. Both seem convincing enough among the kit figures:

 

 

Hoping to have more soon,

 

Cheers, -Lars

[Killingholme]

On 12/03/2018 at 8:09 AM, lars_opland said:

Thanks Again, Will,

 

I had heard of that one but never saw a photo before. She looks like "a real fixer-upper"!

 

Cheers, -Lars

She's remarkably well preserved- and part of that significance is actually that roof- which in greater part is probably the same one that was erected over her decks immediately after her construction. Having had a look at it, it certainly mirrors a lot of the detail of construction you see in early 19th century Royal dockyard buildings in the UK. Still, she needs help- in the last 40 years or so she's hogged by about 2ft. Desperately needs a long-term preservation plan. 

[lars_opland]

USS Constitution had gotten badly hogged too. There are articles on line about how they fixed that in dry dock, but the U. S. Navy is still much involved with that one. "Unicorn" needs a "sugar daddy", or a major seaport that wants a mascot...or something...

 

The old shipwrights would scoff at all this, of course, & recommend to "just drag 'er up on the hard, burn 'er, salvage the metal & build another". Modelers face similar (but much smaller) dilemmas every time one of us weighs a major conversion vs. a scratch build. If you HAD a fully staffed, fully supplied late 18th Century ship yard, the choice would be easy.

[lars_opland]

Hi All,

 

A couple of small matters pushed forward over the past weeks, finishing the fore fighting top with a strip selected to nearly match the thickness of the one around the main top & cut to width...

 

 

The liquid cement under the first strip was allowed to dry until the next evening, then the ends were sanded flush to the sides of the platform & a second piece was pre-bent for the forward corners. This was liquid solvent bonded & secured with small rubber bands to dry overnight. I fussed with alignment of the edges for a minute or 2 while the cement tacked up:

 

 

 

There. A little fine sanding to clean up the edges & that's 2 different tops from the same part:

 

 

I didn't want to attempt rigging the gun tackle at this scale with blocks & thread (especially considering the planned assembly sequence ahead...), so dug out the stretched sprue again & chose a couple heavy sticks of brown styrene. A hole was drilled near one end of one of them with my smallest bit & equally thin steel wire was bent near it's end, CA glued in the hole & clipped off thus. The same bit was used to drill holes in both sides of 10 carronade beds, just above the wheels:

 

 

Using a strip of styrene to get the brown stick & wire to rest at about the right angle, a piece of thinner stretched sprue was liquid cemented to it at a right angle:

 

 

Having determined that 15mm would be about the right length for these, I glued a second stick of styrene there after turning over the tiny dried assembly on a subsequent evening...

 

 

...& on yet another evening, another bit of the thinner stretched sprue was cut to length & glued across, opposite the first one. Again, this was allowed to dry until the following evening when I beefed up the joins with tiny drops of CA. This stretched sprue applicator is one of my favorite disposable home made tools. These can be thin enough that they won't easily disturb tiny loose parts while the too-fast-acting CA is being applied:

 

 

That'll do. I can even CA these in place like this, because they'll end up level across from gun to gun, level with the beds & close to the hull sides when the hull is closed up, without needing to be fastened to the interior. I figure I need 19 more tackles for the 10 guns that can be more-or-less easily seen in the waist area...& 24 slightly smaller ones for the fo'c'sle & quarterdeck batteries...

 

 

Thanks again for looking in.

 

Cheers, -Lars

 

 

 

[lars_opland]

Here's a little more progress on gun tackle, as of tonight. All of these heavy tapered brown sprues were off-cuts from plugging the kit's shroud holes, conveniently sized for the blocks. Dividing the job into "bite-sized" sections, 10 sticks were selected & drilled at one end for the 5 guns in the port side waist...

 

 

...bent wires were added...

 

 

...& on through the steps as for the first tackle assembly...

 

 

 

Only the best & oldest fingernail clippers for snipping off the excess. There are many more "blocks" in these scraps:

 

 

Getting the wire ends into the holes in the slide beds isn't the easiest task, but touching the joins with a little CA quickly finished the task & all outer ends are level with the slide beds:

 

 

That's cutting it a bit closer than intended on the spread at the outer ends, but this will work:

 

 

Cantilevered stretched-sprue gun training tackles. A little paint, & breeching lines through the rings on the cascabels, will see these five done:

 

 

'Til next time,

Cheers, -Lars

 

 

Edited May 20, 2018 by lars_opland
spelling

[Killingholme]

Hi Lars,

 

That's very impressive stretch-sprue work. Hope the gangways don't hide all the effort! 

[lars_opland]

Thanks Will,

 

I figured the gangways won't hide these 5 guns on each side, but the 2 stacks of boats will leave only glimpses here & there. Still, glimpses of something will be better than glimpses of nothing.

That's my story & I'm stuck with it! I can also claim truthfully enough that rigging these 10 is needed practice for the 12 smaller pairs (24 tackles = 48 blocks + 48 "lines" + 24 bent wires) on the upper deck, which will be far more visible.

 

To be continued.

 

Cheers, -Lars

[Courageous]

Magical stuff with the gun tackle, very impressive.

 

Stuart

[Terry1954]

Hello Lars,

 

I've just caught up on this amazing thread. Normally an aircraft and AFV modeller who now and then (twice in my lifetime) built plastic martime models. Oh, and in a cupboard I have a Talhoer wooden model of a Spanish Fishing vessel which was started some years ago and keeps looking at me sadly to be finished .......! I am amazed at the quality and finesse achievable in a plastic ship model and this thread has changed my outlook on such things!

 

I will look on now with much interest indeed. Superb modelling.

 

Cheers

 

Terry

[lars_opland]

Thank You very much, Terry & Stuart!

 

We of a certain age recall when most articles in any modelling magazine, on any genre, included lots of scratch-built detailing, much of it in stretched sprue & sheet plastic, in olden times before photo-etch was "a thing".

 

Terry, if you're a 1954, so am I!

 

 

Cheers, -Lars

[jannie]

Fantastic progress - I have the "Jolly Roger" kiddie boxing in my stash (caused some sneers, jeers & giggles when it was delivered at my OFFICE ADDRESS by accident) but have so many things going on that it is still safely in my stash. And I'm super happy to say that the "Like" functionality is working perfectly fine again for me (and other things, at one stage even Previous Page / Next Page also stopped working in both Firefox and Chrome).

[Terry1954]

On 5/26/2018 at 5:24 PM, lars_opland said:

Terry, if you're a 1954, so am I!

aha, snap!

 

Just catching up here on your amazing work again!

 

Terry

[AdrianMF]

Uh, I didn't realise you were putting all this detail on the LOWER deck! A fascinating read (interrupted by lots of trips to Wikipedia to look things up) and an epic modelling saga.

 

Regards,

Adrian

[lars_opland]

Thank You, Adrian,

I wouldn't have been tempted to go to such lengths except for the big opening over the waist & all the gun ports that will be open on the weather (port & left on this model) side. As for "epic", it's moving pretty slow & I'm not at the end of the beginning yet. Will have enough progress to justify more photos soon though. Of course, the boats stowed over the waist will hide a lot, but there will be glimpses of detail here & there....

 

Cheers, -Lars

[Murdo]

It's coming along splendidly. Some lovely detail there.

Edited September 21, 2018 by Murdo

[J.P.]

Great stuff, I love these sailing ship builds. Reminds me of the builds I did in my younger days.

 

[Kevin Aris]

you have certainly brought a lot of life into this build, well done, i posted a photo on the build log of my HMS Victory last night saying that i put a lot of work into the gun deck, and then ripped it all out as i decided to have the gunports shut

[lars_opland]

Thanks Guys.

 

Kevin, I'm stuck with needing some detail in the waist because it's not only open above (in spite of the stacks of boats) but has 3 ports on each side with no lids to close so there will be some visibility & light. That may have been a safety feature in case a large wave came aboard & partially filled the gun deck. My build will have the port battery run out "to weather" to help the ship stand better against the wind. This would help a frigate sail better to windward just as "hiking" to windward helps in a close-hauled sailing dinghy. The movie featured the crew "manning the rail" as they approached Cape Horn for the same reason & it is a credible gambit. Crews of up to 150 men aboard a small Baltimore Clipper privateer could be even more effective in the same role, & often were.

 

Cheers, -Lars

[lars_opland]

There was a mishap awhile back & a repair has been effected. All my fault, of course. The cats were napping in the corner under my bench & it was time to shut down for the night, they ignored my initial request so I thought it would be clever to just flip on the shop vac for a second to motivate them downstairs. The big orange guy in the photo on our left SHOT out from under there, touching nothing on his way out but the upper deck assembly, which was perched on a box next to their usual route.

 

Everything looked okay at first, but the aft end of the port catwalk was snapped neatly away from the quarterdeck. I scraped paint away from underneath & glued in a small strip of styrene as extra support for the repair, lightly sanded the top & brushed on a bit more deck color. You need to look close to see it now; I just don't want to re-break it...

 

 

 

The hull primer put me in mind of a "what-if" scheme:

 

"HMS Surprise in Battleship Grey. Sails were painted in a disruptive light blue pattern resembling a WWII Western Approaches scheme. Crews found them very difficult to handle & maintain..."

 

This is just some rattle-can gray primer, which I tested on an old, old kid-built Revell "Memphis Belle" before pointing it at Surprise:

 

 

 

Here's the galley flue. The white bit slides up & down for now & fits neatly in the opening between the 2 gratings on the fo'c'sle, adjustable in height for when the decks are finally brought together:

 

 

There are now 18 different crew figures & 2 sizes of deadeyes to be cast as often as needed. I think there will be more than enough crew by the time I have enough deadeyes...

 

 

 

The real fiddly-work hasn't even begun!

[Courageous]

Nice to see you back Lars.

Steady progress, even with the setback.

 

Stuart

[lars_opland]

Thank You, Stuart,

I wouldn't call it "steady"; weeks go by with no progress at all, then I get a few things done before focus must shift again. Another nagging issue that got resolved this past week was the quarterdeck rail. Marquardt shows it with straight, square stanchions, but we're building that older, fictional Surprise so I went with something different.

 

After drilling 6 shallow 1mm holes in the forward edge of the quarterdeck, I twirled a soft, blunt pencil in each of them, pressed a strip of clear tape over them to pick up the rings of graphite & stuck that tape on my strip of .040" railing to accurately transfer the stanchion spacing. Holes were started through the centers of the circles with a #11 knife before peeling off the tape & finishing the holes with the same 1mm bit. These stopped before bumps appeared in the top surface of my railing, except one which was burnished back down with a thumbnail.

 

Six 8mm stanchions were cut from .040" rod, edges rounded slightly by turning against 320-grit sandpaper to aid fitting-up. After gluing them all into the underside of the rail, I positioned this assembly in it's holes along the deck & weighted the ends down while the solvent set up. This is the first use I have ever found for this remarkably horrible X-Acto block plane:

 

 

 

That still looks too plain, but I wasn't sure what I was going to do about it. Then I started looking at my assortment of brown paints & a plan of action suggested itself. This bottle of Pactra Dark Earth must be at least 30 years old; the company no longer exists & this quick one-coat brush job demonstrates why I liked them so much, & still do:

 

 

Testor's Model Master paints thicken quickly in the bottle, but that was actually an asset for once. The color is called "Leather":

 

 

This is Testor's "Military Brown", which happens to be the same shade applied to all the pin rails:

 

 

At this scale, that ought to do.

 

The ladders are also ready to go. The patch of deck may be slightly visible at the bottom of the ladder down the hatch just aft of the galley, so it's going in with 3 or 4 simple strip-stanchions to better secure it under the gun deck. The same ladder went in the same place on the kit, but without a deck to stand on...

 

 

Next time, I really hope to be able to post some images of a hull with some yellow ocher & "tar" on it...

 

Cheers, -Lars

Edited October 29, 2018 by lars_opland
added info

[Modelholic]

Lars, 

I'm glued to this build and am truly amazed by your work

It's been years since I read the book and I can't recall any shots from the film but I thought Surprise had 9 pdr long guns on the gundeck not carronades.

Tom

Just re-read your opening post and now understand:)

Edited October 29, 2018 by Modelholic

[lars_opland]

Thanks Tom,

Yes, it's sort of a blend of the fictional & historic ships. I couldn't resist the carronade  main battery, though probably could have decided otherwise if I wasn't doing resin castings just about every day anyway.

Cheers, -Lars