*** FINISHED *** Revell 1:1200 'Titanic' - in uncharted waters!

[clive_t]

Greetings all,

 

My first ever visit to this bit of the forum - having found some arm-bands just in case

 

I was inspired, by the wonderful Titanic builds I had seen on here recently, to have a go at a ship model - only my second ever,and the first was some 45+ years ago ('Royal Sovereign' if I remember rightly, where I was the willing helper whilst my late step-father did most of the work). It follows, therefore, that expectations as to build quality, should not be that high!

 

From researching the Titanic, and her lesser-known sister ships Olympic and Britannic, I found that the Britannic had been fitted out as a hospital ship during WW1, whilst the Olympic was a troop ship. I had an idea to do a 'what if' type representation of the Titanic, supposing that had the ship survived to the outbreak of war, she would almost certainly have been pressed into some kind of service.

 

Having primed everything with my traditional Halfords car body spray, I then painted the bottom of the hull with a red oxide primer colour:

 

 

I then had a small but significant change of plan - I decided that I would make it into some kind of simple sea-scape, which of course necessitated that I cut the bottom of the hull off!

 

 

From this, you will have correctly determined that planning is not my strong point

 

I then decided to completely respray everything with white!

 

 

I then painted the deck sections with a thinned down tan colour:

 

 

Obviously with a small scale kit such as this, the build phase was fairly straightforward:

 

 

Prior to fitting any of the more delicate bits, I decided to try and paint the green stripe and red crosses, in the manner of the various photos of Britannic. I did so by hand, which is probably fairly obvious!

 

 

 

The photos of Britannic showed that there were crosses mounted on the deck rails adjacent to the first and fourth funnels on either side. I made some from some pieces of styrene strip:

 

 

I then made up and painted the four funnels:

 

 

The funnels, and the cranes were then fitted:

 

 

Finally, the masts and the additional red crosses I made earlier. You can't see them very well, but I also applied the decals:

 

 

 

So that's where I am as of this evening. I hope to try and fit some cables etc, and maybe a bit of weathering - but that's for another time!

 

Thanks for watching

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Edited March 17, 2018 by clive_t
correcting bad grammar!

[kpnuts]

Looking great my 1/350 is still sitting on the shelf of doom and dosnt look as good as this.

[k5054nz]

A great idea, I've not seen many "What If?" ship models and this concept makes loads of sense!

[clive_t]

On 17/03/2018 at 9:55 PM, kpnuts said:

Looking great my 1/350 is still sitting on the shelf of doom and dosnt look as good as this.

Thanks for the kind comment, I guess the smaller scale hides a multitude of sins!

On 18/03/2018 at 2:13 AM, k5054nz said:

A great idea, I've not seen many "What If?" ship models and this concept makes loads of sense!

Thanks Zac, much appreciated.

 

Apologies for the lengthy delay between updates - bench time is somewhat at a premium for me just now, but today I have been able to move this forward a little. It's always a leap in the dark, for me, when I start to attempt embellishments such as weathering on a model - I just never know how it will turn out until I've committed to doing it. This is after I applied a thinned black wash to the hull, and rubbed some of it back with a dry cotton bud:

 

 

Not too bad (to me anyway! ) apart from it accentuated the 'clean' look of the superstructure!

 

From reference photos (albeit colourised) of the Britannic, there were a few rust streaks on the hull, most notably from the where the anchors were stowed (I forget the maritime term, sorry!). This after what must have been a relatively short period of service. My warped alternative history has it that the Titanic had served for significantly longer, and therefore the effects were more visible over more of the ship. To achieve this, I used a tiny amount of thinned oil paint (black and burnt umber):

 

 

As you can see I took the opportunity to make the superstructure more in keeping with the hull, as well as a bit of grime/soot round the front 3 funnels (I understand the stern-most funnel was purely cosmetic)

 

I need to let that dry off before I attempt some kind of rigging. Good luck with that then...

 

Thanks for watching, comments/criticisms welcome

[Martian]

Interesting build which is providing much food for thought for the Martian brain.

 

Martian

[morty_3333]

Hi Clive!

Great progress on Your Titanic,and an interesting premise as the hospital ship,I'm sure Your correct in that it would have been used as a wartime vessel,same thing has been done throughout history,right up to The Falklands War (QE2 and Canberra).

 

Oh, just a bit of advice, if Your doing any soldering, don't use the tweezers from Your chocolate tool kit.........................................

Keep Sticking!                       Cheers,  Pete

[clive_t]

Afternoon all, it's been a while since I've managed to progress this. Well, the ship is as it was, but currently I am working on a small sea-scape for it. I've been perusing various you-tube clips, and I think I have found a method that looks not too bad and, more importantly, one I can follow with a reasonable chance of not messing it up completely! Having said that... nothing is beyond me in that respect! I've decided to post progress on it as I go, so even if it ends up a colossal failure, at least everyone will see it and not make the same mistakes I did

 

Anyway, here's the base - no expense spared, obviously :

 

 

I used the bottom of the hull, the bit I cut off, to mark the boundary of where the ship will end up sitting.

 

Next, I marked out some rough 'bow wave' type ripples, and on those I bent some cocktail sticks and stuck those down:

 

 

Next I got a small piece of foil, and proceeded to 'clap' it repeatedly between my hands until it looked like this:

 

 

I then glued the foil to the base, and carefully smoothed it to remove any large air bubbles:

 

 

Just by way of a test, I put the ship in the place where it will eventually be fixed, to see how it looked:

 

 

Not perfect, but by the same token it's my first attempt at a sea-scape, so not too shabby so far!

[clive_t]

Further progress this week. I trimmed the excess foil from the edges to tidy things up a little, and then applied a coat of el cheapo wall emulsion, stippling it with a paint brush to add some more texture to the surface:

 

 

Once that had dried, I dug out some good old rattle-can black and gave it the once over:

 

 

Bit of a minor setback with this as the rattle-can propellant started to attack the expanded polystyrene base. Fortunately I noticed in time, otherwise it could have spelt an untimely end to this sea-scape!

 

Once that had dried, I air-brushed some random blotches of Tamiya NATO Black over it:

 

 

I then applied a layer of Mod Podge over that, and further stippled it (ignore the railway track in the background, that is for another small project I started on today!):

 

 

Once that had dried (it dries clear), I air-brushed yet more random blotches of Tamiya Sea Blue and Flat Blue:

 

 

... and covered it again with yet more Mod Podge:

 

 

Once dry, it looked like this:

 

 

With the ship placed loosely on top, it's starting to look the part:

 

 

Still a fair bit to do, hopefully more to come later this week!

 

Thanks for watching

 

 

[Gorby]

I'm also a stranger to this part of BM as well, but this is a fascinating build. Wasn't too sure about the bent cocktail stick bow waves to start with, but they appear to have turned out very well. The ship looks great.

Now I'm going off to find out what 'Mod Podge' is.

[clive_t]

Cheers Gorby, actually I wasn't too sure about the cocktail sticks either, but with each stage after the initial gluing down, I am getting to like them more.

 

I hadn't heard of Mod Podge either until a couple of years ago, when SWMBO demonstrated the use of it in one of her crafting projects. I guess it's best described as a glorified PVA, with the additional attributes of being quicker to dry, and is available in a range of finishes. I've also used it as a glue for cockpits before now, so it's pretty versatile stuff. Readily available from the Range, Hobbycraft, Amazon etc.

 

 

[TallBlondJohn]

IIRC, the additional crosses were illuminations to signal the hospital ship status at night. Not so good at deterring mines.

Nice sea scape so far. I've got this model/toy too, tried to make it into a dazzle camo Olympic but went down with major mojo failure.

[clive_t]

Thanks John, I had the dazzle scheme as a potential option, but I bottled it and went with what I considered to be the easier scheme. Maybe one day I will try it.

 

I read somewhere that there was a mutually agreed moritorium on attacking designated hospital ships. However, as you rightly say, mines are indiscriminate - as the Britannic found to her cost.

[Hewy]

 clive, i hadn't noticed you were here in the ship yards, I like how you've done your water,     very nice model , its looking  good

[clive_t]

Thanks Glynn for your most kind comment.

 

Some modest progress today on account of I have been working on a slightly different project which I need to have finished by Friday.

 

I dry brushed some light blue on to the surface in order to accentuate the wave tops:

 

 

Still some more to do but it's definitely getting there! 

 

Thanks for watching

 

 

 

[uncarina]

Just got caught up: really nice work! I’ve never seen that approach to a seascape before, but it looks effective!

 

Cheers,  Tom

[clive_t]

Thanks Tom, much appreciated.

 

I guess it's an amalgam of different techniques I've seen demonstrated on you tube and some maritime modelling forums. It's turned out better than I expected so far.

[longshanks]

Looking the part

 

Kev

[clive_t]

Thanks Kev, I am quite pleased with the sea scape so far.

 

I am, however, pondering what to do for the (4?) aerial wires that run between the two masts. I've tried and failed to create something from EZ Line, but it's either too thick (and obviously overscale) or, if I try stretching the line so that it looks thinner, the masts bent towards one another. I even resorted to splitting individual strands out from a single length of line, but these proved nigh on impossible to work with.

 

I am therefore open to suggestions from the floor for an alternative solution for aerial wires etc. At the moment my intention is to quietly forget about such a foolhardy venture!

 

[longshanks]

Re aerials

1.  Uschi Line Available in three silly thicknesses and is round unlike EZ line, Not cheap but goes a long way

 

2.  Electrical Flex. Strip it down and you will find most are around 0.15 to 0.18mm. If you can get telephone or computer wire you'll often find it thinner. Take a piece and stretch it between two sets of pliers. As you gentle pull you'll feel it give, stop. The wire is now straight and can be cut to length an glued on. I use CA or PVA wood glue

 

HTH

 

Kev

[clive_t]

Thanks Kev, I have a drawer full of old computer and phone cables - buried under a mountain of stuff at the back of my garage right now! I'll certainly give it a try though, thanks for your input 

[clive_t]

Quite a bit of activity today, most of it wasted though. Sadly, my attempts at using the finest of fine metal wire to create the aerial between the masts was all for nought... it just didn't look right, and as before the flimsy nature of the masts was my undoing. I had a search of other forums where other people had made this particular kit, and to be honest (and with due respect to those other modellers) where there was an attempt to rig the vessel, it just didn't look right. The only one I found which actually looked OK had no rigging at all. So, sadly, I shall admit defeat on that, and concentrate instead on making a decent, if unspectacular, diorama as a whole.

 

To that end, I added a wake wash - using some Galleria modelling paste - to the area where the stern of the ship will be located:

 

 

Hopefully I have done it so that there is some texture to the wash, most prominent nearest the middle prop.

 

There you go, short and not-very-sweet, but these things must be at least tried

 

[beefy66]

that's certainly a different take on the old girl looking great Clive  👍

 

beefy

[clive_t]

Thanks Mr Beefy, very kind of you. I am enjoying the challenges it presents - well most of them!

 

The ship is now stuck on the sea-scape base, there are a few gaps which I have tried to fill with small scraps of single ply tissue paper, stuck down with 50/50 diluted PVA:

 

 

Nearing completion now!

 

Thanks for watching

 

[clive_t]

A bit more progress today. The tissue paper has dried, so I was able to apply various shades of Tamiya blue to the area around the hull, followed by another generous helping of Mod Podge:

 

[clive_t]

Got the base on - actually some strips of decorative panel wood that I found loitering in the corner of the conservatory, sprayed black:

 

 

I am wondering if it might ruin what I've already achieved if I try and portray the funnels as smoking. I might try it separately and see if I can get an effect I am happy with.

 

Thanks for looking in