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HMS Dido (Ikara Leander) 1979 - [WAFU’s away match]


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Well that is a big thank you to both of you

 

I am never, ever going to need to do it but it is really good to see the intricacies of esoteric service life

 

I know how to walk, dig holes, talk to 63Sigs and fire my SLR and Gimpy, Browning and SMG

 

Oh yes 66 LAW too but what you guys got up to on the oggin will normally be a mystery

 

It's fabulous knowledge to gain for an old man you know, all my knowledge is obsolete you see  :)

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OK.  I’ve tried 0.2mm, and I don’t think I’ll bother with 0.1mm for 1/350, because this looks pretty decent.

 

This is how you do it.  Get 4 equal lengths of wire and, as Bill says, anchor the 4 close together in your vise (or something similar).  The divide them into 2 pairs (Swann Morton blade for scale);

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Then take one of the outer lines and pass it under the 2 inners, up between inner & outer, before passing back to inside on its original side.  Then do the same on the other side... and keep going; after 4 goes, each wire will have been used once.  Gradually, your sennit will emerge.  Here it is alongside a length of PE cable from the kit:

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...and here with the same PE, but after twisting to stop the PE looking [being!] completely flat:

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This illustrates the issue with PE; if you don’t twist it, it looks wrong because it’s flat... but there isn’t any overlap between links, so when twisted it looks “gappy”.

 

The sennit is really hard to photograph at this size - though once painted and dry brushed etc., it’ll look good.  But to help you get the idea, here it is alongside yesterday’s test run (which I think is probably 0.5mm rather than 0.4mm):

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Finally, here it is laid across Dido’s fo’c’s’le:

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As I say, it’s very hard to photograph; at these extreme close-ups, it looks OK, but clearly a sennit - but to the naked eye, even from a foot away, it looks amazing.  Top marks to Mr. Griffith!

 

More tomorrow

 

Crisp

 

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Post #125 is a very interesting indeed and a fascinating explanation of how all this works. Seeing this process in action, I can now appreciate what is involved, and seeing the ones that went wrong was positively nerve racking! Never really thought about it before.

The cable lockers used to store these must be be quite a size too, large spaces somewhere below decks I assume?

 

1 minute ago, Ex-FAAWAFU said:

Final shot for tonight; in roughly the right position - from this range you get a better idea of how it looks.

 

Looking at that last shot, it seems 0.2mm has come out pretty good. Very authentic looking. Really enjoying this thread very much, but then that has been the case with the Sea King!

 

Thanks for sharing such interesting background.

 

Terry

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14 minutes ago, Courageous said:

Very impressive work Crisp...waiting for Mr Griffith's book to read more.

As a matter of interest, what is its links/inch?

 

Stuart

Measured by eye, c.38

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Congratulations on mastering another craft skill - Lacemaking! :clap:

No, seriously. In lacemaking you work with two pairs of threads. 

All you need to do is add several more pairs and change between then. 

What? you're not going to give up modelling for lacemaking? 😨

Probably a good call. 😋

 

Dave (a 6'4" motorcycle riding, ex rugby player who can make Honiton, Bucks and Torsion Lace)

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Not much time at the bench this evening, so just a bit more added.  First, the control boxes for the cable holders (see the real Leander photo earlier for details):

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Second, more fair leads - this time on the stern.

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Not one of my better days; someone accidentally nudged my elbow this morning in the street and I dropped my phone, completely shattering the screen.  Still, when I went to O2 to check on the insurance, it transpired that I was only a couple of weeks away from being eligible for an upgrade anyway, so it ws actually cheaper to get a posh new phone than to fix the old one...  But it was still a pain in the rear end.

 

So I have a new phone, which has a significantly better camera than the old one; it’ll be interesting to see whether the difference shows up here.

 

This evening I have essentially finished the fo’c’s’le area, adding 6 deck clenches for the assorted slips described above, plus the final details on the Ikara Handling Room - a couple of ladders and two blow-off plates:

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Once it’s all cured I’ll start cleaning up in readiness for initial painting - though I am awaiting a package from L’Arsenal so I can finish adding fairleads around the upper deck, so it might be a day or three.

 

So I have moved on to @perdu/ Bill’s area of expertise, the aviation department.  This thing is tiny!  Quite a lot of cleaning up, plus very carefully fitting the first element of the undercarriage...

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Finally, another shot of 473 (Dido’s Wopse) the right way up:

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More soon

 

Crisp

Edited by Ex-FAAWAFU
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Ill tell you what, for tinyscale that little Wopse is a marvel

 

Mind  you I think it would be a candidate for me trying out casting a copy from clear resin, it would be an ideal candidate for a see through look

 

Love seeing Dido develop Crisp  👍

 

Oh yes the pictures do seem a lot clearer, the resin kinda hid its detail with the old camera

here it shows up the subtle colour and shape changes nicely

 

Lucky fall skipper

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Peter Hall has probably forgotten more about Wasps than many people ever knew; he was a Grubber on 829 back in the day, before leaving the RN and turning his considerable skills to making exquisite ship models.

 

My main concern is getting the undercarriage a) to line up properly and b) to be robust enough.  The fuselage is resin and weighs next to nothing, but PE legs are going to be interesting.  I may need to beef them up a bit with some Albion Alloys stuff - we’ll see.  But I agree it’s a pretty remarkable rendition given that it is sufficiently small for the Carpet Monster to fancy the entire aircraft!

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I would consider using a pin or better still a piece of Albion Alloys thinnest rod or tube from their slide fit set to make the diagonal shock absorbers instead of chancing it with etch

But if as you say Peter is an ex Wasp man I would expect he's already got that taped

Looking superb as she is already

 

 

By the (possibly very boring) way, any date for resumption of the Queen of the skies build?

 

Cake?

Eat it?

Natch baby, natch...

 

😆

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12 hours ago, Ex-FAAWAFU said:

someone accidentally nudged my elbow this morning in the street and I dropped

Phew, like @Courageous as I read that I was relieved it was your phone!

 

That Wasp is rather neat as is the fo’c’s’le area in the earlier pic.

 

Very nice

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47 minutes ago, perdu said:

I would consider using a pin or better still a piece of Albion Alloys thinnest rod or tube from their slide fit set to make the diagonal shock absorbers instead of chancing it with etch

But if as you say Peter is an ex Wasp man I would expect he's already got that taped

Looking superb as she is already

 

 

By the (possibly very boring) way, any date for resumption of the Queen of the skies build?

I think you’re probably right about the undercarriage, Bill

 

As for the Seaking, I’m in a bit of a quandary; at the moment almost all of my modelling time is in the evenings up in London.  I’m really uneasy about trying to transport ZE419 in her current state up to London by train; she is safe at home, even if it delays completion.

 

I have a couple of weeks off at Christmas, so I’ll see what I can achieve then.  

 

If that doesn’t work out, maybe I’ll do a modular thing - in particular, there’s no reason why I couldn’t do lots of work on the rotor head up in town, even if the weapon wiring (which, along with fitting the folded tail, is the main thing left to finish below rotor head level) had to wait a bit longer. 

 

In the mean time I’m having lots of fun reverting to maritime.  And once Dido’s done, I wouldn’t rule out moving straight on to Norfolk.  [Resuming Ark has the same hurdle of transporting a pretty large half finished model by public transport]

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That is good enough for me Crisp, we waited long enough to get you into suitable employment I think we can hang fire whilst you tackle the day job's needs

Sounds as if the sensible way is the way of the ----WAFU

 

;)

As for the etch as legs, in miniscular scale it should be OK with perhaps a skin of cyano to add 'stiff', I am well prepared to trust the man who knows about these things

 

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6 hours ago, Ex-FAAWAFU said:

If that doesn’t work out, maybe I’ll do a modular thing - in particular, there’s no reason why I couldn’t do lots of work on the rotor head up in town,

Sounds like a good plan, and we get to watch. It is all about us you see.............. 😁

 

Terry

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Tonight’s dose of extremely small stuff.

 

Firstly, the flare guns on top of the 3” chaff rocket launchers (‘Corvus’);

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My attempt at improving the roller fairleads on the fo’c’s’le - 0.2mm nickel rod from You Know Who used to give PE a bit of... well.... roller.  Quite pleased with how much better that looks.

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Then a bit of excavation with my faithful microchisel; the port navigation light, which is inset into the bridge wing (I assume even Peter comes up against the limits of what’s possible to do with a mould) - the dirty edges are the pencil outline I drew before starting to dig:

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Plus of course the Wasp, now sitting comfortably enough on the upper section of her legs.  Note the flot canister sitting in the foreground:

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Finally for now, a visual indicator of how far I have got through the PE - gradually getting closer to the point where only guardrails are left:

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There won’t be any more until next Wednesday now (I’ll post, no doubt, but no progress with Dido); half term starts tomorrow & I’m having a couple of days in hospital (nothing to be concerned about - routine maintenance for a long-term chronic condition).

 

More next week

 

Crisp

 

Edited by Ex-FAAWAFU
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Hello again.  Back in harness.

 

And a weekend of decisions that are going to change this build somewhat.  I have mentioned proximity to priming several times, but only at the weekend did I get a chance to do a test run.  All my ships are built as waterline models, so I decided to use an un-used underwater section as the paint mule.  Originally the idea was to try out brush techniques with Colourcoats... but it didn’t really turn out that way. 

 

First, having carefully prepped the resin for paint in the same way I always do, I sprayed a coat of Tamiya rattle can white.  It went very badly, so I cleaned it off and started again.  Here’s the second attempt:resized_ce5aa682-4c08-4b42-903d-c052a8e5

 

[No, that isn’t the underneath of a Leander.  I’d ask you to guess, but the game is well & truly given away later, so not much point!  It’s a County Class DLG].

 

Now it’s one thing cleaning a paint mule, but it is quite another sorting out a busy model with fragile details if the primer paint goes badly wrong... so I have lost faith.  My primer of choice on all surfaces for ages has been Alclad Primer & Microfiller - it has never let me down... but the only reason I was working with Tamiya rattle cans this time was because of the modelling in London thing; I don’t have an airbrush up here (or, more pertinently, a compressor!).

 

So I have made a decision.  The primer coat is much too important on a resin, white metal & brass model to risk stuffing it up... which means Dido is going to have to go on a careful journey, much protected and wrapped up, back to Salisbury for some painting.

 

That won’t be possible for a few days, so what to do this week and next?

 

Start the next model, of course!

 

This will be its only appearance in this Dido thread - I will start a build log of its own in due course.  But if Dido was my first ship, my second was another 60s-tastic beauty: I give you Her Majesty’s Ship Norfolk, a County Class destroyer (but really a light cruiser in all but name).

 

Also Atlantic Models, also 1/350.  Obligatory box and contents shot:

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Some more evidence of Peter’s amazing casting prowess, first in the clean finesse of the GDP:

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...and second in the exquisite interior of the hangar:

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I have done nothing to clean up any of these parts; they are exactly as they come out of the box.

 

Finally, to give a bit more sense of scale, here is dry-fitted Norfolk-to-be with Dido in the foreground:

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And here from above, which probably removes the distortion better; the DLGs were large ships:

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I was appointed to Norfolk straight out of university, in July 1981.  We had what looked a busy programme lined up... only for the ship to be sold to Chile under our feet only a few weeks after I joined (& re-named Pratt, which rather completed the sense of let-down).  I got a pierhead jump to another ship in November 81, which proved to be rather fateful: the new ship was HMS Fearless, in which I ended up going to war only 5 months later.

 

But that’s a build for the future.  

 

Unlikely to be many posts until next week (at least, posts that show any progress!).  The next move for Dido is primer in Salisbury, and in Norfolk’s case it will be lots of careful clean-up of parts, which is not exactly photogenic.

 

More soon

 

Crisp

 

 

 

 

 

 

Edited by Ex-FAAWAFU
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