Terry1954 Posted June 4, 2020 Share Posted June 4, 2020 7 minutes ago, perdu said: How the heck you can work in such an oppressive atmosphere? I am inclined to suggest that the thing that is adding to the impression of oppression, could be that Farrow & Ball Cockpit Green on the walls? He should have gone for their more nautical Slate Grey range .................. I occassionaly reach levels of tidiness as we see in the picture. Perhaps this is Crisp's "Weapons Tight" status? You can be assured though that my own space does not remain in that tidy state for long. It becomes somewhat "Weapons Free"! Terry 5 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ex-FAAWAFU Posted June 4, 2020 Author Share Posted June 4, 2020 21 minutes ago, Terry1954 said: Perhaps this is Crisp's "Weapons Tight" status? You can be assured though that my own space does not remain in that tidy state for long. It becomes somewhat "Weapons Free"! Spot on. You are me! 2 5 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Terry1954 Posted June 4, 2020 Share Posted June 4, 2020 Sounds like it! And co-incidentally, yesterday was my cleanup day, prompted by Mrs H, who shares the room. Her Art Studio bit is on the other side behind where I normally sit in the picture. The deal is when the whole area needs a good clean (needed often, done seldom), I do it to avoid her causing any collateral damage to my bit! My own "Weapons Tight" status.............. Terry 15 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ex-FAAWAFU Posted June 4, 2020 Author Share Posted June 4, 2020 It’s probably time I ‘fessed up to the fact that I have been doing a little work on other projects alongside Ark - notably picking up again on my build of HMS Dido (the Ikara Leander, my first ship - not the WW2 cruiser!). I’ll post this & future pics in the Dido WIP, but Ark will forgive one intrusion; yesterday was one of those days when I should not have picked up anything to do with models. Tired, a bit rushed... but I conned myself that I could just paint Dido’s flight deck. Clearly I didn’t mix the paint well enough (though I genuinely thought I had), and to add to my teeth-gnashing some of the deck green (sprayed last week) came away with the masking tape. Ah well: one step forward, two steps back! More genuine Ark-ery soon Crisp 4 1 5 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
beefy66 Posted June 4, 2020 Share Posted June 4, 2020 So we do all have days like that and it is not just me although probably many more times in my favour I think beefy 3 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
perdu Posted June 4, 2020 Share Posted June 4, 2020 Bad luck, I did think it was going to be "do a bit more on Dido" time Do I get the prize? OK OK already, gotcha! 1 2 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Bigdave22014 Posted June 4, 2020 Share Posted June 4, 2020 Ooh Dido's back! Does this mean a certain Sea King might make a re-appearance as well? 😇 1 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ex-FAAWAFU Posted June 4, 2020 Author Share Posted June 4, 2020 re Sea King... No; not yet! Dido flight desk recovery part 1 successful: Part 2, some misted darker grey, to follow tomorrow. Then that pesky lifting green deck, and then the mother of all masking jobs to get the upperworks colour laid down More soon Crisp 12 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ex-FAAWAFU Posted June 5, 2020 Author Share Posted June 5, 2020 Some genuinely Ark-related work, albeit of short duration. I’ve turned my eye back to the ship’s boats (see many pages back for progress through attempts to improve Merit’s weak efforts with wrong size & shape, eventually ending up with a complete set of 3D printed numbers from Shapeways)... The Shapeways boats are fabulous - streets ahead of available competition in most cases; you can get good Whalers from Atlantic, for instance, but many of these simply don’t exist in this scale. However, they do suffer from that common issue with 3D printed parts, namely prominent ‘striping’ artefacts resulting from the print process. So I’ve been experimenting (initially with a spare Steam Pinnace, not used in Ark, but now with the boats I actually need) with Mr Surfacer to fix the dodgy hull surfaces. Mr S 1200 applied by brush seems to be doing some good, particularly after a second coat: They will need some sanding in places to clean up, but smooth hulls ready for paint no longer seem impossible. More soon Crisp 17 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
beefy66 Posted June 5, 2020 Share Posted June 5, 2020 Looking forward as to how these come out I am expecting an order soon so my not so good looking ones might turn out better fingers crossed 🤞 beefy 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
gunzo Posted June 5, 2020 Share Posted June 5, 2020 Crisp Forgive me if I've mentioned this before but for printed parts I find the'self levelling' performance of Ultimate Primer very useful in eliminating most if not all of the layering on small parts, with the added advantage of being resilient and soft enough for fine sanding. I generally apply with a brush with the part held for optimum grain fill and drying time is on a par with Mr Surfacer- but with Ultimate your unlikely to get a high. Les 2 2 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Terry1954 Posted June 5, 2020 Share Posted June 5, 2020 Oodles of good work along with some excellent tips and ideas on this thread as usual Crisp. Shapeways and 3D stuff in general can be superb in it's ability to give us the components we desire, but ultimate surface smoothness is still in the modellers domain until that final touch needed can be delivered by the technology....... I love this hobby! Terry Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ex-FAAWAFU Posted June 6, 2020 Author Share Posted June 6, 2020 7 hours ago, gunzo said: Crisp Forgive me if I've mentioned this before but for printed parts I find the'self levelling' performance of Ultimate Primer very useful in eliminating most if not all of the layering on small parts, with the added advantage of being resilient and soft enough for fine sanding. I generally apply with a brush with the part held for optimum grain fill and drying time is on a par with Mr Surfacer- but with Ultimate your unlikely to get a high. Les If you had mentioned it before, Les, it hadn’t registered with me, so thanks. I don’t have any Ultimate, so will stick with Mr S for this build, but if I ever get to a show again (if any of us do!) I’ll lay in some Ultimate and give it a try Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
CedB Posted June 6, 2020 Share Posted June 6, 2020 Nice boats Crisp 1 hour ago, Ex-FAAWAFU said: I don’t have any Ultimate, so will stick with Mr S for this build, but if I ever get to a show again (if any of us do!) I’ll lay in some Ultimate and give it a try I'm pretty sure Ultimate primer is re-badged Badger Stynylrez and you know how keen I am on that stuff! You can buy it online in different colours (the red brown might be good for ships?) in various sizes. The nice lady from Barwell suggested an initial airbrush wash out with water and then their airbrush cleaner - it dries quickly and doesn't smell! Great stuff. 3 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ex-FAAWAFU Posted June 6, 2020 Author Share Posted June 6, 2020 I am leaving the Mr Surfacer at least another 24 hours to cure completely on the boats before I start tidying them up and polishing for primer, so today I have been working on the flight deck for the first time in many months. Specifically, sanding away Merit’s accelerator loading ramp (at that period ‘catapults’ were the cordite fired things on ships without flight decks; Ark’s hydraulic jobs were known as ‘accelerators’) and replacing it with Tetra’s brass replacement. Followed by the two accelerator tracks. Like all of Tetra’s stuff thus far, it fits superbly. The Eagle-eyed will notice that the starboard loading platform (which I fitted aeons ago) isn’t 100% lined up with the track, but it’s much too late to fix that now, so I won’t tell if you don’t... The platform stood proud of the flight deck on the original, so no need to counter-sink or anything complicated like that. The characteristic wheels which stuck out of the for’d end of the accelerator track will be fitted a LOT later, once this is all firmly fixed onto the hull. I also plan to add a wee collapsed trolley (scratched) - this seems to have been permanently fitted to the port track (only), and can be seen in this photo along with the wheels. The square-ish holes immediately below the accelerator tracks were anti-submarine lookout posts; there was some poor matelot inside there! Merit’s are a poor shape, so need some work, and they have missed a third hole which looks out to c.60 degree either side (invisible in this shot because in shadow). [Pre-war photo, because there are ?Ospreys / Nimrods visible in the deck range, as well as Swordfish. But lots of lovely detail] More soon Crisp 17 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
giemme Posted June 6, 2020 Share Posted June 6, 2020 I'm rather impressed by that perspective pic Ciao 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ex-FAAWAFU Posted June 6, 2020 Author Share Posted June 6, 2020 Rather hard to photograph - not enough hands - but I’ve also improved the shape of Merit’s anti-submarine lookout ports, including adding the third one (microchisels to the rescue yet again): Not perfect, but much better; this is what I’m trying to represent: 14 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Gisbod Posted June 7, 2020 Share Posted June 7, 2020 Great thread Crisp, Just catching up with it. I love seeing other people’s workspaces. I like the modular set up. I’ll have to have a look at those... Guy 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ex-FAAWAFU Posted June 7, 2020 Author Share Posted June 7, 2020 Today’s game was moving further aft on the flight deck, and is more of a planning and measurement exercise than cutting any styrene / brass (though I did finish the third port side anti-submarine lookout hole first - see yesterday). Today’s focus is on the barrier area, just level with the back of the island - and specifically the recoil mechanism either side, which needs scratch building. The Tetra & WEM sets both include decent barriers (for once I think Tetra’s is weaker than the opposition), but stop pretty much at the barrier stanchions... and there’s a lot more to it than that. WEM’s does at least depict the first section (‘self-adjusting sheave’ on the plan), albeit in the wrong place on the starboard side. In particular, see the starboard side underneath the pom-pom platform, where the cable runs through a series of three sheaves and a roller fairlead before being anchored in a substantial recoil cylinder on the deck edge by the funnel. The port side had something similar, but most of it was below the flight deck, so invisible for our purposes. Here’s the same area of the plans side on: ...and here, in a photo I have posted before, you can see part of the recoil cylinder - comparing it with the guardrails, I’d say it’s a good 5’ high. I started off by putting the WEM PE barrier in the right position judged from the plans, like so: Then I marked each leg of the pom-pom platform in pencil (no point in carefully designing & building a barrier system which fouls the superstructure!) - so this is the same view as above with the pom-pom platform removed: That allowed me to pencil in (by eye, from the plans) something that ought to look good enough - part of this is simply to make things look convincingly busy under there, rather than 100% accurate... not least because I don’t believe there are any photographs of this area: That should work with some Albion Alloys tube for the cylinder & copper wire for the cable, I think. Now I just have to build it! More soon Crisp 13 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ex-FAAWAFU Posted June 8, 2020 Author Share Posted June 8, 2020 If you think about it, the stanchions that hold up the barrier have to be pretty chunky bits of kit - by definition the barrier is there to catch aircraft that have missed the arrestor wires so are generally not under full control, and even at Stringbag landing speeds you’re talking a fair amount of momentum that requires stopping. Equally, when not in use, you don’t want a dirty great heavy girder lying on the deck ready to puncture a tyre (or worse) if an aircraft drifts left during its take-off roll. I’d missed it until now, but the builders’ plans show how they dealt with this; a protecting ramp into which the lowered stanchion slotted. So I thought I’d try adding it to my flight deck. The plans are close to 1/350, so producing a reasonable tracing was easy enough: Then prod the corners through with a scriber onto some styrene, cut out... ...and refine til you have roughly the right shape(s): Still needs a little work, but the real challenge is going to be thinning the edges so there’s something like a bevel / ramp rather than a step. That’s for tomorrow. Plan B, if this cannot be made to work, is to do the same thing in brass. More soon Crisp 11 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
gunzo Posted June 8, 2020 Share Posted June 8, 2020 Our local council seems happy enough for cars to negotiate steps on its speed humps! Les 2 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
hendie Posted June 9, 2020 Share Posted June 9, 2020 3 hours ago, Ex-FAAWAFU said: Still needs a little work, but the real challenge is going to be thinning the edges so there’s something like a bevel / ramp rather than a step. Best tool I've found for things like that is to use the back edge of a knife blade as a scraper. I did buy one of those fancy scrapers, but 90% of the time I still use the blade back edge. hey! I contributed something!... maybe 2 2 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
giemme Posted June 9, 2020 Share Posted June 9, 2020 Wow, impressive stuff, Crisp If you were to redo it in brass, how would you cut those complex lines? TIA Ciao 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Terry1954 Posted June 9, 2020 Share Posted June 9, 2020 Impressive deck work, especially the areas around those barrier stanchions. Extra detail like that will really set things off nicely. Like Giorgio I'm curious how easy or not that might be to do in brass, especially bevelling some of those tricky edge shapes. Mind you, tricky enough in plastic! Terry 2 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Alpha Juliet Posted June 9, 2020 Share Posted June 9, 2020 Outstanding work! Now I'm even more scared of PE than I was before - and I haven't even done any yet!! 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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