HMS Hood

[Micha_Pol]

Beautiful. beautiful cats... beautiful boats too, of course.

[Model Monkey]

Very sorry to read about the loss of your beautiful cat.  Pets are family and their loss hits hard.

 

Your boats are sublime.  World-class modeling.

[foeth]

 

 

 

The artwork sent to etchworks.eu arrived today. This is only half the etch as a copy was added on the opposite side of the A5 sheet (this is an A6 close-up). I always add a few experiments and parts that are a bit finer than recommended by the etcher;  some thin lines are over-etched and some grids and holes a bit under etched but generally a scan of set looks great. Rest of the weekend will be soldering and adding these tiny parts... 😇

[foeth]

Small update showing half a blog image; crutches are next but my DIY audio was temporarily on the Fritz and demanded maintenance... (trigger wire got loose).

 

<pic replaced by one in later post>

 

All etched parts in place; most of it went fine except for the steering pulleys. I tried stacking a few etched circles but I kept loosing these parts and eventually added tube. There's often shield in front of the pilot; not sure if I'll add it though. The grid on the stern was replaced by the newly etched mesh, a decision that came with some regret as it took more effort than anticipated.... For the two small small seats in the aft I found out I added the lines on the back of the etch set to the wrong layer and these folding lines are now missing; except these only two other parts are affected fortunately.  The handrails are drilled in a bit to make sure they don't fall off at the slightest touch.

[ArnoldAmbrose]

Gidday @foeth, that boat's a model in itself. She's very nicely done. Regards, Jeff.

[maarten.schonfeld]

2 minutes ago, ArnoldAmbrose said:

Gidday @foeth, that boat's a model in itself. She's very nicely done. Regards, Jeff.

And to realize it's only 1 1/2 inch long!

[robgizlu]

Whoa - That is tremendous 

Rob

[SallysDad]

Hello Sir.

 

I was looking at your web page and I was wondering if you have done anything on the hull yet?

[foeth]

Thanks for the comments! Nearly finished now.

  

13 hours ago, SallysDad said:

 

Hello Sir.

 

I was looking at your web page and I was wondering if you have done anything on the hull yet?

Quite a lot actually, though not recently. The entire sides, armour plating, and decks have been redone in styrene (core of the model is still the WEM kit, though not WEM parts remain visible).

[SallysDad]

7 hours ago, foeth said:

Thanks for the comments! Nearly finished now.

  

Quite a lot actually, though not recently. The entire sides, armour plating, and decks have been redone in styrene (core of the model is still the WEM kit, though not WEM parts remain visible).

Could you give a link for that. It would be fascinating to see it. 

And..... that ship's boat is fantastic!!

[foeth]

On 2/20/2023 at 4:12 PM, SallysDad said:

Could you give a link for that. It would be fascinating to see it. 

And..... that ship's boat is fantastic!!

 

Thanks! And, not so much to be found I think Still have a history of "the first ten years" of the model (all parts thrown away) here: https://ontheslipway.com/1065/ I did everything wrong back then... some work was later done scribing in the exact location where armour plates meet based on Hood's shell expansion plan but I think I never wrote anything about that...?

 

 

[SallysDad]

2 hours ago, foeth said:

 

Thanks! And, not so much to be found I think Still have a history of "the first ten years" of the model (all parts thrown away) here: https://ontheslipway.com/1065/ I did everything wrong back then... some work was later done scribing in the exact location where armour plates meet based on Hood's shell expansion plan but I think I never wrote anything about that...?

 

 

Thanks for the link. What you did do back then is really interesting. I have always found the external hull plating and armour patterns on these old ships to speak a lot of the "seriousness" of the real ships. They were built for business. 

Modern warships have no armour revealed that you can easily see. Perhaps, with todays weapons there is no real point of armour.

 

What area was your doctorate in? Now that is a lot of work. I did a masters in Canada and that was a lot of work also. I love to learn.

[foeth]

18 hours ago, SallysDad said:

What area was your doctorate in

 

I did some experimental work on attached/sheet cavitation in a water tunnel; setting up flow measurements and such an an antique facility that has meanwhile been replaced (yay!). Been a while ago... was used for a while for validation work for computations mainly and if goes well for propeller design (codes are too time consuming to be used for that )

[maarten.schonfeld]

On 22/02/2023 at 13:08, foeth said:

 

Thanks! And, not so much to be found I think Still have a history of "the first ten years" of the model (all parts thrown away) here: https://ontheslipway.com/1065/ I did everything wrong back then... some work was later done scribing in the exact location where armour plates meet based on Hood's shell expansion plan but I think I never wrote anything about that...?

 

 

Hi EJ,

Maybe this is the right time to show (and discuss) the Hood's shell expansion plan, to a reduced size not to ruffle the RMG's feathers too much?

[foeth]

I was planning on writing a bit on the hull plating after I did a correction pass of the hull, pending completing of the main superstructure parts (1 done, other nearly). So I have no immediate plans to do so

[foeth]

 

 

Done. I had a slight delay as the Beta for the System Shock remake landed that had to be played first

 

All etched parts in place; most of it went fine except for the steering pulleys near the steering wheel that were too small; I gave up and added a tube. The grid on the stern was replaced by the newly etched mesh, a decision that came with some regret as I first had to repair the damage from removing the previous mesh. For the two small small 'steps' in the aft seating area I found out I did not have any folding liens on the rear of the etch (put some parts in the wrong layer when creating the PDF for the etcher); except for these only two other parts are affected fortunately.  The handrails are drilled in a bit to make sure they don't fall off at the slightest touch (now they fall off at the merest touch).

 

The crutches follow the hull lines of the barge, but their spacing follows the 4ft frame spacing of the boat deck; the crutches are spaced at 3 frames, except for the last crutch at 2 frames, positioned just below the stern tube. I started with the 2nd crutch working in either direction, choosing the keel to run level so that the propeller doesn't foul the deck. Each crutch starts as a strip made to fit the pinnace; weight-saving holes are then drilled in and the strip is trimmed to size. The real boat rested on a teak planks but rather than putting a strip between the hull and the crutch, there are a few strips on either side of the crutch so that the crutch doesn't need to follow the hull lines perfectly. There's a bit of damage near the bow as I put the forward crutch initially at 2 frames; I also had to make 4 versions of the rear crutch before it looked fine; only one very tricky part and 13 strips to redo. Propulsion arrangement was last with the rudder being particularly tricky and very fragile.

 

1 down, 15 to go.

[Thom216]

Love the detail you've got in that!

[robgizlu]

Absolutely Beautiful 

Rob

[gunzo]

Just out of interest, did any of the boats have their own names?

[Ex-FAAWAFU]

I shouldn’t be surprised at your skill any more, but I still am.  That’s gorgeous!

[foeth]

Thanks for the comments! Going to continue with the gig, whalers and cutters next, trying to get the internal framing in with very thin strips... I bought some 0.1 and 0.2mm stryrene sheet from Wave via 1990.co.uk that's a bit thinner than Evergreen 0.13/0.25mm sheet. The 0.25mm Evergreen is also much closer to 0.30mm.

 

14 hours ago, gunzo said:

Just out of interest, did any of the boats have their own names?

 

Other than the Commander-in-Chief’s barge (nick-)named The Green Parrot; I’ve not encountered any names. 

[europapete]

Hi EJ, I came across this book at a hobby show the other week. It has some really good descriptions on how to correctly model wakes and waveforms and ocean. 

Waterline Dioramas, a modelbuilders artform. by Justin Camarata. 

ISBN 978-0-9820579-2-6

www.seawatchbooks.com

[foeth]

9 hours ago, europapete said:

Hi EJ, I came across this book at a hobby show the other week. It has some really good descriptions on how to correctly model wakes and waveforms and ocean. 

Waterline Dioramas, a modelbuilders artform. by Justin Camarata. 

ISBN 978-0-9820579-2-6

www.seawatchbooks.com

Ah, thanks for the tip! Very much sold out though  😐

[foeth]

Small update after a few weeks of low modeling mojo; spent time surviving Citadel Station the ISG IshiMura and jigsaws...  below is an update spanning several modeling weekends...

 

After completion of the pinnace I decided to continue with the smaller pulling boats . I started experimenting with the model of the gig, trying a few techniques to get all the details in working with even thinner styrene than normal.

 

Top left shows a cutter, a gig and two whaler plugs.  Gigs  are usually carvel-built (smooth hull), and the cutters and whalers are clinker-built; I have not yet built up the courage to make a small hull from strips and decided to start with vacuum-forming for all. The recipe for the hull form plugs is the same as for the pinnace: simply add strips using the chopper to make a stepped stack and sand the result until no steps remain visible. The width of each strip in the stack is rounded to the nearest 0.1mm without taking the hull hull thickness into account, but after gluing and sanding you loose a bit so it's feigned accuracy only. The setup for my high-tech vacuum forming is quite basic; simply put the oven to 200 degrees, let the styrene melt a bit  and done. That is, a few attempts are normally required before all the folds in the styrene are 'just right', but if it's not right you can put the styrene back in the oven again. I made two whaler plugs because I was worried the plugs accumulate damage with each forming action (as they do). After the final forming I glued a few strips and spacers (-0.25mm margin) as a cutting outline; this gives a nice curvature along the hull without much difficulty and the process repeats well enough.

 

Would it be possible to add all the timbers—the small frames—to the inside of the hull? The problem is that an estimate of the spacing between the timbers is about half a millimeter, so that means a) many strips and b) the strips need to be very thin to look convincing. The thinner the plastic the higher the risk of melting them when gluing; I used Wave 0.1mm place cut to square strips on the chopper. I started with the usual refinement tactic of adding strips at a wide spacing (4mm), filling in strips half-way in three sessions; much easier to eyeball them into the correct location. At first I stopped at a spacing of 1mm, but after the bottom grids where added I felt confident enough to add the rest too. The strips were glued with a mix of Tamiya normal glue for setting and extra thin cement for fixing. Afterwards these were decapitated about 0.2mm below the top of the hull and a gunwale strip was added. The dreaded thwarts (benches) were added next; the one rests on the drop keel and a so-called rising made from stretched sprue runs along the length of the boat.

 

The rests of the thwarts actually rest on these risings and are well aligned. The knees were tricky and should run over the gunwhale. I carved small channel with my tiny X-acto knife for half the knees and glued small strips into place; the rest were added after the glue was set, so that the tiny part of the gunwhale between the knees would not decide to dislodge itself. The lower part of the knee could them be added. Pics of various boats show that the region between the knees is filled for either all or every other thwart; I modeled the latter for variation.

[maarten.schonfeld]

Ouf! You an Marijn van Gils are awesome...