Admiral's Barge 1:48th scale on a slipway

[Steve D]

At the beginning of this thread, let me issue a warning, I may not finish.  I've never done any scenic work at all so this whole thread is an experiment and my experiments go wrong more often than they go right.

 

Still, I've been watching a lot of Youtube videos and I've decided to have a go, time will tell.

 

The subject of the diorama is an Admiral's barge I build ~ 9 years ago in a temporary workshop while building the house we live in.  When I finished it, I could not make up my mind how to display it and so it has languished in the new workshop getting buried in dust and damaged since them, accidents happen!  The model is OK, but needs quite a bit of cleaning up to improve the finish.  Its sitting in a box I made that is supposed to show it in a waterline setting, really a bit rough all round.

 

It was built based on these lines, I had a more complete drawing but it seems to have walked off in the intervening years

 

 

This is what it looks like now

 

 

It almost has an antique look about it, that brass need a good polish...

 

 

 

My original plan was to mount it floating against a quayside but then I found this painting on line

 

 

And I couldn't resist it, just look at that slipway trolley with all those I beams, lots of interesting brass work possibilities!  But a slipway is still a bit simple, so I'm going to put a boat shed behind it and build out a bit of the boatyard.  In the boat shed, I'm going to have a 16ft clinker boat under construction and I may add a dinghy tied up in the river next to the slip, Time will tell

 

I started yesterday by drawing a kingpost truss boat shed  and as you can see, the construction has come along fairly fast

 

 

There will be a small office at the end, it will have an open side and end and be roofed in corrugated iron (O gauge)

 

 

It looks a little low as the frame wall plate will sit on a dwarf wall of bricks (1:48th scale individual bricks, I can't wait...) and be clad in feather boarding

 

 

The legs at the front are not too short, they will sit on stones.  So, excuse me for posting a small framed building on a boat thread, the boat is still the main event, but I have a lot of ideas about adding detail to the boatyard the possibilities are (almost) endless

[beefy66]

Ok pulling up my chair now and getting comfortable 

 

beefy 

[bhouse]

This looks good and I will follow keenly.

 

In some areas, the local craftsman  responsible would carve a personal mark onto the staddle stones (the ones that would go under your short front legs).

 

An opportunity to include an individual touch or joke, perhaps?

 

Oh, and the barge looks fantastic...

[Courageous]

1 hour ago, Steve D said:

I've never done any scenic work at all

For somebody who has done no scenic work, you've definitely gone in at the deep end, I would've played safe and kept to the photo. But you've already got the skeleton of the boat shed done and it looks great, so maybe this will turn into something fantastic...if you finish it. Great start.

 

Stuart

[Steve D]

16 minutes ago, beefy66 said:

Ok pulling up my chair now and getting comfortable 

 

beefy 

You'll need a large bag of popcorn, this will take a while.  Early progress is always deceptive with my projects  

[Steve D]

6 minutes ago, Courageous said:

For somebody who has done no scenic work, you've definitely gone in at the deep end, I would've played safe and kept to the photo. But you've already got the skeleton of the boat shed done and it looks great, so maybe this will turn into something fantastic...if you finish it. Great start.

 

Stuart

No point in being timid, there needs to be enough in it to learn.  If it works I will finish, so long as I'm happy with the results....

[robgizlu]

That Barge is a delight.  Great work already on the shed

This is going to be Good!!

Rob

[Murdo]

Yeah, that barge looks really classy!

[Steve D]

15 hours ago, robgizlu said:

That Barge is a delight.  Great work already on the shed

This is going to be Good!!

Rob

Thanks Rob, the barge needs a good clean up (is was sort of buried in dust for years) but it is basically sound.  My head is full of ideas (like how to make a 1:48th scale potbelly stove etc) for the boat shed.  I'm assembling all sorts of new ingredients this week, will explain all at the weekend assuming the deliveries arrive

[Ripaman]

This will be very enjoyable to see how this will turn out 

 

Regards

Richard

[Steve D]

23 hours ago, Ripaman said:

This will be very enjoyable to see how this will turn out 

 

Regards

Richard

Thanks Richard, no pressure then 😟

[Steve D]

Ok progress this weekend.  First, I went shopping for a whole lot of things I don't have in the workshop

 

In the small bags are 1:48th scale bricks!!  Don't know if I can actually build the dwarf walls (in English bond of course) but i'm going to have a go.  My experiments yesterday were less that a success, and now i need more bricks.  A lot of this stuff came from 4D model shop in Aldgate, the board is Kapa board which I've used to build the structure.  When you strip the paper surface off, you can score it to create bricks, blocks etc.  Corrugated iron roofing coming this week

 

This is the basic shape built up and covered with sculptamold (sort of plaster of paris and tissue ready mixed.  The slipway is in the foreground and the small deep section the the left will be a deeper dock with a dinghy floating in it

Hours of impressions later, it now looks like this

The 3mm brass channel for the slipway frame has not yet arrived but here you can see the slot I've cut to receive it.  The slabs are about 20" square which seemed reasonable but now make the rough stone wall look more like rubble. Still on a boatyard slip you can't expect fine stonework.  By pressing the Kapa board with a piece of wood, you can push in sections to provide a more uneven finish, I think it is quite effective if I can get the painting right.  The dock has some timber buffers fitted

 

Below is it with the boathouse and barge installed to give some idea of proportion.  The water level will be about up to the rear of the barge, so resting on the slip and about 5/16" deep in the dock section which needs two pours to achieve with the dinghly added in between.  The muddy water is transparent to 1/2".  You use perspex to create a tank for the pour stuck with bathroom sealant and then remove it.  All this is easy to write, but the difficult of doing it without ruining everything is totally unknown, still watching videos....😟

 

 

It looks a bit cramped at the back, still no going back to make it bigger now....  I'm happy with the slipway though.  I think that Kapa board now needs a thin coat of shellac so seal the thin paper surface before priming 

[Courageous]

Excellent start, looks very promising.

 

Stuart

[Murdo]

Looking pretty good so far!

 

[Ripaman]

Great start, stones look very convincing 

 

Regards

Richard

[Steve D]

6 hours ago, Ripaman said:

Great start, stones look very convincing 

 

Regards

Richard

Thanks Richard, this is a venture into the unknown for me, hopefully the result will work out

[ArnoldAmbrose]

Gidday Steve, I love the stone work. It looks rough enough to be authentic I think. Regards, Jeff.

[Steve D]

4 hours ago, ArnoldAmbrose said:

Gidday Steve, I love the stone work. It looks rough enough to be authentic I think. Regards, Jeff.

Hi

Its a journey into new territory, time will tell 

[robgizlu]

OK ...........That is really very, very impressive

Rob

[Chewbacca]

Love the effect you've achieved on the slipway.  Did you carve out the stone effects once the scultamold had dried or was it created while still wet?

[Steve D]

The stone effect is impressed into the Kapa board with the surface paper removed, first with a pencil and then run over with an engineers scriber at about 15 degrees to the surface to deepen the grove and round the stone edges.  Then I took a wood block and pressed some stones to create the unevenness and add depth to the surface.  I'm still experimenting with all this, but its working out OK so far.  Their will be an update tomorrow, lot of work on the building and laying 500 odd individual bricks.....

[Chewbacca]

Thanks, it's most effective.  I tried to get this effect to create an early 20th century street scene but used plaster of paris and it was nowhere near as good as yours.

[Steve D]

Long steady weekend of brick-laying.  I've decided that these bricks are intended to be scattered as rubble not actually laid.  The job is more or less impossible.  I tried a range of glues but UHU was the only one sticky enough, the surface of the bricks just comes away and powders and they are sooo fiddly..  The "mortar" is ivory card, in the picture below you can see some tiny bits ready to be used between each brick, the glue resists them being inserted, etc etc....  Trying to get the rows straight and flat, well I gave up and decided that this was an old boat shed that had had a hard life...

The strange colour of the paving slab is the shellac sealant, is will all be painted, no not the bricks, not after all that effort.  The two wood blocks are attaching the office to the shed, they will not be visible later on.  The black top card is a damp proof course below the wall plate (I know, I'm mad..).  BTW, forget 18" walls stretcher bond was hard enough

 

Below is a start made on the office structure, the window came from a kit that turned out too large but one of the panes was just right, the door I made up

 

 

I also made a start on the roofing with the 1/48th scale corrugated iron sheet

 

Below the office structure is complete, the surface will be weather boarded with 4mm x .5mm pear wood strip

 

 

I'm debating the roof of the office, I purchased some slate tiles which I will probably use, if they don't work, it will be more corrugated iron.  No matter how careful I've been, their are various bits out of square, still boat sheds are like that....

 

This shows the start of the weather boarding on the rear of the shed, will look ok I think

 

 

And this finale shot shows a figure to scale.  You have to imaging the shed will have the beginning of a clinker dinghy, a work bench, lots of wood and tools, a potbelly stove with a glue pot etc, I have plans for that space

 

 

Anyway, that's where I got to, at least its the end of the brickwork, save a rubble pile later on, I have plenty left. 

 

BTW, they appear to be European bricks, too thin for English, sigh...

 

[Courageous]

Fantastic work; joinery, brickwork, roof work, great stuff. My only observation is that those three wooden supports are not sitting correctly on the brick piers...

 

Stuart

[Steve D]

I know...😟 

The frame has moved a little, also not fixed yet, just resting.  That end post will have to come off and be re-positioned, but it will come together in the end.  I have to leave the frame free until very late in the build as I have so much to do inside and have to paint the undersurface of the roof etc.

 

The problems with hi definition pictures wip...