Potential project - 1/200 HMS Ajax - Leander class cruiser

[Terry1954]

24 minutes ago, Ex-FAAWAFU said:

in my case using Pixelmator on a Mac rather than Illustrator, but same difference.

Hmm that's interesting. I use a Mac as my primary desktop. Must check Pixelmator out. Given all the photos and plans @SilverGhost linked me to in his Kashin thread for my Kotlin planning, I can see this leading somewhere...................

 

Really finding this thread useful Jamie!

 

Terry

[Jamie @ Sovereign Hobbies]

Anything vaguely relevant is a welcome intrusion Crispin, and it furthers the general cause I think. This kind of thing can look inaccessible to the traditional modeller but it's easier than it looks. The abundance of Youtube tutorial videos and the like to help folk get started using it without staring blanking at an empty virtual drawing board is great and something I never had when I was first interested in doing this kind of thing.

[Jamie @ Sovereign Hobbies]

Whilst certainly a primary source reference and more reliable than the likes of Profile Morskie, one thing one cannot assume is that everything from a scan of a hand-drawn 90 year old builder's drawing will actually fit!

 

An advantage of tracing these out electronically is that I can try each of the sections in situ to see if they actually match the side elevation which for modelling purposes will in effect be the part of the keel of the model albeit in the vertical rather than horizontal plane.

 

 

The tops of the sections should not be worried about as such - these are sheer line drawings which when nested together give an impression of the form of the whole hull viewed from ahead or astern. These will be clipped off in due course for model parts creation. Equally though, the forecastle and upper decks are not flat but slightly cambered. Still, the sections will need some fettling to fit which is better done now before they actually exist in plastic.

 

Guesstimating from a nice photograph staring at the torpedo tubes, I measured the diameter of the opening of the torpedo tubes on my screen then measured the deck planking as close to vertically below as I could, and it scaled out to an exactly 7 inch wide plank, which passes the laugh test. In 1/200 scale that's 0.35 inches which a truely repulsive scaler. Dear Americans, the Metrinch is the work of Satan. Either join the 20th Century and use Metric like civilised people or stick to fractions of an inch. We digress. The nearest V groove Evergreen styrene stock is available in either 0.3 inch spacings or 0.4 inch spacings. I'll go for 0.4 inch I think.

[Jamie @ Sovereign Hobbies]

A requirement arose in the aircraft section of the forum to make an alignment jig with an 82.5 degree angle. I decided to test my eventual ambitions for HMS Ajax by using the Cricut Maker to cut me said jig from a piece of plasticard, and whilst it has been a complete success I still have taken learnings from it.

 

The jig was drawn in Adobe Illustrator just like my hull forms are:

 

I saved it as a .svg file rather than the default .ai file for Adobe Illustrator. Cricut Design Space can import pixel drawings and SVG files...

 

Cricut caters for a large number of arty-farty-crafty materials but doesn't anticipate us sorts wanting to cut plasticard, but it does include basswood, so I decided to try that setting with plasticard and see how it goes. The plasticard is 1mm thick, by the way.

 

It worked great, but I chose the 3/32" basswood setting and Cricut reckons that needs 14 passes. I stopped it after 4. The label I included came out lovely, but the machine implements it by executing around four-hundred-and-eleventy-trillion stabs into the material, and combined with 14 passes the machine told me this lot would take 4 and a half hours. The actual outline took around 6 seconds per pass in continuous, smooth cuts. Lesson learned!

 

 

To ensure you folks can see what I can see after stopping it at 4 passes, I've rubbed in some dark grey paint with a piece of paper towel to show you what it has done. I was worried it would be hard to see on screen.

 

After 4 passes, it snapped away cleanly thus. This will be perfect for my HMS Ajax hull parts.

[FlyingSpanner]

That looks really useful. I must play with the design space software a little to get a feel for it.

 

The sum total of my IT hardware is an iPhone 7 and a ten year old iPad. I’m not whether either would be able to run apps capable of doing the necessary drawing work. Have you tried the same in designspace to see what’s possible? I appreciate that you have better software and therefore have no need to suffer Cricuts offering
 

Edit: I do have Visio on my work pc which apparently can save files as svg, but accord you Wikipedia it cannot open them. I used Visio to draw plans for our  house extension so I have a passing knowledge of its use

Edited July 3, 2020 by FlyingSpanner
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