French Stealth Frigate 1/700

[bianfuxia]

Inspired by @Parrahsselection of the stealthy Swedish corvettes, I decided to try again with this Lafayette frigate kit I got last year during the first lockdown.

 

 

I originally wanted to do this in the "In the Navy" GB but upon getting into it I discovered the whole ship was pretty badly warped:

 

 

I had plenty of injection ship kits to be going on with during that GB - I made six or seven of them - so I set this aside. Now that I live in a different place with more outdoor space I might have more luck at safely fooling around with the boiling water I think I need to use to fix this. I had some other strategies (like cut it behind the hangar, level up the deck, and fill in the resulting triangular gap) but the informal poll seemed to say boiling water was the way forward.

 

So I'll give it  a shot now that there's another GB I can slot this in to push me along...

 

[PeterB]

Hot water certainly but perhaps not quite boiling or the whole thing could go floppy on you like a vac form canopy did on me a few years ago, but then again it is a big lump of resin! Stick it cold water to "set" it after bending and don't try to do too much at once I suggest.

 

Best of luck.

 

Pete

[Parrahs]

I guess resin ships like to go bananas that way. Luckily mine, probably largely on account on being a good deal smaller, also didn't bend nearly as much and so I just sanded things flat-ish at the bottom.

[bianfuxia]

19 hours ago, PeterB said:

Hot water certainly but perhaps not quite boiling or the whole thing could go floppy on you like a vac form canopy did on me a few years ago, but then again it is a big lump of resin! Stick it cold water to "set" it after bending and don't try to do too much at once I suggest.

 

Best of luck.

 

Pete

good tip - thanks!

 

12 hours ago, Parrahs said:

I guess resin ships like to go bananas that way. Luckily mine, probably largely on account on being a good deal smaller, also didn't bend nearly as much and so I just sanded things flat-ish at the bottom.

Maybe I could make a sea base for it too - it's most noticeable when you can see the waterline and less so when you look at the deck.

 

food for thought - thanks both of you!

[bianfuxia]

Well, that was a little easier than I was expecting, and also a good bit faster. What I am about to show was done and dusted in about 15 minutes. It isn't perfect - there is still a bit of a warp - but it's good enough for me. It will sit on the shelf next to the other ships nicely enough. And when I pose them in the "Contested Blue Towel Sea", where all my naval ships conduct their operations regardless of type, navy, or era, it will be unnoticeable.

 

This, for reference, is the Contested Blue Towel Sea. Nations have disputed each others' sovereignty over these waters since humans invented the boat. Here you see my ROC Navy Fen Yang (formerly a USN Knox class frigate) patrolling against PLAN incursions in the contested zone:

 

anyway, the Lafayette will soon be representing French interests out there...

 

I started here:

 

Nice big warp under the waterline.

 

Hot but not boiling water:

 

Drop the ship in there for a while:

 

After a while to warm up, I then gently bend it with both hands. It moved pretty easily - I wonder how floppy that stuff can get if you really heat it up? I was wary of (a) snapping it and (b) making it so floppy it would lose all its shape. I was also careful not to wreck any of the moulded detail topsides.

 

Then it was time to mask up for safe resin sanding...

 

 

I took it outside too, as this kind of sanding generates a lot of resin dust. Hopefully I didn't get any in my lungs.

 

I used the metal railing as a flat surface and I just sanded away for a while.

 

And here is where I got to when I decided it was good enough. You can see - in the photo perhaps more than in reality - there is still a gap in the middle. But it's good enough. I don't enjoy sanding and I'm not about to spend an hour getting this perfect. The ship is needed at sea! It's the French turn for Freedom of Navigation cruises in the Blue Towel Sea.

 

 

 

[Mjwomack]

4 hours ago, bianfuxia said:

the Contested Blue Towel Sea

Genius!🤣

 

4 hours ago, bianfuxia said:

I wonder how floppy that stuff can get if you really heat it up?

I expect that @trickyrich can give you the melting point for every resin used in a model ever😉

 

4 hours ago, bianfuxia said:

 

Then it was time to mask up for safe resin sanding...

One thing about the pandemic is that it's a lot easier to get hold of PPE nowadays- as Machiaveli said, never let a good crisis go to waste.

 

 

Excellent recovery of the warded hull btw and good to see progress.

[bianfuxia]

1 hour ago, Mjwomack said:

 

 

One thing about the pandemic is that it's a lot easier to get hold of PPE nowadays- as Machiaveli said, never let a good crisis go to waste.

 

 

Excellent recovery of the warded hull btw and good to see progress.

Thanks!

 

Yeah, we were given a few of those masks when we left hotel quarantine after getting home last year. At the time I thought they weren't great, because they have ties instead of those elastic ear straps. But when I put it on today (for the first time, because we used our other masks to leave the quarantine) I realised they were the best fitting, most comfortable mask I'd experienced! And as I know is true for so many of BMers, we're all pretty experienced at masks by now! 

[trickyrich]

On 4/22/2021 at 1:53 PM, bianfuxia said:

- I wonder how floppy that stuff can get if you really heat it up? I was wary of (a) snapping it and (b) making it so floppy it would lose all its shape. I was also careful not to wreck any of the moulded detail topsides.

 

 lets put it this way.... a jellyfish would have more body to it!!! Think puddle of resin if you get it too hot!

 

You just want it hot enough for the resin's memory to bring it back to shape. If you don't know the resin it's always better to start warm and move up to hot. Plus have some cold water ready just incase. The hardest part is keeping it in shape as it cools down, as being soft you can easily miss-shape it again.

 

Warpage wise, your wee ship wasn't too bad, and you did a great job in getting er even keel again....... now off to the South China sea with her.......to go chase those Wascally Whines boats!  

[bianfuxia]

Figured it was about time I moved this one along.

 

Today I sprayed it with Tamiya AS-7 which is USAF Neutral Grey. The can is almost empty so I thought I'd just see whether it was a suitable shade. It's a bit too blue/grey, maybe.

 

 

the spray attempt was a mess, too. And then the stick it was using to lean up against the wall to dry fell over so the hull had all kinds of crap on it. Fortunately it was easy to get rid of, and the paint itself dried up ok.

 

So I will try for a lighter shade.

 

 

It's a bit darker than these pics make it look. Closer to a haze grey almost.

[bianfuxia]

Well, I didn't get too much further with this one. I gave up trying to get it done for this build when I looked at all the PE...

 

But I did find a colour I preferred to the blue-grey I had before. I'll pick this up and keep going and hopefully finish it soon.

 

[bianfuxia]

I'm still working on this little ship. I did a little more research on the colour when I discovered I'd run out of the spray paint I'd used for the grey in the last photo. Turns out I was off target with that anyway. Supposedly FS36375 is near to the colour of these ships. I have a Vallejo bottle of that so I've now painted everything ready for final assembly:

 

 

Still have to do another coat on the hull and also do the decks.