My first sailing ship... Airfix’s Wasa

[Paul H]

Ever since childhood, the story of the Wasa, and in particular, her recovery in 1961 has fascinated me.  My father had recorded a TV series onto video tape called Discoveries Under Water, which I would often watch, and the episode on the Wasa included a lot of the footage taken at the time that the ship was raised, included a clip of her afloat again once pumped out.  I cannot find the full episode online, but did find this clip which was part of it (even after all these years, I recognise the narrator's voice):  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0n3PPWAkVy8

 

I've only recently branched out from car models (this place is entirely to blame - I currently also have four 1:72 WW2 aircraft in build), so whilst I was aware of the recent tooling Revell 1:150 kit, I didn't buy one at the time.  However, if I only ever build one sailing ship, Wasa is the one which interests me most.  I was initially put off by the age of the Airfix 1:144 kit, however at the time of writing, the only Revell one I can find for sale is £85, and ome research revealed that the Airfix one is still well thought of, and I was able to buy it new for £27:50 delivered from a well known online shopping platform.  This arrived on Friday, and unusually for me, it has jumped straight to the front of the queue and I have already started building!

 

 

Having read up on both kits, I've printed out a copy of the Revell instructions from their website to use as additional reference, however the quality is really poor - as though it is a bad photocopy, which is annoying as amongst other info, it has a huge amount of colour call-outs for all the sculptures, which is now very difficult to decipher.  That's a way off though, so I'll just have to do some further research later on.  At this point, I am undecided as to how much correcting I may (or may not...) do, and also whether to use the Revell or Airfix colour scheme.  I've read that it is as accurate as the info known when it was tooled, however if there are areas which are easy to deal with, I'd be very interested for advice on this.

 

For 51 year old tooling, which according to Scalemates, has been reissued umpteen times, the sprues looked pretty good.  Yes, there is some flash, but nothing to get upset about, especially as Airfix highlight the age of the tooling in their Vintage Classics boxings.

 

Having never built a sailing ship before, I am taking my time to  work through and also test fit the parts.  Once the sprue attachment points were cleaned up, the hull halves fitted together nicely which was a relief, as I have read at least one build thread which has reported issues with warping.

 

However the fit of the transom and stern galleries was not so pretty.  A bit of clean up and tweaking required here I think, as I would rather avoid using filler as much as possible, especially around the delicately moulded sculptures and decoration.

 

To aid with accurate alignment of the stern, the aft deck sections would also need to be fitted.  By this point, both had the vertical sections already cemented in place (visible in the pic above).

 

The open sections visible below were fully flashed over, and completely flush with the front face (I forgot to take a before pic).  Having spotted this, I checked through the instructions carefully, and what I thought was just a sink mark on the same deck section was actually supposed to be the mast step for the mizzen – however, the aperture that the mast fitted into was moulded solid.  This is the mounting hole furthest from the camera, shown after it was drilled out.

 

It was only due to the shape of the rear of the moulding, and also the instructions  that the issue with the flashed over apertures was clear.  Visible also is the mast step boss, which had a witness mark in the middle from where the hole should have been moulded, which made it easy to drill out from this side.

 

 

Compared to the Airfix instructions:

 

Compared to the Revell instructions:

 

And now a few close-ups of the moulding details:

Not bad at all in my opinion for such an old kit!

 

Thoughts and advice would be very welcome, especially any particular tips for this kit, or pitfalls to avoid. 

[Adm Lord De Univers]

Excellent start already of a truly magnificent ship, albeit one that even looks unsteady/top-heavy to these untrained eyes.

 

David

[mick]

great start , will follow your build

[Faraway]

This is a build I’ll follow, always quite fancied building this ship.

Back in the heady precovid days of 2019, I visited Stockholm and went to the Wasa museum. A really impressive display of this ship and as @Adm Lord De Univers says she looks VERY top heavy, it was amazing how much of the original ship is on display, any replacement timber was done a lighter shade so you could see the difference. 

One thing I don’t envy you, is painting the carving on the stern, the museum had a replica of this huge stern, onto which they projected the original colours. Amazing. And not just the stern, a lot of the carved wood would have been painted.

Best if luck.

Jon

[Orso]

I am looking forward on this one. On the shelf I have my kit finished 1978 in the blue/gold scheme. I have another kit waiting to be built in the new scheme.

[Paul H]

Thank you all!  I must warn you that I'm a slow builder, and the only ships I have built so far are precoloured 1:700 - three Meng WW2 battleships and one Academy Edwardian liner, so this will be a steep learning curve for me.

 

21 hours ago, Adm Lord De Univers said:

Excellent start already of a truly magnificent ship, albeit one that even looks unsteady/top-heavy to these untrained eyes.

 

David

 

Ah yes, the stability...  I may use this as my excuse if I don't finish the rig!  Many sailing warships do tend to look top heavy, however the hull shape is usually designed to handle this.  I haven't read the info on her design flaws for a while, however the short story seems to be that she was doomed from the start.  1628's loss however is our gain, as there is nothing else like her.

 

14 hours ago, Faraway said:

This is a build I’ll follow, always quite fancied building this ship.

Back in the heady precovid days of 2019, I visited Stockholm and went to the Wasa museum. A really impressive display of this ship and as @Adm Lord De Univers says she looks VERY top heavy, it was amazing how much of the original ship is on display, any replacement timber was done a lighter shade so you could see the difference. 

One thing I don’t envy you, is painting the carving on the stern, the museum had a replica of this huge stern, onto which they projected the original colours. Amazing. And not just the stern, a lot of the carved wood would have been painted.

Best if luck.

Jon

 

I must admit that painting the carvings are something I am looking forward to (whereas something like Victory with her striped topsides would drive me nuts as I'd need to get them exactly aligned / straight / OCD compliant) - however, I reserve the right to regret saying that later on...

 

I would love to see the Wasa, as what they have done is incredible.  I'm yet to find much info on the actual reconstruction (as opposed to the preservation), as I think that would be fascinating.  Thinking about it, it was probably essentially a 1:1 scale model kit with missing parts and no instructions...

 

3 hours ago, Orso said:

I am looking forward on this one. On the shelf I have my kit finished 1978 in the blue/gold scheme. I have another kit waiting to be built in the new scheme.

 

Thank you again for the reference photos - I'd also love to see some pics of your model too!  Is it another Airfix one, or the Revell that you are planning to build?

 

[TallBlondJohn]

Try looking online for images from the Wasa museum - it's superb and only one of Stockholm's many fantastic museums. There's a large scale model of Wasa at the museum as launched, so it shows the original painting (as near as can be figured out), and there are colour reproductions of many of the statues.

 

 

and yes, looking at the real thing you can see she was doomed from the start, far too narrow in the beam.

 

[Paul H]

Next, was the main deck section.  The gratings were also moulded solid:

 

but strangely, there was detail shown on the underside:

 

Holding it to the light, showed that the mouldings matched, suggesting that the gratings were originally moulded open, but were now also flashed over.

 

I selected a suitably sized drill bit and started drilling out the holes using a pin vice for control:

The plastic in each was thicker than I expected, so perhaps they were never open?  However, it was easy as the moulding automatically aligned the drill bit, but rather time consuming, so this is still progressing in between other things.  A light dab of Tamiya extra thin cement has since worked nicely to deal with the burrs on the edges, so even though the holes are round, once painted and probably also given a wash, the effect should hopefully be much better.

 

Whilst on the topic of the deck, the location points for it in the hull sides were rather shallow, and just test fitting and securing the hull halves with tape showed that it was easy for the deck to fall downwards out of alignment.  As a result, I decided to make the ledge that it sits on much wider, so that it couldn’t fall through when the parts are being assembled and glued.

 

These are not meant to fit directly to the underside of the deck, simply to direct the deck into the correct location when the hull halves are pushed together.  I originally intended it to be a very neat one piece addition, but soon realised that it would be much easier to do in sections, and it won't be visible later anyway.  In places, packing pieces were used to support it against the portholes so that it could be cemented securely.  As the deck is meant to be curved, to follow the sheerline, I may add some features to the underside so that it clips under this ledge, to pull the deck down, as the moulding is currently pretty flat.

 

With pressure applied:

 

and without:

 

The insert for the bow, aft of the forepeak was also lacking positive location – it aligned at the top outside edges, but its lower edge had nothing preventing it moving back into the hull. A small raised tab to prevent this was glued inside the keel, and given a web to secure it.

 

 

And with the hull halves together:

 

The addition is only just visible through the bowsprit aperture, however I will check the fit of that before assembling the hull in case it requires further trimming to avoid fouling anything, as I don't fancy trying to do that later.

 

To keep a neat edge between the decks and the inner bulwarks, I'm thinking of painting these areas separately, before assembling, rather than trying to cut in the different paint colours later.  Any thoughts on whether that's a good idea?

 

Also, which Humbrol acrylics* would be best?  The manual says 29 Dark Earth for the hull and 63 Matt Sand for the deck.  I've plenty of the former for WW2 RAF stuff, but wondering if there might be better colours to use?  I'll be painting by hand, so any brush strokes will just add to the weathering / texture / wood grain effect...

 

*I don't use anything that can't be thinned with just water these days, as my children are also getting into the hobby.

[Noel Smith]

This is coming along nicely. Airfix used to mould it in dark brown plastic.

The Airfix Victory, Cutty Sark and Vasa kits have appeared regularly in their catalogue down the years so they must be what is called 'bankers' in the trade. (ie constant good sellers due to the subject material.)

The downside to those three kits is that the moulds have been around since the 1960's 1970's and are getting a bit tired.

Maybe Airfix should re visit these kits with new mouldings and correct any errors in view of more recent research.

The Vasa cries out to be kitted in a larger scale, say 100th or 1/96th instead of the current 1/144th scale. The ship is rich with ornate carvings to paint and a larger scale will do it more justice.

[Bertie McBoatface]

I read your thread yesterday and quite by coincidence came across this method of 'drilling square holes' in an old book on model ship building just this morning. It might be something you'd want to use on your gratings.

 

It's easier for me to post pictures than describe the process.

 

 

 

 

I hope that's useful.

 

 

[Paul H]

12 hours ago, Bertie Psmith said:

I read your thread yesterday and quite by coincidence came across this method of 'drilling square holes' in an old book on model ship building just this morning. It might be something you'd want to use on your gratings.

 

It's easier for me to post pictures than describe the process.

 

I hope that's useful.

Yes, it is indeed - thank you, very appreciated!  I haven't drilled out any more of the gratings yet, but will definitely try this.

 

I must confess that I haven't done much more on the rest for a while either, but itching to get back to work on it!

[Orso]

Paul, you asked for some pictures of my old build but as I don't want to flood this thread I have put them in the Ready for Inspection section

[Orso]

I found a page with lots of pictures from the museum: https://pbase.com/ssanneru/vasaskipet

It saved me a trip there as I needed a pic of a missing part of the Airfix Vasa: https://pbase.com/ssanneru/image/69670025  The forecastle railing was missing on the ship and I guess that the one that they made for it wasn't built when Airfix made the kit.

[steve5]

built this many years ago , grandkids thought it was a great toy , 😭 , will be following allong .

[Bertie McBoatface]

On 4/19/2022 at 10:58 PM, Paul H said:

itching to get back to work on it!

 

Have you scratched that itch yet, Paul?