Hendie builds a ba...ba...ba...ba...Batboat!

[hendie]

It seems like an absolute eon ago that I did any of yer actual modeling stuff. I just checked and apparently it's only been just over 3 months, but certainly feels an awful lot longer. I've been busy beavering away on the digital modeling side getting all the Wessex stuff ready but feel that I need to take a small break from that, or at least have something else on the go to keep the mind from going stale.

I had a few things in the stash which I want to do, - DH3 Otter, AW Merlin, DH5 as well as a Nimrod that's been gathering dust for a few years now, but all of those are going to require that I get my serious head on and they are going to be long and intensive builds. I needed something nice and easy to ease my way back in to fondling plastic again. 

Towards the end of last year I was browsing the usual sites to see what was on offer when something grabbed my attention - the Batboat!  I had already build the Batmobile, and designed/printed a Bat Signal. A Batboat would make a nice little addition to the Batcave section of the man cave.  

A little bit of research ensued, showing what I feared most - it was a Polar Lights kit and was up to their usual standard.  Being polite let's just say that some of the molding is a bit iffy, there's not many parts, and it has Polar Lights decals. Ouch.

Anyways, at the start of January, this little package arrived at my abode.

 

 

Believe it or not, but that is most of the parts. There's a few still in the box, but only a few. Should be a nice easy build eh?

Well, no. Not really.

 

The general shape of a Batboat is there, but it's somewhat lacking in some of the details. Take for instance, this cleat at the knife tip... it has to go. You'll notice that I have already taken care of the cleat on the starboard side and this one is about to suffer the same fate. Those who know me know that that of course means there's some 3D printing in my near future.

 

 

It is a cleat isn't it? Or is it a Bow Chock? or a deck cleat?  gurgle didn't help me much there. That was why I didn't post this in the Maritime section - I just knew they would start shouting at me before too long 

 

Without telling anyone I went and started this a week or two ago. Now when I say "started", I mean fiddled. 

I cut a few parts from the runners and glued a few bits of Batman and Robin together. Batman bits to Batman bits, and Robin bits to Robin bits - I haven't been away from modeling for that long!

Hmmnnnn... to be fair, it did not say "highly detailed kit" anywhere on the box.

 

 

Then I remembered I still had the figures from the Batmobile somewhere in the stash. I hadn't used them in the Batmobile build for some reason

 

 

ah... now I remember why.

 

 

Batman looks more like a fat catman. Even Peter is disgusted with him.

 

 

 

Then there's the decals.  The Batmobile decals from Polar Lights were by far the worst decals I have ever come across in my life.  These one's do not look as if they'll fare any better. For a start the Bat symbol on the real Batboat has a yellow background, so that's two decals down (aside from a really crappy looking bat). The large bat symbol is supposed to be mounted on the stand which is a sort of domed oval shape. There's no way on earth that decal is going to confirm to those compound curves.  Then there's the flames... 'nuff said. And what about the missing transfers? well,m they're missing aren't they? 

 

 

Chromed parts? I'm not even going to bother stripping the chrome off cos I know those parts are never going to make it onto the model.

 

 

oh look - it's almost finished!

 

 

Not quite my dear bat-friends. Not quite.

For a start, there's a big gap under the center console that's going to need un-gapped. 

Being fair though, that detail on the center console doesn't look too bad. There's a Bat-scope thingy and some bat-buttons

 

 

Then we look at the Bat-radio and oh dear.  Someone pinned a cats tail to the microphone.  

 

 

Holy screwed up details Batman!  It's all wrong anyway. The real Batboat didn't have all that quilted effect nonsense on the console at all. Just plain old flat sheet aluminum by the looks of things.

I guess we'll be doing some destructive construction before too long then.

 

 

It's time to get serious with this thing now. I opted to begin with trying to enhance some details on the molded splodges, sorry chrome trim around the front end of the Bat-fin.  As you can see, the detail is poor at best so I thought I could perhaps use my cheapo but incredible useful scriber to deepen the grooves and make the ribs look like ribs and not frankfurters stuck on a board.

 

 

However, I soon gave up on that idea and decided it would be a shorter putt just to remove that detail entirely with one of Bill's finest and replace it with some home brew printing at a later point.

 

 

I'm not sure the kit supplied rotating red beacon is going to make it to the end of this build either 

 

 

There!  That's as far as I got with this to date, but it's a start.  All of which means I must continue to see this through. I have to be honest though - there's something about these old kits that I kind of like. It's almost but not quite, a blank canvas. You can choose to simply follow along and paint by numbers, or you can start adding bits n pieces n greeblies wherever you see fit. 

I know this is never going to be perfect. At best it's going to be a poor replica of the Batboat but I'd like to try and lift it from its "toy" status to something at least approaching worthy of being called a model.... and have some fun along the way.

 

 

 

 

 

[giemme]

I'm in! First row!

 

 

 

Ciao 

[John_W]

I never new Benedict Cumberbatch played Robin...

[hendie]

On 2/12/2025 at 3:10 AM, John_W said:

I never new Benedict Cumberbatch played Robin...

 

I thought he was doing a great impression of 

 

 

but I can see a touch of Benedict too.

 

But on to more pressing matters. Matters of modeling, mostly.

 

I left you in suspense in the last post displaying Polar Lights pathetic attempt at a Bat Beacon.  As it turns out, they had it located in the wrong position anyway so off it came. The hole was un-holed by the addition of some scrap runner, which I shall attempt to make flush later.

 

 

Also in the last post I showed you a gaping hole underneath the center console which will need to be addressed. Well, looking at this further I noted that there's also another gaping hole under the deck, where out dynamic duo's feets would go.

Believe it or not but I went old school on this and did some of yer actual scratch building using styrene sheet and glue.

 

 

That will take care of the unwanted openness under the deck.

 

 

There's a lot of preparation required on this before I can do any actual building work.  The kit, obviously not of the best quality, has a number of issues that need addressed. One of those was the thickness of the plastic at the front edge of the "whatever it is" cover.

If reports are to be believed, these ducts housed some form of Bat-ray. Anyways, in reality they were thin sheet aluminum (I think).

 

Holy thick walled plastic Batman!

 

They as supplied kit version is on the left, and I've had a go at thinning down the one on the right. It may have to be thinned some more methinks.

 

 

While the glue and styrene was out I took the opportunity to block off some more holes. These are the locating points for the glass domes.  A bit over the top but hey, it's Polar Lights here. I'll fill the holes and get the surface flush when there's more mojo flying about.

 

 

I also did a first run of test prints for a few items I'll be replacing.  Here we have a cleat thing. One is the kit part and the other is my part. See if you can guess which is which?  I followed the dimensions of the kit part which I now realize was a mistake. It looks okay, but I think it will look better if I reduce the height a little and also shorten the overall length by about a batmillimeter.  My hands are kind of tied here as you can see that Polar Lights thoughtfully left huge gaping 'oles everywhere for popping parts into. That means that whatever I come up with has to hide that hole (and all the other holes) one way or the other.

 

 

Talking of holes... they put holes all over the place and on the few parts that do need holes, they leave them out!  Once again, the kit part versus my designed part.

 

 

For once, the test run parts came out perfect and don't need any adjustments at all.  

 

 

On 2/12/2025 at 1:55 AM, giemme said:

I'm in! First row!

 

as a reward Giorgio, you might even get to see paint before the first page is over. You never know.

 

(I'm not telling you what color though!)

 

 

Going back to this picture for a moment...

 

 

The demons in me want to try and incorporate that chrome and rubber buffer strip somehow. I think it would make a big difference to the over all look of the Batboat, but the kit doesn't really lend itself to helping me out here. If you look at the shot above where I thinned down the cowlings, you can see that the front of the kit bears little resemblance to the actual boat.  I looked at it briefly today and I think I have about a 2mm band where I can try and incorporate 2 strips of chrome and 1 strip of rubber. Not an easy task, especially at the front of the kit where it all goes haywire.

Gotta love a challenge eh?

 

 

 

 

[silverfox63]

Holy (or is that wholly?) unrealistic figures Batman.

[The Spadgent]

Oh my!!! I didn’t read the thread yet but I’ll just toss my coat on a chair near the front. pop off and get a pint. Back in a bit. 🦇🖤

 

 Johnny
 

[Pete in Lincs]

54 minutes ago, The Spadgent said:

Johnny

Bring some crisps back, will you?

 

Alan, great to see you back doing proper stuff. I have a part started Bat bike and sidecar gathering aeons of dust here. Please send a box of brave pills. I might have a gander at it then and do something besides ignore it. 

That cleat on the front needs turning 90 degrees and gaining Bat 'wings' much betterer, and damn wot it should look like! 

Warm up the Bat goop and carry on, Sir.

[The Spadgent]

Hole blocking sheets and printed cleats. Just what the Bat Doctor ordered. 🦇

 

looking like you’re having/ will continue having fun with this one kid. 
 

Are you doing a watery base with a ….. you know…. 🦈?

 

 Johnny

[CedB]

Great start hendie. More Bat fun in the offing, I’m in. Nice cleats. 
 

I thought about starting a book on how much of the original kit you’ll replace (just joking mods!) but I know nothing about odds. Last time I bet on something at ten to one it finished at quarter to four. 

[hendie]

10 hours ago, The Spadgent said:

Are you doing a watery base with a ….. you know…. 🦈?

 

you just had to go there, didn't you?

Nope!  I'm crap at dioramas n suchlike. I'm as good at them as I am at figure painting. 'Nuff Said.

 

bloomin' temptin' though innit?

 

 

On 2/14/2025 at 5:05 PM, hendie said:

Giorgio, you might even get to see paint before the first page is over.

 

See?  What did I tell ya Giorgio?  Paint.  Well primer - but it still counts.

The majority of this are my own printed parts and a couple of kit seats.  There's cleats, n'other cleats, a nav lamp, and some weird thingy that looks like a speaker housing - I spotted these on the back end of the boat and thought they would be good to add and take away from the blandness of the back end. There's also a dashboard since I'm going to discard the kit part, and a (not yet) chrome grill for the Bat fin.

 

 

Don't like that color Giorgio?  What about this color then?  White primer!

 

 

Then more white primer. It took quite a bit to cover that horrible blue plastic. Polar Lights had very thoughtfully molded their logo and a bunch of other info on the outside of the hull (as well as inside) so that was all sanded off prior to priming. It looks like I got away with it.

 

 

Then some more grey primer - yes I cut the front of the deck off while I figure out what I'm doing here.

 

 

I also covered the Dynamic Duo in primer to check for seams. Yes, there are seams. Darnit. But it's a start.

 

 

The grill turned out fine - on the second attempt.  My first attempt was a bit embarrassing as I'd really messed up the dimensions somehow and it was WAaaaay too wide.  This is better... and fits.

 

 

Finally, a shot without primer. This is actual paint. Mr. Color Black/Green to be exact.  

 

 

I'm not convinced I like it but there's plenty of time to change my mind before anything gets assembled.  I'll see how it looks in situ and with the seats in place.

 

Okay, it wasn't much and it wasn't very exciting, but it was progress.  

 

 

 

 

[The Spadgent]

Progress indeed. Looky all the new bat bits. And I’m sorry I couldn’t resist. 🦈

[giemme]

Impressive work with the 3D bits. And paint! 

 

 

Ciao 

[ElectricLightAndy]

Looking absolutely brilliant! 

[Whofan]

Goodness me, a 1960’s bat boat!!

 

I remember an odd episode of the show but can’t remember if there were any Splash! Or Gurgle gurgle (as a villain went into the drink) sound balloons in the episodes with the bat boat.

 

To the  …. Errr ….. Bat dock!!

Edited February 19 by Whofan

[hendie]

On 2/17/2025 at 8:59 AM, Whofan said:

Goodness me, a 1960’s bat boat!!

 

I can't remember if I remember the Batboat from the series or not though I can definitely remember it from the film.

 

 

On 2/17/2025 at 1:58 AM, giemme said:

with the 3D bits

On 2/16/2025 at 6:06 PM, The Spadgent said:

Looky all the new bat bits

 

more to come in this episode guys.

 

Before that though... one f the many things bothering me about this kit is the toylike nature of it, and how that all interferes with trying to make it more of a model and less of a toy.  Like the iconic Batmobile, the Batboat has red pinstriping - that pinstriping travels all the way along the side of the boat.

Just where these ribbed armrests are!   I'm never going to get a neat line with all those inny and outy bits now am I?

 

 

So lets try something and see if it works.  Holy Mr Dissolved Putty Batman!    

 

 

I masked off the ribs at the demarcation line and applied MR Dissolved Putty in a downwards motion over the masking tape - hoping that none of the putty would travel back up underneath the tape. Once cured, I sanded everything back to the tape.

Was I successful?

 

 

on closer inspection I'll say a definite maybe.   There's some cleanup required - only to be expected, but I won't really know until I hit it with primer if it actually worked or not..

 

 

In a more exciting move I ran a test print of a center console replacement. This was the second attempt as the first one was a whopping 1mm too long. 

 

 

This version fits just nice and snug.  I'll run another print with a different print orientation to remove the striations, but proof of concept is positive.

 

 

Here's a sneak preview of the console with the fittings ehrr... fitted

 

 

That looks much better than the original kit offerings.

 

 

The rear bulkhead is now a lot more like the 1:1 - and now we have no big gaps showing anywhere. Result!

 

 

I had a quick burst this afternoon and got some more priming done, as well as a few more prints running. Hopefully they will be up to scratch and be worth using.

(I also sprayed some color on a few parts this afternoon but nobody tell Giorgio, please).  

 

 

 

 

[The Spadgent]

Bat tastic!!!!  The console looks ace. Fingers crossed for the pin stripe section. 🤞

[CedB]

Much better hendie, that's really shaping up to be a model!

 

Great stuff, as usual.

[giemme]

12 hours ago, hendie said:

I masked off the ribs at the demarcation line and applied MR Dissolved Putty in a downwards motion over the masking tape

Ingenious job there!

 

I'm with Johnny, the consol looks ace!  

 

Also, there must be some echo in here, because I heard a remote "paint"....

 

Ciao

[81-er]

Great work so far, Alan, though I'm now wondering how much of the kit will actually be left when you're finished?

 

On 2/14/2025 at 10:05 PM, hendie said:

I'm not entirely sure I want to know what Batman has just done to Robin in that photo...

 

James

[Thom216]

Nice bit o' Bat-boat Bat-fab!

[hendie]

Something for the weekend sir?  With apologies in advance for the phot heavy posting. I was going to make a post the other night but thought I'd hold on for something more meaty, then got much further forward than I anticipated, so you'll just have to put up with me.

 

Now, where were we?  Oh yes, Giorgio was moaning about colors again. Well Giorgio, you will have more than enough of coloring in during this weeks bat-tastic update.

 

So, ignoring Giorgio for the moment  we'll just go ahead and squirt some primer.  It looks as if I might have got away with the filler-for-a-red-line attempt, but only the red paint will tell for sure.

 

 

Since we're talking about red paint, we may as spill some and see what happens.

Good... sort of, and bad.   I really should have known this and I think I was aware of it but I was hoping to get away with it. I didn't.

White primer versus grey primer have a drastic effect on the finished top color. Darn it.

 

 

and they make things difficult by having a red stripe down the back end too. No consideration for modelers whatsoever.

 

 

But back to the grey primer. I had to revisit all the parts I had greyed over and spray them again, this time with white primer, which I am fast running out of, which is part reason why I tried to get away with grey primer.

Anyways, that's better now.

 

 

and it looks like my little bodge worked.

 

 

It should by now be blindingly obvious to everyone that I now need to respray everything that isn't supposed to be red with more of my precious white primer. This is getting tedious.

So I thought I'd try masking for a change. 

That was even worse. Polar Lights give no decals/transfers, not even a template so you have to go and figure this all out on your very own.  What I did discover was that the shape of Polar Lights hull does not really match that of the 1:1 Batboat.   The pointy bit on the left should be much further forward but try as I might I could not get a nice round curve on the masked area when it moved forward. I believe the hull should be a good bit deeper than Polar Lights have molded it. After numerous attempts and frustration I called it a day at this.

 

 

Lookeee, it's almost symmetrical

 

 

Then came the easy bit. At least it was for this part.

 

 

and for these parts.

 

 

 

But when I went to spray other bits, all was going well until I was happy with the coverage, then the airbrush spat out a wad of gunky stuff all over the shiny painted foredeck.

 

 

After that there was nothing to do but let things dry then rub them back and paint all over again. Did I mention tedious?

 

So, changing tack once again I decided to head indoors.  After studying what few phots there are of the Batboat, especially the internals, I came to the conclusion that the center console was aluminum of one flavor or another. Aluminum, but unpainted.  Quite by chance I had some BMF Flat Aluminum sheet in my stash - I've had it for years, and never really use it cos I don't like the stuff much as it never really works for me, but what the heck... lets give it a try and see what happens...

 

Golly gosh!

 

 

Before anyone mentions the seats being exactly the same color as the rest of the boat - I did think that was a bit weirs but eventually came across a few photos of the original Batboat in action, and yes, the seats were the same metallic blue as the rest of the boat.

See?

 

 

Some more playing around with masking tape and paint resulted in the jet exhaust getting a coat of various colors.  I think the producers were running out of ideas when they designed some of these parts. The exhaust is very bland imo.  The kit doesn't provide anything to sit inside the exhaust so I'll magic up something on the printer to make it just a little less boring.

 

 

It could be worse I suppose.

 

 

Now things take a drastic turn for my sanity.

 

As you can see in the photo of the real Batboat above, the fin has 3 luvverly scalloped white bits at the tail of the fin. Oh now nice it would have been if Polar Lights provided some decals for those, but no, not a chance. there was a company providing decals for the Batboat some time ago who thoughtfully provided the necessary white bits but they seem to have fallen off the face of the earth.  What's a poor boy to do?

How about something really stupid and really, really desperate?  Yup, that sounds like me.

 

I slapped some masking tape on the fin and pencilled in some rough scallop shapes and tried to capture the curvature of the bat bits at the back. I then scanned the masking tape, imported it into my CAD program and made an attempt at producing something a bit more professional looking... on paper.

 

 

it did cross my mind that I could print these on decal paper but the biggest roadblock was present for both decal paper and ordinary paper - I still have to cut them out and somehow use them, somehow, for something.

This is where things get really out of hand.

I wasn't enamored with the decal paper option as everything would have to be exactly exact and leave no room for error so I decided the best option was to attempt masking. I just had to transfer the scallops from non sticky paper onto Tamiya sticky paper. To make matters even more bizarre, I didn't fancy cutting out those shapes 6 times and having to get both sides identical.

Why didn't I just stick masking tape on both sides of the paper then cut out the shapes?  That's what reasonably sensible sort of person would do, wasn't it?

Of course it wasn't, so I did it anyway.  The first round showed some errors in my CAD shapes but rather than go and redraw, reprint everything again, I used the linework to guesstimate where I had to deviate from the shape as drawn. (I got one of them right, honest!)

Some cutting later...

 

 

Now all I had to do was separate the masking tape from each side of the printer paper.  Try doing that with shaky hands and dodgy eyesight!  Just add the icing on the cake, as you know, when you peel masking tape off something it has a remarkable tendency to coil up into a nice tight little roll. That made trying to actually place the little blighters lots of fun.

 

 

After much muttering, stuttering, and puckering we have something that sort of looks like scallops on a Bat-fin. With some extra assistance from Aizu tape, just for good measure.

 

 

Well, now you're either in suspense, or more likely, rolling around on the floor guffawing and laughing in derision at such a stupid idea.

Just for that I'm gonna leave you rolling about on the floor for a few more minutes.

Instead, lets see how the primer/paint/more primer/more paint debacle turned out shall we?

As it turns out, not too shabby. Not perfect by any means but acceptable. There's the slightest hint of white primer showing but I'm going to live with that. Anything I try to do now to improve things is undoubtedly going to make things worse. Much worse.

 

 

Even the foredeck turned out okay in the end.

 

 

...and that red strip over the ribbed armrests?  Result!

 

 

Not so much on t'other side though. The strip is fine, but some of the blue has come away with the masking tape. Touch ups required.  Oh, I was so close...

 

 

Even the extreme back end which Polar Lights have made a real mess of, turned out acceptable. Yes, I forgot to spray under the bat-tips, but I need to remove those two errant red stripes first. Straightforward enough. 

 

 

The blue however, has shown up some sink marks on the plastic which were hiding nicely under the primer.  Again, I'm going to live with them.

 

But what about the Bat-fin everyone is crying?

Would you believe - I only took one photo, and it's out of focus... that was not intentional, honest!

 

 

The red stripe turned out well though.

 

 

... even at the back. Again, there's the white primer showing at the edges, but this is a close up shot. It's really not that visible at normal bat viewing distance.

 

 

Now lastly, remember this?

 

 

How did it turn out?

Once more, not too shabby.

 

 

and about as symmetrical as I'm ever going to manage.

 

 

 

Wow. I'm glad that's over. That was a bit of a marathon that was, but I think we're over the worst of it and things should get easier form here on in. Unless they don't, of course.

 

Oh, one last thing just for Giorgio... the red I was using was Testors Italian Red.

 

 

 

 

 

[Pete in Lincs]

Lots of luverly pictures and a grand end result from the masking and angst. I'm glad I wasn't doing it. So thanks for taking one for the team.

I did wonder, rather make a dio with the wet stuff, what about ditching the figures and making a Bat trailer.

But then, You can't hitch it to the Batmobile, the jet exhaust would roast the boat. Oh well, back to the Bat drawing board, eh?

[CedB]

Stunning work hendie, working towards a very special model  

[Whofan]

I am full of admiration for the way in which you’ve solved several painting problems here, absolutely superb finishing.

 

 

[81-er]

I think you're doing very well with this one, Alan, especially given how poor the base kit is. I don't envy you for having to do all that masking either.

 

James