Just to prove that there really is progress being made around here, despite the relative quiet on the blogging front, here’s a fairly bad late night photo of the motor yacht, with it’s second coat of white paint applied!
Motor yacht, with paint on it! Click for full size.
Because of the board expanses of plain, untextured surfaces on this thing, and the tendency of those broad expanses to show brush strokes really well, I’m using very diluted paint, pretty much just using layers of washes to get colour onto the thing. It means a couple of coats to get a good colour, but also no visible brush strokes!
I’m going to do the bow and rear decks dark, glossy wood, and then pick out the railings and other details either in white or in brass — haven’t decided which yet.
Slow but steady progress on the 28mm pulp motor yacht. I hit it with a light coat of grey primer, to better show the seams and bits that needed additional putty and sanding work — that sort of thing shows up so much better under a thin coat of primer than it does in the blindingly-white bare plastic!
I’ve re-done the edge of the bow deck around the curve of the bow, and several areas on the cabin roof and around the flying bridge. Here’s a pair of low-res after dark images showing the boat in it’s current state.
Easier to take photos of now it’s not blinding white, too. Low quality image, but click for larger.
The cabin roof/flying bridge assembly is still removable, and I glued a 1.25″ washer to the roof then skinned over it with another layer of styrene plastic. With that ballast and reinforcement, the roof is a lot more solid and stays in place much more easily. It also visually makes the boat seem more solid, somehow.
Stern quarter view. Low quality image but click for slightly larger.
The rear view shows the cabin door and the ladder up to the flying bridge. The three round windows started out with a hand-spun drill bit, then got carefully and slowly reamed out with a sharp Xacto blade. I thought about doing window frames or something around them, but ultimately decided the boat would have to manage without in the interests of my own sanity!
Second, proper coat of primer tonight, then paint later this week. The paint scheme is going to be pretty simple — white hull and walls, glossy wooden decking — so it should be fairly quick to paint up.
I’ll be off to the main downtown Cenotaph for the ceremony and two minutes of silence today, but after you do your own two minutes, here’s a pair of relevant songs for today.
I first heard “Green Fields of France” at ten or fifteen years ago, after a backpacking trip through Europe that had included time at Ypres, including a walk out of town to see John McCrae’s grave. Here’s the Dropkick Murphy’s cover.
At our main cenotaph ceremony here, we always have both a Royal Canadian Navy band from nearby Esquimalt naval base and the pipes and drums of our local reserve infantry regiment, the 5th (Princess Mary’s) Canadian Scottish. If massed pipes and drums don’t make your hair stand on end, I’m afraid you have no soul. Here they are with our local symphony orchestra doing Amazing Grace.
Part One is here, for those of you just joining in. The project is a small 28mm motor yacht for pulp gaming, based loosely on real motor yachts from early in the 20th C and built entirely out of styrene plastic sheet, because I have a lot of it hanging around!
I finally got the hull sides done this weekend, using one long strip of .020″ styrene plastic per side. To accommodate the slight rake of the hull side and the curve of the bow, I cut the strips slightly too wide and wider toward the bow of the boat. After gluing one side at a time, I trimmed the thin plastic down with knife and sandpaper to match the actual lines of the boat.
Adding the hull sides. Right-hand side glued all the way to the bow but not trimmed; left side glued along the stern and cabin. Click for larger.
The stern and cabin area was simpler, except for being careful where the curve was placed that fits the higher bow deck into the hull side. Initial glue was quick-acting Plastruct Bondene solvent; after that set up I used superglue along the bottom seam to strengthen it.
Boat from the stern quarter, with cabin roof in place. Door frame and ladder in progress. Click for larger.
I’ve also gotten panelling into the cabin (see the first photo), door frames on either side of the door at the rear of the cabin, and started in on the ladder up to the flying bridge on the cabin roof.
Boat from bow quarter. Lots of putty work and detailing to do, but it’s structurally complete! Click for larger.
There’s a large amount of cleanup and detailing needed with Milliput and modelling putty to get everything cleaned up and smoothed out, a bunch more details to add, then the first spraycoat of primer to show up any glitches and things that still need to be fixed. The cabin roof needs some weight on it to get it to sit properly on the cabin walls; the seams all need cleaning up, especially around the bow deck and the bow itself; and I might yet put another layer of styrene down on the bow deck, as the single layer there currently is quite thin and I worry about it standing up to the wear and tear of gaming and transport.
Still, it’s great to have the major structural parts of the boat complete!
Just a few links to start the new month off. Hope everyone had a safe and excellent Halloween, for those of you who live where it’s a thing.
Black Army Productions are a company with a small but interesting selection of things, including a few WW1/Interwar armoured cars. The fantastically pulpy-looking Romfell is certainly eye-catching; my pulp-flavoured German FreiKorp might need one of those… They’re having a fall sale until November 15th, so there might be a Romfell and a few other bits enroute to me after next payday…
Just a week or so left in this, but the excellent J & M Miniatures is having a (Canadian) Thanksgiving Sale, 15% until 10th November (so it lasts until the Yanks have their late Thanksgiving too, how about that?). You put the code “Thanksgiving2013” in during checkout to get the discount on everything they stock. Which reminds me, it’s been a long while since I fired some money at J & M, perhaps it’s time to have a look at their catalog again…
Acheson Creations is another one of those interesting companies that’s got a wide range of interesting bits and pieces, mostly resin scenery and such for a wide range of eras & locations. Their Primeval Designs line includes a bunch of unique 28mm & 15mm dinosaurs and other prehistoric beasts. They’re also running a Kickstarter to fund creation of some new, larger pieces, including a big ape who looks just right for transporting from some Lost World to the nearest skyscraper! The Kickstarter is about halfway to it’s modest funding goal and runs until November 20th, so hopefully this one funds!
Finally, via Paleofuture, this 1929 American air travel map over at the awesome David Rumsey Historical Map Collection — apparently flying across country in the late 20s actually meant spending most nights on a train…
