Post by david on Dec 29, 2008 1:26:27 GMT 1
Hi everyone, since the summer I've been busier than a one-armed monkey in flea circus, but lately I've been able to get back to the important stuff, Bismarcking!
Here's a few shots of recent progress, there will be more detailed ones shortly I hope. The first one shows the preparations for doing the windows, thin strips of acetate from transparency film sleeving, fixed in place with superglue. The great thing about this film is that it is highly reflective, very thin and optically excellent. Rather than drill holes in the wooden structure, I have painted the sides of the superstructure where the windows sit matt black. When the finished painted PE parts with their windows are finally fixed to the superstructure, they look very realistic and being very reflective, catch the light and change from being dark to bright just like a real window. I did try just painting the back side of the acetate black rather than the wood behind it, but that looked too dark, severe and not nearly as realistic. The effect can best be seen in the last picture.
The next 2 photos briefly show the extent of progress so far. Not everything shown is glued down yet. Rather than follow Hachette's building sequence, and because I'd 'real' planked the decks, I had to paint many of the parts before assembly. This gave me the opportunity to get an early visualization of how best to treat the decks, leave them natural or stain them. Ultimately I decided to stain them a little darker with a combination of teak and pine wood stains. Pre-painting before assembly also allowed me to paint the dark margin lines at the bottom of nearly all the superstructure walls where they meet the decks, something that would have been very difficult if attempted later. I've avoided using an undercoat because I wanted to preserve the maximum level of detail and also, I figured that the superstructure parts were unlikely to be subject to wear through handling. I did start by using an undercoat but by the time it received a topcoat I found a lot of detail obscured. This might be due to the paints I used and others might have better success than me. I then had to Nitromors both layers off. It took ages to get the crumpled paint out of the crevices, the worst bit being the hanger doors which I had to gingerly disassembled to clean.
Here's a few shots of recent progress, there will be more detailed ones shortly I hope. The first one shows the preparations for doing the windows, thin strips of acetate from transparency film sleeving, fixed in place with superglue. The great thing about this film is that it is highly reflective, very thin and optically excellent. Rather than drill holes in the wooden structure, I have painted the sides of the superstructure where the windows sit matt black. When the finished painted PE parts with their windows are finally fixed to the superstructure, they look very realistic and being very reflective, catch the light and change from being dark to bright just like a real window. I did try just painting the back side of the acetate black rather than the wood behind it, but that looked too dark, severe and not nearly as realistic. The effect can best be seen in the last picture.
The next 2 photos briefly show the extent of progress so far. Not everything shown is glued down yet. Rather than follow Hachette's building sequence, and because I'd 'real' planked the decks, I had to paint many of the parts before assembly. This gave me the opportunity to get an early visualization of how best to treat the decks, leave them natural or stain them. Ultimately I decided to stain them a little darker with a combination of teak and pine wood stains. Pre-painting before assembly also allowed me to paint the dark margin lines at the bottom of nearly all the superstructure walls where they meet the decks, something that would have been very difficult if attempted later. I've avoided using an undercoat because I wanted to preserve the maximum level of detail and also, I figured that the superstructure parts were unlikely to be subject to wear through handling. I did start by using an undercoat but by the time it received a topcoat I found a lot of detail obscured. This might be due to the paints I used and others might have better success than me. I then had to Nitromors both layers off. It took ages to get the crumpled paint out of the crevices, the worst bit being the hanger doors which I had to gingerly disassembled to clean.