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Decksercising

April 4, 2015 / efoeth

I’ve been exercising my painting skills and trying to find a good way to get the best coat of paint on my model. The decks are still a difficult subject for me. I really do not like real wooden decks and most techniques whereby batches of individual planks are airbrushed in seem a bit harsh in contrast and I want to be able to paint in detail and repair work in later. Let’s have a look at decks first.

This image of HMS King George V shows the deck from a good distance and a lot of contrast is visible. This deck certainly isn’t a single monotonous area. Note that this deck is only a few years old but already looks quite ‘rough’.

The decks of MS Queen Elizabeth are a few decades older. Individual planks are visible by the contrast lines between them but the color differences between planks are slight. Note the wear and tear and dirt the deck collected. Again, far from a monotonous area and a lot is happening, color wise.

This close-up of HMS Rodney shows the deck up much closer than you would inspecting a model. It’s not really as if each plank has its own color but contrast shifts along the plank.

This nice photograph of the quarterdeck of HMS Rodney again shows there is quite some variation between the individual planks and that the color changes at the butt-ends of the planks that is sometimes very well visible.

When the ship is at sea and the decks are wetted, the contrast difference is more or less gone and the decks become nearly a single area.

Some color footage of HMS Hood exists and Thomas Schmidt of 3Dhistory was kind enough to put in on youtube. I pulled a few frames from the clip. Now, the resolution isn’t as good as for the B&W photographs and interpreting color from old footage is risky, but you can still get some idea. The blue hue of the ship matches well with what I think AP507B should look like (I really don’t know!). Some variation between planks is visible but it is a sandy light brown overall.

The view of the aft deck shows the deck to be a grayish sandy brown tint without much variation.

Again, during heavy seas the entire deck becomes more muddled.

At the edges differences in reflection due to the green water and possible wear tear are present.

So for attempt N I started by spraying some Humbrol 72 on Evergreen grooved styrene and added color and accents at different locations. Painting in individual planks using white oils looks awful. I applied thinned-down Humbrol 72 in pure, whitened and darkened (Van Dyk brown) variations and blended everything together. Applying and blending in spots works nice and I think I have a decent attempt to have some large-scale color structure but nothing on the planks yet. A few washes of Van Dyk brown to add details to the groves was added afterwards.

For some reason there was a lot of dust on the styrene test plate working itself in the paint; need to avoid that. The contrast with the turret is nice but the color variations do not really work from this angle. Need to practice more. However, I am really satisfied how well the turrets have worked out and feel pretty comfortable painting the entire superstructure; how this was painted will be treated in more detail separately (a part of the turret is still unpainted).

Cat attack! This not-quite-so-rare-moment was caught on film! Disaster is narrowly avoided.

Perhaps add spots of white and brown and blend them into the decks? It results in some variation but looks a bit… rough… and silly. More practicing is required, I’m not happy with the results so far… overall color is fine though.

Bridge Superstructure, part IV

February 2, 2015 / efoeth

According to the original plans of HMS Hood, a set of signalmen shelters were built between the fwd Hacs pedestals and the superstructure.

There isn’t much to go on what isn’t already on the official HMS Hood site, but I suppose they reused the beam that was already present (top left). A number of voice pipes can be seen crawling around the bridge.

I added some semirandom detail with the voice pipes ending near the signaling area.

Adding railings was a skill I once had but now it seems to go fine. Too bad that stupid ladder hits the railing; this escaped my attention during the design, unfortunately. Perhaps I’ll replace the ladder or make the hatchway smaller…

Pompoms, part IV

July 21, 2014 / efoeth / 0 Comments

UPDATE 27/12/14

Right, my previous pompoms were just perfect if it weren’t for the corrosion of the solder (flux, probably). The parts were re-etched and the 100-part pompom is on its way. This weekend I finalized the guns themselves.

It’s very easy actually. Prefold the photoetch part with the small photoetch tool and find out it is far too crude for fine work. Find a part of brass strip to finalize the fold. Add evergreen strips that should be the right size. Be dissappointed that they are not and file all parts to the correct height using a filing jig. Replace jig from time to time. Place the part in a small jig and use the drill press to drill in the placeholder for the barrel. Be disappointed that the Proxxon drill press is unable to drill consistently, but be happy you added a photoetch part that acts as a drilling jig. Hold the part with tweezers during drilling so that the drill will not exit the part sideways. Place the guns in another jig and add a small strip on the end. File a fillet to the end of that block. Thoroughly check the gun for CA spots and clean. Add some putty to the end and sand smoothly. Find out that Tamiya putty is no longer sold in Europe and order from Singapore. Wait for the shipment while Vallejo putty disappoints you.

Because the process seems fairly repeatable I made enough guns for HMS Hood and for my next project (oh yes). Repeat the above at least: 78 times. Loose mind, despair, find will to live and continue. Fairly straightforward scratch building.

So here is half of them; these guns have a small lip to act as a spacer when added to the gun block that hasn’t been soldered yes. The barrels are on order. The mounts themselves are coming along nicely!

UPDATE 27/7/14

The main gun housings were soldered today with 5 etched parts for each housing: the housing itself, a center shelf that holds the upper guns, one top detail part and the two-part elevation gear parts. The housing part is sort-of self-interlocking, making it easy to hold without the risk of squeezing it with my tweezers. Soldering was quite interesting as applying heat means that some bond will release at another location (the part measures 3.3 x 2.6 x 1.9 mm only). The gun housings are supported in the center for which I made some etched part filled with styrene; the result was 0.1mm too wide and the housings ended up about 0.05mm too wide each, meaning that the sum of thee parts was 0.2mm wide and it didn’t fit. I wasted some time making the center parts fit anyway but I’ll have to add a new styrene part for that.

UPDATE 3/8/14

There’s a small coolant overflow cone at the end of the gun block (beautiful custom work by MASTER). I added some 0.2mm wire to either side and soldered it together so that is also works as a spacer for the two gun block halves. With some tape it’s easy to position the parts and add some solder. The first specimen was used for the general dimensions. The two wires were cut after soldering.

The gun blocks were glued to the center support after having spent 5 minutes in the ultrasonic cleaner. Fortunately, the part is now 4.5mm wide and fits the mounts. There are still a few more etched parts to keep the gun blocks together but I have to wait for the barrels to arrive. Now that some styrene is added to the model I can no longer solder and the part is delicate with superglue only until the mounts will keep the gun blocks in place.

UPDATE 10/8/14

While Tiberius the Famished kept the etch set warm, I started adding the custom barrels that meanwhile arrived. You could say that the image shows how small the etch set really is, but Tiberius is a particularly large Norwegian Forest cat.

The work by Master is as good as ever and fits the tiny pompom models well. I had to do some post-drilling by hand of the styrene guns to clear all the ‘chips’. Note that the conical flash suppressor that is ever present on all pompom models is absent; HMS Hood did not yet receive the upgrade to the pompoms and the barrels are thus plain and simple. The bottom row of pompom guns have a small lip below the barrel; this is a spacer for the correct offset of the outer barrels. One gun block was finished today but another one fell apart during handling; I hope to finish the rest soon. I learned the hard way that once parts start breaking up it is a good moment to stop.

UPDATE 17/8/14

All the gun blocks are all done; the guns were inserted and final detail was added. The cooling lines to the guns are partially added; the pipes running to the barrels themselves where eventually ‘canceled’ was it was too small to do repeatedly nice. I gave the models a coat of paint. I found out that out of the four premixed colors two batches again went bad and turned into sludge. The others, same ingredients but in a different ratio, are just fine. If anyone has tips how to improve the shelf life of premixed Humbrol to more than 2 months, let me know!

UPDATE 2/9/14

One down, two to go. Soldering the sights was tricky, holding the PE part with tweezers in one hand and the soldering iron in the other… still have to add that curved bar from the portside sight to the guns but I think I’ll glue that one having spent too much time trying to solder it.

UPDATE 20/10/14

I wouldn’t want to leave the impression no progress has been made, even though most weekends have been quite busy, including a visit to the Small Scale Convention at Heiden, Germany, where the unfinished Hood was on display. There were many stunning models by the IG waterline group and the ‘German gamblers’ to study. One visitor wondered if the Lion Roar pompom set tempted me into building the rest of the ship myself? Well, it’s a bit more weird than that!

The pompoms have received some attention; here you can see one of them in my “high tech” clamping mechanism ready for some soldering of the rear railing. I have to add a few more lines of the hydraulic system and the base of the guns and then I can move on to painting.

UPDATE 27/12/14

Done! One picture with flash so they look awful, but it is snowing and light conditions plus a bad camera make bad pictures.

Aft searchlight platform

June 5, 2014 / efoeth

The site is back up and I’ve enabled comments with the usual comment filters. I have a few side projects going on and some are nearly finished but I decided to post more unrelated images instead of ripening the posts on oak for a year…

Actually, I updated my blog to take my mind off my cat Mouse, Slayer of Photoetch, who was put to sleep today. She was only 10 year old and suffered from a tumor in her nose that suddenly grew very large starting to push out her right eye; for three months we thought she was fighting an infection as the X-rays were clean and she was finally getting better, but apparently not. We buried her in the garden close to one of her favorite spots. Good bye my friend.

I bought a new airbrush over a year ago, a Harder & Steenbeck Infinity (perhaps I’ll make a post later why this airbrush is really fantastic) and experimented with various paints, thinners, airbrush settings, oil washes and filters. The goal was to mimic the blue-grayish AP507B that Hood was painted with. I tried water-based paints but I think they hate me. I just cannot apply these paints to the smallest parts without suffering from tip-dry, overspray or grainy surfaces. Enamels are so much easier to use and cleaning the airbrush afterwards takes only minutes. The White Ensign Model colourcoats offer a premixed AP507B and spray beautifully although they are slightly less resistant than Humbrol when sprayed on PE and resin (might just be me). However, WEM suffered a few problems with restocking and as I (think to) know that several of their colors (based on the Snyder and Short color charts ) are wrong, so I decided to experiment with mixing. My local hobby shop had an old binder by Humbrol called the Colour System that had a few recipes and using Humbrol 34 (white), 77 (navy blue) and 140 (gull grey) in a 1:1:1 ratio is an excellent match for AP507B. (This doesn’t mean those color charts shouldn’t be in your collection).

Perhaps the result is a bit too dark, but the overall effect is nice, especially compared to the single coat in the previous image. The sides are sprayed with AP507B, and the top and bottom surfaces with a coat with more white and blue respectively. I added some filters and drybrushed in pure white (artist oils) and added some additional (artist oil) highlights in black, umber, and probably a few colors more. I want to emphasize all details without giving the idea of a severely weathered ship; HMS Hood was painted about a week before she sank. I have to experiment with the deck colors a bit more (wood) but I’m about ready to start painting the hull.

The old aft searchlight platform (ASP) was damaged during cleaning up for painting and needed to be replaced. I drew the part in CAD first. It’s both a building manual and a note combined. The old AOTS shows this platform in several views but the measurements do not agree with each other. So, the CAD file is my ‘new’ reference’ and I think I’m going to do this more often. I even drew in what styrene strips go where and assembly is then very fast. ish.

The lines were scribed in styrene using a steel ruler and the depth probe of the calipers. Very easy and very accurate. The two cylindrical parts of the top floor of the ASP do not have doors and as all pictures seem to indicate this area was open I decided to leave it open on the sides as well as on the aft bulkhead. However, cutting out doors and then folding the plastic won’t work, so I first folded the part around (lathed-to-size) rod, boiled the part for a while, and then cut out the door and added the slanted interior. Tricky but it worked.

The front bulkhead fits the top floor excellently. Caliper and CAD work give good results. The previous variant of the ASP had the bulkhead glue onto the deck, now it is glued against the deck. Can’t remember why I made this bad decision for the previous version, but it resulted in the part being tossed.

The old ASP had to be removed with subtle force from the deck part. A few positioning pins were added for easy fixing later.

The rest of the part is now simple a matter of stacking. I started with a core of several layers, added the sides, and puttied everything smooth. At least the forward corners (well aft actually) of the ASP are now round as they should be.

The wings for the two lower searchlights are very delicate. I never met a circle cutter I liked so when I need to carve a circle (or in this an arc) I make a disc on the lathe to be used as a template. The wings were added using a small template for both the right height and angle. I used some tape to get an ‘exact’ measurement and added the bulkhead cut to size and small strip later. Note that I add that strip on a flat surface; otherwise it will never look right.

Existing detail was transferred; some railing, stairs, Carleys and ammo lockers. The structure consists of two parts for easy painting and is still very open.

TO BE UPDATED

The structure and searchlights are now painted. The fog light still needs to be assembled so no pics yet.