Ambrose lightship (Digital navy, 1:250)

[mOONwOKA]

Hello everybody,

I'm posting pictures of the Ambrose lightship, that i completed recently. I borrowed camera just this weekend, so here are the pictures. From a distance it looks not that bad, though.

 

[mOONwOKA]

Another portion of pics:

 

[lizzienewell]

Not bad? What a wonderful model. I love the little details of bollards, vents, and davits. I think that's what some of those things are called.
Wow!

 

[mOONwOKA]

Thanks, Lizzie. Rigging might not be completely accurate, since i had only several reference photos from internet and those were obviously taken not by modeller besides, on the real thing railings have some kind of meshes, but i decided not to replicate those. The model itself has some inaccuracies too e.g. wrong number of portholes in wheelsmans "office". I'm trying to enlarge model to 1:200 scale and eliminate some minor flaws - a future project - but in general it is a very nice little kit and a freebie too! Good value for money

P.S. i feel like i'm having trouble with nautical terminology too

 

[Stev0]

Looks great. The weathering on the hull is quite realistic. You should glue down on 1/8" plywood to correct the base warping.

 

[eibwarrior]

Great job on Ambrose. Clean, neat, professional looking build.

It is a good model and very straightforward to build.

 

[barry]

Great looking ship.

Always ask when I see good looking wire work are you an ace at soldering or how did you get such good rails and mast tops please.

regards

 

[mOONwOKA]

Barry, i did soldiering only for main "spars" of mast tops. I used thick (approx. 1mm at this scale that is) copper wire and it shows in picture as the thickest parts. All the thinner parts are made from stretched sprue, using some CA and lots of swearing. Railings are made from stretched sprue and finest fishing thread. I calculated approximate distance between columns from a photo and drilled a light recess for every one of them. Still, paper, styrene and CA is not a very firm combination. For deck rigging it was good enough, but when i tried to apply the same scheme for cabin railings, trying to bend fishing thread at almost right angle, the columns would break off. So i used very fine copper wire - it bends easily, and that is both good and bad. Bad, because it bends even when it's not desired. I must say, that when i saw photos, i was a bit shocked - macro mode shows all the flaws

As i wrote before, not averything is absolutely to scale, because many things were made with approximate calculations based on photos, which adds some level of distortion. I also apologize if my writing is hard to understand, as english is a foreign language to me.

 

[milenio3]

Should you post "leasons learned" constructing this model?
As Barry says, how did you do that details?
Any special tools / materials?

 

[milenio3]

Oops, I didn't refresh my page, and you'd already answered.
Hey, the good thing about the fine copper wire is that in that way, it seems "oldish", and gives your model more realistic details.

 

[Bowdenja]

Great job........... I tried this one once and boogered it up so bad, I ain't touched another ship..........

Maybe after this I'll give it another try............ but it won't look this good!

john

 

[Gregory Shoda]

Ambrose lightship

Congratulations on a very attractive model. I think it looks great! Didn't see/notice the flaws. You are right about finding flaws after taking pictures. Photos reveal mistakes you don't see most of the time. Correcting with paper is not so hard as it is with plastic models, but it is aggravating to see problems when you think you are all done.

Best Regards,


G. Shoda

 

[Jim Krauzlis]

I think you have done an outstanding job of this build! I have pondered this build for quite a while now, but other things inevitably came up...seeing your pictures are certainly an inspiration to consider building her once again.

Thanks for sharing photos of her; they are quite nice and I enjoyed seeing your model come out so well.

I would also like to comment about how it's nice that Digital Navy continues to offer this particular little ship as a free download, as well as others that can be found on their site. I don't think there are ever enough "thank you"s given to such generous folk, so please permit me to express my thanks once again! And the quality of their offerings are outstanding, as this build well testifies to. No, I have no connection to Digital Navy, expect for being a very satisfied customer.:grin:

Cheers!
Jim

 

[mOONwOKA]

Thanks, Jim. And thanks to everyone for your kind words. It was enjoyable to see this ship finally done. But it's even better to see, that others like her too