Free Model #3 - HMS Dreadnought by Mark_1984

M

Mark_1984

A little more progress today. I decided to do the wheelhouse support before the forward funnel.

Here is the first section. The kit only has a former for the top of the oval shaped house. However, as I've got a second copy of the sheet printed out (and I've used several bits from it already ;)) I cut another former and used that onthe bottom to make it easier to get a good shape to the part.

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Here is the top section of the support. I tried cutting out the black circles, but my smallest punch is too large, so they will have to stay as black circles. The inside of this part was coloured with my battleship grey marker.

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M

Mark_1984

I've made a start ont he forward funnel now. The plan of attack for the aft funnel wasn't the easiest way of building it. This time I bent the funnel more or less to shape, and then attached formers top and bottom.

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Then I glued the rest of the funnel wall to the formers, bit at a time, which gave a much neater job, and far easier.

You can see I've also glued the 'top hat' in place as well, now it's just waiting for the grid.

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M

Mark_1984

Here is the completed funnel glued in place. There are also a coupl emore of those pesky guns which need to be fitted before the wheelhouse goes on. I haven't painted the barrels yet.

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I've decided to construct the wheelhouse as a separate subassembly befire fixing it to the main model. Here is the base with the wheel house cabin attached. Needless to say, the underside was coloured in battleship grey. I think the front of the wheelhouse will go on next.

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Taking stock of where I am, I decided to do some of the railings next. Here is a photo of the first stage of construction. The card was protected with clear tape to stop the cotton sticking to it. The cotton, stiffened with PVA was glued to the card as shown. Next will be the stantions. I used grey cotton for the handrails. I think that black will be a littel too dark. I know that the real ship would have had canvas over the rails, but I don't think that this works very well in card. The rear would be stark white and the thickness would be most unrealistic. I thinkk that cotton rails will look far better, so I'm just going to pretend that they've been taken down for washing :rofl:

The 0.5mm pencil is there for scale.

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M

Mark_1984

Continuing with the handrails, here they are with the uprights attached. They were smeared with PVA and pushed into place before the glue dried. Just to be sure they were well glued, I painted them with watered down PVA afterwards.

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And here they are almost cut free. Once cut free tehy are very easy to blow away. I got lucky and caught one before the carpet monster ate it sign1

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Finally, here are the rails fitted. Fitting them is a bit of a challenge as they don't want to stay bent to the right angle. wall1
PVA, a pair of tweezers and a pin eventually won the battle.

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M

Mark_1984

The stern facing bulkhead proved to be a bit tricky. It didn't want to be bent to the right shape or stay in place. I eventually decided to glue one edge first.

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Then glue the middle......

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........and finally glue the remaining edge. There is a little gap as the part seems a little short, but I can live with this.

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You may note that I cut the hand rails off this part as they will get replaced with cotton.
 
M

Mark_1984

It's been a while since I've updated this thread, mainly due to holiday and a stinking cold. Time seems to be pressing, so I'm doing more building and less photographs ;) Anyway, here is the bridge assembly. I've still got the handrails to do. These are particularly complicated with lots of bends, but I'm going to try and replicate them using cotton. Gonna need a steady hand and a good deal of luck !!

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Here are the life boat supports. Quite simple. I scored down the centre line, folded in half and glued before I cut them out. This gave a very neat result.

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Here are a couple of views of a deck house towards the stern. Again, quite straight forward, but the brackets and search light platform are a bit on the small side.

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Anybody got any suggestions about how to make the bollards realistic. I don't think I can do a neat job of rolling them from paper (not very good at rolling paper) and I don't have any thin plastic rod which would be ideal.
 
M

Mark_1984

I decided to do a little white spot killing today. First, three skylights at the bow.

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The a bigger skylight towards the stern. I laminated this on card and coloured the edges to give it a bit more height. I also added the breakwater. I've just noticed on the photo that there is a bit of white still showing. This is almost un-noticable on the actually model. Close up photos can be sooooo cruel :eek:ops:

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Here are a couple of pictures of the overall model to give an impression as to how it's coming on.

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Still plenty to do, the masts and guns are giving me cause for thought at the moment. Thanks to Nullmoon for the fag paper suggestion. I'll see what I can find, although I've never seen a Korean with a rolly. sign1
 
T

Tim Crowe

I colour the white dots in with a suitable felt-tip pen to hide any white that might show.

My six-year old still hasn't noticed that his pen sets are missing the grey pens

What a rotten daddy!
 
M

Mark_1984

I colour the white dots in with a suitable felt-tip pen to hide any white that might show.

My six-year old still hasn't noticed that his pen sets are missing the grey pens

What a rotten daddy!

sign1 My daughter is only 6 months. Too young to be given pens yet !!
 
M

Mark_1984

Got a bit more done. Here are the start of the wheelhouse railings. Bending the cotton rails through 90 degrees wasn't going to work, so they were cut into individual lengths and glued on.

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Here are the barbettes (gun bases). I'm not too bothered about making the guns rotate. My models are for looking at, not playing with ;)

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Here is a thingie at the stern. Absolutely no idea what this it.

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Finally, for this update, the breakwaters on the main deck.

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Lex

Dollmaker
Nice work on the railings Mark! Just to say the base for the side turrets would leave a bit of exposed white on the bottom, so you might want to patch that up as well ^^
 
M

Mark_1984

Thanks Lex. I'd actually just found that out when I tried the barbettes in place. Luckily I've got my hands on a couple of different shades of grey, so I can match the colour of the rest of the hull quite closely.
 
M

Mark_1984

A tiny update. Got the bridge wing hand rails finished and decided to glue the wheelhouse onto the model before tackling the handrails on the top of it. I figured that it would be easier to apply these railings being able to handing the whole model rather than a tiny little itty bitty wheelhouse.

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I've come up with a good plan for the masts. Found some thin cotton buds, which are just the right thickness to have the paper part wrapped around for the main mast. I'm sure my 6 month daught won't miss her cotton buds :)
 
M

Mark_1984

I've made a start on the search lights. Not quite made how the instructions suggest, but I think my method is easier, and probably looks better (at least with my ham fisted construction !!) I didn't use the bases that were part of the bracket. I cut them off the part 63, and made them from punched out 2mm discs. The Japanesse screw punch is earning it's keep here. It was easy to glue the brackets onto the new bases. The lamp section was simply a case of laminating the lamp front onto some card, and them cutting it out with the trusty screw punch. Here are the parts all assembled, but prior to colouring with my battleship grey felt tip.
The end result looks pretty good (to my eyes anyway, given that these are tiddly little things !!) I've found that the sticky side of a post-it note it great for stopping small parts from getting lost.

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The main mast was made by wrapping the paper part round a thin cotton bud. The thinner masts were simply made by cutting the same cotton buds to length and colouring them with a matching felt tip.

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Here is the crow's nest, ready to be fitted to the mast.

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Finally for today, here is the main mast in postion. You can also see the first batch of search lights fitted. (Only another 8 lights to make - I hate repetitive tasks like this - don't think I shall ever make a tracked vehicle !!)

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