Wilhelmshaven 1:200 scale USS Constitution

Jim Krauzlis

Active Member
And, finally, the last few for tonight.... :D

Sorry about the quality of the first photo, but the photo posting size limit kept me from getting a clear photo of the uninstalled gun port lid details. :?

The last two photos show the first gun port lid finally in place. Still needs a bit of touchup, but, well, there you have it. :D

Cheers!

Jim
 

barry

Active Member
Jim

I am amazed at your attention to detail, that is really superb

On the close up if you are using Adobe photoshop try cutting out the small section you want and then store it at 600 by 480. Teaching granny to suck eggs again.

Actually on my screen it is very clear I hesitate to say but is your screen covered in paper dust like mine was (and nicotine). I was about to throw it away when I decided to take drastic cleaning measures quite an incredible improvement.

barry
 

Jim Krauzlis

Active Member
Thanks, Barry! :D

Here is a slightly enhanced photo. Actually, I think it's just my photography "skills" more than the resolution problem...the part is slightly out of focus, but the background is better. :?

Yeah, I am kind of driven to try and make some of the details the model lacks. It just doesn't sit right with me to have it devoid of some of the little things that are characteristic of the real thing. The gunport lids are a good example. The photo of the printed sheet shows how the gun ports are just printed, don't have the port hole/lights and don't show the laniards or the distinctive water diverters. :roll: Those things are pretty obvious when you look at the photos I posted earlier of the real thing.

It's proven a bit of a challenge with this model, since a lot of the construction is a bit simplified, perhaps because of the small size of the details, but, heck, if it doesn't come out just right at least I gave it a shot. :lol:

Anyway, here's the photo...I'll just have to take a better photo next time so it doesn't lose so much detail in the reduction for posting. :wink:

Cheers, mate!

Jim
 

jrts

Active Member
Hi Jim

Nothing wrong with the photos from this end, the detail shows up very well.
Barry is spot on, the detail going in to this is amazing.

More mate when you can

Rob
 

Jim Krauzlis

Active Member
Thanks, Rob! :D

Must be my eyes, then. :lol:

Okay, and be kind, there is one more shot. I really zoomed in on the gunport lid that I installed. It never ceases to amaze me how these closeups show the mistakes so clearly! :lol: I do need a bit of touch up on some parts here, no? :lol:

Anyway, hope this gives a better idea of how I hope the finished job will look...just imagine a whole gun deck side with the lids. :D By the way, the printed gunport is shown clearly to the right...see what I mean about needing something more? :wink: And now you can see the door inside the quarter gallery too! :lol:

Thanks, mates!!

Cheers!
:D
Jim
 

barry

Active Member
Jim

At that range almost any scale would show a few brushmarks, sailors are not renowned for rubbing the ship's sides down I reckon if you looked hard at the real thing it would look the same. I'm impressed with door mate.

barry
 

Jim Krauzlis

Active Member
Barry, my dear friend, you are too kind... :D

Glad you liked the door! Thought it was a neat idea to add it. :wink:

Okay, I lied...sort of...here's the last photo for tonight...but it's the real ship (like it isn't obvious! Sheesh!). Just to show what I am aiming for.

Hopefully more tomorrow...because Monday I have to fly out to the left coast (a.k.a. California) for a bit of work in San Diego...should be back Wednesday. So, I really want to get as much done as I can before the trip.

My best to all!
:D
Cheers!

Jim
 

Jim Krauzlis

Active Member
Okay, let's start out by saying I didn't get as much done today as I had hoped. :( In fact, it was a lot of trial and error on the gun barrels for the gun deck port, along with continuing with the construction of the gun deck gun port lids. But, if any progress was made it was in figuring out the right dimensions and make up for the gun deck gun barrels.

First the gun deck gun port lids...it's now just a matter of making them. :lol: No, seriously, after all the trial and errors of yesterday, I was able to pop out six assemblies in the time it took me to do one yesterday...at least that's some progress. Even still, as I went along I found it easier to use my monocular lens to thread that bloody little thread through those bloody little holes. Can't tell you how many times I tried using my usual clip on magnifiers like I did yesterday, but I finally saw the light...I couldn't see the hole and tip of the tread very well. :eek:ops: Well, out comes the rarely used monocular lens, and Ta Da! Threaded the darn thing on the first try...guess it just proves it helps to be able to see what you're doing. :lol:

I also learned a better sequence for threading and gluing the laniards to get them reasonably lined up right over the gun holes. Just a matter of dabbing a bit of glue on the back side of the lower two holes so when I adjusted the thread it didn't go too fast and too far. Then I threaded the top thread in the hole below the water diverter...boy, what a difference that super duper lens made, cause now I could see the black thread against the black part, and the hole appeared easilier to see.

I then continued with the usual hinge assembly, and the monocular made that a lot easier to do too! Now it was just a matter of compensating for my shakey hands. :lol: Once dried, I did the touch up painting and cut the assemblies out. They went on like a charm on the hull, and before I knew it the first seven gun port lids were all in place! Now we were moving! :wink:

After they dried I touched up the edges with flat black paint and, while I had the jar out, I decided to finish up the touch up for the entire section above and below the gun stripe. Tell you what, that coat of paint makes a world of difference in giving the black area a smoother and neater appearance than when I left the printed black area unpainted.

Feeling flushed with progress, I thought it would be a good idea to start some of the gun deck gun assemblies before finishing up the rest of the starboard side gun port lids. The aftermost gun position apparently doesn't have a gun actually at that station because the real thing has a plate covering the hole, with that little red star in the middle just like the tampions used on the gun deck barrels. So, I fashioned the plate (seems it is just a tab larger than the actual gun barrel, since it covers the hole entirely, whereas the barrel just protrudes though that same hole) and installed it. It looked fairly realistic, I thought.

So, on to a gun barrel. Here's where the kit again departs from reality. :? If you use the kit barrel parts the barrel will stick out of the gun ports almost two times as much as it should. :shock: Rather noticeable error. So, I built a barrel from scratch (didn't like the way the card from the kit rolled anyway) using a 26# bond paper strip of the right width. I rolled it around one of my micro punches, the size just smaller than the gun lid hole, and got it nicely tight for about one and a half turns around the punch, backed up a tad, applied glue, and then rolled the glued section. When it looked like it was setting up right, I trimmed the excess, applied a little more glue to the edge and finished it off by rolling the punch with the little tube on the work table. Nice, tight and the right size! Here's where it got hairy...the darn little bugger kept jumping off of my work table as I tried to maneuver it for adding the other parts. Finally, it got tired of jumping, and I was able to assemble the rest of the barrel. I first tried using the parts from the kit. They have two discs that go on the end. One looks slightly larger than the tube of the barrel and the last is about the same size but has that red star on the printed side. When I used these parts, the first ring was not much different than the second and gave it a funny top hat look, rather than a barrel look. So, back to the micro punches...I ended up using a punch about 0.058 diameter and punched out a disc of card with it. I then used a 0.043 punch for the red star section, leaving out the rest of that disc part. Using these two new pieces, I assembled the new end for the barrel. When I applied a little glue to fair out the larger disc with the barrel, it took on more of a flare that the real gun barrels have, rather than the top hat look from before. I painted the dried piece, being careful not to paint over the little red star on the outside, and the barrel was done!

Well, that took a bit of time to work out, so I didn't have time to build any more of the barrels tonight, nor to finish the gun port lids on the starboard side. But, next session should move quickly (famous last words! :lol: ) now that I have the procedure worked out.

So, just a few photos tonight. You should be able to see the aftermost gun station with the plate and no barrel, and the next gun station with the new and improved barrel assembly. I hope the touch up painting of the black sections shows some improvement from the last posted photos...it does look better, trust me. :lol:

Well, off to San Diego for a few days for work, then I hope to be back Wednesday and, if jet lag isn't hitting me too bad, I hope to do a little more. Till then, hope you enjoy these photos.... :D

Cheers!

Jim
 

barry

Active Member
Jim

Looks more like 1/200 scale rather than what it is and that's a bit mean shall we say 1/150/

You are right it has made all the difference again.

I'm gobsmacked !!!

Keep going mate I trust now you have the size of the barrels you will carry a small box of glue and paper with you to keep from being bored.

barry
 

jrts

Active Member
Hi Jim

Nice parting post before your trip :D
I take it a big post with loads of photos when you come back, all that time in a hotel room watching the TV. It just screams build time :lol: :lol:

Great stuff mate, more when you can.
Best post of the weekend 8)

Rob
 

Jim Krauzlis

Active Member
Thanks, mates! :D

You guys give me too much credit, to be sure...but I am glad you liked this last post. I'm happy Constitution is moving along. Although I did get some good time to work on her, it's certainly not as much as I would have liked. Ah, but Wednesday I return early, REAL early, and will be no doubt working off some jet lag, so maybe I can sneak a few hours in rather than running back to the office. :lol:
We are nuts, aren't we? :lol:

Would if I could take some busy work along with me, but it seems I am all booked up this trip. :(

Talk to you again mid week! I will be checking in during the trip, so I hope to be able to see more Fuso, Barry, and your superb airplane work, Rob (if not some Missouri :wink: ).

Cheers, mates!

Jim
 

larrymax

Member
New Poll!

Who can eat more Sushi in one sitting?
A) A team of Sumo Wrestlers after a long tournament.
B) The Dallas Cowboys (including cheerleaders!)
or
C) Jim K. in a Sushi Bar in San Diego!@!#$#


Answer: C. Jim K. actually amazed even the wait staff when they brought him enough sushi to feed a small army, but it was all for HIM! But, Jim, being an EXTREMELY NICE guy, DID share some with me!

Thanks for the laughs.....and the Sushi, Jim!

Hope you can make it back to the Left Coast again, real soon!

Max
Captain, HMS Cleopatra
Paper Navy of the Bear Flag Republic
 

Jim Krauzlis

Active Member
If I ever see another morsel of sushi... :lol:

Well, Max, it was a blast! :D

Folks, I was honored to spend part of this Monday evening with Max, who brought along his Cleo and two of his other models, the monitors from Modelshipwrights, and they were...AWESOME! :shock: You know, the photos do not do these models justice. I sat there with jaw dropped, gawking at the monitors (the detail is unbelieveable!) and enjoyed being able to look over Cleo in person...Max's skill in making realistic and complex paper models is very evident in the work he has put into Cleo...and it's not done yet! :shock: The frieze work looked like it was actually carved and the degree of detail he has put into Cleo is incredible.

We had a super time chatting about paper models, ship modeling in general, talking about our families, watching my Eagles destroy the Cowboys and consuming vast quantities of sushi...all in all easily the best part of my visit to the beautiful town of San Diego. Max was a superb host, a wonderful dinner companion and is an outstanding modeler!

The sushi was great and, yes, I have to admit to consuming an awful lot of it...seems the Californian sushi chefs make their rolls twice the size of the east coast chefs, which I did not know. :roll: When they brought the patter with those 5 rolls...40 pieces in all, I believe, it was a good laugh. :lol: They were excellent eating, and went down easily. 8)

Thanks for a wonderful time, Max! Can't wait to return to the scene of the crime... and we MUST get more of that delicious sushi when I do. :lol:

Cheers!

Jim
 

Jim Krauzlis

Active Member
This weekend I was able to pretty much finish up the starboard side gun deck gunports and barrels. It was slow going, not because it was troublesome (actually, it got easier as I went along and had the system down), but only because there are so many of them and a lot of steps in one assembly.

I started out by continuing with the construction of the gun port lids with their water diverters, port holes and the upper lid laniards. I pretty much now had the procedure down to a few steps. As you saw in the last post, I used my extra hand jig to tie up the laniards and let the glue on the knots set while I could do other things. This time I also gave them a nice little touchup with flat black acrylic to try and remove any remnents of the glue (seems to show up on the thread at this small scale) and made good use of my monocular lens to trim the knot before rigging them to the lids. I added the small thread pieces which represented hinges, and painted them flat white...the monocular lens came in handy to do this without painting something that wasn't supposed to be painted white. :lol: It's amazing how large that small brush looked under the monocule... :shock: I gained a lot of respect for those brain surgeons that work using microscopes and what not to see things not visible to the human eye. :wink:

After turning out a few oversized stubby barrels :eek:ops: I figured out I was starting out with the wrong sized punch as a rolling aid. You'd be surprised out much of a difference the .043 sized punch made compared to the .033 punch in rolling the barrels (and I don't just mean the .010 difference, wise guys :lol: ). I think I also used one too many layers on the first batch, but then got it down to a fairly routine procedure of rolling the thin strip one and a quarter times around the punch, touching a bit of glue to the strip, making another 1/4 turn, trimming and then finishing it off with a good roll on the work pad. The key was making sure you rolled it true to the punch, to avoid any layers being out of line. The barrel stubs came out to about .043 round.

I then added the first disc, which was .048 round and then another disc, this time .043 round. I decided to not use the kit parts for this assembly, that card kept delaminating at the most annoying time (i.e. when gluing), and it worked out better. I painted the card with my flat acrylic black before punching out the discs, and that worked great. Finally, I then punched out some .028 discs from red painted card for the tampions (nope, didn't even try to make them into stars, that would have been insane :lol: ). I painted the stubby barrels first, and when dry glued on the red tampions. I got it down to a science, rolling barrels, punching discs, starting assemblies, while at the same time working on the gun lids while the other assemblies were drying. Even with this fairly smooth procedure, the 14 gun port lids and barrels took all weekend (two sessions of about 3-4 hours each).

I then started to add the assemblies to the hull. I found it easier after the first two, the procedure again becoming a set of cuts, and gluing, all being the same...just hope I can still remember them when I do the port side gunports. :? I again cut the upper and lower lids apart, but before that I punched a hole in the middle where the barrel sticks through. Then, I added the stubby barrels to the lids in place on the hull. That went fairly well, none flew off into the nether regions as I had feared (watch, they'll act up when I do the port side! :lol: ) Just like the aft most gun lid, the forward most gunport, which is actually a bridle port (used for passing lines ashore), had only a plate with a red star in the middle.

Well, that's about it for this weekend. I felt a bit disappointed I could only get the starboard gun port lids on, but the port side will be next. I did, however, play around with the entry port boards as well. They are supposed to have a carving of an eagle and a fouled anchor, but when I printed out the reduced template that I put together the carving lines disappeared! :? I did two dry runs just to see how they fit to the hull, but nothing worth posting yet. I did gain some ideas on how to modify the entry port boards, so maybe the carving will at least show up as a tiny impression, but that will have to wait till next time. :D

I also started working on the hammock nettings. I probably won't put them on until all the deck furniture and carronades are in place because I can almost assure you I will knock them about if they are there too early on. :lol: I am trying something different for the netting, and the first run came out pretty well...I still need to improve how I will use this material on the actual model, but the way the material reacted to my process is very promising...but more on that later. :wink:

Cheers!

Jim
 

jrts

Active Member
Hi Jim

Love the bow shot with all the guns run out 8)

A very fine bit of work mate, the detail is outstanding for such a small model.

More when you can :roll:

Rob
 

barry

Active Member
Hi Jim

Wordsmith extrodinaire, what a good read I do not know how you are packing so much into such a tiny ship. I don't think I could see .010 let alone centre it up all the way along that number of ports.

My favourite out of that set is bow_4 mind you all the others are great as well (thinks must get a dictionary for some new adjectives).

More please as usual

barry
 

Jim Krauzlis

Active Member
Thanks, Rob...should be done by Christmas...2006! :lol:

Barry, thanks for the kind words, mate. The thickness difference was pretty striking when I put the piece up to the port just to see how it looked...Boing! :shock: It looked like the damn thing was inflamed with some festering illness. :lol: Did I mention I had made 15 of those oversized tubs before I realized they were all too thick? :eek:ops: At least I got a bit of practice in rolling them. :lol:

Some of the build is just plain slow going, but that's okay, I am really enjoying the challenge of trying to add the details to this kit. Just wish I had more build time during the week, but that's not in the cards...but this week is Thanksgiving, a holiday, so I hope out of the four days off I can sneak off to the garage and get some further build time in. :wink:

Take care, mate!

Cheers!

Jim
 

silverw

Member
Hey Jim.... like the others have inferred....I just don't know what to say! :shock: :shock: :shock: :shock: :shock:
 
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