Wear Ship Dave

Rewind and Take Two on the Nelson Chequer and Stepping the Main Mast

Another busy day, not much time for model work. But I managed to do a little here and there throughout the day (between spurts of real work).

I decided that I didn't like the hand painted gun ports. So, I painted back over them with the yellow paint.

I also added some white to the stern area of the ship where the windows will be applied. The reason for the white is that I am using ...

Painting and Detailing, continued

I didn't have a lot of time to spend today, so a small update this evening.

I began with the yellow bands. I did them free hand... Working in this scale, I suddenly realize that my hands aren't as steady as I thought they were! But these are passable. I've intentionally left the rear quarter of the ship for now. I'm still contemplating how I want to do the windows, so I'm keeping my options open for now.

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Initial Painting and The Cannon Foundry

Today, I gave the ship some color. I started with three coats of acrylic floor finish to seal the balsa a little. Then a couple coats of black on the hull, a light tan on the decks, and a medium brown on the inside of the rails. I cut some hatch covers/grates from card stock and glued them in place, giving them the medium brown color.

I still need to add the yellow bands on the hull, maybe tomorrow.

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Attached Images

 

Adding the Rail and some Detail

I had a few minutes to spare this afternoon. I wasn't liking the strip of card stock that I added to the bow of the ship. It was too square... So I put a new blade into the X-Acto knife and went to work. (I wanted a REALLY sharp blade)

Very important to draw the blade through the paper here, let the edge of the blade "saw" through it on a microscopic level. If you try to just push the blade through the paper, it will tear ...

Hull Construction
I started by choosing a couple of points that I could precisely locate that also passed through all of the decks I am using for reference.

The purpose? To align the decks correctly, one above the next.

Points chosen, I used a basic hat pin to pierce each deck in the correct location. You'll see that I have a lump of modeling clay underneath my deck shape. This supports the card stock shape and makes it much easier to push the pin through ...