Cargo Ship Revisited Pt4…………….

I've finally finished the T030 Cargo Ship from Scalescenes . I've had to put it onto the back burner for a short while, as I've recently lost my Father. Modelling was the last thing on my mind whilst he was so ill. He’s in a better place now and out of all of his dreadful pain and things are slowly returning to normal.

Anyway back to the ship. I left showing you the hatches I'd fashioned from some mounting board wrapped in a green cover layer. That left me with a dilemma, do I leave the modified hold white or do I change it to green to match the ship. I decided to go with the green, so I used my hand held airbrush with my Promarker alcohol pens. I was very pleased with the result. 

     

All that was left to do was all of the little fiddly details. Some steps for access to the aft and fore decks. A length of fine florists wire makes an ideal handrail.

     

     

Then the winch on the fore deck. Cleverly made with the addition of a couple of push pins fashioned for the drums. A trip to the local pound shop for a cheap chain necklace to make an anchor chain. A quick coat of black paint and you have an ideal anchor chain.

     

     

On the original ship design, it comes with two life boats on the aft deck. The problem I had was, when I chopped off the stern it left me with very little room for the life boats, so I had to improvise. One would have to do. Very clever, but simple design makes a perfect life boat.

     

     

     

I was stuck to what cargo to put in the hold. I thought of coal, sand and even steel coils, but I opted for a cargo of urea. This product gets shipped into our port in this shipping companies vessels. I couldn't use actual urea as it is a hygroscopic substance. Not good when your model is made entirely of card. I would end up with a soggy mess. My wife Jak had a pack of a product called Artista Super Light, it is a moist paper based modelling product which is easily fashioned into shape, and once it's air dried, it's ideal as a bulk lightweight cargo.

     

And here it is in all of its glory. As my attempt at a bit of a kit bash, I'm quite pleased with my effort.

     

     

     

The gantry crane that moves the hatches, was kindly made for me by a work colleague Andrew. He is a very good scratch builder (as you can see) and he made this out of strips of Evergreen plastic. And it is very accurate to the original crane. He took photos from a sister ship in the port.

Until Next Time………

Cargo Ship Revisited Pt2…………..

Part two of the revisited T030 Cargo Ship build from Scalescenes, and it’s going quite well. Now that the interior of the bridge is complete, it’s time for the exterior detail. Even down to port and starboard side lights. With the addition of the wind deflector to the upper bridge deck and the bridge front edge, it’s time to fix the bridge section onto the main hull stern deck. I’m sorry I forgot to take any pictures of the funnel been put in place, but as you can see, it fits a treat.

     

     

     

Now time for the the hull sections. These come in four pieces, two for the aft section and two for the forward section. These are cut out and stuck onto 200gsm card stock, so that they can be easily manipulated around the hull form.

     

Carefully manipulated around the form and the hull slowly takes shape.

     

The sides of the hull are now very flimsy due to it being made out of only 200gsm card. These are reinforced with the addition of bulwarks glued to the hull sections. As you can see in the previous picture, I have quite a few small clamps. These are invaluable in this instance, as it makes it so easy to fix and hold the bulwarks in place whilst the glue sets. They are readily available from a popular online auction site, for not a lot of pennies.  In my opinion, you can’t have enough.

     

     

That’s where I am at for the moment, but I think I might be about to make a radical change. I feel some bits may be about to be chopped off!!!

Until Next Time……………

Cargo Ship Revisited…………..

A couple of years ago I built the T030 Cargo Ship from Scalescenes. It was quite a challenging build for me at the time, as I hadn’t been building models for long. I built it over quite a long period , as it was quite a technical build. There were a few little hiccups along the way, although I was quite pleased with my results. As I wasn’t blogging at the time, so I didn’t share the building process with you, I only showed the finished result. So, I’ve decided to build a second one and take you through the build process along the way. Don’t be put off having a go building this kit, if you take your time, follow the instructions, read twice, cut once, just like with any Scalescenes kit, you will be pleased with the result.

So here we go. The laying of the keel. The bow and the stern are of very similar construction, save that the stern has a small cabin with detail. It’s really not rocket science. A to A, B to B………. you get the picture.

     

     

The stern and bow are joined by the hold sections. And thanks to the way Scalescenes kits join together, sections no longer in length than an A4 sheet of paper create a ship that is verging on 600mm in length.

     

The holds are built in a box form.

     

      

I do like to touch up any raw edges of card with my pens. These details may never be seen but, I like to think just in case they are seen, it’s best to cover them up.

     

Two of these holds made up and fixed into place on the base, then the addition of the decks, the structure is becoming very rigid.

     

     

Time to set the hull to one side to let the glue to go off. Just time to make some fine and fiddly bits. An hour and a half later and my fingers numb. All of the life rings and fire hose boxes made. I like to get these out of the way early.

     

The Fore and Aft decks cut out ready to be installed. And a bit detail added to the Fore Deck.

     

The construction of a couple of sets of steps comes next. Simply made by layering progressively shorter steps with spacers in between.  I know they don’t look much at the moment, but trust me, when you see them in situ shortly, you might just be impressed.

     

These steps are the start of the cabin structure. Again this is built with inter locking elements. Once it’s all put together, it makes a sturdy cabin structure and a base for the Bridge that goes on the top of it.

     

     

Like I said earlier, the steps look totally different once in place. Very Effective.

     

The Bridge is next. Simple box but full of interesting detail. A bit fiddly for my huge fingers, but well worth the effort. It never ceases to amaze me how much detail goes into these kits.

     

     

It’s hard to think that all of this detail is download from the internet, printed, stuck to card, cut out and glued together. How simple is that?

That’s all for now, time to go make a bit more.

Until Next Time………….