Hello and welcome to February.
Time flies when you're having fun. I'm thinking about doing an extra news blog about the new things coming out of Nuremberg. Keep an eye on the blogs page. Here's a direct link.
I've been working on the deck accoutrements of Fram. As said before, they're a mix of preformed wood and metal parts, wood strips and brass wires. Fiddly and difficult at times, it's all turning out pretty good, if I do say so myself.
If you remember my café, I did a small experiment with opaque glass (I mentioned it in blog 38): either lightly sand the transparant plastic, or airbrush some flat varnish. Well, this kit also has a few parts where milky glass is needed. The instructions say to sand it. My experience has taught me that varnishing works better, so that's what I did. It doesn't photograph well, but here it is in action:
The grille you see to the left is made of preformed wooden parts. You make the correct number of squares, then cut off what you don't need.
The rear of that grille will hold the ship's wheel, linked with chains to the rudder post. However, one of the metal parts (M15) was badly cast, with half the part missing:
From what I hear and read of OcCre, they're very customer-friendly regarding missing or broken pieces (because of either a mistake on their side or yours). On their website, there's a form where you can request spares. I immediately got an email back saying they'll be sending out a replacement in 5-10 days. So let's see how that goes!
There are three rope ties to be constructed out of brass wire and eyehooks. Luckily, OcCre provides a 1:1 plan of the deck and a few pieces to be made. Nevertheless, these were a pain to make. Here's a picture of the pieces, the template and a completed part:
You can see two of them in place on the deck in the next picture:
The smoke stack is made up of a wooden rod and four metal bands wrapped around it. I had to anneal the thick brass for the bands, because they would not bend easily. I thought about drilling out the top somewhat to give the impression of it being hollow, but I don't really trust the wood to not start splintering... The stairs and door housings are preformed wood and wood strips. The doors themselves are photo-etched brass.
That's about it for the deck. Here's two photos to give you an overview.
First the front:
And the back:
All the vents are metal parts. I give them a grind with my Dremel tool to soften/remove the mold lines, then spray them with
Vallejo white primer. The OcCre paints are perfect for wood, but I don't like them for metal. Brushing the primer is a pain, so a quick spray is a lot easier, faster and cleaner. I just have to give them an extra coat of OcCre white to give it a bit of a shine.
These kinds of vents, by the way, are called '
dorade boxes' and are designed to let air into the interior of a ship, but keep water out. You learn something new every day while modelling. :-)
With the deck furnishings almost ready, it's time to start looking at the masts. You get these as long wood dowel rods, which you need to cut to size and then sand into shape. Again, OcCre provides 1:1 drawings of all the masts. This is something I'm absolutely not used to doing. I started working on one part of the bowsprit. It's supposed to taper gradually from full-width to a smaller diameter. I, however, succeeded in giving it a noticable step in the last millimeter or so... I'll have look up some tips on how to do this properly on the internet.
To be continued...
See you next week!
