The Ship Model Forum

Its been a hectic week X 3 and so work on the Larsen has suffered. Having said that I have primer down, began patching holes and gaps, another pass of primer, drilled out the holes for the bubbler system, built up the anchor pockets, prop shafts, and rudder. The hull is progressing and I am collecting a healthy list of 'I think I will do this differently next time'. For my next post I should hopefully have some colour down.

Thanks for reading.
Gord

Thanks Phil. The litho has been a interesting material to use. I found over the course of plating the hull I have started to see where things have worked well and where I needed to modify my approach. I think my future builds will be a lot more precise. It will be good to see how things will look once the primer is on.
Brad. Breaking ice seems to be an under appreciated profession. It must be great to work with these ships and the people that crew them. To spend a day on an ice breaker would be really cool.

As for my build, the majority of the plating is done. The bulwarks have been left off until the upper deck superstructure and fitting have been addressed. The bow and the Ice guard have been filled and shaped. These are cast pieces on the real ship and not plated so the texture difference from the bondo and the plates should represent well. I hope. The portholes have been drilled. Still more work to do but getting closer.

Thanks for reading.
Gord

Hi Gord,
nice build you have going on there- those are incredible ships... Ive had the pleasure of working with the Pierre Radisson the past two years on the Great Lakes. That is one incredible Ice Breaker! Seen her do some incredible things. And the guy driving it? he was just as incredible- sure left an impression on me.



Good luck on your Build!
Brad

Sorry, the "Guest" post was from me. I didn't realise I wasn't signed in. The plating is amazing and I'm looking forward to seeing what happens next. Good luck & happy modelling!
Regards,
Phil

Hi Gord,
I'm enjoying following your build, such a great job!
Regards,
Phil

A quick update. The bow is now plated. Finally . Still a bit of work to do on the hull but getting there. I also have picked some PVC so I can slowly start to build up the superstructure. A few of the deck superstructure parts have been cut.

Thanks
Gord

Thanks Aop Aur and Neptune. I am going to follow Neptune's advise and make the anchor from plastic. This will give me the most flexibility.

Its been about three weeks since I last posted as I have been on vacation. I hope everyone had a good new year. I haven't spent a lot of time on the ship but did make some progress. The anchor pockets are made and installed. I also cleaned up the props and primed them. I will fill the finer imperfections and prep them for bronze paint. Most of the time has been on plating. Its amazing how long it takes to make each panel section but I see the end is near. The stern is almost done with a few more plates needed. The rudder has been made and will be mounted once I finish the hull. The bow is progressing but will likely be the end of the month by the time I have everything plated. I am a bit off schedule but I think once I get past the hull, things will move a bit faster.

Thanks for following.
Gord

Glad to be of any help.
Wouldn't exactly call anchor pockets an easy win...
I did build my own anchors and I used simple styrene. It depends what you want to achieve. If it's just an anchor for display that will always stay in place, then you can use styrene.
If you want to be able to move it back and forth, then it's probably better to use something more sturdy (and heavy if you want to be able to lower it under the waterlevel).
I did make a hinge on the shank to be able to fit it inside the anchor pockets, I just drilled a hole in the shank and used a piece of small brass wire (0.5mm or 0.8mm). I assume you could also just place the shank in, and then glue the flukes on in a fixed way if it's just for display purpose.

Very nice! I wonder if I could do the same thing for the hull plating of my Lion battleship. Though she is in 1/350 and I have no shell expansion drawings at all! Anyway your hull would look perfect when painted!

Aop

Thank you Neptune for you help on understanding the hull plating. You clearly understand the intricacies of ship building. Your advise has helped quite a bit.
The last few weeks have been busy as we lead up to the holiday season. Thankfully I got some work done on the hull plating. I am finding the compound curves to be very challenging. I have tried using the litho plate as is but found it wouldn't form to the hull very well. I have annealed some panels and this worked better but then I lose the crispness of the plates. I have a feeling this will be my biggest challenge for the entire build. With the pain I have on plating the hull I decided I need an easy win so, I cleaned up the anchor pockets and plated the forecastle and main deck. To finish the anchor pocket I figure I need an anchor to build it around. I have been searching for some options online but I can't say that I am impressed with the offerings out there. I need a hall type anchor around 28mm wide and have 2 options. I am wondering if most on this forum scratch their own anchor and if so what material do you use?

Thanks for reading

Gord

Fantastic job so far. I might be able to help on that shell expansion, but I'd need to get a larger view of it in order to determine each line on it. In normal cases, yard plans, they use broken lines to show the inside framing and thicker lines to show the actual plating edges, it seems to be different on your plan, so a larger view would probably give more leads.

As said, a great job. Those anchor recesses are always difficult, haven't found an easy solution for that either up till now.

Thanks again Scott. Its my first build so I am learning this as I go.

So I spent a few hours plating the hull. I had started by separating each of the panels and gluing these in place and then realized that it is very difficult to ensure alignment and that as the hull starts to curve more gaps appear between the plates. So I switched to making large patches of plates and scribing the aluminum. This is producing a more consistent result and probably closer to the scale effect for a welded hull. To wrap things up this weekend I started to punch out the anchor pocket.

Thats it for now.
Gord

That hull is looking good,Gord.

Scott

So this week I sanded the Bondo smooth. The material worked well to even out the hull and provided a 'wonderful' aroma to the entire house for which I was asked 'what the $%@! I was doing' .However another lesson learned is to know how much sanding is too much. My poor Ice guard got a beating as I tried in vain to shape it evenly. Thankfully I can build it up again and be more conservative in the future shaping. I applied a coat of primer to help highlight the divots and areas of the hull that have some shape issues. For the most part it is looking good so I have started to mark up the location of the hull plating and started applying the litho. This stuff cuts great and seems to form well to the hull. I know it will be a challenge once I hit the compound curves. I have left some of the cut edges raised on the plate to simulate the welding. Most of the plates will be but jointed except for the 2 lines denoting the transition of the thicker ice belt.

Enjoy,
Gord

Thanks Scott.

A lit more work done this week. Though it doesn't look like much, I now have the decks glued to the hull. The outer shell has a cost of resin applied followed by a coat of Bondo. I also have the litho plate I need thanks to a great printing company I have worked with in the past. I am starting to look forward to finishing the hull and moving onto the superstructure.

Thanks for reading
Gord

Great updates.

Scott

As I get ready to do the plating of the hull I am hoping that someone can help me in understanding the the shell expansion drawing. Below is the overall fore shell plate expansion drawing and then I used colour to define what I believe is the extent of the plate. I hope that someone can provide some insight or point me to a reference that I can use to understand these drawings a bit more.

Thanks for your help
Gord

Many thanks Aop Aur. I am hoping that doing weekly posts will keep me on track with the project.

This week there was some work on the finer shaping of the bow and stern. Still more work to do but it is getting closer. When I had the frames routed out of the plywood I also had the corresponding guides / templates made so I could check the outer hull shape. Using these, I am able to sand the hull closer to the real thing. I realized that there was some Irregularities in the forecastle so I added some additional balsa to be sanded to shape later. I epoxied the interior of the hull and underside of the deck plywood. I am hoping to mount the deck to the hull before I leave on my business trip tomorrow.

My propellers also arrived this week. While they were cheaper than some of the other brands I had hopped they wouldn't require as much work as it seems I will need to do. They had rough casting marks that need to be ground down. However when I started to grind the 'bronze' it quickly became apparent this was just a paint or plated finish and that it was in fact cast aluminum. I can work with this but just a bit unexpected and frustrating.

Thanks
Gord

Looking very nice!! Look forward to more updates!!

Aop

So as real work has eased up this week it has given me a chance to spend a bit more time on the Larsen. This week I added the second layer of balsa. This went on quite well and required little in the way fiddling to get it to fit right. I am now at the point where I need to do a light sand to even out the high points and then I can start to shape the hull a bit closer to the 1:1 version. I have only 2 photos of the ship in dry dock but I have a few others of her sister ships and so I am hoping I have enough to represent the hull faithfully. If by some chance someone out there has better photos, I could definitely make use of these. I am now sourcing some litho plate so I can use this to represent the steel plates of the ship and have ordered the props. Still a bit of work to go, but progressing.

Thanks for following
Gord