Apologies for absence=-== holiday, good weather and old cars ... and then back to work arghhh...
but there is progress to report.-
-
meanwhiles...
@ Hi Richard P ! seriously innovative outside-of-the-box thinking !
Not wanting to distract your from your Barham mission...(!)
I plodded on with my ' analogue' method-- but I think with refinement your concept has excellent potential !
back at the bench things have progressed somewhat....
The sails on the real thing were made of ' modern' sailcloth- '-in the era I am portraying they were made of Polyester (Terylene) ,
Sails such as these are cut with luff and footcurve, with minimal seam shaping .
They set well and are not 'baggy' as ' traditional sails with hand-worked boltropes along their edges would be , as such are harder to make look realistic in small scales--....I am still struggling on that point!!
Anyhow they are also very very white, ==> whiter than my paper!
But before I did any colouring I had to make them moisture impervious and stiff enough to take a shape
I experimented with CA-- but the paper went grey and the surface was was not to my liking, I tried a thinned enamel paint and vanish combo,
( using hemp colour to be easier able to gauge the coverage effect) and also used matt varnish airbrushed on, the latter was ultimately the most successful.
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The problem is......
that when sails are backlit by the sun-- the seams, reinforcing, reef points etc are quite prominent,
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with the sun shining on them they appear almost solid white and hardly any seam detail is visible.
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in different lights, not backlit...
the seams ARE viisble...
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in model form ,we the observer/ viewer know that there are seams--but we cannot alas encompass all the variants if the above scenario,
hence a compromise is needed.
To this end I decided to overcoat the sails and their seaming with layers of thinned white paint.
I tried airbrush but it gave a ghostly, overly homogeneous ' dead'; feel- (alas probably more correct...)
- so I resorted to brushed washes.
Its an inexact art/ science and I feel I can hopefully improve vastly on this in every direction in the future
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after a number of layered washes the effect I sought was appearing
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The spars on the real ship,
3 x booms , 2 x gaffs and 1 x staysail boom
were made of square edged sections of varnished spruce timber,
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In model form I wanted to use metal , so as to guard against future deforming, hence I excluded plastics.
I used 'old' Model Railway photo-etched items - by our standards enormously thick
original purpose unknown, as I bought many years ago a bag of assorted PE scrap at a train model show...
but in this instance I now had strong, square edged ,repeatable dimensioned material
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Getting the desired set and twist into the sails was carried out by using a clean cylindrical tube and pressing this onto the sails on-top of a post-it note pad , repeatedly rolling back and forth until the shape started to appear.
The biggest issue had was of getting the large number of head sails to set on their stays without sag or kink.
Wire would be the obvious material, but I was worried that if kinked once it would be irrecoverable
I used the .oo3 line from' Uschi von Rosten' for the stays, set up with some degree of tension ( thankfully my masts are made of stainless steel
( masquerading as anodised aluminium)!!! and they were up to the job and showed no sign of deflection.
I have had a test-rig of this material in the various sizes outside in my garden in bright UV light and all weathers for the past 4 years-- seems unaffected ...
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so an easy life out of UV light in a sealed glass case.....
?
The brass bow sprit was also braced as per the real thing
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The sails were tacked onto the stays using thinned white glue ( Hi-Grab) an then thin CA dabbed on at intervals.
The only problem I had was getting the sails to set at the correct angle, as the stays were free to ' rotate '
and the relative torsional loads of the weight of the sails is considerable.
Fortunately I hit upon the idea of using the slack windward sheets--if made of wire--to support the sails in their 'set' position
I plan to make the( in model-form non-load-bearing) leeward sheets and much of the non structural rigging, halyards etc
with stretched sprue a per my usual methods.
So far I am quite pleased with the overall look and feel of the model underway.
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Winston Churchill carried usually 2 sometimes 3 dinghies.
The kit items at first sight I was about to dismiss as being too deep, square and clunky...
but... study of the old news reel footage showed them to be about the right shape and size--so Imai were correct.
But moulding tech back then resulted in rather fat gunwhale coamings and a boat interior that was way too shallow
curable ... with much paring, digging and micro-chiselling fro the sea-boat slung outboard in davits port-side
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The boat on deck on chocks was canvas covered.
I did not bother hollowing this one, but installed a string back ridge of wire
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and then made the canvas ,by spanning white glue across the gaps, after 2 coats the desired effect was reached
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The davits on the leeward side were distinctly tapered;
I used ( wasted?
) some 1/700 Master models tapered yardarms
to make them and cut them off just past the un-tapered midway point
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The boats are now painted, they need oars and and finishing, the canvas still needs a final pencil outline and the the edge of the coaming defining with a light drybrush
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) whilst the (rather un-super ! ) super glue/ CA was setting... 
sublim 
