PS LORNA DOONE ex HMS Atherstone -- 1/700 Paddlesteamer

[JIM BAUMANN]

I obtained some 27 ft whaler boats as a 3D print

( Starling )

-Lorna Doone at times carried six boats -- 4 with covers on 2 without

the civilian version of a whaler seems to be wider and deeper than the RN navy version
and the 3-D print shapes were to my liking and resembled the boats on the Lorna Doone very well
I made the covers using 2 different shades and types of filler
to give contrast assist the shaping of the covers on these 10.5 mm long boats ( less than 1/2 inch )

[bgire]

The portholes with the eyebrow shadows were genius--

and I shall use that feature on a future build,
probably on a grey rather than white background ship
but in the end decided to use just the black part of the porthole;

here is a magnified porthole with eyebrow in "trompe l��il"



And yes, that was a fun and challenging project!
_Bruno

[marijn van gils]

Great work Jim & Bruno!

Those port'holes' are quite genius indeed.
I often find it easier to paint some details than to construct them. But doing them as decals is and option I hadn't seen before, and you can't argue the sharpness of the results. Or the ease of application I'm sure, compared to drilling a straight row of holes or supergluing PE porthoiles...

[JIM BAUMANN]

Hello all!

what I should have mentioned before is that
before I ' launched' the model onto her paper sea on her stainless steel plate;

I first had to make and install her paddle wheels.--The Photo-etch renders these quite well

However--once assembled--they would be almost invisible on a waterline vessel...
so I cut them down brutally and aftre painting the remaining parts installed them into the paddle-box
so as to make them fit the waterline configuration.

The etched paddle-box 'fronts'-- nice as they were in 1/350 were a bit clunky in 1/700

so I elected to use the decal versions made for me by Bruno.


Many of my previously prepared structures were now fitted to the model, Bridge, skylights etc.

tediously I ended up re-making almost all of my cowl vents as on the model --they suddenly (!?!!) looked too large
I made smaller ones , and then more--ever smaller ones ...==> there are a lot of vents !
I also added the bridge supports ( fiddly) and the 4 bar rails with wooden capping ( brown paint )

Steam pipes numerous water-tanks, skylight railing surrounds, fwd deck-house-skylight,
anchor windlass and curved companionway hatch etc etc


so this is the current status quo-after much fiddly work is such .

more soon!

JB

[bgire]

WOWWW !

[MartinJQuinn]

Tasty! (pun intended)

[marijn van gils]

Fantastic!

[wefalck]

It's a pity that those etched wheels are almost invisible and they will be even more so, once the kicked-up foam behind will have been added ...

Comong on nicely the model

[SG1]

Some exquisite progress! a beauty so far

[Iceman 29]

We can already imagine ourselves with our noses to the wind, enjoying the crossing, leaning against the rail!
Continue to make us dream.

[JIM BAUMANN]

Hello all again-

-I was able to make a lot of small increments of progress in the last couple of weeks....

herewith a few images to show that I have not been idle !

for a small vessel--the sheer amount of cowl vents is quite epic!
The bridge wing supports were quite a fiddle
I was able to find a suitable cruciform brace in
my stash of old and obscure PE--which meant that the crossover was nice nice and flat

The boat covers had their tops painted--there after when paint was hard they were
inverted onto Blu-tak on an inverted paint tinlet and the boat cover side covers skirts an the tie-down triangles were painted in.
I always outline the triangles and the skirt with a sharp pencil -
- the idea is so as to imply the shadows that are cast by the canvas ,
--as ( on the real thing also....)
the canvas is not completely flush with the hull.

These boats are very small-- and the initial attempts did not look terribly encouraging
( though it worked well enough on the 1/700 Normandie boats ... )

However I found I could pare ( with a Swan Morton scalpel 11p blade)
away pencil and paint rather more accurately than I apply it !

a lot of re-re-re paring and re-re-re re-applying paint and pencil later it looked OK....

Once the boats were installed onboard Lorna Doone they do look
quite sassy!

The distinctive stove-pipe on stb was a bit challenging ;-- my attempts to scrachtbuild it proved nice enough....
if it were a larger scale..!!!

In the end I cut it out an elderly WEM 1/350 RN ariel array;
more in scale... and the 3-D thickness added with paint!

a lot of time was spent staring at old photos--trying to discern what function things may have....

I managed to identify the well disguised lights on their posts,

as well as an unknown ' thing' on the fwd face of aft funnel
these were made using thin wire passed 'thru very small discs of PE( soi that the bulb is simulated underneath! )
They will be installed to the vessel nearer completion

the split steam pipe in brass was a bit challenging ;-
for the small scale to the 1;1 scale eye looks OK

The curved railings on the paddleboxes were another challenge, (!)

These were bisected by the large(!) Navigation light positions


( which means I could hide the join-
-fortunately these have a life ring on the reverse side !! )

more about those next....



More progress soon!

JIM B

[JIM BAUMANN]

well -- still in full swing-- a wee bit more

Being a passenger excursion vessel-- she carried quite a number of life rings
ready to be thrown/deployed in case of a man overboard

I always prefer to make my own-
-PE items ( often/ usually...)

having too large a width overall or of the ring itself.

I usually use copper wire, formed into a spiral around a small drill shank,
then cut and ( hence the copper ) flattened with smooth faced jewellers( near ) parallel pliers

these had a pencil point run through the aperture from behind
so as leave a darker ring on the inside
so as to simulate the shadow on the surface they were placed on

there were 8 x aft, 4 x on the bridge wings and 2 on the paddle boxes

the rather empty aft deck had some of the mooring furniture added as well as the deck-gear boxes
which doubled as passenger seating

the large steam windlass received its chains ( unusually these were painted white ...)

===================================================================


I can no longer avoid it... ( the elephant in the room that is-- being the seating benches)

the real thing is made of wooden slats on metal legs...( so it appears..-. but see below)

an' out-lined' side view of the aft seating on Lorna Doone

the only usable photo of what they looked like.... on sister-ship 'Solent Queen'
interestingly some of these appear to be seats on top liferaft-float stacks

lightening the image and squinting-- I think this is what I see....

and a near equivalent shaped seat on the Paddle steamer Waverley

experiments in using brass and stainless steel are still ONGOING....

Obviously I cannot simulate the slats, --but I am hoping that using the PE-
-when the gaps have been filled with thinned ) white glue and painted -it may add some texture to suggest / imply the slatting

.............of course I may still have them 3-D printed ...-

...===> -If I feel the need to give up !

[Alexey Nikitin]

Hello all again-

Great job!

[EJFoeth]

Nice ringwork! Probably must easier and certainly more consistent than trying to make them via Punch & Die sets...

[SG1]

Obviously I cannot simulate the slats, --but I am hoping that using the PE-
-when the gaps have been filled with thinned ) white glue and painted -it may add some texture to suggest / imply the slatting

Jim, I know it might sound crazy, what about flattened 0.01 mm copper wire slats? fiendish, huh ?

[marijn van gils]

What a beautiful array of tiny details!
The rings look so much better than PE versions indeed.

For the benches, maybe you have some PE scraps in your stash with tightly spaced fine grooves (that can simulate the gaps between the slats), that you can cut to size and bend to the shape of the seats? Then you only need to add legs under that.

[JIM BAUMANN]

Thank you for all your thoughts & advices !

The vexed benches...
I tried variations of above suggestions and most of the results
were alas suboptimal...
in the main because of my clumsiness and lack of sharpness in both cutting
and the limitations of finesse of adhesives...( or my application thereof...! )

So I returned full circle to using PE hand-railing....
as the sizes and dimensional repeatability were inherent
BUT...

This time with a plan (!),
==> more precision, a method of repeatability , care and importantly
using stainless steel hand-railing PE ...
==> which did not distort and kink as readily as the brass versions...

The images should be self explanatory and have been annotated...

I hardly ever use my PE bending tool--
usually using in preference jeweller pliers,
or my fat headed, ground-to-dead-square-ended Tweezers
( always used for railing bending etc... )

But this time the parts were very small... so I blew the dust of the bending machine !

...and used it to get the repeatable bends desired --the contrast of the black base
helping very much with precise placement of PE rail bits

I used a No 9 blade to get under the PE and lever it up square

The bent seat pieces were placed back to back to glue
but first a bit frustration...-

==>because the backrest was inclined and slightly larger
( and ergo heavier by a 'nanogramm' or two..!) than the seat base,
they would not balance and fell over ( |) and would have been the devil to assemble...

-- until I placed them on the slightly tacky / sticky strip of a post-it note.
Ha!
Held in place I manoeuvred the second backrest in place using a pointy knife blade as a lever
( much like levering a muzzle loading gun carriage around the deck in Nelson's day-)

-except it was adhesive power of the post it note- not weight ..-
that I was fighting with my leverage-

-albeit on rather very small scale!

the result was easy( er ) positioning and gluing using thin CA droplet applied on the end of a ( discarded !) cats whisker...!)
The cat whisker being lightly springy and ergo softer than the adhesive grab of the post-it-note, meant no dislodging of positioning of small PE parts when the glue was applied!

The resulting benches had the right shape and size to my liking.
...but alas had gaps large enough for scale dogs to climb thru...

These gaps were filled from the ' upper ' top side with very thinned white glue,( thinned with ( distilled ) water) ,
applied with a very fine brush--
-into which I had mixed some brown water colour ...

This meant that when the white glue dried, I could 'see' the result;- and could refill and level up as required.

I became quite adept at making these benches so that I can afford to discard
the lesser perfect ones if needed when I apply them to the deck vessel

The benches were placed onto small coloured styrene block snippets
( representing the life rafts upon which the benches sat )

Now they just need painting in lighter ( matt!) brown shades

here is a batch ...

as light relief I carried on staring at the images to discern further stuff on deck....
I managed to -at last...(!) --identity what the shapes were and my findings are as below
( fortunately the aft gangway was slightly imperfectly stowed by the crew-at a slight angle-

which gave me the breakthrough clue...!)

and then a second gangway...

Ha!-- all I have to do now is work out....
==> how to make the portable deckchairs.....!

more soon

Jim Baumann

[Iceman 29]

Very good exercise of dexterity and view, Jim.

[MartinJQuinn]

Wow - impressive work. Not only coming up with a clever solution, but also the execution.

[Dan K]

Agreed. Pretty neat.