1/700 Trumpeter SS John W. Brown Liberty Ship
Comments
30 4 January, 15:57
coporadoTake off for my first maritime project and in scale 1/700 😠 Good start so far with the kit and the PE- parts. Scale is challenging, my limit were the PE- Oerlikon guns - had to return to the kit parts, but could use the PE armor plates though 🙂
4 January, 16:01
TreehuggerBtw, it might help having a secondary glue to help the photo etch stick to the small parts, so that you have good time to wiggle the parts into position, so the parts doesn't glue hard too quickly using cyanoacrylate. I like adding cyanoacrylate after I know a PE part was added perfectly into position, and so I tend to add cyanoacrylate glue around the edges and usualy the cyanoacrylate glue then get sucked in under the PE.
4 January, 16:09
Tom B.Looking nice so far! Those cargo-vessels were really important and it is always nice to see one built 👍
4 January, 21:02
coporadoThanks mates!
@Treehugger So you are using some plastic glue first to position the parts and then add super glue at the final stage to fix it?
5 January, 17:18
Tom B.I think he probably thinks about PVA glue... at least I sometimes used it for the purpose of initial fixing of PE parts. With plastic cement you always melt some of your existing plastic a bit and it does not really help when sticking metal to metal.
5 January, 18:07
coporadoThanks Jörg and thanks Tom for explanation.
I gave that I try - using PVA glue first and at the final stage super glue. It gives a relaxing time to position the parts exactly. It´s not applicable to parts having only small areas of contact on the plastic, such as the rigging parts and parts which are not attached on a flat surface. Another downside is the residue of the PVA glue when it´s dry, even when applied thinned down with water.
Nevertheless the, from my point of view, most challenging parts are done - the mast sections. Around 10-20 PE parts per section have been attached. Challenging in that scale, but fun with glasses and magnifier - and of course a nicely detailed vessel as a result 🙂
7 January, 16:49
Tom B.Those tiny PE parts are indeed hard to properly fix in place... the PVA-solution does with all it´s drawbacks seem to be one of the better "Low-Tech" solutions... maybe working with special slwo-seting CA and accelerator spray might be an option. However, I have not yet really worked with CA-Accelerator, so I cannot say for sure.
7 January, 17:11
coporadoI'm using cheapest ca glue from the 1$ market and fortunately it gives enough time to correct positioning if neccessary. Dry fitting the desired position and the way of holding the part with the tweezer before final glueing, helps a lot . Works fine for me up to now 🙂
11 January, 08:17
TreehuggerBtw, there is a product for cleaning up hard superglue.
One thing is debonder liquid, but that liquid soften the plastic surface so no good for delicate surfaces, then better to use minimal amount of cyanoacrylate and instead rip/push the PE part off with a tweezer or a sharp blade.
Another thing is a glass fiber pen, but I had no luck using it. Again, the abrasive glass fiber seem to dig into the plastic if one isn't careful. When using excessive super glue around parts, probably best to just QUICKLY wipe excess glue off with a finger tip, or quickly rub it off with a piece of paper towel, but not too slowly else the towel will stick to the area you tried to wipe off, but a quick wipe should be easy, bringing with it most if not all of of the excessive cyanoacrylate. A drop of cyanoacrylate won't dry for quite a while, it is when it creeps into corners and in between surfaces when the adhesiveness of the super glue seem to kick in. And so one can sometime poke a tiny pool of superglue with a pointy object and redistribute the glue around a little if you don't mind the gue pooling up a little bit around say the base of a rod glued onto a surface.
12 January, 08:42
coporadoThanks Treehugger - CA is tricky indeed and more when trying to remove a glued part and get rid of the residue on the plastic. For those issues I use a sharp blade or tweezer as you mentioned. Best experiences getting off the residue is using a smooth sanding stick (800 graining or more). This won´t harm the plastic too much, but removes the glue to a more or less clean surface.
Meanwhile the superstructures are almost completed. Life boats and some antennas are to come. Unfortunately I need to reposition some of the derricks. I messed it up concentrating along the PE- part manual instead of the kits manual. The PE- parts are applicable for Trumpeter´s John W. Brown and Jeremiah O´Brien and the manual shows the O´Brien, which I noticed too late. There are some minor differences between the vessels which resulted the wrong position of the derricks. Fortunately nothing too bad which can be corrected 🙂
15 January, 07:37
coporadoIt was time to put some paint on the vessel. First the antifouling- color using redbrown surface primer and flat red. The grey part of the hull and the deck were painted in the next step. Finally the superstructrures were glued and painted. Next is correction on the red parts, detail painting and weathering.
2 February, 11:08
coporadoDetails painted and weathering was done using oils - port side completed 🙂
17 February, 16:56
coporadoHaving procastinated for weeks, I finally picked the desired method for the water. First step modeling the surface with Magic Sculpt. This still looks quite rough, next step is applying tissue in order to smooth the texture. Really hope this will smooth anything. Still not sure whether I should dig the ship a little deeper into the base.
4 April, 15:35
Michael KohlReally like ship and dio. Will the ship be a bit derper in the end? It looks a bit high, but this is only a feeling - not knowing.
4 April, 19:35
coporadoThanks, Michael! The depth of the ship was my struggle indeed. I decided to put the vessel a bit deeper into the sea. Much more convinced now 🙂 The tissue and 3 layers of diluted acrylic medium was applied to smoothen the surface. As the medium dries transparent the final result can be seen once the first layers of color have been sprayed. Now letting dry everything and excited about the outcome after colorization .)
6 April, 16:21
coporadoBase colorized and spray added using cotton. Quite happy with the colors, not happy with the overall moulding of the water surface. Bow waves are too steep and the waves generated by the wind are not fitting smoothly into the overall surface. Next is building an appropriate frame to mimic the view from a uboat persiscope.
24 April, 14:56
