Ship Diorama Build Blog : HMS Rodney : Pt15

So, I'm literally scared of rigging... It scares me.  I therefore try to keep my technique simple, a single pair of sharp scissors, a single metal tweezer, my hands and superglue.

I then let out a pool of superglue and let it cure a little whilst I unfurl a length of rigging elastic, I'm using mig's here.

Then I use a cocktail stick to put a dot of partially cured glue at the start and end points... The start I then let the rigging rest in the dot of glue and hold with my left hand and then my dominant right hand can move the rigging into place and let it sit at the right tension (or slack) in the end dot of glue.

If I use fresh glue it simply takes too long to cure, partially cured already going and it's just right, but you can end up with thick layer upon layer of it, specially when doing multiple runs - we will look at the stern of my ship in part 16 maybe....

However, for now here are some pictures of the rigging to the signal deck and bridge wing struts.

Ship Diorama Build Blog : HMS Rodney : Pt14

The penultimate post!  Yes we're nearly there with the actual paint and build, we have two pieces to give us the planform of the ship the small pieces are the anchors...

The larger piece is the main mast... which was a bit of a pest.

To get it straight under it's own weight with a single point of glue.

I went with a dot of superglue, which I had led oxidize and cure a touch.

This let it at least sit whilst I then held it with a single finger, whilst it solidified a little more.  And then finally I put a layer of extra fresh superglue with a cocktail stick on the crows nest to just hold it level.

The final touches were then to a little deck furniture.

Next, and this truly scares me, is the final pieces of rigging...

We will get to that in due time.

Ship Diorama Build Blog : HMS Rodney : Pt13

Well, it's been eleven months since I started her, and now it's been nearly eight since I last touched her, but finally, after a tumultuous period I'm back at the model making bench... Working on finishing the Rodney, the first task was to remove the dust which had gathered.  Then to start to fit the out rigger boats.

I took the ship off the weighted base, and the turrets off to dust her.

The waves were the worst thing to dust.

I spotted this section of the deck, behind the middle turret mount needs painting.

The first starboard side boat, the cleats added with poly cement and left to set, then the boat gun with super glue.

Close up of the port-side boats through my new magnifying boom.

And a general look at my work bench.

Highlights are the use of my new magnifying lighting boom... lovely.

Ship Diorama Build Blog : HMS Rodney : Pt12

You may recall my attempt at making flags on foil, well... i tried again...

Laying out foil and picking it to fit the aft flag pole...

I even got the St George cross really nicely done...

It just utterly disintegrated when lifting up from painting...

So I went back to masking tape, and made this HORRID thing... I need to work on this basically... It may take hours.

I then painted all the ships boats with a brown wood, highlighted parts in white and fitted out the main boat deck.

Plus this one dinghy I saw.

I'm not happy about that hull slung boat yet, I did it's internals wood brown, but then the hull white, and whilst handling it into position I put marks in it, the hooks aren't straight, they match the marks in the plastic but I don't like them being pigeon toed like that.  Nothing I can do now though.

I also set the guns to be trained out to port, this is the angle the model will be set at, so we can see the secondary battery port side and the main guns on the base for the first time.

Ship Diorama Build Blog : HMS Rodney : Pt11

 Now I'm going to detail the anchor chains, forecastle and secondary spray shields, this is just lots of lumps and bumps of plastic really, so it's a case of colour, highlight, mask, colour over and over.

Swapping between grey, white, black and skyblue so many times makes you a little bit tired.

But next I needed to add the four capsons to the anchor chain ports, these I gave three strong coats of white to whilst still on the sprue.

I also painted the boat gear and fore cranes black still on the sprue.

A dab of sperglue in each hole and then move and the capsons are in place.

The cranes however I wanted to rig... I found the mig rigging wire too thick, so I asked the wife for a stand of hair... and with patience and superglue.... I rigged each crane still on the sprue.

This took maybe half an hour to fiddle the hair into place, leave it and keep the place draftless to stop anything moving before the glue cured.

Fitting these boat cranes finished off the forecastle.

Next we're going aft.

Ship Diorama Build Blog : HMS Rodney : Pt7

Today, for it is a glorious weekend (for real, not just when I scheduled the post to be published) I had a good three hour stretch to work uninterrupted, I therefore started to spend time doing little details, a turret and getting ready to detail the superstructure... But along the way, I also had a self inflicted cock-up.

The funnel needed a white band around the top, and so I started to add some white details elsewhere.

A little of the black was added to the super structure in my last session, so I started to flesh things out with more of the white.

Then I got a little bored and decided "GUNS"

Using a little piece of blue-tac I elevated the guns, this set is going to be fairly highly raised and then a dot of glue to hold them at that angle.

While it dried I added the life boats to the roof.

This was done by placing the boat, turning the turret over whilst my finger was on the opposite side and giving it a touch of the extra thin cement.  And this technique, which I was using so well, would come back to bite me very soon....

These little runner like things need to sit on the deck in two holes, one at either end, either side of the fore and aft turret.

So just like the boat on the turret I held the skiddly little thing in place and inverted the hull, touching a dot of the cement on the two pins.

It was at this point I realised the tooling, and perhaps even this stamp, of the model was four years older than me, but with confidence in my old friend I dropped the second of these skips into place.

I put my finger on it and flipped the hull over.

Two dots of cement... AND MY FINGER IMMEDIATELY FELT WET.

This is bad, this means the cement has wicked out the holes, up and around my finger tip.

Which of course means that cement is melting both the plastic deck AND my lovely paint job on it.

PANICK!

I cleaned it up, with a little thinner, then scraped the flaky dried clods away and cursed myself, for this is the port-side, the main side which will be closest the viewer when displayed.

I went to do something to calm my nerves, the funnel...

And when everything had had twenty minutes I got the ocre back out and did a fine coat.

It looks worse in the picture, once dry it was fine and below the temporarily fitted gun turret it's hardly noticable, unless you know, or read this blog.

I added a few colour details to the deck and decided to leave things there for the day.  Unnerved.

The turret however needs a dark coat to the roof, and I'm yet to pick the shade... Solid black seems perhaps wrong.