Hi Bill,
Thanks for the kind comments. They are much appreciated.
Fact is I have new glasses since the beginnig of december, and they have improved my close vision a lot. As far as surgery is concerned, I have had my share of it, being one of the "rare" failures of laser operations some eight years ago, fortunately just for the right eye... Not ready to give it another try...
I have carried on with the Shell Welder, finishing detailing the main deck with the anchor support on the Foc'sle bulkhead, and adding a "box" on the Foc'sle deck, made out of a 6 mm square Evergrenn strip. I also added a box on the Foc'sle bulkhead, which looks like an old style mailbox...
Nest step were the stairs from the tank top to the main deck. I had a go at the Atlantic PE ones, but I am definitely not good at manimulating CA glue...I decided to go the plastic route, with 1 mm wide EG strips for the sides, and 1,5 mm wide strip for the steps. My first attempt (see below) was not perfectly square, and I did not like he slightly skewed look thay had when fitted to the tank sides. So I made new ones "in situ", which I feel much happier about.
The rear bulkhead needed also to be redone, as the old one was too narrow, now that I had thinned down the side bulwarks. It is actually a perfect 60� arc of a circle, with a radius equal to the breadth of the ship, i.e. 68 mm in this scale. I build a bracing structure against which I glued the bulkhead made of thin (0,5 mm) plastic card. The pipes on each side of the bulkhead have been shaped out of 0,75 mm rod, bent to shape with round ended pliers, and the retaining straps made out of 0,3 mm tin wire. The box in front of the bulhead was assembled with EG plastic card. There are 3 skilights on top, made with squares of thin (0,25 mm) 5 mm strip, and a punched porthole.
I strated shaping the rear deck, but soon stumbled on the big irregularity of the inside of the hull moulding, with plastic thicknesses that vary between 1 and 2,5 mm. Achieving the right shape was going to be a nightmare...
So I decided to go my usual route, i.e. start from scratch...With a razor saw, I sawed the hull abve the rubbing strake. I will then glue above the rubbing strake a new deck of the right shape...
And I have done some painting !
As Father Christmas was king enough to bring a new silent compressor and a Paasche Talon with it
, I could inaugurate them. I have used Tamiya acrylics mostly. The tank deck has been sprayed with XF-14 JA grey. After studying the photos, I decied to paint the main pipes Tamiya Red-Brown. I am not 100% sure about the color, but it seemd to fir the blurred colors I could discern on the color photos I found on the net. And It also fit my idea of a "no-nonsense" color for this kind of hard-beaten workhorse, and with a bit of artistic licence
The smallerpipes were painted dark grey, just for the contrast, although they were likely to be the same colour as the deck on the original ship.
I painted the sides of the tank with Gunze "tire black" , which I felt was better for a wetaher-beaten base colour, ditto for the visit hatches of the tank. On a photo of a more recent Shell coastal tanker, I saw that the main valves wre different colours, namely red, blue, and yellow, probably to reflect the different contents of the tanks. I went for ths solution again, trying to find reassurance in my interpretation of the color photos of the Shell Welder, where the hand valves looked "colored".
The mast was sprayed Tamiya yellow.
The hull was resprayed with a mix of Tamiye red and red-brown (roughly two-to-one ratio) to achieve the desired "Hull red". As my Gunze "tire black" tin was a bit old, I bought a Tamiya "Nato Black" tin to spray the black hull It is similar to the the "tire black" with a dirty black look to it. The white parts have suffered somewhat of paint spill under the masking tape (not properly rubbed down
, silly me), but as I will add some new plastici above the rear rubbing strake, and will need to harmonise colours again, this is not a big issue...
I have used faster drying and less fragile flat colours, but will spray the whole ship with 'Future" (in France it is called "Klir") before I start weathering the ship a bit...But this is still a long time from now...
That's all for the past weeks. I hope you enjoy.
Hubert.
Hi-res larger size pictures here :
