The Ship Model Forum

by **Cadman** » Wed Apr 11, 2007 12:17 pm

Great work! Good to see this one of a kind ship finished so nicely. Now how about some finished photos for the gallery?

by **Andy G** » Thu Apr 05, 2007 2:45 am

Flip!

It's not a scale or a subject I'd've chosen, but I've followed this build from the start, followed all the trials and tribulations, and all I can say is "wow". That's lovely. Well done!

Andy

by **Nektarios** » Wed Apr 04, 2007 1:15 pm

Neptune just one word can describe what my eyes see. WOW.

by **Rob** » Wed Apr 04, 2007 10:38 am

Hi Roel,

Nice to see you getting to the finishing line. Super project and some great work here.

Well done mate!

Rob K

by **Neptune** » Wed Apr 04, 2007 9:38 am

Well Ron, the water wasn't finished yet! The white effect was just the gel that was still drying. Once dry it's entirely transparent.

Here she's a little further down the road. Nearly there as you can see! I'm decided to do some rigging on the ventmasts too. Just needs a little more dry brushing on the port side with white. And a new layer of paint on some parts.
One big problem I'm encountering now is DECALS.... I'd need white decals for her name and that's pretty hard to find I guess. In that scale, and that name...

Now on to the pictures! I'm affraid the rigging will break though, my last try, Admiral Graf Spee, has most of her rigging broken while I used the same method for Excel now!

Next to the Udaloy:

Lifeboats are attached as you can see, by stretched sprue:

The water seems darker than it really is, I'll try to find a better lighting to take new pictures when she's finished. It really looks a lot better than on these pics I have noticed. Not half as good as Mike's Sea Witch of course....

Yes the little spiders do their jobs well... Jim Baumann disease they call that! But now I'm certain it's nearly finished!!!!!! It SHOULD BE!

by **ARH** » Thu Mar 29, 2007 8:18 am

Roel, Now that looks very good on that water,

by **Dino Carancini** » Thu Mar 29, 2007 7:44 am

Very nice model!

Congrats!

by **Guest** » Thu Mar 29, 2007 6:55 am

Hi Roel Well your 99% there . Looking at all your build pictures it was only when I saw your phone close by the model that it struck me how small your model is. I can't see at that level of scale , particularly all the fine pipe detail . Looking good

Dave Wooley

by **Neptune** » Thu Mar 29, 2007 4:59 am

Well, STILL NOT FINISHED!!!

I decided to put her in the water before I do some final adaptations. Sticking it to the base, moving it a lot to put it in the right position etc. would be too dangerous for breaking off the real sensitive stuff. So first this one. The gel is drying now. Then I will do a thorough search for inaccuracies and add some more details. After succeeding with the fireboxes, I will also place the metering cabinets on deck. That should work too and add a little more diversion from the overal grey.
And she finally received the Owner's sign of Exmar. I actually repainted the entire funnel. First an extra layer of white because I had made an error in my first attempt for the E. Then repainted the E and repainted the blue. I also added the four funnel outlets from the boilers and auxiliaries. A detail I wouldn't have done if I wouldn't have succeeded in the other details. But now of course I'm somewhat obliged to add it.

by **spikesliew** » Fri Mar 16, 2007 9:12 am

The lifeboats look great!

by **Neptune** » Fri Mar 16, 2007 5:31 am

Here's the lifeboats, good enough for me! The ship itself is nearing completion too. Too bad I don't have decals for her... I have broke off the funnel again. I had to add the red E on it, but made a mistake. Tried to wash it off, but didn't work out well with the other colours. So I decided to give it a new white background and restart all over on it. I've also added the powder extinguishing boxes on deck and painted them and added the supports of the manifold platform, which came out rather nicely but took a long time to get it more or less straight.
I also chose to put one big crane in operation and one stored on its support.

by **ARH** » Wed Mar 14, 2007 1:53 pm

Well Roel, Thats the thing with scratch building, you never know were to stop, you can go on for ever, with kits , when the last piece has been glued and painted and put in position, its finished, we wet lads have to do ballasting tests, sea trials, transportation trials, what a life,

looking good. ARH

by **Neptune** » Wed Mar 14, 2007 1:12 pm

Hmm, kits are easy! If the parts are finished, you are finished...
With scratchbuilding, you just keep adding parts! She should have been ready for a while by now! But she isn't... I've added more and more detail, up to a level that the crew of the ship would probably have a hard time finding any errors! But at least now I'm finished (I think). As far as I can see I haven't left out too many parts.
The Anchors didn't come out too well yet, I should have painted them before I glued them to the ship. But I'll have to add some more layers of paint anyway so that's not a problem. The anchor shape is pretty good, although they are slightly too large (which is of course relative if you speak of a matter of tenth's of milimeters).

Today the deck will (normally) get its final coat. Then the white will follow for some touch-ups and then the red of the hull. Afterwards she'll go onto a board and only after I finish the silicone water, I will add the radars and tops of the vent masts.

Notice the anchor, which is good in shape, but badly painted. Also note the stairs and doors added to the bow and changed bow piping layout.

She has her own anti-ship defence with her now. A 1/700 Nanuchka!

Most of the masts are added because I wanted to have most of the glue staining before I did the final coating. Only details have to be added here, but that'll happen after the creation of the water.

Here's the manifold closer by and the supports for the crane jibs.

by **KV_Pharaoh** » Sat Mar 03, 2007 10:17 pm

Really starting to come together now, I always find once the final coat of paint goes on the hull it always looks better. Takes a seasoned eye to see through the "construction" phase I think. Keep the updates coming, shes looking great.

by **spikesliew** » Sat Mar 03, 2007 9:17 pm

It's looking better by the day, Roel!

by **ARH** » Sat Mar 03, 2007 5:37 pm

Now were cooking, its looking 100% better, looking forward to the finished job,

by **Neptune** » Sat Mar 03, 2007 5:17 pm

Well Pain is what you feel when you discover, after having thought for weeks over every step you took, that you made an error in the very beginning of it. And that's what happened with my Excel build.
I discovered, by placing the third vent mast in place, that I had actually misplaced all of the cargo gear on tank Nr.2!!!
This is the thing:

So off it goes, cutting the stuff away:

But I got it repaired quite swiftly, it' uglier than before, but it's repaired. This build has to get finished soon....
And a new coat of paint. ARH, the thing I did to the sides was sanding, in some places the Red paint remained, because those areas were in dents in the hull. By sanding it flat it got much better now.

I still have some work to do, the cranes and fixing the vent masts because the thoser are just there for showing purposes now.
Some other details too of course, I'll notice it when it comes. I still have to connect the boil off line in the funnel casing and the boil of line on the superstructure. The deck also needs a new layer of coat. And of course the windows of the superstructure...
I guess these are the last pictures I'll take before I "finish" the build.

by **ARH** » Sun Feb 25, 2007 4:38 pm

Taking shape Roel, what are you doing with the sides of the ship,

by **Neptune** » Sun Feb 25, 2007 12:40 pm

Hello Jef, much appreciated! You know how hard it is!

It's that time again, finally finished that thorne in my eye aka the Manifold. No bending nor iron wire because both didn't really work out. I just cut them all and glued. Some turns have been sanded to a more or less round appearance, but I'll just leave it like this. It's pretty fragile and I don't want to lose my patience with this.
I also did one of the masts (not fixed yet) and some platforms. I also cut the crane jibs but didn't attach them yet. There is some work left on the manifold, mainly the big platform running from one side to the other over the vapour line.

by **Jefgte** » Tue Feb 20, 2007 5:31 pm

That's hard to scratch at 1/700...

Congrat for the quality of your work Roel.

Jef

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1/700 LNG carrier Excel

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pain, PAin, PAIN