The Ship Model Forum

I somehow missed the update on the hull...
Great work!

About the sand 'curtain' holding the ship up: maybe you can use two steel rods in the sand to support the ship instead of the perspex? The sand should stay together with glue just fine. That way, no perspex would be visible, only sand.

Whyyyy do you all hate my perspex plate soooo much????

Point is, if the curtain doesn't run all the way down, then the steel bar(s) would be visible, more so than the plate I believe. I guess I'll need to advance on that idea, just to see where it goes.

Marijn,
I did notice that the filler you use (or proposed in this topic) is a different product from what I used. When I bought the spray putty, the shop owner also offered the filler you have shown here. Apparently the filler is thicker than the spray putty. I guess I might give it a go on a future build so see how much difference there is.

Currently I've finished both hull fender arrangements and put both parts in primer.
After that I applied a white coat for the bulwarks, and then the green coat. It's quite close to the green on some pictures, although it appears a bit too "white", where it should have more "yellow" in my opinion.
This is however caused by the Revell Yellow, which appears a bit off-yellow to me.
After a light sanding, she will receive another coat of light green, before I proceed to the anti-fouling red. Also the inside of the parts is green at the moment, I'll also apply the red there.

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The merchant shipyard

Time for anti-fouling paint.

And as promised I started on the sand-curtain. I'm not entirely convinced for the time being. I actually started in the wrong way. I started with a very heavy gel-sand mix on the upper part, making it deeper where the hopper is normally filled more (=more weight would push the sand/stones out faster in those locations).

Then I started with a light water-gel-little sand mix from the bottom upwards, in several layers, started at different levels (like airbrushing) to smoothen it out. I kept the bottom line level since I assume when the hopper opens, the beginning is at the same time... My short tests showed something like that, but went too fast to really see that.

Currently I have a rather dark demarkation between the heavy part and the lighter part, not truly smoothing out. I think I'll add a full coat of the light mixture over the heavy layer as well to smoothen things out and get a similar tan on the whole curtain. If that's not satisfactory, I'll try to peel it off and start building it up completely with light mixture layers.

That said, I do hope this picture shows why I'm trying to stick to my Vivak plate for the time being...

In the meanwhile I'm also looking for a way to finish the part in between the hull halves, where the sand transitions from the hopper to the plate.

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The merchant shipyard

Noticed I forgot to crop the bulwarks. Normally I make such things oversize in order to flatten and correct the size later on. I guess I forgot about it before as I'd normally do that before painting.
I noticed it when trying to determine the place for the reinforcement brackets.

I also tried the extra layer on the sand base. Although the gloss is similar now, there is still that dark line, so I guess I'll peel it off and try to build up the complete sand curtain in finer layers.

I concentrated now on getting all the yellow-green details finished and painted. It's the first time I actually try to airbrush small items. Finished the lifeboat davit, which stays upright along with the accomodation when the ship splits. Additionally I finished the mooring winches, hinges, capstan and "old men" (mooring rollers).
The "hinges" are still loose as I will only glue them when I have the hull halves ready.

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The merchant shipyard

From a geologist's point of view, the sand discharge looks ok. The colour wouldn't be uniform due to the various layers of sediment.

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Eberhard

Former chairman Arbeitskreis historischer Schiffbau e.V. (German Association for Shipbuilding History)

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I will test wefalcks theory on location (Koudekerke) over the weekend. Excellent build by the way.

Well, these vessels aren't exactly made to move sediment, sediment is normally dredged by Trailing Suction Hopper Dredgers, kind of like large sailing vacuum cleaners. Those vessels are made for sediment, soft material and nowadays are also capable of going into slightly harder material. However, due to their moving nature, if the material is too hard, their suction head could get stuck behind a rock, so they avoid the hard parts. That's where cutter suction dredgers come in, and those are the ones that fill these barges, most of the time with fracture rock. Considering the way it all works, very often the material inside the barges is therefore quite similar in nature. From a distance it also looks more equal than from close-by.
That said, the heavier particles would probably fall faster and also in the locations where the mountain inside the hopper is largest. I guess nobody really knows what it looks like down there once that ship splits open...

That said, I chose to peel off the first layer of my curtain and start over again (if perhaps mostly for an aesthetic reason). Following pics show the second effort, which resulted in a much thinner curtain. I might add a couple of layers more to decrease the transparency further, but I'm already happier with the second try than with the first.

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The merchant shipyard

Some people do, actually, look at the way split barges drop their loads of sand and rock.
https://repository.tudelft.nl/islandora ... J/download

Not very visual, but thanks for the document anyway, very interesting.

Final result of the sand curtain for the time being, still slightly transparent, might add a layer or 2, but also don't really want to make it too thick and chunky like before. I also toyed with the idea of adding painted cotton wool to give some turbulence, but I don't think it would look any good.

Still sort of pondering over the construction of both ends of the curtain coming out of the hopper...

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The merchant shipyard

It would be pretty time-consuming, but one could add volume in form of layers of (slightly) coloured acrylic gel.

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Eberhard

Former chairman Arbeitskreis historischer Schiffbau e.V. (German Association for Shipbuilding History)

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Well, it might actually work and not be as time consuming as you think. You can add quite a thick coat of the sand in one go. Due to high sand-acrylic ratio, it dries rather fast as well. In the peeling picture above, you can see the layer was quite thick and the top part was applied in one layer.
However I think I might try to use more of the transparent plate to cover the top, slanted sides and fore and aft part of the curtain and again put layers of sand mixture on top of these plates. Perhaps I will not do the fore and aft part and just add a few layers of heavier mixture, it might give it a more fluent texture.

Here is a small overview of where we currently are. Next up will be some smaller detailing on deck before painting it in the typical DEME moss green.

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The merchant shipyard

Oh it works! It looks incredible. I can only imagine how many people would want one for their desktop. I know I am envious!

Thanks a lot for that comment Todd, although I hadn't mentioned it yet, a desktop piece is exactly what I had in mind for this concept.

After giving it a lot of thought, I decided to add the horizontal stiffeners inside the bulwarks as well. Giving it a thought took longer than actually performing the job I guess...
Also added the bollards and some hatches on the deck as a last preparation for airbrushing the deck in Moss Green.

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The merchant shipyard

Since the deck is awaiting paint, I've decided to continue with the superstructure and bridge.

I know the railing doesn't look very nice, but it's my first PE effort in over 10 years and certainly the first one in this scale.

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The merchant shipyard

Good to see that extra detail! Well worth the extra effort I think

If what's in this video is anything to go by, the falling sand bit you've got going there looks like it should work.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i5dRoEbxVh4

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Sean Nash, ACG (aircraft camo gestapo)

On the ways:
1/200 Trumpeter HMS Nelson
1/700 Tamiya USS Yorktown CV-5

In the stash:
1/35 Italiari PT-109
1/35 Tamiya "Pibber" Patrol Boat
1/350 Trumpeter USS Yorktown CV-10

Railing looks great. If anyone says otherwise they need to look the toothpick to know the scsle.

Thanks for the comments guys, also thanks for helping me out getting that PE railing in this scale Marijn!

Due to lack of paint (no matt Moss Green) for the deck and funnels, I continued with the general set-up. The idea is to mount two plates going from the hopper to the sand curtain. Those plates will then be covered in the sand-acrylic gel mixture on the bottom, making a smooth transition between the hull and the sand curtain.
Then I will mount a plate on top, which will also have small piles of sand, depicting the escaping sand, I will also add pure acrylic gel between those mountains to depict the water entering the hopper.
I also finished the bridge and superstructure and put them in primer, awaiting the white final coat.

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The merchant shipyard

Made some small items, like the overflows for the hopper and lifebuoys (awaiting delivery of the moss green paint).
Not sure if I'm going to use this type of lifebuoys, only few are really well centered, so might need to invent a different and more consistent way of making them. In any case I do believe it needs lifebuoys (adds colour and another layer of detail to it).

This is only the beginning of the overflows, it needs some more work at the top, but first needs to be painted before I can proceed.
The Moss Green paint is exactly the colour of the real ship's deck, but Revell only has it in glossy version. I therefore mix it with transparent matt from Revell to create a sort of satin gloss/matt version of the paint. During mixing it colours greyish (since the transparent matt paint is grey in its liquid form), but when it dries out it becomes matt moss green. I think this method is more reliable than to coat the matt layer over the glossy paint.

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The merchant shipyard

Neptune, i like the way she's coming along! The sand curtain merging with the base is a very clever solution, it works! Am looking forward to see deck and funnels painted and to see the model completed. It's a very original project and your scratchbuilding technique is very effective. Really cant wait to see this finished.

SG

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http://www.3xblackcats.wordpress.com