The Ship Model Forum

She keeps getting busier!
Quite a complicated project to scratchbuild...

'Neptune'......... What an Incredible piece!!!

I Especially Enjoy the way you mounted your cable-laying ship on the surface .... giving the effect of actually laying down the cable and the equipment / RV and the strata of the seafloor!!!

I Always wanted to make a diorama of one of my FF/FFGs looking for a submarine and your diorama is giving me those ideas Again!!

I going to check out the rest of your previous posts to get some ideas!!

Good Show!!!

Mario

Thanks Moe and Marijn,

Coming towards the end of this one.

The last things remaining were the finishing of the acrylic box, mounting and connecting of the ROV and quadrant and finishing the sea surface itself. While I had the intention of a greenish brown translucent surface, this seemed very unrealistic when comparing with real pictures. All of them showing a very dark blue-black sea.

Initially I started mixing green and brown shades with the acrylic gel, something I had done in the past, however this didn't give me much confidence for this dio. At that time I did notice this wasn't going to be a good idea. So I started testing with blue.
It didn't really do what I wanted it to do. It turned darker, as I wanted, but it also dried in spots and completely lost its glossy finish. As mentioned before in this topic, it's easy to peel it off like a skin (at least when it's not connected to the model). So that's what I did. I ran more tests and finally decided to paint the top plate first and cover it in acrylic later. It was not possible to get it dark enough without losing most of the translucency... Unfortunate, but not a real issue considering the final colour.
I'm happy with the final colour as it contrasts nicely with the lighter vessel colours and is very comparable to the real sea colour.

For the surfer ladder I made a compromise. Normally the heavy protection bars are separate from the ladder itself, however I couldn't find a good way to make a decent, tiny, ladder, so I decided to use the protection bars to insert steps.

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The merchant shipyard

And a few pics of the real deal with the darker sea color. Also notice the two very different shades of green on the vessel, although she was definately not repainted between the two pics... Really hard to get that color correct.

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The merchant shipyard

Hi Neptune,

I'm glad you decided on LVS101 as the colour for the sea surface: it looks really good! If you ask me the ship's sides have only a single colour green, but the looks depend on the angle of the surface, so in a single view there are quite a few different shades. However, the deck might have a different colour indeed.

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"I've heard there's a wicked war a-blazing, and the taste of war I know so very well
Even now I see the foreign flag a-raising, their guns on fire as we sail into hell"
Roger Whittaker +9/13/2023

So, put the acrylic on, but I'm not too happy about the result, so I'll try to smoothen it out. Always remains a risk to make it worse of course.

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The merchant shipyard

For me, the first photo looks fine!

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For me too!

Well as you could have guessed, the last picture was after applying the second layer... So your comments were late (well actually my post was late ).

All in all the pointy waves of such a height would be something you could only see in cases with high wind and a suppressed swell, like behind a breakwater. At sea you don't see such unrealistic waves. The second layer has toned that effect down and the peaks of the first layer had a good holding effect for the second, much smoother layer.

I consider her finished, pictures have been submitted for the gallery as well.

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The merchant shipyard

Congratulations! An impressive scratch built and a very interesting diorama!

There is really a lot to see on a cablelayer!

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Congratulations! A very unique model indeed!

This is soooo nice. This build thread gave me some idea on what is going on with all those strange shapes I see sailing past nowadays.