HMS Tiger... In Progress

[Bill Livingston]

Managed to get some weathering done...



...and cut a short length of GMM railing as per Jim B advice, painted black with grey uprights, I have just put it roughly in place to see what it looks like.....



Bill

[Bill Livingston]

Managed to start on the railings... nightmare! The curves around the deck above the casemates were very difficult and I am not too happy about the lack of neatness... but I cant really see me getting them a lot better than this. At this scale I may be able to get away with it... But I hope to do a better job next time. Just over halfway through them now... and I think the rest will be a lot easier now I have got these out of the way. Found some matt varnish, so if it is still OK (could be years old so I had better test it first... dont want a 'milky' varnish all over it after getting this far!) I should be able to finish the railings and give it a coat of matt tomorrow.



Just added another photo before I get some much needed beauty sleep...



Bill

PS. Having compared the railings in the two photo's it is clear than Jim B is right... the GMM railings are far finer and would look better. Just too tricky for my first model back after such a long gap... Next time..!

[Thomas E. Johnson]

You see lack of neatness and I see shear awesomeness. Trust me, it looks great and no one looking at it will say your railings are not neat.

[Bill Livingston]

Thank you Thomas for your kind comments...

Another quick update. Railings are now finished... not my favourite part of the build I have to say... I need to get some better superglue! I ran out of the very fast set thin stuff I had and had to make do with some normal DIY type... Not as neat as I would have liked but with a bit of touch up most mistakes are hidden

Anyway... a few pictures. Varnish tomorrow if it arrives (decided not to risk the old stuff I found!).







These Combrig kits are just excellent value for money!

Bill

[Bill Livingston]

Pretty much finished now...



Waiting for my matt clear to arrive and then rigging and the base to do... So no updates for a couple of days... This has been really enjoyable for my first model after a few years break. Cant believe how bad my eyes have got though... It was a real struggle sometimes!

Bill

[Bill Livingston]

Managed to get the accommodation ladders done... Plus a few other bits and pieces and now I just need to do a little bit of touch up here and there...And my varnish arrived today!! I can now airbrush it this evening, do a little more weathering and then give it another coat and then on with the rigging...



Hehehe... light at the end of the tunnel now...

Bill

[MartinJQuinn]

Looks great, Bill!!

[Bill Livingston]

Thanks Martin... so does yours

Weathering and both coats of varnish done now... Weathering seems a little more pronounced in the photo than it does in real life... But maybe for photography I need to go a bit more gently... Rigging tomorrow... Almost there!



Bill

[Bill Livingston]

Managed to start the rigging today after fitting the hoists and a few other little bits and pieces... Got quite a way to go if I am going to do the whole thing.... but I think I will do a simplified version of the rig... and I will just be using long lines in place of the cage aerials... I have spend some time thinking about various jigs and so on I could make to produce the perfect, in scale, aerial... only to discover it was all I could do to attach a single strand of mono to a yard... and I even got that wrong a few times...!!! Maybe someone will make available some machine made aerials in 700 scale... I am sure they would sell... (Well... probably not enough to make a living from... but you know what I mean! lol).





Bill

[Bill Livingston]

My magnifier lamp just fell on my Tiger and bent the topmast, ruined all the rigging and bent a couple of the starfish 'arms' !!

I have managed to repair the starfish and touched it up, removed all the rigging and the topmast and all looks OK... But that is two days work down the drain in a few seconds...

It happened a few minutes after this picture...



Think I will leave it for the rest of the evening and start again tomorrow...

Bill

[Thomas E. Johnson]

Sorry to hear about the accident. At least you were able to repair the damaged masts and can re-rig her.

[JIM BAUMANN]

Big comiserations--that is rotten luck! --( similar stuff has 'nearly happened....)

BTW--didyou get mt PM re davits etc...?


Cage Ariels.... in 1/700...

there are two masters of this so far that I know of ....

Mike McCabe-- did it on Dreadnought

http://www.modelshipgallery.com/gallery ... index.html

and David Griffith did it on Cumberland

http://www.modelshipgallery.com/gallery ... index.html



BTW--recommend his Model ship building book---- darn useful!

JIM B

[Bill Livingston]

Thanks Thomas, not been a great day... went down the pub and had a pint of beer to drown my sorrows... Start again tomorrow...

Hi Jim, thanks... no, I didnt... Dont know why... Could you resend?

EDIT: Just looked at those two links... very impressive modelling. Maybe I should turn disaster into an opportunity and have a go at trying to replicate the cage aerials... although just doing the basic stuff was enough of a nightmare. Just imagine how I would have felt it had done them the first time though lol!!!

Thanks,

Bill

[Thomas E. Johnson]

Alcohol always works to drown ones sorrows after so much work goes to the proverbial bottom of the sea.

[MartinJQuinn]

Oh no!!! Hopefully the damage isn't too bad, and as you say, you can make some lemonade from the lemons you've been dealt. You didn't think this build was going to be easy, did you?

[Bill Livingston]

Hi Martin,

Thanks for your sympathy... bloody nightmare!

Decided to stay up until now (5.20am!) and fix the topmast back on and do the blast bags with milliput (textured with a sharpened matchstick!!). First attempt and I am reasonably pleased. Just painted them with a white undercoat... couple of bits to tidy up but I will be going to bed reasonably happy at least.

Anyway, here she is now, as finished with tonight... minus virtually all of the rigging!



Bill...

[MartinJQuinn]

Decided to stay up until now (5.20am!) and fix the topmast back on and do the blast bags with milliput

Now THAT is dedication! Nice job on the blast bags...

[Bill Livingston]

After yesterdays disaster I couldnt face re-doing all the rigging so I mounted most of the boats and did the blast bags.. I had used Milliput moulded round the barrels and then sculpted with a sharpened matchstick.... It was quite hard to get a very small bit of Milliput to stick to the paint and varnish but once on it was quite easy to get a reasonable shape. I let them dry and then gave them a white undercoat.... That was how they were on the picture from yesterday... the one above.

This morning when I looked at them they looked pretty good... although a bit too white and I wasnt quite happy with the shape although I couldnt work out why.

I looked carefully at all the photo's I had of blast bags in the Burts Battleships of World War One and realised that the part of the blast bags at the top of the barrels were much more pronounced than they should be. They basically are almost flush... bending down to a very shallow curve... The undersides however, expecially with the main guns not elevated, hung down rather a long way... Well, by accident, I had more or less got that bit right... but I took a scalpel to the top of each of the blast bags and gently shaved off Milliput until I had the right profile. I am much happier with them now. However, next time I do this I will assemble the guns and make the blast bags before I do any airbrushing. The Milliput will probably stick easier and I can then mask and airbrush the correct shape, as the tops should be flat and level with the top of the turret and then come straight down either side of the barrel and then go into a gentle curve on the underside. I tried the best I could to get that right, but it isnt perfect... I am pretty sure the next ones will be better though, as I have learned a lot from doing this.

I notice Martin is using white glue for his... I hope they look really good because it will probably be a lot easier and a lot less messy than the way I have done it... so I will nick his idea for the future! But this is a first for me... so thats my excuse!

Anyway, here is a picture... 700 scale, so they are damn small... but you can see the shape I was aiming at on B turret best... I used WEM RN White, as it is slightly off white... the matt white humbrol I used yesterday was too bright... Even without a wash to bring out the fold detail and simulate residue they look much better in this white... not so stark and seem to 'fit' with the rest of the ship... Actually, maybe someone can help me with this... In the photo I have of Tiger at the time of Dogger Bank and the blast bags on X and Y turrets look black and the bags on A and B turrets look white.... Now I know that B&W photos are next to useless when it comes to sorting out colour... but is that possible...? Blast bags of different colours? I dont see why not... they are replaced from time to time obviously... and you often see both black, white and anything in between in various photo's where it is pretty clear what colour they are... So... what do you think? Black or dark grey on X and Y and leave the white on A and B???



Martin, note the little stanchion for the RT lead (probably) that runs from the staffs (not the aerial stanchion) on to the top of 'A' turret... there is one on 'Y' as well... In a moment of madness I decided to put them on too while I was messing with the guns... No idea why... I have missed out huge details elsewhere...

Bill

[MartinJQuinn]

Martin, note the little stanchion for the RT lead (probably) that runs from the staffs (not the aerial stanchion) on to the top of 'A' turret... there is one on 'Y' as well... In a moment of madness I decided to put them on too while I was messing with the guns... No idea why... I have missed out huge details elsewhere...

Bill - I like how the blast bags came out! You make a good point about the tops being flush with the barrels - I've probably built mine up too high as well.

Damn - I'm going to have to add those stanchions to the turrets now too!

[Bill Livingston]

Well.... I thought I would try to turn disaster into an opportunity and thought long and hard about whether to try to build a cage aerial array in 700 scale.

Jim kindly sent me a couple of links with examples of how others have done it and both looked really good, but there were no real explanation on the technique used and besides... I had seen this as a bit of a challenge and over the past couple of days came up with all sorts of different jigs and methods... each one even more complicated than the last. In the end I decided to try a fairly simple method, although I was not too sure how it would turn out... but then I thought, if I try and fail, at least I have managed to disprove the theory and it may help me come up with a better idea...

Anyway... Here goes

First, I was pretty sure what I was going to use for the lines... 0.002 mono fishing line. It is reasonably strong (breaks at 10 ounces, with a little bit of stretch before it goes 'ping')... But, what to use for the rings? I spent the day wandering round various shops, particularly jewellers, looking for some small (less than 2mm O/S diameter), light rings. In the end I gave up and drove home thinking about looking for some small plastic ptfe washers from an online component company, when I had a brainwave. One of my other hobbies is carp fishing... and I am pretty serious about it, tie my own rigs and so on, when I thought about rig rings... These are used when making a mechanically complicated hair rig with a sliding hair... they may well do. So, a quick about turn and down to my local carp fishing specialist for a chat and a cup of tea and a look to see what was available. Sure enough... I found some and they looked eminently suitable for what I had in mind.



You get 25 in a packet... (more of which later!!) So, along with my 0.05mm (0.002") mono line I had what I needed.

HMS Tiger, in the beginning of 1915, had a cage aerial array which was made up of four cages, each with eight spacers, either side of the topmast, two per side, front and back... Messing around with my model, measuring bits and pieces with dividers and checking against my drawings I worked out that each cage would be about 2" long, so, with eight spacers, I could put one every 0.25" and get it more or less accurate and in scale. The spacers are 2mm diameter so at 700 scale that equates to around 1.4m across... which is obviously way too big, they were probably about half that, but if the technique worked, they would still look fine and be perfect for 350 scale!!

So, I made up a little jig with the lengths dran in, a guide to the spacig was maked out and I then hammered in two very shiny new brass nails, which proved to be a good idea (more luck than judgement) because later I found I could slide the line up and down the nails quite easily to get everything in position.

Next step was to colour the line with a black permanent market and wind it round one of the nails a couple of times and secure it with superglue to stop it moving. I then moved over to the other nail, would it round again a couple of times, pulled it as tight as I dare and then glued that in place too. That left me with two parrallel lines of 0.002" mono which would form the bottom two lines of the cage...



Then came the (very) tricky part. I picked up a 2mm rig ring and dipped it into a pool of superglue and then placed it on the two lines. This was quite difficult to do as my magnifying lamp is now broken (see earlier post) and I had to manipulate the thing so it was propped up on my desk in the right place... which meant curling my arms around it in order to place the rings properly. With a decent, unbroken, lamp, I think you would find this pretty easy. As it happens, I found that some would go on very quickly and easily and others would 'tack' to the line and then be impossible to move without risking breaking the line...



Eventually (about an hour!) I got all the rig rings in place. Not perfect, but good enough for a practice run.



Next step was to do the the top two lines... I did te same as before, although this time I left the looped line unglued but pulled as tight as I could and slid it down until it touched the top of the rings. Gluing the rings to the line now was considerably easier because they were already in place and fixed. A dab of superglue on each rings where the line touched was all that was needed...



Ok... so I now had four lines of the cage in place and everything was looking good... I was going to leave it there as the examples Jim B had copied me also only used four lines in order to get the effect of the cage, without having to do the whole thing... But, emboldened by the fact that the second pair of lines was pretty easy, and the fact that each pair where central on the rig rings with a big gap between the top and bottom pairs I decided to add the final pair (cages have six lines) on either side. So, using the same method I wound round another pair of lines on my jig and spent a while making sure they were level and central, and, again glued the rings where the lines touched... Again about 15 mins work. (Use fresh superglue though... I used what was already out and it was beginning to get tacky, so I ended up with some lumps... not noticeable at all with the naked eye, but you can see them in the final photo as a sort of roughness to the edges of the rings).



So, looking pretty good, a six line cage array more or less done.

I then tied some of the same line around each end and tightened it like a drawstring to form the ends... and then glued them once fully tightened. Bit scary this bit as they needed some force and I wasnt sure how much stess the fine line could take... but I got away with it



So, there we have it... a cage aerial, almost to scale if you can forgive the rings being too big... But it looks tiny and very, very fine in real life. Next time I will feed a line for the single attachment wire through each end before I pull the drawstring, as I had to tie another line on and spend a while making sure the knot eited the right way so it was reasonably central. But you live and learn. The rings are not perfectly upright, which has irritated me somewhat, but then it strted out as a trial and I ended up with something that is more or less useable.... but anyone with more skill and a better light and eyes could do this pretty easily I think.



Shame they are all not as neat and upright as the one on the left... The one on the right shows signs of the superglue getting tacky and not flowing properly... Laziness on my part, although in my defence this started out as a trial of the method and I wasnt sure it was going to work, or split apart when I tightened them up...

I have another three of these to do and if I can make them a bit neater than this one I will make a fifth one and use the four of them... I need 32 rings in total, 40 if I scrap this one, so I dont have enough to finish the job this evening... I may do one more now and then get some more rings tomorrow and do the other two. Its not that hard, but it IS bloody time consuming and frustrating, but the results are worth it I think. Certainly would work in 350 and be in scale... They look delicate enough to use on my Tiger at 700 scale and just about get away with it... The photo is miles bigger than the actual thing and exaggerates the faults, so I think it would probably do. (I can hear Jim sighing deeply at my cavalier attitude...lol!).

Bill

NOTE: Since posting this I have decided not to use the aerials as described. They were far too big and heavy to look right in 700 scale. The links Jim provided show two modellers who have both produced a much more effective cage aerial in 700 scale... although the method described does work and is apparantly how many modellers produce this type of aerial array in 350 scale. At 700 scale it seems that something 'that gives the impression of' is much, much, more effective than trying to model something of this fineness accurately. Still... I learnt a lot and often trying things for yourself is the only way...