Hi all!
Tired of big SMS Grosser Kurfust in 1:350
which gave me much stress I decided to do something smaller in-between to test some techniques and return to the battleship a bit later. Fascinated by scratchbuilding achievements on this and other forums I wanted to try it. So I decided to build a Kaiserlische destoyer thinking it will be simple
My choice was V106 torpedo boat based on free paper model from from Digital Navy. The company offers paper model of V108 but I want my SMS torpedoboat to be in black livery. One of experts on Russian forum gave me a photo of V106 in black color so I decided I will build V106 (in doing so I will have to change the guns from 88mm to 57 mm which were used on V106 and I do not have plans for them so far.. will investigate may be V106 carried 88mm guns in times of being black ?
)
Here is the photo of V106 in black livery (much attractive than grey to my liking)
At first I thought I would not make a photo report especially as I do not have a proper camera
excluding one on mobile phone. But later after reading threads on this forum on SMS torpedo boats I thought my attempt may be interesting and I may get some new information I do not have to build this model.
This was the start:
I cut the ribs out of 1,2 mm cardboard (e-shop listed it as 1,0 mm) but when I got it and measured by my slide caliper I understood I got fooled
Being impatient I decided to use what I have and widened slots on ribs.
After installing all the ribs the hull was filled with fragments of foam board (from hi-fi packaging which I had in the closet to be able to return them to sellers in case of warranty repair
).
Afterwards the hull was filled with acrylic putty for wood from construction shop:
After filling I brushpainted the hull with acrylic paint (for walls) to protect it from solvent as I wanted to cover it by automotive filler from can (actually I had automotive primer which I wanted to use as filler because it worked this way on plastic). After 2 layers of paint I thought I will be safe...alas after I covered the hull with a good layer of primer it started to eat my polystyrene...no photo
I thought it was the end as the hull looked as food scraps...but couple of beers and good sleep returned my inspiration. So I used construction foam from can to fill the hull again and more acrylic putty after cutting off foam orienting by ribs.
Now the hull is restored and covered with same acrylic paint
(guys building R/C models from epoxy and fiber use same acrylic paint to protect their hulls but they use automotive filler instead of primer) I am going to buy automotive filler now...suspect the primer has more solvent in it so it dissolved my paint when I layed a heavy layer of primer (I forgot a brush covered by this paint in my modelling room and the next day I could not clean it in lacquer thinner...had to leave it for next day in bottle of thinner to dissolve the paint). Anyway I will try on a piece of polystyrene.
I decided to make some changes in Digital Navy proposed way of building this model. First - I do not like using paper for small details and superstructure. So I decided to use metal. In order to do so I have to change the way of building this model.
For example Digital Navy proposed way of building superstructure:
I want the walls being covered by metal sheet so I created superstructure by cutting same segments from cardboard and gluing them one on another to have necessary thickness. After filling and sanding (Revell's putty) it looks like this on the photo ready to be laminated by sheet metal:
I glued paper on sheet of metal (aluminium) with resin glue to cut it out later. Resin glue is a marvel for such purposes (already tried)- after I remove a paper from metal there is no glue residue on metal. After cutting I will take the paper out so I will have ony metal part which I will glue to superstructure made from cardboard.
Guess where I got this sheet of aluminium??
I am inclined to get this project to the end - one of the reason to start it was to try rigging from fishing line to use the experience on my Grosser Kurfurst which I am very afraid to spoil now...only rigging and adding railings plus installing already finished boats remained.
Plan to continue them both by V106 first
Yevgeniy