The Ship Model Forum

I'm new here (at least as a member who posts) so let me start by introducing myself.

My name is John, and I am a Software Executive by trade. I have been building model battleships since I was a teenager in the '70s, starting with a 1/720 Massachusetts, then moving on to the Revell Missouri and Arizona, the Lindberg Bismarck and Hood (I was a kid, and they were big and cheap) and eventually culminating in my teen years with the Tamiya 1/350 Yamato. Then came lots of work, wife and kids, and I didn't build another battleship until the 90s - when I built the Tamiya Bismarck and New Jersey in 1/350. These two marked my introduction to working with Etched Brass. Another super-busy career period, a lot of models purchased, stashed and not started.

I bought the Academy Graf Spee deluxe edition a few months ago. It came with a wood deck, and metal barrels and I thought, "Wow. How the hobby has changed from the days of the painted tan on my Yamato, and sewing thread rigging." One of the kits in my "purchase and stash pile" was the Eastern Express (before it was acquired by Zvezda) Borodino in 1/350. I bought the White Ensign Brass, and the metal barrels, and searched around for a wood deck - and nobody made one. In fact, I discovered that there are a LOT of kits that don't have wood decks. More on that in a minute.

I found a wood deck for the Revell Bismarck on eBay, so I purchased that - along with one for the Yamato - both in 1/350. And I bought the Hasagewa Nagato 1944 in 1/350, and was very impressed with the deck that came with that kit...

So I started thinking that I really wanted a wood deck for the Borodino, but I wanted it to be really good. And I wanted better deck options for the other kits that I planned to build. For example, I came to realize that if I combined my Revell Bismarck with my LionRoar Super-Detail Etched Brass, that the wood deck that was cut to fit the factory kit would have holes for all of those fittings that the LionRoar brass kit told me to scrape off and remove!

So then I thought that I needed a wood deck for the Borodino, and one to fit the Super Detail Brass for the Bismarck, and I want to build the Varyag after the Borodino, so I would have to have a matching deck for that...

Sorry. I am easily distracted. Here's where all this is going... I have a friend with a laser cutter that he uses in his buisness to make balsa aircraft kits. And my son needed a job, and he's good with computers. So I started doing some test work with different materials and designs for making wood decks, with the thought that if they turned out okay then maybe I could have a nice little business going here where I can produce them for model warship freaks like me - for the little obscure kits. And, super-detail brass compatible variants for the big kits. I had to experiment with materials, and planking patterns, and CAD software and all of that stuff. And I think I have a winner here, so now after getting all of that rolling I am going to take some time and build me a Borodino with the new wood deck technique. I'm pretty confident that it's going to turn out great, so I am even willing to post pictures as I go so you all can follow along.

This will be the base post on this thread, and I will post replies showing the work as I go. Stay tuned!

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Hi John looking foward to your progress reports!

to modelwarships.com

Certainly an excellent idea-- providing employment for family--create a small bushiness and have ..kind of- fun !


Borodino is a model that needs a careful coat of looking at before launching into...

suggest have a look here first-

viewtopic.php?f=47&t=12304 ( 35 short(!) pages of ananlysis and PHOTOS)


- the minutia is being dissected--but it is very useful in avoiding some of the pitfalls in the starting point kit


here is a presentable and handsome model of Borodino built recently by my chum Nick Johnson.

He made his own Porthole surrounds and eyebrows of brass wire--the PE items being decorative--but too clunky
gallery page link here

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



Cheers

Jim Baumann

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....I buy them at three times the speed I build 'em.... will I live long enough to empty my stash...?
http://www.modelshipgallery.com/gallery ... index.html

IPMS UK SIG (special interest group) www.finewaterline.com

MOUNTING
So let me start with some of the boring background stuff on the project for starters...

In the old days, I just use the plastic stands that came with the kits. After drooling over a lot of fancy wood kits mounted on brass bells and such, I decided that from now on all my model ships would be mounted on pedestals. Being the cheapskate that I am, I don't want to spend a fortune on nautical warship model brass bells, so I am just going to use standard drawer pulls that I got at my local hardware store (I went with a Nickel finish because I like that better than brass.) You only need to make a few very simple modifications to make this work...

First, use a dremel (or a hacksaw) to cut off a bunch of the machine screw that comes with the drawer pull. After all, you're not going to be mounting through a 1/2 inch piece of wood - so make sure you leave enough to screw into the pull, but not so much that it can't totally disappear inside the pull when the pull is right up against the hull.

Second, get a box of large "fender washers" from the hardware store when you pick up the drawer pulls - they're really cheap, and the provide a larger mounting area than just the screw head.

Third, superglue the screw head to the washer.



Fourth, I use a great product called "Kneadatite" that you can find on the web or from select hobby stores. Sometimes it's called "Green Stuff." It is a two-part expoxy putty that comes in a tape form with blue and yellow halves. Mix it up with your fingers and it turns green. It is a super-sticky putty that bonds to just about anything. It's great for filling in gaps on styrene and resin models, too. Amazing stuff. So I put a bunch of it around the screw heads under the washer, and I have a large, sticky, putty mass to attach the screws to the inside of the hull - no resin pouring, nothing like that. Five minutes and you are done with steps 1-4, tops.





Fifth, insert the screw heads through the pre-drilled holes in the hull, and press down firmly. The kneadatite will lock the fender washers and bolts to the hull, conforming to the interior hull shape as you go.

Sixth, screw on the drawer pulls to test fit, make any adjustments before the kneadatite turns to concrete, and you are good to go!

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METAL GUN BARRELS

This is my first experience working with metal gun barrels, and… I LIKE ‘EM! I can’t see going back now…

Installation was straight forward… Cut off the old barrel, then drill a 1/64 hole to hold the pin on the replacement barrel. The biggest concern here was drilling the hole straight, and to make sure that the bit didn’t drift when starting the hole.

Even as a first timer I had great success. No problems at all, really, and a few misaligned holes could be easily corrected either by filling with CA and re-drilling, or simply by bending the barrel a little bit after assembly.

One trick I discovered for the Borodino kit… I reinforced the outside of the barrel swivel plate with a plastic rod. The assembly of the plate to the turret floor is not very strong; by putting in the reinforcing rod and applying a liberal amount of CA glue I am now confident that those suckers aren’t going anywhere – and I have extremely strongly mounted main battery guns that I can elevate to suit my fancy.

The secondary battery guns just mount to the roof of the turret, but once again the metal barrels are so much better than the plastic blobs…

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FIRST PLASTIC DECK TO HULL ASSEMBLY

This is actually a LOT easier now knowing that I have a wood deck coming in the next step. All that you need to do is just mount the deck to the hull, and fill in any gaps. I plan on adding etched brass railings, so I know that where this joins with the deck I can cover up a lot of errors, too.



Knowing that I am going to be covering this with wood, I don’t have to worry at all about preserving the etched planking pattern in the plastic. I can fill and scrape away to my heart’s desire. As long as I have a good edge, I am golden.


Painting is a snap, too. All that I need to do is to paint the entire deck the color of the metal fittings that will poke through. (I think that painting the deck a uniform color will be very important, as our decks are so thin that they are relatively translucent. I fear that if the deck has an uneven paint application that high-contrast differences might show through the wood. So just to be safe, I painted the whole thing and the edges the hull color of Floquil Weathered Black (which actually looks quite a bit darker in natural light than it appears in these flash pictures.)

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THE PAYOFF!

So here is the big moment that I have been waiting for… How will this new wood deck look when placed on the hull?

First, a few disclaimers. This particular deck was a test cut pattern, it is not our production deck. I’ll be swapping that in shortly. Also, these photos show nothing glued down – I am just trying to get a feel for the colors to see how the deck will look against the color of the hull and to see how fittings and turrets and such will look when poking through the wood.

This deck is made from genuine teak – the same wood used on most warships. It has a nice, rich tone – but it is just a bit darker than most hobbyists seem to paint their decks. Nonetheless, this is real teak, so it should be an accurate color to some degree. (I am also planning to offer all of our decks in the lighter wood maple as well to allow hobbyists to go with the lighter color that they may be used to.)

The deck itself is only 1/100 of an inch thick, and can be glued right to the top of the existing plastic deck. There are openings provided for all of the fittings to be mounted. The wood is backed with thermal fleece to provide some working strength and flexibility. I plan to glue the wood to the plastic using Testor’s liquid cement, which has worked really well in our tests. Fittings glued to the top of the wood will be locked down with CA glue just to be sure they stick forever.

As for the planking, that has proved to be problematic. To represent four inch planks in 1/350 scale, they would be barely larger than 1/100 of an inch apart. A typical laser printer can print at 300dpi resolution – about the maximum that the human eye can detect. So, if I were to print this on a laser printer with one line every three pixels, and the line one pixel thick, it would look like a grey sheet of paper – a blurry mess. Not good.

So what we are doing is cheating the scale up a bit. Our gaps between the boards are indeed one pixel thick, and we are spacing them ten pixels apart – or 3/100 of an inch. This makes a pretty nice scale effect that “looks right.” It definitely looks like wood planking.
And, yes – you read that right. Our manufacturing process is to print the planking (or other features) on the raw wood so that we can get that 1/300 inch resolution. Then we carefully line up the planking patterns with a laser cutter, then cut out the deck and all of the associated openings.

Some manufactures simply burn in the planking lines to save the step of pre-printing. But this can leave a much wider and brown line to show deck features. We think our thinner and black lines look more realistic. By working with a very thin sheet of wood, we are able to feed this through a specialty laser printer to get the patterns on the wood that we want.

Take a look, and let me know what you think…




If you can please leave your honest opinions, as that would help us to come up with better products. This Borodino deck is our very first test product, and we’re anxious to hear what the modeling community thinks about it!

More photos to follow as work progresses...

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Jim -

Thanks for the welcome. While I am a new poster here, I am certainly not a new reader as I have been lurking for years and dreaming of the time when I would be able to post one of my projects. That dream is now becoming a reality! I have already read through the Borodino thread, and printed out a bunch of the pictures of various builds of the kit to use as references!

Thanks again for making me feel welcome here!

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john,

If you're into making some obscure things, or perhaps could help me out on making my own wood deck please get back to me! I want to make a wood deck for my 1/350 NJ to save the time of laying down individual planks. I'm not sure about the CAD work necessary for this. I think there could be a big market for wood decks for USN BB's. All the Trumpeter / Tamiya kits have annoying seams in the decks (lack of a one piece deck is a huge buzz kill) and just about everyone on this board has one. Some people make the complaint that USN BB's in WWII had blue or camo'd decks. Well I can argue that carriers had camo'd decks too and theres wooden decks available for them!

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Actually, those are in development right now! Here's where we are in terms of what we are working on (all kits 1/350) and their status:

Available: Zvezda Borodino Class Battleship (Borodino, Oriol, Knyaz Suvarov) and Varyag Protected Cruiser
Final Test Cuts: ICM Konig Battleship, Tamiya I-400 aircraft carrying submarine, Dragon Scharnhorst Battlecruiser
Preliminary Drafting Underway: Tamiya Missouri (1945) and New Jersey (1980s) Battleships

Next candidates (This is what we have planned, but these are definitely subject to change due to demand):

A refit of the Tamiya Missouri/New Jersey to fit the Revell 1/350 kits of those two ships
Tamiya KGV and Prince of Wales
Revell Bismarck Super-Detail Deck
Tamiya Yamato Super-Detail Deck
Trumpeter 1/200 Arizona
Trumpeter Roma (as soon as it is released)

As for the comments about wood decks, take the North Carolina, Alabama, Massachusetts which are all preserved as museum ships - they all have natural wood decks today, so modelers wanting to render those ships as they appear as they visited it would want a wood deck - right?

I also have the Trumpeter Alabama and North Carolina on the shelf, but they haven't made their way onto the deck development list yet.

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wow... outstanding work,, are you planning on doing this for MASS/Alabama..?????

I think this is a wonderful idea. The thinness of the material means you do not have to sand down the entire deck enough for the wood planks to keep from being too high on the deck fittings. By the time you have sanded off the raised lines, you have probably sanded off 1/100 of an inch. For the new Arizona from Trumpeter, this would be ideal because 1/100 of an inch is a scale 2 inches at 1/200 scale, which just happens to be how thick the deck planks were. The new Arizona should be easier to design, also. The planks used appear to be 8 inches wide. This scales to 4/100 of an inch. That would be real close to 12 pixels wide, with a 1 pixel line.

Have you tried to print at 600 dpi? This might give you more flexibility, and more realistic lines. They should still be visible. It is amazing what the eye can actually pick up. A 1 pixel line at 600 dpi would look more scale than a 300 dpi line. At 1/200 scale that would be a scale 1/3" line vs. a 2/3" line. The caulk between the boards was, I believe, only 3/16" wide. That is only .1875, or half the width of the 600 dpi line. Even if it only gives the impression of a line, that would be even better, as that is what we see in the pictures anyway, isn't it? Except for the closeups, of course. Just an idea. If you have already tried it, that's fine. I just mentioned it in case you hadn't.

To answer recent questions:

Yes, we are definitely planning on doing an Alabama (already have the Trumpeter kit to work off of!) and probably a Massachusetts adaptation after that.

Right now I am printing a one-pixel line on a our 300dpi laser printer. In case you're wondering, it's not easy to come by an 11x17 laser printer with a straigh paper path that is capable of printing on wood! And, the toner sticks to the wood pretty well, but not perfectly. So we actually get a very slight drop-off of some plank lines, making them almost imperceptible. Overall, the effect is pretty pleasing to the eye - even if it is by accident!

The cut lines at the plank ends are really, really tricky. For some reason, if you print those fully we get a much too think line. I don't know why that is, but it is. So what we do is to leave little gaps around the cuts; picture a pattern like |-| where the cuts don't actually form corners where the toner tends to accumulate. So that's a bit tricky, but I think we have some good results there. The trick is to make it "look right" with a "hint of a line" and let the human imagination do the rest.

And, for the record, we're using a fairly old printer now (it's what we could afford just to get started.) My dream is to get a nice, 11x17, straight path COLOR laser printer that we can use to print not only deck lines but camouflage patterns, national insignias (think Kriegsmarine swastikas) and other markings (such as aircraft carrier lines and numbers.) But that is all MUCH further down the road after the business starts paying its own way.

Great questions and great comments. Thanks, and keep 'em coming!

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Great work. Maybe you can be persuaded to do a proper wood deck for the 1/350 Shokaku/Zuikaku. THe KA deck planking is twice as wide as it should be.

Any plans for 1/700?

Now that you've given me this news, I don't even want to touch my New Jersey! Or at least glue anything down.

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I am a battleship guy first and foremost, but I'm sure we'll do cruisers and carriers too. I have the Trumpeter CV-2 Lexington, but that's my only carrier right now. I'm sure we'll get there, I just don't know how soon.

As for other scales, my son and I are intrigued by all of the 1/400 Heller kits; they certainly have a nice selection of European WW2 warships. We might do some dabbling in there.

When it comes to 1/700, there are two problems. First is that there are a whole lot of ships out there in 1/700, so to do a deck for each of them - even "the most popular 50%" could keep us busy for years. Don't get me wrong - busy is good! But the second problem is the price. Doing all the design work has to be spread over a certain number of sales at a certain price to be even worth the effort of doing it. We could probably do any ship in a one-off deck for say $500 or so. I don't know how many 1/700 decks we could sell for each ship. And where would we price them? Would somebody pay $30 to $50 for a wood deck for a model ship that cost less than the price of the deck? I guess people sometimes pay more for brass than kits, but adding in decks and barrels... I just don't know. That's the long answer. The short answer is, "if there is a market for it, we have no problem making 1/700 wood decks for kits." The real question is, "does a market exist?" As for plans, they are far down the road at this point; I'm not saying that we won't go there, it's just that we're not likely to go there anytime soon as we have so much that we want to do in 1/350 and 1/400 at this point.

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I posted about a wood deck on a 1/200 Arizona forum where the modeler was asking about how to best paint the deck. I don't want to take over his thread with discussions about wood decks, and not about the Arizona at all, so I will answer the questions from that thread here - so that we can keep this discussion about wood decks. And I, as the thread originator, don't mind if we talk about more than the Borodino!


Actually, Dave, it has been a bit of an experience to work with the thin stuff. It has to be that thin to go through the printer - but of course the real benefit for the hobbyist is that it can just be laid down on top of the existing plastic deck. As for the website, I have reserved the domain name ScaleDecks.com, but I don't have the website built yet - there is nothing there. That should be my Christmas project, with a formal launch at the start of 2011. In the mean time I am just selling the first production units on eBay.


Timmy - We don't want to enter a market by competing with established players, that's for sure. We try to offer is some differentiation, though, when we go head-to-head. VectorCut is a good example. I checked out their deck, and it is a thick sheet of wood that replaces the plastic deck entirely. You then have to scratch build the deck detail (hatches, metal plates, etc) onto their thick deck. Our approach is to use a super-thin sheet that glues on TOP of the existing deck, with the desired detail poking through. A very different approach. We are also looking to offer "super-detail" decks, designed to work with high-detail etched brass, that cover up all the things that you would cut off. Take molded-in stairs - you cut those off and replace those with brass staircases - right? But if you buy a factory-fit deck, then you have a block missing where the clunky staircases used to be. We will offer decks that assume all that stuff has been cut away, then you have a smooth, clean, wall-to-wall deck to work from.


John - We'll launch ScaleDecks.com in 2011. There is nothing there yet, but the domain name is reserved. We are also considering pointing the hobbyist to decks that other people make that we don't, so that if you are looking for ANY Scale Deck then we can either offer you one of ours or point you to somebody else.


We are trying to be really reasonable here. The decks for the 1/350 Borodino start at under forty dollars retail for the maple, but I am offering them at a discount below that on eBay. Larger ships, like the 1/350 Scharnhorst which features 35 separate pieces will list for $79 - and I plan to offer discounts below that price on eBay. I don't think that's too bad for a kit that lists for $170 or so. If you think the prices are too high, let me know. We're still trying to settle on our final pricing structure.

As for me, I think this way. My time is worth "X" dollars per hour. If I can get a wood deck that will save HOURS of painting different shades to simulate wood, and hours messing with masking the borders between wood and metal to get a crisp border line, then it's worth quite a few bucks in time savings alone. It doesn't take too many hours - even at minimum wage - to pay for the savings in time. And the results look better, too! (That's a bonus! )


As for right now, check out eBay - and look for our website launch in 2011. I have a big ol' Revell Bismarck sitting on the shelf and a LionRoar brass to go with it. I expect that and the Tamiya Yamato will be our first forays into the "super detail decks" - although I hear that LionRoar is coming out with a super-detail set for the Tamiya Missouri. It would probably be pretty easy to alter our existing "stock" Missouri deck to produce a high-detail variant. That one might sneak ahead of the other two...

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Not trying to rain on your parade; the technique looks like it shows promise, but when I see your tests, I still see 1/1 wood grain, and that kills it for me.

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"Let the evidence guide the research. Do not have a preconceived agenda which will only distort the result."
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I hear you. Nothing I can do about that, unfortunately.

I will say this... The lines printed on the wood do a pretty good job of fooling the eyes. You see some light planks, and some dark planks in a nice variation - and the printed lines do tend to fool the brain into thinking that these are planks. Other areas in the wood that are darker or lighter across planks tend to look like stains or worn areas. And I do think that once you look at an entire model with etched brass and all the other detail that you eyes will take it all in and the reaction of the ship overall will be "wow." If you stare just at the wood, you can fixate on the grain pattern and your brain can conclude that it's "not right."

Again, nothing I can do about that.

For me, when it comes down to a choice between real wood with imperfect grain, or painting shades of tan - this wins hands down.

Your opinion may vary, of course, as this is more of an art than a science.

Thanks for the feedback, though. My parade is a little damp, but not drenched.

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Don't get me wrong; I see most photo-etch and it looks wrong to me too. It looks BETTER than nothing, but I've spent a lot of time looking at real ships, so my expectations and what I compare to in my head is a little different than a lot of people's.

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Tracy White -Researcher@Large

"Let the evidence guide the research. Do not have a preconceived agenda which will only distort the result."
-Barbara Tuchman