Good evening chaps/chapeses
I have more photo's than usual tonight, there may be another update before the weekend if I get some painting done tomorrow but I'll show what I've done so far this week to safe myself from too much typing in one go..
Last update I showed the pillars being drilled and mentioned that I first fitted the 'H' frame girders underneath so that I could drill through them for the pillars to sit under. I have now fitted the 'I' frame cross pieces, I have tried to follow the prototype and give some feel to how things looked under the shelterdeck. The first picture for tonight shows the state of play so far, it took a bit of working out to allow clearance for the superstructures that sit between the two decks. I haven't fitted 'I' beams everywhere as they can't be seen but I have tried to cover those areas that are easily seem. As best as I can tell and going by dimensions given in the AOTS the 'H' and 'I' frames are pretty much to scale, you guys can judge for yourselves in this picture.
Now, of course the thickness of the deck is way over scale so this frame work sits lower than it should. However when I test fitted the shelterdeck to see how things were looking I was very happy with the overall impression. The 'I' beam that go between the outer 'H' beam and the outer edge of the deck have been tapered so that they blend in to the decks edge. next picture shows how it's taking shape...
Next job was to do the various parts that needed to be fitted before I can paint the shelterdeck, now I probably do things different to most in so far as I like to use natural edges for when there's a colour change. What I mean by that is that I try to avoid needing to mask areas where there's a colour change if there are separate pieces that can do the job much better for me. For example the wooden deck and the PE metal deck sections for the shelterdeck, by leaving these off, spraying them before fitting I can achieve the best/neatest paintwork where deck meets splintershield etc. This has one drawback and that's the parts that sit on top of the metal decks, again these are mainly splintershields so for this reason you won't see the shields fitted before the main painting of the shelterdeck, this includes the rear wall with it's incorporated shield around the rear 4" gun as this sits partly over the wooden deck. Such parts as these will be painted independently and fitted later, hope that makes sense. First thing to determine is the exact position of said decks, most line up with various splintershields and thus are easy to position but the wooden deck needs locating properly first. On looking at the deck and the area around it's outer edge I chose to use the metal deck to locate the forward edge and the two brass strips that are glued on at the rear for the 4" shield to both locate and centralise the deck. Picture shows the deck taped down, with it in this position I glued the two brass strips one either side at the rear.
The next picture shows the two brass strips that I'll use to line up the wooden deck, it also shows a start being made on the rear walls, as you can see I have pre-drilled the portholes and in the process of using one of them to help line up the first brass section. For the vent I cut out a larger hole so that you the thin vent section is seen, in hindsight I could have done this for all of the windows to reduce the thickness, oh well..too late now. BTW the Admiral's windows are best left alone as there's a large step between inner and outer walls, the plastic is pretty close to what's required so best leave as is. I was going to glue these with superglue but soon thought better and did all the brass sections with epoxy due to the amount of handling that is still required.
I include this picture just to show the first two parts fitted..
The other side with windows,doors and davit supports fitted, I will leave the accommodation ladders until much later.
Here we have the boom clasps and swivel bracket fitted, I'm not too happy with Pronto's method of fitting these, they supply a template which is good for positioning the slip eye but not so good for the clasps which I'm assuming are supposed to be fitted using the template for positioning, not very practical. A bigger problem is the fact that the clasps are fitted edge on? not a good method for longevity at such an early stage. They could of course be left till later but I'm not a big fan of gluing parts to a painted surface, I just hope that I can get this sub assembly painted and fitted when it will have relative safety without loosing any of the small parts beforehand....
One more picture, I show the under section again as I have added some pipework following photo's, I could add more but where do you stop? there's more pipes/wiring, hammock hangers etc, etc that could be fitted if one so wished...
Tomorrow I hope to get the shelterdeck sprayed and left for a day before gluing in place with epoxy, before I do that I still have the vents to add, which first need modifying, or at least the rear does before fitting.
Thank's for looking in guy's...more soon..
Pete