The Ship Model Forum

Nice to see some progress on these small weapons. I tried casting a few times and was never really happy with the result, so naturally I'm looking forward to the casting progress report

Looks fantastic!

Good to see you back at the bench, Marijn-sama! Not something your average modeller would dare to do though, impressive stuff

Insane job so far!




Bob Pink.

Great work! And yes - there's a reason those 64pdrs were nicknamed the Smashers

Luvit!!!

XXXDAn

Many thanks guys!

A friend will do the casting. You really need a vacuum pump for proper resin casting, especially such small items. And some experience!

I'm really happy he is willing to cast these guns for me, as it will save me an enormous amount of time. Each barrel took me about 45 minutes to turn, and each (non-slide) carriage about 90 minutes to build (they are not complicated, but so tiny...). You can do the math for both a 104-gun and 74 gun ship if I would have to do them all by hand individually...
Now they will of course still take some time: cutting from the pouting plug, cleaning up, and drilling the muzzle end of the barrels. But it will be much less!

very good and sharp progress!

in your huge 1/300 scale the differences twixt RN and French pattern guns will be discernible to the knowledgeable eye


==> in 1/700 I think less so...

hence ,

I am considering/ planning 3-d printing for the gun carriages and barrels for the deck guns for my
1/700 Bretagne project

Back Cat manage completely step-less 3 D printing...



JB

Many thanks Jim!

3D printing the guns is an excellent idea!
In these small scales, I found the hardest part with the 'traditional' way is to get both sides of the carriages (brackets) identical. Because they are so small, the most minute difference becomes instantly visible. A challenge in 1/300, but even harder in 1/700 I'm sure. No problem at all though when CAD-designing them... I

Also for the barrels, 3D-printing would have some good advantages:
- it would be easy to have the trunnions as part of the barrel instead of the carriage.
- the muzzle could be hollow, and the barrel attached to the wafer with the pommelion. For resin casting, that would be too fragile and too thin for good flow of resin into the part, so I had to attach them to the pouring plug with the muzzle end, which means I will have to drill out each and every barrel by hand.

But completely stepless printing would be a prerequisite indeed.

Funny how we often choose our methods on the possibilities offered by our modelling friends! I chose lathe turning and resin casting because I have friends to help me with it. If I had a 3D-designing friend, maybe I would have rather thought of that too?

Wonderful model, Marijn! Just stunning work.

Big fan of 3D-printed cannons. Here are examples of what is possible in larger scales. Ben's printer is likely to achieve similar detail in 1/300.

marijn van gils wrote:In these small scales, I found the hardest part with the 'traditional' way is to get both sides of the carriages (brackets) identical. Because they are so small, the most minute difference becomes instantly visible.

Glue two strips together at one end, model the end of the other end of the strip (file, cut, drill, anything you like), then separate the strips using a chopper. Voila, identical parts. When you need to use them for casting they only need to be identical once!

Thanks guys!

Those look great Steve!
That's actually a very good idea Evert-Jan!
These things are pretty small in 1/300: the brackets (carriage sides) are only 0,3mm (8 pounder) to 0,5mm (36 pounder) thick. The detailing really depends on tenths of a millimeter, so still challenging for either method... But mine are made now and ready for casting!

Meanwhile, I also made some small stuff to dress up the decks in a combat scene:
Top: different sizes of barrels (powder and other), two sizes of (swab) buckets, and a larger tub for holding water.
Bottom: �salt box� (ready use cartridge box), 3 different wedges for the guns, match tub (for holding linstocks), and French and British pattern �cases of wood� (for transporting cartridges from the magazines safely).




Cheers,

Marijn

Great work!

HI Marijn

as usual, a precision work and especially personal work more gratifying that the systematic use of 3D
completely "fan" of your work
cheers
Nicolas

Hope they come out as nicely as castings

Many thanks guys!

I hope so too Wefalk...
My friend has plenty of resin casting experience, and a powerful vacuum pump, so I have good confidence.

My my my, I would wet my pants only thinking about doing such fine and small work . Great work. The effort sure will pay of. Looking forward to next installment.

Thanks Wouter!

Here is the next installment!

Besides the guns, I have been working to get the Redoutable started for some time already. Since there is no kit in this scale, it will be fully scratchbuilt.

Since the gun ports will be open, I need a hollow hull. I opted for vacuum forming two hull halves, in between which I can fit decks etc. For this, a mould needs to be made.

This started with plans, which I took from Boudriot�s magnificent �the 74 gun ship�.
These were scaled to 1/300, and printed multiple times. Ribs were cut out according to all the station lines.

But since the mould will be on the inside of the vacuum formed plastic, the thickness of the plastic needs to be subtracted from them. The thickest part of the hull, at the lower gun ports, is 1,5mm in 1/300, so I cut the ribs 1,5mm smaller than each station line.
But of course, the hull is not of equal thickness from top to bottom: the hull sides are thinner near the weather decks. So I make the mould for the outside of the vacform parts to be correct, and I will later sand the inside thinner towards the top.



These paper templates were transferred to plastic sheet, cut out and glued together. I kept both hull halves separate.



Next, the space in between the ribs was mostly filled with scrap plastic sheet.



And the final voids were filled with Magic Sculp epoxy putty.



This was carefully sanded, using the ribs as a guide.



Now, both hull halves were attached to a thick baseplate. This leaves some space near the bottom, in case webbing is created by the vacforming.
The space in between the hull halves is filled so the vacformed parts will smoothly continue over the top of the hull instead of sharply bending downwards. Again, first plastic sheet was used for most of the volume�


� followed by Magic Sculp and sanding.


Next, the surface was smoothed further by spraying it with Motib spray filler, sanding, spraying more filler, sanding, etc.


And finally, a coat of primer was applied to reveal any imperfections, and the mould was ready. Making this mould was not really difficult, but I have to admit it was more time-consuming than I anticipated.


Now, the same friend who will cast the guns, took the mould and vacformed the basic hull parts for me. He did a fantastic job! Perfectly formed, and no webbing at all.


Now I can start the laborious task of cutting out correctly both hull halves and opening up all the gun ports�

Cheers,

Marijn

Did you hear that? That was my yaw hitting the floor . This is a new technique to me, looking very interesting. Great part about it is that you will have a subject no one else has so far. Really looking forward to see laborous work to transform this into something which resembles a ship. Keep up the good work sailor!

I can imagine that the next steps are actually more difficult, marking out all the cutting lines. I suppose you will add the planking as strips of polystyrene sheet ? The whole process seems to be very similar to how Artitek makes their masters (they sell a nice video on this, btw).