1/100 HMS Zinnia ( 1915 )

ARH · Post by **ARH** » Sun Dec 10, 2006 5:38 pm

A very good update, some unusual ideas, keep on posting, ARH

Reid · Post by **Reid** » Sun Dec 10, 2006 9:31 pm

unusual but very creative, cheap and SMART!!!

Reid

Laurent · Post by **Laurent** » Thu Dec 14, 2006 3:59 pm

Hi Guys ,

not been able to answer earlier , sorry ...

Thanks for your words

I'm now drawing on the first layer the whole plating , where the IN & the OUT strakes go ( not forgetting some IN & OUT strakes there in between ) , where the laps go , where the water inlets & outlets , portholes , etc ...

on this hull , I will not bore holes where the portholes come , there will be some transparent plastic to materialise the portholes windows , with a black paper behind ...

later on , the superstructures will be hollow and then , the portholes & other windows will have to be made , as in the reality...

No pictures today , I should have drawn the whole plating by saturday & I should only then take pics...

See you !

Laurent

Neptune · Post by **Neptune** » Fri Dec 15, 2006 2:33 am

Good news Laurent, we're looking forward to that!
THat's a very sharp bow you have created there. This will be a very nice ship, do you have an idea when she'll be finished?

Regards
Roel

Laurent · Post by **Laurent** » Fri Dec 15, 2006 4:30 am

Hi Roel ,

My latest project took almost one year to be ready , so , I guess this one should take one year either , let's say november 2007 , ready to be shown at our club yearly "best of show models" ...

About the sharp bow , I've seen too many models with a very heavy unrealistic bow , I know how & why such errors happen & how they easily can be avoided ...

I maybe could write an article on this somewhere ...

I'm a kind of a annoying & captious nerd , I always consider that a hull is the most important part of a model .

When I see , study & eventually evaluate models , if the hull is distorded or not so well shaped , I don't look further on the model

I shouldn't do that , but heh ! I'm looking for perfection , even if I'm certainly not the most perfect & better model builder myself around here ...

Cheers ,

Laurent

Neptune · Post by **Neptune** » Fri Dec 15, 2006 10:35 am

Hey, you can't carry the same flag as I do at the moment. You know our country has seperated now

Well I think you're not the only one looking for perfection. My LNG is looking pretty ok at the moment, but the hull is a disaster and so I'm not considering her a succes up till now.

The hull is the largest part of a ship and therefore it is indeed very important! On a warship the superstructure is pretty large, so at least you could look further than that

Maybe I can make it to your show!

Post by **Dave Wooley** » Fri Dec 15, 2006 12:34 pm

Hi Laurent Good project l I do like the bow and the way you have constructed the hawse pipe plus your ideas for the deck. I tend to shy away from making my own props and go for one from a manufactures that specialize in props like the the Prop Shop or George Sitek it's worth it in the end.
Dave Wooley

Laurent · Post by **Laurent** » Sat Dec 16, 2006 4:03 pm

Hi Dave ,

I never made one propeller myself , but I want to give it a try ...

My problem is that props being 30 mm in diameter , 4 bladed with a M2 thread do not exist .

I know I can ask to PropShop to make one for me , but I'm a little afraid of the costs involved ...

about the hawse pipes , this is one of the reasons I always have loved plumb bows , the hawse pipes always look terrific ...

Roel ,

no , we are not separated yet , it was just a bad TV joke ...

Regards ,

Laurent

Laurent · Post by **Laurent** » Sun Dec 17, 2006 6:12 pm

Hi all ,

about the plating ...

as I already have told , the plating on my models is made out of paper or cardboard , depending on the desired thickness .

Zinnia had a "baby skin" , most of the plates being .25 inch thick ( about 6 mm ) , each member being 21 inches apart .

I had the opportunity , when I got the NMM plans offer , to buy Zinnia's shell plan .

hereby some scans of it :

an interesting view of the scantling used on the deck sides

not really useful for 1/100 or 1/96 guys like me , but there are also on the shell plan datas about the riveting :

All those datas ( strakes & butt laps ) have to be drawn on the hull .

There are two ways : beginning from the keel line up to the deck or from the deck line down to the keel

In my case , I was more sure of my keel line , my decks being not glued on the hull for the moment .

hereby some pictures of the strakes being drawn on the hull ( there were some corrections made afterward , the two sides having to be at the same level )

strakes B , C , D are to be seen here ( strake A being the keel plates ) , with the IN & OUT plating system :

Plating around the bow : IN or OUT , with some parts being IN & OUT

the stern part :

the next step will be putting & glueing the IN plating first ( strakes B , D & F ) , I'm beginning with it tomorrow

As we will see later , a shell plan , on the contrary of what most modellers do think , doesn't show the actual shape of the plating ...

this peculiar shell plan is just a kind of a diagrammatical plan of how the plates are riveted together and where the strakes are intended to be on the hull

Once the strakes are drawn on the hull , you'll see that most of the plates actually used on a steel hulled vessel were plain rectangular , there were no "banana" shapes involved...

Yes-yes , you may believe me

regards ,

Laurent

ARH · Post by **ARH** » Sun Dec 17, 2006 6:26 pm

Got my eye on you.

Post by **JIM BAUMANN** » Sun Dec 17, 2006 6:29 pm

..... there is a lot of work in there!!

Very good stuff--I shall be watching!

JIM B

Edward Pinniger · Post by **Edward Pinniger** » Tue Dec 19, 2006 8:32 am

The hull looks great so far (wish I had the patience to put so much work into this area of the ship on my own builds). Definitely looking forward to seeing the rest of the ship when you get to this stage!

Laurent · Post by **Laurent** » Fri Dec 29, 2006 5:21 pm

Hi all ,

I didn't begin already with the actual plating , I just drew all the plates on the hull , hereby some pictures :

Before the plating can be put on the hull , the main deck had to be glued on the hull , what happened today ...

to change a little my mind , I also began with the "wooden" deck ( cardboard , actually )

This is my usual manner to represent wooden decks at 1/100 scale , easy to do and it looks realistic ...

I usually coat the "wooden" decks with two layers of matt varnish , from a spray can , available in the automotive industry , and it becomes waterproof ...

any comment welcome ...???

Cheers ,

Laurent

ARH · Post by **ARH** » Fri Dec 29, 2006 5:32 pm

Hi Laurent, You seem to have some very long planks on your deck, they would be about 18 - 20 ft long and then a join, nice build so far,

Laurent · Post by **Laurent** » Sat Dec 30, 2006 4:58 am

Hi Admiral ,

you're right about the planks length ...

For the deck planking , I always represent it following what I read in the John Bowen's book "Scale Model warships" ( my Bible for years ) : I put a end joint at each 5th plank , like this ( the same picture appeared on page 2 of this very topic ):

this is how I understood it , in the book above mentioned , they tell "the butts are shifted so that the ends of the planks only occur in the same line every fourth plank "

Am I right here ?

Cheers

Laurent

ARH · Post by **ARH** » Sat Dec 30, 2006 5:08 am

Yes, that looks great, keep up the good work, looking forward to more.

Laurent · Post by **Laurent** » Fri Jan 26, 2007 3:48 pm

Hi Guys ,

I didn't have much time to model those past three weeks ...

I just finished my "planking" for the main deck & the f'c's'le deck , that's all ...

the main superstructure coaming is there also .

I'm now in the process to build the CO's cabin , using therefore cardboard from a italian "lasagna" box

Stay tuned , I should post some further pics tomorrow ...

Regards ,

Laurent

Jefgte · Post by **Jefgte** » Fri Jan 26, 2007 5:47 pm

What nice drawing Laurent, without any mistake...

A perfect work.

Jef

middle_watch · Post by **middle_watch** » Sat Jan 27, 2007 12:36 am

Unusual subject, and a fascinating use of carboard!

Re Q ships, they were only succesful in the early years of the war when the U-Boats followed the rule of surfacing and giving the crew time to abandon ship before sinking with guns. Some accounts claim that Q ships were so succesful they forced the U-Boats to assume the tactic of torpedo attacks without warning, frankly I doubt it, Q ships operated in such a way as to tempt a U-boat to save torpedoes and engage with guns instead. Either way in 1917 the balance swung and more Q ships were being lost to U-Boats than vice versa and their use was largely discontinued until the Americans revived them in WW2.

Zinnia was Azalea class and only one of those was converted to a Q ship, the Begonia, which was Q-10, known as SS Dolcis and SS Jessop, she was lost in 1917 in the Atlantic, believed to have been either torpedoed or she rammed a U-Boat, maybe both. Sadly as yet I have not traced any detail on her conversion.

Anyway, following your build with interest, nice to see this obscure class coming to life again.

Laurent · Post by **Laurent** » Sat Jan 27, 2007 6:18 am

Hi Jef & Middle_Watch ,

thanks for your comments ...

about the Q-ships , I remember I once saw a modelling plan , and the hull profile showed a lot of similarity with a WW1 "Flower" class vessel , I should check my sources ...

As already said , Zinnia is my first "man-o-war" , I wanted to start with something "manageable" , both in size and in "quantity of fittings" ...

My next naval ship should be a Destroyer , maybe the HMS Swift ( 1907 ) , or maybe a "I" class destroyer ( "Icarus" or "Ilex" , both built at Clydebank in 1937 )

I didn't do a research for plans yet , "Ilex" should be easier to find than "Swift" , as she was the only one of this design ( NMM Greenwich should be the way to go ) ...

yeah , I know , my cardboard mock-ups look odd , but this is what our pioneers in modelling used 70 or more years ago , before "plasticard" even existed ...

I still continue to think that modelling is like illusion , whatever material you use , if the results obtained look realistic , there you are , you reached your goal ...

cardboard is cheap , it can be made waterproof with modern resins , and , more important , it is lightweight , it means more ballasting in your hull , to get a stable model on the water ...

Regards ,

Laurent