The Ship Model Forum

You put the bar high again with those masts and I am working at twice the scale ...

Your masts are excellently soldered and built, Jim.
Great progress here again.

sign if life.....

alas various aspects have delayed my modelmaking--not least the seemingly months if uniterruored sunshire and -for UK--very high temetratures up to 56 degrees C--making my south facing modelroom impossible to work in .

so have been filling my time constructively....!!--
sun, clean air, ice-cream at the beach and convertibles!

a kind of summer recess--back shortly!"

The weather is a challenge everywhere, had 40 degrees over here... nothing melted though. Looking forward to your next update to keep the spirits up as each update always does.

Good day all

August 24 and the heatwave in UK has passed...( for now?)
and I have been active at model bench.

Nothing spectacular or worthy as yet!

I don't like 21 Century Rib boats--and have avoided them hitherto;

alas Sagres is a sail training ship in use in the 21 Century and she carries Ribs.
Close inspection/ deduction and guesswork suggests that the 2x ribs she carries do not differ in length
but are not always the same fit out .

Both have jockey seat bench fore and aft with grey cushion pad--
One has a centre helm console -the other one is offset.

I have also deducted that one of the outboards is probably a Tohatsu--these has very square and angular power head casings
The other on appears to be a Mariner--more curvaceous casing -
either way they are very small!
They were carved out styrene block strip. The gearbox shaft and skeg were made from thin styrene sheet
==> alas the current rotten photos don't actually show the things in detail



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The mast cross-trees
....were re-made using the platform from the kit cut down, thinned, angled
and the stainless steel wire and ... 1/700 stainless steel pulley sets--infilled with CA glue to make it strong


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The 2 x whalers- as modified as described onwards March 19 (!)

viewtopic.php?p=1098390#p1098390

have been painted and had their top gunwhale planks added--which on the real thing are vertical
stand off and are painted black---still needs the stem and stern tops added as well as the badge on fwd hull

using 0.4 mm drafting tape--I cannot mask or paint that sharply
and usefully as well as sharp colour demarcation it created the stand-off plank

The inside of these boats -- surprisingly--have the thwarts painted grey -along with foredeck and floor boards.

The Oars ( Sweeps) are quite fun-- having a black demarcation , white blades and pulling handles over wood shaft
The oars are elderly WEM PE--cut down and painted as below
lastly I have been experimenting--buying copious life-rafts
( in the same unpopular league as RIBS for me!)

The brown resin items scales out as too long and not quite right
The grey resin items match the real thing better

That's it for now, but at least I have CA glue,paint and thinners on my hands again as well as some small Scalpel cuts everywhere
( including a toe where I dropped it vertically thereupon!

More soon
JIM B

Welcome back! Great progress, always a pleasure to see and learn from you. Oars are delightful and so is the gunwhale. New raft canisters are a major asset

It's great to have you back and to see your fantastic build log continue.

Good to have you back 'in business' Jim!

I'm quite used to modelling in +30°C weather (annual summer holidays in Turkey), even though I'm not the most heat-resistent person. For me, a well placed fan is all that's needed to be able to cope. And over 35°C, I do take my shirt off too...
But that doesn't help with the stabbing and cutting risks inherent to our hobby...

Quite the challenge is an understatement! Wow.

May I ask who is your source for making custom 3D parts? Perhaps I can be a paying customer also to him. I see his work on bretagne and here as pretty amazing!

....so we are nearing the end of summer 2026.....

Modelmaking has been lost for much of the summer to unusually high temperatures in England ( even more so in Europe)
which means I did not need much persuasion to abandon the work bench and go the the Beach with the family, swim & Laze...
boating and paddle-boarding etc
and also use our classic cars in optimal weather !

alas...

the additional dampening of my enthusiasm was the inability of a ( nameless) UK photo-etch firm
to etch the custom railings in stainless steel and or Nickel silver thin enough for my liking.

( I have a perfectly good set from Toms Model-Works.! but its brass--)
( fine for USCG Eagle etc which have white painted stanchions and rails

and as the real ship-....SAGRES had silver-painted railings all round
I wanted my model railing to be in stainless steel--un-encumbered by paint;
==> thereby maintaining the thinnest line thickness on the model and by-passing painting

After two not-good enough attempts of etched frets....
I had the railings re-drawn for me by a friend in France to my satisfaction ---( thanks!)
and they were etched by a ( nameless) Eastern Europe Photo-etching firm very fine.

To achieve my satisfaction--did take quite some time (!! )

Why be soooo obsessive with thin-ness...?

The 4 x bar railing on on Sagres has longitudinal tubing x 3 plus a capping rail.
The 3 lower 'bars' I surmise to be either 3/4 in ( 19mm) or 7/8 (22mm )
say 7/8 in ( 22 mm ) divided by 350 = 0.06 mm ( 2.36 thou )

This what the real thing looks like; ( note how unobtrusive they are )


The second attempt ( UK looked like this) as below
( I tried to like it but....)
Compare this with the new railings
So I am now looking forward to applying ,cut-and-shutting the spaces for fairleads,platforms et al-
-all of which is....--honest...!--' kinda fun!

But after my summer hiatus there is still much to complete before any railing can be installed.

Aft Starboard belaying pin rail;
From the over-scale etched foot-ropes I cut the basic frame of the free-standing aft belaying pin rails
using cut in half 1/350 ladderstock for the ( brass) pins- fatteneg with copper wire
Belaying pin rails need coils of rope
( previously for this ship covered here...14 Feb 2026 )

https://www.shipmodels.info/mws_forum/v ... 5#p1095555

briefest of recaps;
I needed at least another 60 + coils ..( !!)

with the end result looking like this
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Other areas that needed rope coils were the fwd belaying pin rail
and the midships belaying pin rails
(as well as the bow )
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another area that needed my attention was the extreme bow bulwark
This had fairly large rollers and fairleads atop the coaming both sides
These have pierced bracing plates on the inboard sides.



The centre (low) bow coaming has a wide a timber flat capping rail on fwd curve
which house 5 x belaying pins
This was made of this solder( non-lead ) and flattened
These works look like this;


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whilst on the fore-deck--inescapable to ones notice.....
is the large Port side emergency admiralty type cast iron anchor sitting on its raised bed


This I made thus;
and installed it looks about right
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a new problem --is that the ships on the foredeck has 2 x -what looks like- 3inch QF saluting guns.

I had some from the kit --which I thought I could use the pedestal

Ha! ==1970's accuracy...!
more on that soon...


More progress soon

JIMB

As usual

Have you measured the dimensions of the new etched rails (just curious)? This E-European company seems to have done a pretty good job on them.

It states it is and with my crude tooling measures at 0.1mm( or less)

--I asked for over-etch-in so it might be thinner
cheers
JB

Ahoy there Jim!

Nice, very nice update

Keep us posted, please

Cheers
Rui

Loved the making of the anchor. Simply delightful. Very inspirational

Goodness me!

Your "obsessiveness" or rather uncompromising quest for the best solution is paying off and will result in another masterpiece.

Glad to observe this project from the sidelines, never will be able to come anywhere close to this level. But the main thing is that anyone lives and executes the hobby in the way that is the most fitting and pleasing for them.

Properly impressed and awed

Frank

Great work on that anchor Jim!

And clever to do the pin rails now, before the railing, and especially before the shrouds...

The small anchor looks impressive.

Okay, as does the rest.

Good day all--with autumn setting in =>heading for November ....
in I am spending more time at the bench

Recent progress;--still dealing with the minutia...
there is much on deck detail, to be made
almost all needs some or total scratch building.

Planning ahead to solve problems ahead of time- when inspiration strikes
hence -I am jumping around to different parts everywhere,
consequently there is no real order of proceedings ( as yet ! )



The Sagres is festooned with quite number of modern Liferaft canisters

These sit on racks at the edge for easy deployment via quick releasing webbing straps

The racks were cobbled together from various sections of PE misuse !
these metal parts are tacked together with matt varnish and the raft placed on- also using tacky half dry varnish=> instant grab! Now the assembly is fragile and structurally held together with willpower only!

Once the varnish is dry--the life-raft cannisters are placed loosely upside down on blu-tak,
the bottom square is filled with matt varnish to form a ' bowl ' and when dry
a droplet of CA glue is placed in to add strength
The stairways Fwd and aft -unusually - have a solid backing--

(..at a guess these vessels assume some strange and severe angles of heel
so I guess a crew-members leg through the slippery stairs could be suboptimal>? )
The most suitable proportioned stairs were from a spare REGIA MARINA old ROMA PE set ( Giampiero )

These were bent up in revere so so that the treads would be within the sides .
This allowed me to infill the treads with white glue--when dried it self-levels
and this did not increase the --depth-- of the stairway--keeping it proportion
Once installed the effect is quite pleasing


I re visited the 2 x 3" Q/F saluting gun pedestals again ....
in an attempt to get closer to scale when a crew member stood alongside

The pedestal bases needed to be still thinner--some old -quite chunky- PE circles were cut and sanded Painted as below and married up with a resin cone and spigot that was the right height in scale
The gun itself will be added at a muuuch later time because of the fragility and danger of knocking whilst rigging

At the belaying pin rails surrounding the fore and main masts,
Inboard of the previously made belaying pin rails
-there are a line of turning blocks attached to a rail
I had puzzled how to make them ( if at all )

I found by accident in my boxes of old brass Photoetch....
this very old piece of PE--no idea what is was
but inspiration struck.....

The images explain... and after wrestling with tweezers
The end result ( after a bit of tuning )
will look like this
Once the the rail is black and the 'blocks' have their centres filled with white glue and painted white
the effect should be quite good.

Aft of the funnel ( neither made or in place yet! )
There is since approx 2006 a covered wooden Nav station 'cupboard'

This is in scale quite small as the top of the cupboard is only around 5 ft - 5ft6in high ( 1m 50 cm-1m67 cm
when measured against an adjacent crew member

Laminated styrene block with brass sides, lid and lower ' dash'
..> Once painted with a decal nav chart screen added and instruments in decal strip
it started to look similar to thereal thing in 1:1 -
a subtle amount of high-lighting and sharp pencil work to make ' edges' are still to come


The big life-raft and boat supporting racks
have occupied my mind for a while-- how to make...
Having tried to make them in metal was alas a failure
so I went back to strip styrene-


But first measure the spacings.....
I find it easier to do this by eye using a suitable size 'check 'strip twixt the strips
searching through that stash I found some
Evergreen of a suitable size ( 0.75 x 0.75 mm )
WRONG !!... Too thick !
More searching and some Plastruct section appeared in the box
This was better and the styrene was able to be " set " after bending.
This was looking better
I managed to find some very thin and narrow stainless steel strips from a unusual source on a fret with all the remaining arches measured, test-fitted, trimmed and installed ( laborious and many failures !!!)
and the longitudinal stringers installed ( as above sourced metal strip) --it did start to look better

The real thing has a " Heath -Robinson " impromptu awning above the two doors at the aft end of the super-structure
this was also included and spanned with white glue which will simulate the canvas once painted Next to make to stowage boxes and the additional framing and life raft racks atop of this !



The ships wheels were from the Toms MW PE set of Gorch Fock class--and ingeniously have a fold to
increase the heft of these wheels ( 3 x main wheels and 1 x aft )

But first I had to make 2 x identical binnacles

and these were added along with helm wheels assembly

--in summary the effect was not displeasing !
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More soon JIM B

Morning, Jim!

I’m genuinely blown away every single time by your sensational gift for improvisation. You rummage through your old box of odds and ends, grab a few nondescript bits, and—presto!—you’ve created these brilliant little details that truly bring your ship models to life! If you look closely, you’re always discovering new highlights.

I never get tired of looking at them.

Very impressive!