NORMANDIE in 1/700 scale - a non-grey fleet ship !

[Dan K]

I agree, less is more.

[patrick camilleri]

I've just come across this build �.don't know how I missed it! Fantastic work your are doing on this model. I'm looking forward to seeing the final result!

[marijn van gils]

Fantastic work Jim!

Looking forward to seeing those handrails with their capping! Never seen that in 1/700...

I also read the thread on the plating/bolts on the hull. But I have nothing to add!
I would probably stay on the safe side by (hand)painting the effect on, and not try to mimmic the bolts. That gives enough flexibility to keep it in-scale and avoid the excell-sheet effect. Safe, but boring! So I wouldn't advertise this to you, but instead I wait with interest what solution you come up with!

[JIM BAUMANN]

the search fro the rivet strip material is still ongoing... ( arghh! )

I refer you to the now 2pages of thought in the main forum

LINK

viewtopic.php?f=2&t=179947

JB

[JIM BAUMANN]

meanwhile some tangible progress is being made;

whilst fiddling and waiting for experimental strip tape material material (!!) for the reinforcing riveted strip quest..( as per previous post)

I have continued on with the daunting and seemingly endless task of getting the davits cut and prepared

each davit arm cradle consist of two pieces- mirror imaged -both relief etched with pulleys--
there are a lot of them !

60 cradles required-- so that is 120 of these arms to cut and file and glue back to back
plus I am making 20 or so spare -- so as to guard against loss, damage or imperfection
I noticed that the first few I was cutting ended buckled ( luckily I have acres of spares! )

should any other future Normandie builders want to purchase a set of this PE from me ,
--> so as to guard against frustration ...

this is the cutting sequence that worked best for me and avoided buckling

once separated, the stainless is damn hard to file/sand !!

and the relief etched parts are pretty thin...(!)--
...==> whilst being hard , they are also delicate ( but much stronger than if made in brass!! )

I shaped up the ends of a pair of tweezers , so that I could hold the parts in the fashion as pictured below

==|> this allowed the davit to be able to turn around its axis ,
whilst I cut the small tabs left over with Fiskar scissors
before a final swipe or three with 1500 grit sand-paper


I made a rudimentary jig of blue-tack and copper wire to enable me to line the two parts up accurately back to back ,
and applying the first glue droplet on end of small piece of thin wire through the centre pulley hole

the piece of blue-tack wrapper serves to prevent the glue bonding the pieces to the blue tack

Only now have another 48 to go ( who is counting? !! )


more soon when sanity prevails!
#
JB

[JIM BAUMANN]

Good evening all!

still obsessing about the reinforcing strips ( rivest) on the hull sides....

I received the 0.4 mm tape and tried it on the hull.

width was ok ( ish) but like all masking tapes the edge was just too 'jaggedy for my liking

I still prefer the 0.5 mm metal foil nail art tape for its 'thinn-ness and clean edges

but just a tiny bit too wide

I managed to find on e-bay Germany ( and absolutely nowhere elses! )
the same type of metallic tape at--allegedly-- o.3 mm wide

I await its arrival eagerly and with interest...

meanwhile...
===============================================

after what seemed an eternity I have completed the arms of the davits as described above

( the davit twin legs I am still cutting ...)

this coffee jar lid pictured below contains 70 or so davits arms

each one consists of 2 pieces back to back ergo 140 or so individual parts
allowing 4 minutes for each half piece on average to ...

cut out,, snip off, file , sand, align on jig , glue, remove , tweak , second glue and re-sand the back and inside faces
on the double pieces

means I spent, it seems , an incredible ( to me ) 9.5 hours of a good life...

( that's modelmaking! )

=======================================================================================

The apertures for the stern rope rollers on the real ship had quite massive reinfrocing around them

the apertures on the casting were alas rather too high and completely flat to the hull

I made some surrounds by using suitable size evergreen strips with the edges sanded round ,
( as the apertures varied in size )
and then wrap thin wire around it in a oblong spiral

when cut they did need tweaking !

doing this 6 times in various sizes was not a speedy process...(! )

apologies fro poor quality photo ( all the others were even more out-of focus ! )

paint is drying as I write...

we shall see what it looks like in black !?

==============================================================

meanwhile I tackled another piece of visible 3-D printing steps ( arghh!)
with a pointy blade and patience...

I think I have them all now... (?!)

more soon

JIM B

[JIM BAUMANN]

aside from damaged fingers from 1/1 scale work on yachts....

==> cold wet weather with lots of wind makes canvas unruly and causes the skin on fingers to split
making holding blades and tweezers errr... challenging!

aside from this handicap---the model is proceeding well



well... the riveting strips question...

in greater detail ( this is the tail end of the debate )

viewtopic.php?f=2&t=179947&hilit=norman ... 20#p768046

it is still underway...

I long awaited the 0.3 mm wide foil tape strips, alas when they arrived I was sad to note that the vendor was unable to measure accurately (!)

and indeed they were 0.4mm wide using callipers.

I again offered up the o.3 tape ... ( as per above thread link) nut the thickness of it was too much.

Its a model-so I compromise-- the thinness of the foil tape outweighs the width argument
less is more ; I think...

so I started to apply the strips

eye-balled and measured


the vertical strakes are wider than the horizontals in the upper 2 rows only

the spacing of the verticals on the real ship tightens and asymetyrises in places (!)

I copied this slavishly as best I could. ( photos taken in poor light alas )

lets see what it looks like with paint on....

JIM B

[wefalck]

What kind of foil tape did you use and where did you get it ? I am just in the process of cutting 0.5 mm strips from self-adhesive aluminium tapes (the kind that is used in dry-wall construction) after I embossed it with rivets - it's a bit of a hit and miss action width-wise ...

[JIM BAUMANN]

these are ladies finger nail decor strips ( huge industry! )

as used in nailbars

its plentiful and cheap and much comes from hngkong and china

I bought 3 lifetimes worth (!!! ) for less than �15.00...
in various widths
( o.5mm 0.7mm 0.8mm 1mm 1.5 2mm 3mm and various finishes)

the silver takes white paint very well indeed I found.

The one I used seems to be approx 0.05 thick using callipers-- very very thin either way
for your project --in your scale-- I think the thicker variety may be ok
I ended up buying rather a lot so as to have a big choice, same of the o.5 was actually 0.4 also !!

but beware some are thicker than others.


it looks like it will be an invaluable resource for other ship modelling projects
e-bay will be your friend

hopefully this link will work for you ( for e-bay UK )

https://www.ebay.co.uk/sch/i.html?_odkw ... e&_sacat=0

and wider tapes

https://www.ebay.co.uk/sch/i.html?_odkw ... e&_sacat=0

[EJFoeth]

Ah, putting a product to an entirely different and good use! Good work in spite of that damaged finger.

[wefalck]

Thanks for the links ! I'll deeper into this.

I find these kind of nails disgusting, but indeed, this girlie industry has a lot of interesting things to offer. Sometimes, these are these same things as for modellers (think of burrs and polishing heads for hand-held drills), but a their market is so much bigger, they tend to be cheaper. I do browse such shops from time to time ...

[marijn van gils]

Great work Jim!
Very precise and neat placement, and a new product indeed!
I also wonder how it will look under a coat of paint, but it looks like that will work out great.

Nail decor stuff can be interesting indeed!
The cannon balls for my napoleonic scene will be tiny metal balls that are sold for nail decoration! Lots of them, at precise measurements, for little money.
They even come in different colours! (I'm using the dark steel coloured ones of course) :
https://www.aliexpress.com/item/4-PCS-S ... 97656.html

[harristotle]

It's always a joy to watch the master at work. I haven't been a member for very long, but I've been reading these forums for years before joining. You are an inspiration!

[Dan K]

Beautiful work as always, Jim.

Btw, that's very impressive 1:1 battle damage. Seems too painful to replicate, though.

[Harpy]

Very nice.

[JIM BAUMANN]

Thank you for your encouragement!

The rivet strakes with some paint on;

I am fairly happy- and have commenced the other side now as well
the lower two strakes of course will be in the black area--so I don't think it will look too overpowering

More soon ( it takes about 10 hours to cut and shut all the small bits....)

[chuck]

Can anyone point me to any source for modeling plans of the Normandie? Suitable for scratch building fairly large scale (1/200) model? Much appreciate it.

[Pieter]

1/200 plans can be found here.
http://www.modelbouwtekeningen.nl/nvm-1 ... gen-a.html
They will charge you about $55 + postage.

[JIM BAUMANN]

woah!!! sheesh! April o9 was my last posting on this.... how precious time flies !!

Aside from unusually fine weather here in the UK, the distractions of business becoming almost all consuming all the time
,( and after work then being just too tired to play...)

the easy option of classic cars and familyin the sunshine ...==> means progress has been somewhat woeful.etc

here endeth my procrastinations :

High time to post my meagre progress
==========================

I have been working surprisingly hard and long-winded on all the windows,
more precisely vainly trying to make the cast windows look more akin to the real ship.

(The cast windows are , in fairness ..-- all in the right place! )

but many the shapes are most certainly not as per the real ship

and being the Normandie... there are a heck of a lot of windows, garishly black on white showing every slightest error

so the effort to make them look reasonable has been disproportionate , compared to my usual fare of ( easier!) pre-dreadnoughts...


================================================================================================

The hull side windows and portholes on Normandie show a remarkable lack of consistency!


the fwd portholes have no ( in 1/700 !! ) discernible eyebrows

Lower hull portholes have no discernible eyebrows either

But .... the bottom row only do have noticeable surround rings !
( when I have finished getting a satisfactory finish on the upper windows.... )

I shall start making porthole rings

BUT....the windows that have been getting me really exercised ( and depressed ! )
are the 2 x rows in the white sector , below the promenade deck overhang.

On the real ship, the row of 'squashed oval ' windows under the overhang had no eyebrows, the row below did.

the casting windows looked like this

The aft windows in the area below

on the real ship, looking closer show external frames that allowed the port to rotate, as well as some eyebrowless small ovals

on the casting they looked like this ( spacing and position OK but...)

So as to create a repeatable oval, I shaped up a piece of fuse wire to be able to make oval rings of very fine stainless steel wire
to create a ( fairly!) repeatable oval shape for the opening windows
( The stainless wire does not look that fine in the photos!!!! )

they are of course quite a bit over-scale when viewed 12 times life size...

I used a Rotring pen

to be able to black up the apertures controllably, repeated dipping would create an ink- pool that would end up quite oval ..( sometimes !!!)

repeated re-touching up with white paint started unifying the shapes

I have spent many hours paring away both ink and white paint --and am still doing so for many more hours
( however much work left to do! )

The eyebrows are over-scale of course, but I wanted to differentiate between the upper and lower rows of oval windows,

The intermittent section of oblong windows in the upper row were cast correctly as oblong on the 3D model--but of course were riven with 3-D steps lines

Having sanded these off, the definition of the cast aperture was still not sharp enough to ink in black successfully or satisfactorily ,
jagged edges and a general lack of crispness and sharpness was frustrating. !

==> after much frustration I filled the apertures with white paint within about 0.1 mm and laid into them 1/16 inch x 0.5 mm wide strips of black tape,

cutting these SQUARE was not ever so easy...(!!! )

I devised an aid, using a plastic ruler with 1/ 16 demarcations and cut inboard of the black lines with the scalpel blade to give a fair chance at getting them square

whilst it not quite perfect alas, at least the edges are crisp

Having viewed the large photos posted above , I am of course rather disappointed with my efforts--and will keep trying improve the sharpness of the edges

in mitigation... in period images the windows look fuzzy too...( hahah... )

ok funny joke..--[/color][/i]


but the OVERALL effect is not entirely catastrophic

back to the bench , .... with the fine brush, the pen and a scalpel to pare away both!


JIM B

[JIM BAUMANN]

hello all again, a bit of progress...

Having spent many hours correcting, re-correcting and re-re-correcting ....
I am finally quite happy with the oval windows hand drawn on the hull sidles

==> in place of the SQAUARE (!) cast apertures....

Having laborious applied the bracing strips and the quite numerous eyebrows...
I was not overly enthused about applying masking tape --in case of pulling strips or eyebrows off

( eyebrows are held on with paint, varnish and will-power !!!! )
=================================================================================================


What perhaps I should have done.. was to mask the black onto the white first ... and then draw the windows and apply the eyebrows...

=================================================================================================

anyhow--so as to avoid a high attrition rate of tape and eyebrows...
I elected to lay down a fine line of black decal as the outline and then paint up to and over it with a brush

( this is not new--- I was doing this on my Airfix liners back in the 1980's and 90's

as per here....








................................................................................................................................................................................................................................




meanwhile...


Here is what it looks like on the Normandie --with better decal striping and some know-how acquired in interim

I took fair pains to ensure that the black line would bisect the portholes as per the real ship

Getting the overall line straight, wiggle-free over the bracing strips and inducing the gentle hollow curve was at times very challenging--

I used quite short strips of decal striping , to give me reasonable working time before the decal grabbed

This first coat is plain matt black

the second coat will be a dark anthracite grey... mixed with some black .

more soon

JIM B