First off, my apologies for leaving parts of previous posts at the end of my most recent post. Sometimes I get in a rush to get something posted or I get a little tired, as I often write late at night or in the wee hours of the morning. I clean these things up as soon as I see them, but I’ll try to be more careful in the future. Meanwhile, this Seahorse kit is coming along, slowly now, but surely.
New Parts
A couple days ago, the additional items I ordered from Seahorse arrived. It took just 11 days from the day I ordered them and, as I mentioned previously, the whole order cost me less than $20, including shipping, and was quite a collection of goodies that are specially for this model. Below, you can see a set of 8mm 3D printed belaying pins, a full set of 3D printed cannon and swivel gun barrels for the Armed Virginia Sloop, the dowel set, and the laser-cut cardboard blocks and deadeyes set for this model.
The Guns
For now, my focus is on the ship’s carriage guns. I double-checked Dr. Clayton Feldman’s book Modeling an Armed Virginia Sloop of 1768, and he describes the carriage guns as 3 pounders. That makes sense, given the small size of the gun carriages and barrels for this kit.
Again, the carriages are being made using the optional laser-cut gun carriage set for the Armed Virginia Sloop. One issue I ran into using these parts, is that the carboard is a little on the soft side. So, as soon as all the parts are together, I’m using some CA glue to harden it all up. For now, I’m using Aleene’s Tacky Glue where I can.
These parts are so small that, were I to do this all again, I’d probably get an extra set of the gun carriages. Given that these only cost about $1, and there are no extra carriage parts provided, this seems a reasonable precaution, particularly when working with the gun trucks or wheels.
I considered painting the gun carriages a natural wood color, but the kit’s printed carriage parts are red, and I thought that would look good, so that’s how I painted them.
I can’t recall if I mentioned this before, but for paper models, I’ve mostly been using a paint that is the same that Shipyard includes in their boxed laser-cut kits. At one time, they included the original tubes of paint, straight from the manufacturer, but now provide it in jars. The jars don’t show the manufacturer, but it’s exactly the same stuff. It’s from a Polish art supply company called Renesans. A couple years back, it took me a while, but I was able to find it on a Polish art supply shop that sold internationally. I have a small supply, but in this case, there’s plenty included in a jar that I got in another Shipyard kit. This model is so small, it doesn’t take much paint.
You’ll notice in the above photo that I messed up the front axel on this particular gun carriage. It’s so small that without special visors, I could not see that it wasn’t going on correctly. However, once the wheels are in place, this won’t be noticeable at all.
I kept the wheels on the laser-cut sheet until I was able to add the axel ends to them. These are REALLY TINY round pieces of card stock that often started to break up. And, if you look closely, you can see that they aren’t of uniform sizes. But, this was as good as I could do. When the glue dried, I brushed on some paint using a very dry brush. It was dry, so that the paint would seep into the cardboard and “glue” the parts to the sheet.
Afterwards, I glued all the wheels into place, again, using Aleene’s. After that dried, I use some thicker CA glue to lock things all together, then I gave them another coat of paint.
I test fit the 3D printed barrels I got and the following is the result.
The barrels seem black enough to use as-is. But the swivel guns look a little transparent. If I paint the swivel guns, I feel I really should paint these cannon barrels so they all match, but I’m hesitant, as these look pretty darned good the way they are.
In the above photo, you can also see that I’m test fitting the main deck hatch and the companion way hatch behind that. I’m not quite sure in what order I need to fit out the deck, as the model is so small. I’m concerned that putting some parts in place with get in the way of working with other parts. There are, after all, lots of eyebolts, ringbolts, and cleats to install.
I’ve been dragging my feet on this, but it looks like I’ll need to get to work on making some tiny wire eyebolts. Plenty of other things I need to work on, so maybe I’ll keep dragging my feet on that eyebolt production…
Little Steps
It’s been almost exactly one month since I received the 1/100 scale Armed Virginia Sloop from Seahorse, with construction just a few days short of that. Progress has been really good, and now I’m plodding along with the little steps. As I mentioned before, I ordered the remaining optional accessory sets for this kit, plus I ordered the belaying pins set as well. Hoping to get these soon.
In the meantime, I added the swivel gun posts, using parts from the optional laser-cut details set, and I also used one of the paper pieces that cover up the face of the posts, so you don’t see the multiple layers of paper.
Construction of the 1/100 scale Armed Virginia Sloop paper model from the Polish model publisher Seahorse continues, but progress has slowed greatly now that the main work on the hull is done. Now it’s a matter of making all the tiny details, and for this, I started working on the gun carriages. Seahorse sells an option set of laser-cut parts for these, which I ordered when I bought the kit. Having tried to make small scale gun carriages when I built my Shipyard HMS Alert model, I know I’ll be much happier with laser cut parts like these.
Construction of the 1/100 scale Armed Virginia Sloop paper model from the Polish model publisher Seahorse has been moving along surprisingly quickly. It’s been rather hard to stop and document the build, as things have been progressing so well. But, I finally reached a point where I feel comfortable taking a small progress break.
My last post was only few days ago, at which time, I was working on the final layer of the hull planking. Below, you can see the second planking layer in place, for which I used the laser-cut accessory set, but the keel and the lower hull are actually covered by the third and final layer of planks.
About two weeks ago, I began work on this small paper model kit from the relatively new publisher, Seahorse, and I have to say that the build has been going quite well. I was going to say extremely well, but I don’t want to jinx myself and this build. This is the first Seahorse kit I’ve ever tried, though I completed the HMS Alert paper model kit from Shipyard, as well as one of their small lighthouse kits, and, most recently, the laser-cut Hanse Kogge von Bremen kit.
Last time I posted, I had completed the second hull layer, and added pieces to build up the thickness of the bulwarks. This model has three hull layers, and on my build, the second layer is made up of laser-cut pieces that were part of an add-on package of laser-cut parts. The basic kit requires the paper parts be laminated to a 0.5mm thick piece of cardboard, then cut out. Clearly, the laser-cut parts set is a big time saver. But, I think it also will end up making for a better looking model in the end.
The Armed Virginia Sloop is a rather popular subject that seems to have begun with a book written by Dr. Clayton Feldman for the scratch building of an Armed Virginia Sloop of 1768 that was published by Phoenix Books back in 1991. Up until then, I knew the type of ship as a Bermuda Sloop. But, sometime after Dr. Feldman’s work was published, Model Shipways released a kit of an Armed Virginia Sloop, then Bob Hunt’s Lauck Street Shipyard company had their model too. So now, there’s a kit available in paper from the relatively new Polish paper model company, Seahorse.
This it a 1/100 scale paper model kit, and at this scale, it makes for a pretty small model – only about 15.4″ long, including the very long bowsprit. The kit is very inexpensive. But, to make construction easier, the company also makes accessories for it, including a sail set, laser-cut parts set, and cannon carriage set (laser-cut).
For me, it seems that there is a danger in working on paper models. I find these things to be so engrossing that I have a hard time taking a break to do other things. I’ve been working on the Schwarzer Rabe pretty steadily for a couple weeks now. Almost a week ago, I had made a comment on Papermodelers.com that I was probably posting my last update for a while, as I get back to working on some other projects. But, I never stopped this one. Here it is, a week later, and I’m still trying to make myself shift gears and get some other needed work done. We’ll see if that happens after this post.
Planking of the Schwarzer Rabe is coming along well. I’ve now gotten well into the planking below the waterline. Planking the lower hull seems much easier than the upper hull. With the upper hull, the treenails show, and they need to line up along the imagined frames. Also, the gun ports and other similar features have to line up properly, so a lot of attention goes into these planks.
In above photos was taken just as I was about the reach the waterline. So far, things seem to be looking okay. All planking strips are edged with brown paint to hide the edges. The individual lines of planks have been scored as well. This serves to make the planking look a little more realistic, but it also allows the planking strip to curve more easily, adapting to the shape of the hull.
I still have a little issue with the hull flattening out a little between the frames, but I did my best to minimize this by inserting a blade under the flat areas of the plank strips and pushing them back out a little. I then fill the resulting gap between the hull and the planking strip with a little extra glue for support.
At this stage, there’s really not much to say. Below the waterline, my biggest concern is keeping the hull more or less rounded. Also, I have no way to really gauge how well I’m covering the hull. Am I going to have any gaps or any overlap at the end. Past experience has taught me that I’m certainly going to end up with one or the other.
Since I’m cutting the planking strips along the black lines with those lines mostly showing up on the edge of my planking strips, I’m guessing that I’m going to end up with a little overlap at the end. Whatever plank I end up trimming in the end may look a little odd, but it will probably look a lot better than having gaps.
But, I am thinking that once the lower hull is planked, I’ll be treating with thin CA to stiffen the planking, then sanding the hull down a little, to reduce any burrs or ridges formed from the cutting process. I expect I’ll paint the lower hull too, or at least give it a wash of paint. That should subdue those black plank lines. The printed paper is a bit pure white, so I may tone it down a little bit.
In any case, planking the hull is somewhat self motivating. I’ve gotten so much of the hull done now, I’m looking forward to finishing it up before I take any kind of break and work on something else – Remember, this is a model I started as a filler project to work on when I’m tired of working on other things. That said, it’s feeling a lot less like a filler project right now, and I’ve started prepping the parts for the stem/beakhead and the sternpost/skeg.
As a parting pic of today’s post, the above are two of the 6 pieces that will make up the beakhead. There is a kind of scrollwork that shows through here. On the top piece, I’ve carefully cut away all the black printed areas. You can see the black printed areas in the bottom piece, which I’ll “carve” next. After I finished cutting, I treated the scrollwork with some thin CA to harden it, and keep it from getting damaged later.
As soon as I can get the beakhead and the keel all done, I’ll be able to work the mounting. On my first paper model, HMS Alert, I used simple brass rods. This has a very clean and minimalist look, which I like. But, I’ll see how things go when I come to that.
It’s a bit out of sequence, but I’m kind of itching to work on the deck area a little. Not sure what I’ll do, but you might see some details get added – at least ones that I don’t think will get in the way or get damaged while I’m working on the outer hull.
As you may have noticed, I’ve now officially elevated this build of Shipyard’s 1/96-scale paper model kit of the Dutch fluit Schwarzer Rabe to a full fledged project, with its own place in my Ship Model Build Logs menu.
It seems that after completing the 1/72-scale Hanse Kogge Bremen laser-cut paper model, for which I did not maintain a build log here, I was itching to keep up with the paper models. I wasn’t really sure if I had been doing a good enough job with my Dutch fluit Schwarzer Rabe, but I thought I should give it a chance. So, I continued the build this weekend, adding more details to the hull, and starting a blog on papermodelers.com, which I will basically echo here, or vice versa.
As we last left this build…
Ship Modeler 