Steamer Ben Ain

[Bluewavestudios]

Nice work Richard,

I have always had a soft spot for Boats, In fact I still have a couple. Yours looks superb and is coming together nicely. I agree with the bit about getting a buzz of it building it too, Usually I get the same feeling when you can see a project really starting to take shape and coming to life...it's when you get that feeling that you really enjoy the labour of love involved in Model Making, which makes it all worthwhile

Looking forwards to seeing the finished Model.

Regards.....Mark

 

[magpie]

Richard!!!

How dare you have a workbench so tidy and damb discustingly clean?!!!!

There should be a law agin it#*%+##

Just joking mate!

The ship's looking fantastic!

Jason

 

[Bunkerbarge]

It's just my obsessive-compulsive disorder!!

 

[tomarack]

Richard-very interesting model of Ben Ain. I found out the drawings of Dorris Thomas in my book by Waine immediately,but not found the ribs cross sections there. Sorely it happens many times when drawings of ship are published.No way, anyway. regards Tom

 

[tomarack]

Hi Richard, very nice and workmanship piece! I spent a lot of hours browsing through your pages , I didn´t left them till midnight. Congratulations. Tom

 

[Bunkerbarge]

Tomarack, many thanks for your kind words. I cannot remember which book the cross section was in as I now have about five of those books each dealing with slightly different subjects and I am at work and away from my resources intil next March. The books are superb for getting to the detail of how such vessels were put together and giving excellent guidance as to how you can model them.

If you haven't yet looked try this link to a site that has a wealth of superb photographs of steam ships of the period I am interested in. Not only are there one or two of specific ships from the company that owned Doris Thomas but there are a lot of close up pictures that will be invaluable for creating the correctly realistic and weathered finish of the ship. They make you realise just how well used these vessels were.

http://www.rhiw.com/website_maps/ships_photos.htm

Look at the "Short Sea Vessels" section.

Apologies for not replying to your PM yet, I haven't forgotten it but busy at work so haven't had time. I will reply to it though.

 

[Bunkerbarge]

I think it's a great idea to put build threads together. I was never quite sure where best to post them in the past, thanks Greyhead and John.

 

[Grief]

Hi Bunkerbarge.

Due to working a lot my Ben Ain Build has stood still for a long while. Things are easing off now so i can pick it up again.

Your progress has been supurb. The pictures will be very useful, as i'm still at the deck phase.

You have set the bar high for the rest of us to live up to well done look forward to seeing more pictures on the thread

Regards

Chris

 

[Bunkerbarge]

Thanks for your coments Chris. I have just actually written the latest installment of the build thread with the progress so far and a couple of pictures from this leave. Glad you are getting back to your model and I look forward to seeing some picture of her. It really is a very rewarding kit to make and, although I am making a lot of modifications to mine she still looks good straight out of the box. Anyway here's chapter whatever!

Once again I find myself at the end of a leave and the Ben Ain not progressed as much as I’d hoped for. Never mind, Rome wasn’t built in a day but it was probably done a bit quicker than this model!!

This leave started with a go at a rowing boat which ended up taking far more time than I had intended so I had to make the break after a couple of weeks to get back to the steamer. Then, of course, I ended up doing a bit of work on the house for a couple of weeks so we now have a nice lounge but not a much progressed Ben Ain.

Having said that I have still put a lot of time into it but as with all my modifications to the kit they eat up time. The first step was to caulk the deck so I used a slightly modified method this time whereby I didn’t spread my glue mix all over the deck before sanding it down but I simply syringed it along the plank joints. This is strangely enough exactly the same way real teak decks are caulked so it must have something going for it. After the glue had set hard it was a lot easier to sand down to the wood level and after touching up a couple of air holes I had a neatly caulked deck again.

The next step involved making the flying bridge sidings which are supposed to be constructed of ply and then covered with a printed overlay. Once again I was not very impressed with the idea of an overlay so I glued the ply core to the deck first then I commenced the very time consuming task of planking the sidings myself with 5mm x 1mm stripwood. I cut the wood to length, 25mm, then carefully sanded a chamfer on each edge of the plank. This chamfer is necessary to allow the planks to appear quite distinctly separate and will allow a wash to flow into it when I eventually get around to weathering the model. I used 5 x 1 metre lengths of stripwood cut into 25mm pieces so you get the idea of where the time went. I also fitted a skirting around the bottom edge and a double thickness capping rail along the top edge. I still have to fit a decorative bead around the outside according to the plan which is the first job next time home. The skirting proved to be particularly tricky when it was fitted across the camber as the curve is quite significant and the plank required wetting to try to get it to conform. To help with this I cut the 5mm strip down to 4mm, which conveniently gave me a pile of 1mm strips to be used for the decorative beading! After the vertical planking had all been completed I then had the task of levelling it all and ensuring the front and back were both of the same curvature and they were level. To help with this I made a tool by glueing a piece of sandpaper to a piece of an old wooden yard stick and then proceeded to very carefully sand the tops of the bulwarks down to the required level. This actually worked very well and left me with a nice flat top to glue the capping to relatively easily.

The other main part of this work has been the fitting of the navigational lights and how I was going to get power to them. I ran some fine cable up through a box at the back of the wheelhouse which was then run into a channel along the back of the flying bridge, held in place first by the vertical planking and then finally by the skirting. The cables then had to be joined to the lamps so I had to decide how best to go about that. I bought some brass lamps of Ebay for the Navigation lights as I wasn’t too keen on the white metal quartered lamps supplied with the kit. I painted them up with primer then a coat of copper paint before a top coat of red or green. This allowed me to scrape a bit of red and green away and reveal the copper below which I then gave a dry brush with a Verdi Gris colour before a wash with a brown. The lamps were installed into the boards and the cables run through a hole in the deck before looping back up through another hole on the other side of the siding. This then gave me the two ends of the cables together and I then constructed a planked door which you will actually find in this situation on a lot of vessels which is there to enable easy access to the Navigation lamps for maintenance or, in those days, for lighting and extinguishing the Navigation lamps. I employed a little bit of poetic licence here and instead of just having an access door I incorporated the door into a raised box which then gave me somewhere convenient to make the electrical connections to the lamps, neatly and completely concealed.

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[Bunkerbarge]

Well I actually got the skirting all finished and both Navigation light connection boxes finished today so next leave I have to get the equipment fitted to the bridge and a real attempt to get the bridge unit completed.

 

[Jayjay]

Hello mate,

This just gets better and better every time i look,

All the best ,:bravo: Jay

 

[Bunkerbarge]

Thanks Jay, it's always a great shame that I am just getting back into it when I have to leave it again for three months. I am looking forward to making the flying bridge equipment next time home though and this time it will all be visible and not half shut away like the wheelhouse detail is.

 

[new to trains]

bunk please enlighten me further , re your deck caulking, your results look perfect, - and first time too ! i have to do lots of adjustments to get it looking half as good as that ! so let us have your secret ?

i have in the past used black card bonded with PVA to each plank, this is then trimmed and finished and then waxed or varnished, i have used black thread also, , i have also heard about black tile grout being used ? , .... whats your tecnique, what adhesive do you use that is syringed in place and whats your secret, is it still the PVA and black powder paint mix too ?- does this not stain the plank wood grain ?

will post some pictures of a panel i am planking at present tomorrow...you can then give advice !

 

[Bunkerbarge]

Hi Guy, I don't know about perfect but I think by the time I have completed my third area of deck and got the hang of it I am actually getting quite pleased with the results.

I was never really keen on the idea of messing around with bits of black paper or string as I just think it is introducing something else into the construction process that makes it more difficult than it needs to be. I decided to give my caulking idea a go based on the fact that I have seen the job done in real life on various ships and realised that to seperate the planking process from the caulking process gave you the chance to concentrate on each in turn and get better results.

I was a bit apprehensive with the first one and learned a lot in a very short space of time. Firstly the spacing of the planks was done with small peices of cut up plasticard which ended up being a bit fiddly and I hadn't sorted out how to get nice neat 90 degree cuts on the plank ends so they weren't as neat as I would have hoped.

After the planks were laid I mixed up my waterproof Resin W (White PVA) with a few grams of black powder paint and made up a thick black paste. Unfortunately I was a bit over enthusiastic with the application and so it took a hell of a lot to sand it all down to the planks again. I had tested the idea out on a sample peice so was confident that the glue would not bleed into the planks but I hadn't banked on how much sanding was required. I was quite amazed though at how well it looked when I got down to the wood and realised what I needed to do to make it better.

My second attempt, the bridge deck, still used small tabs of plasticard and a complete covering of glue but the ideas of how to improve were now coming together.

For the last deck I did I used strips of plastic angle section laid along the planks which made for much easier even spacing of the planks and nice neat plank ends where they butt up to the edging. I also tried the same glue mix but put it into a syringe with a steel tube on the end, which you can purchase all over the place for oiling steam engines etc, and I was surprised at how easily I could squeeze it out onto the joint. This meant that there was far less glue excess to sand off so that part of the process was considerably easier.

To finish off I applied three coats of satin yacht varnish, lightly sanded between coats, and then I will be adding weathering as a final stage of the entire build process.

I am, as I said, now quite pleased with the results of the process and I am even looking forward to doing a bit more. Unfortunately on this model there is only a very small area of planked deck left on the top of the galley so not much opportunity to get to grips with a larger area.

 

[new to trains]

Thanks Bunk, i am getting to the end of the build of the first model so will have to continue to maintain the continuity.....

but i am definately going to give this method a try.... its got to be the best alternative i have !.......and different to to the paper method i am using now, plus even if it is as tricky to do as the paper method -its something new !

We have syringes and steel needles in fine bores at work ( will borrow a few) !

i have two models on the go at present that both have planked decks, and a puffer deck to start, so will give it a go....

the black powder paint, i suppose its a simple black kids style powder paint or is it some exotic batch of artists pigments ?

thanks once again.....

 

[Bunkerbarge]

It's exactly the same stuff kids have been using in schools for many years. I bought a big cardboard tube of it from my local art shop and simply asked for "Powder Paint".

If you have any contact with a school I am sure you can get hold of a cup full for nothing as I'm sure my supply will be here long after I am gone!!

 

[new to trains]

will go and swipe the kids art set when i get home !

 

[new to trains]

here is a panel that i planked using the paper / card technique

 

[Task Force 57]

A live steam coaster is one of those ships we'd all like to have in our "fleets". Your work to this point has been most thourough, the Pics are great!

Im debating a live steam conversion flower class corvette so im going to follow this thread most intently

Keep up the good work!

 

[Bunkerbarge]

Thanks for the kind words Russ, a Flower class would look superb with live steam coming from the funnel.

Guy the planking looks excellent, the card is just the right thickness and works well with the wood. I think the caulking method I tried comes into it's own when you get to the intricate jobs around deck fittings and 'joggling' the ends into curves when you can concentrate on the planking job without worrying that the card is in the correct place as well.

I am sure there are people out there who have used card for years and wouldn't dream of doing anything else, it's what you get used to and are comfortable with.