New Bedford Whaler...circa 1875. *The Harbour*

[spanner570]

Just like my Severn Lifeboat, I'm going to try and do a potted history of the whaler's life in a trilogy of builds.


This is part 1....The harbour. I had but the roughest of ideas what to aim for, so here is the build, warts and all!


I've photo'd up to this stage in the original whaler thread, so I'll just post this image as a 'where up to' for the harbour construction.






Here's the happy accident I mentioned in the other thread. This is just the machined edge of the scrap polystyrene packaging. See how with just one wash it has produced a great looking harbour wall. With a bit more work, it could look quite nice......However! More in a mo'.






Something didn't look right and was bugging me. Then it hit me, the harbour wall was a bit too high. The whaler cutters were nearly touching the quayside. So I ripped the whole lot off and re-did the thing reducing the height. I also decided there was too much open water, so whilst I was wrecking the wall, I also cut down the size of the base to a better proportion.


Moral...never be afraid to tear your diorama apart. If it don't look right - it aint right.....


I wasn't sure what the quayside surface was at the time. I found out it was sometimes a mixture of cobbles and just rough, hard ground. So this is what I've gone for.


To get the scale cobbles something like I had to make them 1mm square. This I did by gently scribing the lines onto my trusty polystyrene pizza base with my knife, using a steel rule as a guide....Never use a plastic rule - Yes you have!






The cobbled road.






Here are the cobbles after the first coat of paint. They have turned out o.k., nice and rough and well used!






To break things up a bit, I've decided to make a sort of jetty cum landing stage for smaller craft. Here is the woodwork scribed to look like random boarding. The scale is the same as the whaler's deck planking - about 1/16" in old money. Slightly wider than the cobbles.....






The jetty In position. The planking lines are straight, it's the photo that's made them look bent!






The cobbles in position.






Build so far. Note the lowered harbour wall and the cut down base area.






I really must do something about the awful colour of the water. Still it's only a base coat which I sealed with pva by the way.


I've ordered some diddy figures for this. They are about 8mm high, so once I have them I can start getting ideas for the quayside.


Thanks for looking in on part 1 of the trilogy.


Cheers all,


Ron

 

[Deleted member 4539]

I'm Loving the work you have done on this.


Great scribing work

 

[Gern]

So what are you gonna use for your whale? Or is that going to be a surprise for us when you get to that bit?

 

[papa 695]

Liking the start of this part Ron

 

[spanner570]

Thanks Chaps...


Dave, I don't need to go on 'puter for a whale image. I have a photo of the present Mrs. Ron in her cossy I can reference - and before the cogs start turning, no, she probably isn't going to Cosford!


O.k., I was going to have the quayside woodwork going around the corner, but I 've decided to break it up a bit and put a bit of stone defence work instead.....Here is the start of it. Just a scrap piece of polystyrene, ragged a bit, stuck down and a first coat of paint added.






Here is the finished job. Brown, green and black. The secret of the colour blending is to keep all the colours 'wet' so they kind of mix together



The woodwork on the quayside. The horizontal timbers are gern's coffee stirrers cut in half, the smaller upright posts are cocktail sticks and the larger ones, BBQ skewers. I might yet add some more woodwork. See the green algea working up the timbers? Again wet on wet.






I've added a timber border to the jetty, again coffee stirrers cut in half.






Here are the final stages of the jetty weathering. The one on the right has had a good scratching with sand paper to really give the surface a good antwacky look before the final coat of paint you see applied to it. Considering the engraved planks are only just over 1mm wide and I've not attempted it before , I'm well chuffed how the jetty has turned out....Another first for li'll ol' me.








A bird's eye view of the harbour so far. I've still got the colour of the water to attend to. It needs to be a bit more brackish.






That's it thus far. Thanks for viewing progress and I appreciate all the great comments.


Ron

 

[spanner570]

I've started to add bits to the model to get a bit of 'life' into it. I have made a stack of timber, complete with spacers. These were inserted between


the layers of timber to allow air to circulate around the stack. I will probably make some more later.


I split a coffee stirrer into three lengthways strips and then glued the stack together. I split one of the planks in half for the spacers.


Yes, I've still got all my fingers.....so far!






Here it is painted up. I like to vary the shades of brown. It's better than all one shade , it brings the thing to life - take a look at furniture and see the different shades in them.....Unless of course, you cheapskates buy it made of MDF, stained and then varnished!






....placed on the quayside, but not fixed.






Cheers,


Ron

 

[eddiesolo]

More juicy detail work Ron. Like it, like it.

 

[Deleted member 4539]

Loving it, such great detail

 

[spanner570]

Thanks Si, I'm glad you like the progress....


I'm waiting for the diddy figures to arrive, then I can scale things up for a building or two.

 

[spanner570]

Sorry Ralph, I pressed the reply button to Si the same time as your post came up!


Thanks for your comments too.


Ron

 

[spanner570]

Big alterations - and how!


I now have the figures and have balls'd up big time. I knew I should have waited for the figures before starting this build....But no, push on, eh!


Here are the very nice, hard plastic 100 1/200 figures. I'm impressed. They need very little cleaning up....










...way out of scale, and the jetty planking is just over 1mm wide, yet still far too wide - What a to**er!






So I got the wife to give her opinion. She said it was too big and ambitious for the scale, and the focal point should be the whaler, not what's going on around...And she is quite right.


So I've hacked off most of the jetty and left just a thin strip. I have also removed a big slice from the back of the base. I've kept the remains of the jetty and the stack of wood for future use somewhere else.






So there you are. Always have everything essential to hand before starting a build.


Happy days....all part of the fun.


Ron

 

[Deleted member 4539]

We live and learn

 

[papa 695]

Pity about the work you've done Ron and have to get rid of but like the wife says the ship is the focal point.


Cracking work by the way.

 

[spanner570]

Thanks chaps - Not to worry though.


It does nark me when the wife is right. She is usually "Always right." but on this occasion, she actually is!


The main lesson to learn from this episode is never, no matter how drastic, be afraid to get the saw out and totally alter the diorama, even if it means loosing hours of work. To carry on with the original would have been just stubborn, total folly, and I would have gone at it half ar*ed.


It hasn't effected me one bit, so onwards and upward men!


Best wishes,


General George Patton

 

[spanner570]

I've just spent a pleasant couple of hours or so trying to pull this back - and I hope I have succeeded!


I've more or less gone back to the beginning. I have removed all the boarding (even the little bit I left bottom right of the last picture) also the cocktail stick quay supports, which were too thick. I then made completely fresh boarding, same scribing method as previous.....


I found an old engraving on Google which showed the boards running to the edge of the quayside, not hard ground as I originally had it, so I've scribed the 'ground' with boards, and to a much smaller scale.


Here is the result. I'm well happy with it....What say you, landlubbers. I hope you approve?






I've done a couple of lengths of projecting boarding up to the cobbles...






One of the 1/200 figures to give an idea of the new boarding width. I think it looks tons better.


He looks like he's just dropped a can of pop too....Don't know where that came from!






The final general view. This is honestly the last bit of hacking I'm going to do to this.......






I'm so happy 'cos even the wife approves!


Ron

 

[spanner570]

Please don't desert me folks. Not after my 'Darkest Hour' with this.......I need all the support I can get.


I'm designing a backbrop of buildings out of thin card. I was surprised just how big the waterside buildings where around this time.


Here is the paper template and the resulting card frontage, obviously still more work needed, but I have the basics done and made all the templates.






Cheers,


Ron

 

[spanner570]

Oh well....


Here are a few pictures of the building...


Note the tabs for gluing.






Stuck together....






Placed on the base.






Thanks for looking.


Cheers,


Ron

 

[Caledonia]

Beginning to smell the salt air Ron, great work. Derek

 

[Gern]

He's here again folks! Creating another masterpiece out of scraps and oddments.


Are you trying to put the scenery manufacturers out of business by showing us how we can do without them?

 

[spanner570]

Thanks for your posts Derek and Dave. All good stuff.


I'm sure peeps will have noticed I have glued the back bit back on to accommodate the buildings - will someone please tell me to leave the bl***y thing alone!