Sunday, April 18, 2010
The shipyard is officially open !!
Before starting any activity on this model I preferred to wait to have in my hands at least 8-10 issues. This in order to have more informations and materials to better decide how to proceed. In effect at this date I have the issues fron 1 to 9 and this Sunday I decided to start. I prepared in advance my individual plan, with the intention to follow in a customized way the instructions.
The main reason for this choice belongs to the fact that these instructions are prepared in a way to made the beginner shipmodeler to start, since the first issue, to "mount something". But this approach is not what I like, first of all because I am not a beginner and secondly, because there are some minor dangers or problems that can raise if you indiscrimitately follow this intricated approach.
For example I do not understand why I have to mount an anchor today, another within two months, the third after an year and so on. I prefer to build and finish them all togheter, I think it is a more efficient and reasonnable way of working. This is just an example of how the weekly issues approach makes you work . .
Finally, before definitely mounting any component I have "dry mounted" them, to see and test all the joints and to make proper adjustments.
First I would like to list two points about this model that it is worth to highlight:
- The size of the ship hull, I'm building another model (Dolphyn from Corel) and if I look them together, the difference is very great. The Soleil Royal is fatty, potbellied, rounded. And this makes this ship pleasing to me . .
- The precision of the pre-cutted material supplied by the kit manufacturer. Some pieces of the pre-cutted material were twisted and I had to spend some time to correct them but after they are very precise. Every joint is right and I didn't adjust anything. I made a lot of controls but everything was perfect. So I decided to definitely glue them. I imagine these pieces were cutted starting from CAD plans.
Now let's start to describe the process . . first, as I wrote, I didn't follow the instructions. This is an approach that I don't suggest to everybody, but only to shipmodelers with a minimum of experience. Personally I follow my instinct . .
- The keel is made of up to three segments. At the moment I have only two and I have mounted them together. Great care was made to obtain a perfect alignment. Anyway a simple task.
- There is a false deck made up of several pieces . . I have mounted the first two of them perfectly aligned. They will keep in place the bulkheads from number 2 to 7.
- Then I have installed all the bulkheads from number seven to three with the vinyl. After each bulkhead I put in place the false deck to keep right positioned the new bulkhead for some 10-15 minutes. Then I repeated the same process for another bulkhead until number 3.
- Then I have definitely fixed the false deck and . .
- As last task I have installed the bulkhead no. 2 without glueing it to the false deck. This because there was a small problem with the keel (a little twistly, +/- 1 mm) and I think to solve it when I will install the bulkhead number 1.
In this way I have achieved the goal to mount a structure that is perfectly aligned between the bulkhead 7 and 3, alignment that will become my "point of reference" to mount all the other elements. Last: The lower part of the keel has two protrusions that allow the keel to be inserted into an home made "keel clamp" made with two aluminum bars and two iron bolts.
Here follow four images of the work done today (remenber to consider the date on top of this message, not the date the message is published)
01 - P1060197.jpg
02 - P1060198.jpg
03 - P1060199.jpg
04 - P1060200.jpg
See you soon next message. Jack.Aubrey