Stern Decorations - Hahn Drawings - Prototypes

Brian077 said:
This is cutting edge technology at its best for our hobby. Well done Dave and Mike.
Click to expand...


there were 3 mile stones in the evolution of the ship model kit

1 first kits had solid hulls

2 then the European kits first called plank on frame but were actually plank on bulkhead

3 the actual plank on frame plans first introduced by Harold Hahn

from that point on the timbering set of milled wood then the laser cut frames were introduced.

what brought the development to a grinding halt was producing quality carvings and fittings

you can change a bulkhead kit by trying to be innovative but in the end it is still the same old bulkhead kit, you are just re inventing the same thing and calling it new.

What now? well the hobby got stuck in a rut when first introduced the cross section kit was all the rage a break from the norm. Then more and more came on the market and the novelty wore off and seeing one you seen them all. If it weren't for the name tag you would not even know what ship it is. Same with kits they are all built the same and a limited selection of subjects.

the issue facing the hobby today is the repetition of doing the same ships over and over another Victory and Bounty looking at the line up of the manufactures and they are pretty much the same. even if you do a frigate or a schooner or any class of ship they are all still the same thing just a slightly different shape.

As technology improves and the cost goes down builders will be able to order custom parts and services and the subjects will widen and builders will not be stuck with the limited selection. Should i buy this Vistory or that Victory kit.
Things may very will evolve to custom made kits to order
 
TRUER WORDS WERE NEVER SPOKEN, REMEMBER OUR CONVERSATIONS A LONG TIME AGO, YO FORGOT TO MENTION KITS THAT ARE 30 40 YEARS OLD NO CHANGES EVEN IN MOST CASES SAME PLANS AND TERRIBLE INSTRUCTIONS, AND NO WAY FOR MODELERS TO MOVE FORWARD, NOW DAVE AND MIKE, KRIS AND SOME OTHERS ARE MOVING FORWARD, USING THE NEW TECHNOLOGY, KEEP IT GOING, AND YOUR COMMENT ON POB KITS OF BEING SEEN ONE SEEN THEM ALL IS SPOT ON ANOTHER REASON FOR ME TO DO POB, NOW SOME POB KITS DONE IN RUSSIA ARE CHANGING THE VENUE LET IT CONTINUE. GOD BLESS STAY SAFE YOU AND YOURS DON
 
I would like to also add to that. The industry is is small and the market is small... but the technology and fabrication tooling to do what Dave is suggesting is very expensive. Because of this, you don't see the kind of advancements in wooden model ships as say automotive, or aircraft technologies. Or even plastic model kit technologies for that matter (ie. Tamiya, Trumpeter, etc). Add to that, the average wooden ship model takes 100+ hours to build and the average wooden ship model builder is probably 50+ years old (at least in North America, Europe, and Australia) there just is not the demand for model companys to invest in what it takes to produce cutting edge products. The result is stagnation.

What we now see coming out of China (ZHL, CAF, Trident, Unicorn, etc) is due to the vast domestic market size and younger relative age of model builders in China. Labor and production costs are also cheaper in China than the west. This enables more innovation to flourish over there. Remember there are 1.3 billion people in China. That is more than the US, Canada, Europe, and Australia combined!!

So, what is the situation with model kit companys in the west. Let me be blunt here.

Europe: Not including MarisStella, most of the classic kit makers are gone or struggling. Most have not updated their kits in years. Still fewer have any new offerings. Amati has a new version of the Victory coming but chances are we won't see it before 2022 and like Dave said - it is just another Victory. These companys also typically have poor instructions with terrible translations. I am not counting kit makers from Russia as Europe. There seems to be some promise from Russia, time will tell.

United States: Model Expo has long been the largest kit maker here but hasn't had a new offering in years and definitely no new innovations. All their kits are primarily basswood and while are capable of being built into a nice model it has been the same old stuff forever. The only other real kit maker in the US, I am not supposed to mention but most of us know who I am talking about, is a very low volume operation primarily selling overpriced rowboats with poor customer service and a habit of chasing away customers.

Canada/Australia: Really has no model kit companys to speak of.

So what choices do model builders have left? Not much - other than scratch building. Since many model builders dont have the skills for scratch building it leaves a big gap in a hobby where people seem to desire new and innovative products but just can't get them.

So how can we as a hobby community push the needle forward ourselves? This is what Dave is getting at. The way forward is by a bunch of skilled and diverse model builders combining their talents, working together and helping to produce state-of-the-art products however it can be done without focusing on profit. Because honestly, there is no profit in it. Anyone who thinks they can run a small business in the wooden ship model market and actually make money is just fooling themselves. A better approach is collaborative teamwork to break even on the costs with the goal of innovation and making model building a more enjoyable experience for everyone.

For myself, I have a professional fab shop and am trying to do my part to make that difference. But I am only one person. Dave is only 1 person. Kris is only 1 person. We need the rest of you guys support if you want to push the envelope. It is not about money for us... It is about the hobby!! Never forget that.

So what are we, the member of SoS, gonna do about it???
 
wow dude you lay it right on the line not mixing words

hum
first we came up with kit ideas and went just so far with it

china comes along and take the ideas and kicks them up a notch

then we take it from where China is and thought "nice work" so we take that and are now moving right to the cutting edge

it was a long winded trade off between us and manufactures in China and we both won
 
I think what might happen in longer terms is that machinery that cannot be afforded by the average person today will become ordinary tools in many a private workshop.

Just during the last few years the sale of for example 3D printers has exploded. Nowadays you can even borrow a 3D printer at any puplic library. Prices for high power lasers, stepper motors, servo motors, controllers etc. are falling almost as rapid as the air passenger traffic during the Corona lock down. Even today a CNC kit for for e.g. Proxxon MF70 can be bought for very small money. Maybe such cheap CNC machines cannot produce the quality Mike makes on his prof. machines but I would not be surprised if in a not so distant future it will be possible to buy a decent, and at the same time cheap, CNC router with 3, 4 or more axes.

It also depends very much on software and especally software becomes more and more advanced at the same time it becomes more and more userfriendly and cheap (at least for personal use).

I remember clearly when the cost of a computer with one color screen 1MB RAM and 40 MB harddrive was around 8,000 $. Just 15 years ago the cost of a 3D printer was > 10.000$ Now you can buy a $MS windows based laptop with 4 GB ram + a 3D printer for a few hundred dollars.

Maybe in the future, many modelers will be able to produce parts which are almost impossible to make with hand tools. Could perhaps create a demand for finish G-codes etc. instead of custom made parts.
 
Hello friends. There is a lot going on in the image below. I will attempt to explain for those with interest.

The desire is to recreate 3D decorations for scratch built models based on Harold Hahn designs. Today we are working on the vines/flowers for the stern of the HMS Alfred. Remember, this thread is about "prototypes". At this point we are still in the "design" process and still working in the 2D world. We still need to get this design rendered into 3D and then toolpathed for CNC carving (or sent to a 3D printer) for fabrication. So how did we get here? The simple answer is: with some very powerful software. As there is always more than one way to do something with technology - this is what I did:
  • First, I took a high resolution photograph of the stern of the Hahn HMS Alfred provided to me by @Dave Stevens (Lumberyard)
  • Because the stern is curved horizontally, the camera distorts the image slightly like a lens. To correct this, I used my software tools to remove the horizontal distortion leaving us with a "flat" photograph.
  • Next, I color enhanced the photograph to pull up as much detail as the original photo would allow. The reason the vines are darker on the right side is due to the original photograph. This will not matter for the end result of our 3D carving.
  • From there, I cropped the photograph leaving just the flower/vines in a rectangle and deleted the rest of the image. This gives us a more workable object.
  • I then took the image and zoomed it up 2400 times magnification so I could see right down to the individual pixel level. Pixels are the individual "dots" the photographic image is made from.
  • Using very powerful software tracing tools, I carefully traced around the edges of the flowers/vines pixel by pixel. I use a very high resolution 4K ultra-wide screen monitor for this work. It took me about 2 hours to complete this tracing.
  • After the tracing was completed, all the excess material from the photograph was deleted leaving only the imagery from the flowers/vines behind.
  • Then I zoomed the image back out to a normal view.
  • The next step was to pull in @Dave Stevens (Lumberyard) CAD drawing of the stern transom for the HMS Alfred at 1:64 scale.
  • I took the traced image of the Hahn flowers/vines and superimposed it over the CAD drawing.
  • From there, I carefully studyied the original photo of the model while scaling and positioning the flowers/vines to size and fit precisely on top of the CAD drawing where it needs to go.
  • I then saved the flowers/vines as a perfect 1:64 scaled 2D bitmap object complete with the original photographic details from the original Harold Hahn model.
Ok, that gets us where we are now. The next task will be to take the 2D bitmap image, convert it into vectors, and create an actual 3D model of the flower/vines. The software I use will take advantage of the photographic bitmap as a texture to create the 3D shape required to hopefully duplicate Hahn's carving exactly. Of course, since this is prototype work we won't know for sure until we get there.

Stay tuned for the 3D part next time.

Alfred Stern Deco.jpg
 
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MIKE AND DAVE YOU GUYS ARE BOTH SO FANTASTIC AT WHAT YOU DO, SKILL, TALENT, DETERMINATION, AND A GREAT SENSE OF GIVING BACK, SO MUCH TALENT HERE, MORE ARE NEEDED, BOTH ARTISTIC, TECH SAVY, BUILDERS AND YES HISTORIANS, LEND A HAND ALL YOU WILL FEEL GOOD ABOUT YOURSELVES, WISH I COULD HELP BUT ALL I CAN DO IS APPLAUD. GOD BLESS STAY SAFE DON
 
there are others working behind the scene like Mohamed (a member here) who does the 3D modeling, Doug and Eric both professional CAD draftsmen who i consult from time to time, tommy who is a wiz on industrial level lasers

Even if the tooling and software comes down in price there is a steep learning curve and a lot of R&D to make it all work.

there is a big gap between hobby tools or tools for home use and professional grade software and tools.

the big break came when SoS was formed, what happened was as individuals no one had all the answers, the software or tools and computers. Plus the fact no one person had the time to invest in making it happen. Then China came into the market with really good quality CAD work and kits. That showed us 2 things 1 it can be done 2 we here in North America were sadly behind the times still stuck with 35 year old methods of producing kits and to this day kits here are still very much "old school" the kits themselves and the subjects are well past their prime

i doubt the people at Ships of Scale will storm the ship kit market with state of the art kits, but we will lay the ground work, and because we became the number 1 international site we are seeing more and more professional people taking an interest and actually contributing.

i also want to say it is the constant growing membership of model builders support in making this hobby interesting. When it is all said and done all this comes down to just one person Donnie Driskell who a few years ago started it all and stood his ground never backing down, he had an idea and stuck to it, see what you started Donnie!

at SoS we do not follow trends we set them
 
WELK SAID DAVE CAN REMEMBER THOSE DAYS WELL YOU, I, MIKE41, WINSTON, OTHERS AND THE FIGHTS AND TOTALLY NASTINESS OF cp/msw/nrg, AND DONNIE BEING THREATNED EACH AND EVERY DAY, BACKED BY MANY, THE ONLY OTHER ITEM I SLIGHTLY DISAGREE WITH IS ABOUT STORMING THE MARKET WITH STATE OF THE ART KITS, SOS MEMBERS 100 PLUS, FOR THE ALERT, MANY FOR THE LECOURER, NEW KITS FROM RUSSIA, KRIS CONTRIBUTION, JUST NEED TO KEEP PUSHING, AGAIN IT WILL HAPPEN, PROBALLY QUICKER THEN ANTICIPATED, WAIT SHORTLY TO SEE HOW THE TRIDENT KIT IS DEVLOPING WORLD WIDE NOT JUST SOS, SUCCESS BRINGS COMPETION, AND MORE ADVANCEMENTS, MORE TECH, LOWER PRICES MORE MODELERS, MORE SEMI KITS, ETC, YES WE WILL LEAD THE WAY, JUST DO NOT STOP KEEP WHY NOT LET ALL BEHIND THE SCENES CONTRIBUTATE ON OPEN FORUM EXPLAINING THERE CONTRIBUTATION. GOD BLESS STAY SAFE DON
 
Wow... with so much excitement going on around here over people receiveing the new Trident Alert kit today and our continued R&D for new model building innovations it must be really boring at those other small little forums where very few people post anything. I am having a hard time just keeping up with all the reading myself.

Take a look at the image below. It is not much yet, but a start. Here is what I did.
  • I took our 2D bitmap image of the flower/vine Hahn artwork from the stern of the HMS Alfred and imported it into Vectric Aspire.
  • I used the Trace Bitmap function to create usable vectors and experimented with various noise filters, corner fits, fading, and color thresholds. The purpose of this is to pick up the textures from the original photograph that the software can use to create details in 3D. It also outlines the objects with a vector so that the 3D object can later be cut out on a CNC machine.
  • Then I used the Create 3D Object function and experimented in real-time with various shapes, angles, fades, tilts, base heights, overall heights, slicing and limits until I ended up with what you see below.
  • This 3D object is right at 3/32" tall (about right for 1:64 scale) and was completely auto generated by the software.
  • But we are not done yet. From here we will add additional texturing details on the surface of the decoration with manual tools to enhance the look even further. This work take a lot of trial and error and experimentation. Luckily this software has a built in real-time simulation engine that allows me to work while looking at the photograph of the original Harold Hahn model in real time.
  • Once I get this artwork looking the way it needs to we will be able to do 3 things with it. 1) Save it as a piece of 3D clip art into a library for future use. 2) Export it directly as an STL file for 3D printing. 3) Move it over to my CNC Toolpathing software for machine bit selection and simulations
  • Eventually, this artwork will become a reusable object that can easily be set to ANY SCALE - printed on a 3D printer OR machine carved on a CNC machine.
All 9 of the cooling fans on my workstation have been spinning at max speed today doing this work. While I can't speak for the international community, I can guarantee you there in not a single ship model company in the United States doing anything close to this type of work!!

This becomes easier and easier every day. Once we get it down, we should be able to crank out all the decorations needed not just for the HMS Alfred but for all of Harold Hahn's classic models. In-fact, I think it is entirely possible to recreate virtually ANY decoration simply from a good quality photograph considering that is where we started with this. But of course this wasn't cheap, as the software and hardware to produce this type of work is in the tens of thousands of dollars (USD).

For SOS members only!!

Sail on..


Alfred Stern flowers.jpg
 
Dave Stevens (Lumberyard) said:
Even if the tooling and software comes down in price there is a steep learning curve...
Click to expand...
Agree with that.
I'd like to help and contribute where I can, I'm not that software savvy- I just use Sketchup to design furniture projects (lots of straight lines as opposed to ship models).
With all the extra time working from home I'm happy to offer the time I used to spend commuting.
 
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