December 15 2009 | A new diorama on the way

called Spaceman 3..

December 15 2009 | Photoetch time

So here is the time again for a new diorama, now this one should end up loolink either frankly good and sort of new, or slightly ridiculous and more than a bit psychedelic, hence the poster.

Anyway, here is the photoetch fret.

I know why I always do photoetch, it's because I spent so much time learning how to do this properly (and i still fail from times to times) that I want to do this over and over. That's also a very convenient way of letting the computer do the job for you (what's important is the idea and the mood and the setting methinks, not much the actual building process..)

December 16 2009 | Boat modelling

Concerning boat modelling, here are some thoughts about the navies by country and easiness of finding reference after basically 5 years doing this:

USA: you pay okay you get okay when it comes to plans with sadly fewer things on the pre -14 era, many books covering every period still, great amount of pics available, great forum community.

Germany: you get sick by the amount of stuff on WW2 but for earlier period it's sure harder to find anything worth when it comes to plans or reference, especially for pre-14 era. Some plans are on sell, but few books with pics usable for the modeller - The reference collection you mostly have to do by yourself collecting photo postcards on ebay. the dreadnought project website is a great resource and furthermore the community is okay.

France: the Service Historique opened their plan collections for a short time and it the began to be the greatest country on earth when it comes to availability! thousands of plans of extremely great quality for free.. But then they closed down.
And then NO books with pictures -or those from marine Edition who seem to have been done by a 5 years old kid with an eye problem with very few pics. NO online community. French boat modelling forums are the Gobi desert, the people being there not usually knoing much while people who know and own the pics probably not even knowing about internet. So.. plans yes, but pictures no.. and no help.

Russia, THE great country for boat modelling. They have great books on almost every boat of every period of Russian history, then You see the word "copyright" doesn't exist for them, and the online community is okay, passionate and post everything they have.. Still my preferred country for modelling.

Spain and Italy..Gobi desert?!!!! If anybody knows how I can get some stuff about the lepanto and Italia class in Italy and all the Spanish predreads that were butchered by the USA in 1899, please post any info my way!!

Japan? nothing before the 30's apparently (?)

All the countries are covered? ah no..
Stays Britain.
THE maritime state par excellence..
you would think you can find easily what you want but errrr, no.
if you search a bit deeper than HMS Hood or the like there is nothing.. plans are available at some national thing in Greenwhich but like says one friend "you have to sell body parts to be able to buy them"
the online community is uuuhh.. a bit like the French one perhaps?

okay here is my story: my worse so far concerning finding reference.
remember The Womb? I think it is my best diorama, there is a dry cynicism about it and a sense of colour that tells me i am finally getting somewhere. BUT I don't like having to look at it, it's just too terrible, it's currently in one corner of the garden shed and i will probably dump it on ebay in 5 years time.
So i thought I needed to do something like the Womb but more my way you see, more ambient and detached. Something with a turret too. So it was years that I considered doing a diorama with one plane turret sticking out of the water but i thought that would look sort of stupid and artifical. And then a few weeks ago i fell on some Telford report on a ship forum showing a model of this:

December 16 2009 | Bad plans..

you see? those turrets at the back of the boat? plane turrets of the most peculiar form as they are looking like some light bulb.
So this boat nicknamed the "whaleboat" because of the dome shaped rear, was used by the British to get downed pilots in the Channel, and generations of modellers built the Airfix model with *basically no reference except an article with 5 poor quality pictures in an Airfix mag from the late 70's*
Asking questions in forums I was quickly prompted with this article alongside a set of bad quality plans done by "the great specialist of British MTBs one Mr Pritchard..
Then I was given a list of 5 absolutely unfindable books about those boats.. Looking online, I found 3 extra photos, and .. that was all.
So here I was starting my build with basically no reference about a British WW2 boat that is well known to modellers.. amazing, truly amazing. Britain i used to know you better.

I saw that Mr Pritchard designed a set of good sized plans so i set up buying them but alas the deception was huge as i could find straight away some innacuracies -worse even he seems to have been designing them using some huge sized pen akin to the ones you give to kids.
he also included some cross section plans.. for the hull but not for the rounded cabin!!
All the problems induced by this third rate material will sadly show through throughout the build..

In the end I found out what those plans were for: the RC guys who probably figure out that a boat model is accurate as long as it floats.

here are the plans anyhow.. what a waste of paper..

December 17 2009 | Deciphering the photoetch

Obviously the 2 windows are the front ones. The 2 big sort of round shapes are the commander's cupola. the polygonal shape at the bottom right is the side of the cabin.
Then you have some plain shapes with roughly oval shapes cut and a square shape with a big round in it: I feel unable to cut such shapes perfectly in plastic, so my plan is simple, I cut a rough square in the plastic, fit those parts with green stuff and get the joints done with Tamiya filler. The rest is basically hinges, windows circling, lights bases, aerial support etc.
of interest is the sort of round circling with dents on it, those are for the complex aerial, same thing with the "tear shaped" part witch is going to fit above the turret.
a lot of hinges and small rounds are also there to occupy the space -the acid gets reusable more the less metal it has to eat!

Small reminder of the whole insulating process -those are old pics actually:

1/ i print the drawing -I have a b&w HP printer, a cheap one.
2/ I cut the 2 halves and glue them
3/ 2,30 mn each side under my insulating machine (homemade so quite crude indeed!)
4/ then in the developing bath.. you can see the drawing being made..


Anyway, Merde happens straight away. I begin to get short in insulated metal and will have to re order it (from Britain actually) and I used some left over part from another diorama and look at what I got when I got it insulated? this is right okay, but there is a big round shape that is eating all the details at the middle!
This means those special parts simply will be eaten. Gulp, that's a good thing I usually do twice the number of pieces I need..

December 18 2009 | Let's etch

So here's my old etching tank -some morning chocolate plastic box, an aquarium pump and heater..

December 18 2009 | Rheingold again

After roughly 20 mn in the mix I got this;.. Rheingold!

December 18 2009 | The final result

yep that's right, there is a whole chunk of the front window lacking.. and some other parts are also badly eaten.