5/ Building the Folly.

When I was a kid I remember stopping in the hobby shop at some boat models made out of balsa and wondering at the many intricate details that had to be cut out of very thin balsa wood.
But then my mum wisely said “You will screw up this one in no time”, and there she bought a small HMS Hood model that I also screwed -but not after having torturing the bits of plastic for many hours before.

But then I always thought I had some revenge to take on balsa wood and this diorama proved to be a nice occasion.
Indeed as the boat had to be cut in 2, I had no other choice than to build an empty hull.
I first thought of doing a full hull out of wood and mastic, and then to vacu-form the plastic hull with a homemade machine. But then I am crap at doing any other machines than the miniature ones that actually are on my dioramas. So I had to find another way.

First I printed the side and top view of my plans and proceeded to number all the different cross sections I would need. (step 4/ 1)



Second, I printed all the sections of the boat as they were present on the plan numbering them as well. And cut them out with scissors.
Third, I took 2 medium sized glass sheets and put my bits of papers on one of them.
Fourth, I made a Magic Sculp lump and flattened it against each of the cross sections using the curve as a direction. (step 4/2)
Fifth, I greased the second glass sheet with errr, olive oil from the kitchen –I pray for my wife never reading this- and pressed the glass sheet against the Magic Sculp so that all the lumps would be taken in sandwich and flattened without them to adhere on the glass.

Now the great thing with magic Sculp is that you are doing a different use of it depending of the degree of dryness. I then waited maybe for 1 hour, 1hour and the half, for the Magic Sculp to still be cutable and bendable but not deformable with fingers anymore.

I turned the paper+Magic Sculp cross sections and helping myself with the transparency of the paper, I drew back all the curved shapes with a pen (step 4/ 3).
When it was done, I proceeded to cut all the cross sections with an X-Acto knife and then used an indelible pen to numerate them. (step 4/4)
I then cut a keel out of strong plastic, made some notches on the cross sections and fixed them in their final position 

 I then glued a ridge made out of balsa wood (after failing to succeed one out of Magic Sculp using the same technique as before), and here it was, I had an okay looking boat skeleton in no time –of course it was not perfect as you can see on the pics, but it is enough if you consider most of it would end up being hidden

Finally I cut some thin balsa wood stripes and proceeded to do the planking. As this kind of wood is soft enough, I had no difficulty in doing the fine bending. I glued the whole with superglue and proceeded to sand very carefully the edges that would tend to appear here and there.

Then I had to do the boilers. That one was a fine internet story where I posted a good half a dozen questions on at least 3 forums so that somebody explains me why I had 2 different entries of coal on my plans as well as other issues. I was helped handsomely, and proceeded to build the boiler out of rolled plasticard, plastic tubing for the bars inside the boiler, and a bit of brass tube for the chimney (step 7/8).