Wear Ship Dave
Scratch Building HMS Leopard Part 5
by , 09-17-2013 at 21:09 (76244 Views)
Initial Painting and The Cannon Foundry
Today, I gave the ship some color. I started with three coats of acrylic floor finish to seal the balsa a little. Then a couple coats of black on the hull, a light tan on the decks, and a medium brown on the inside of the rails. I cut some hatch covers/grates from card stock and glued them in place, giving them the medium brown color.
I still need to add the yellow bands on the hull, maybe tomorrow.
Now a visit to the Cannon Foundry!
1:1000 scale cannons are really really small!
I started with a thin strip of card stock, about 1/16th of an inch wide.
I coated one side of the strip with watered down PVA glue, and then folded it over on itself to make it double thick. I then used a brown sharpie to color it. With my sharp scissors, I snipped of lengths of the strip about 1/8th of an inch long.
I put a strip of masking tape down on a plastic container lid and stuck my gun carriages to it. This is important, they are so small and fiddly that the tape is needed to keep them in place.
For the cannons themselves, I stuck several basic sewing pins (which I had already clipped off the points) to a strip of tape, allowing about 1/8th of an inch to extend past the edge. This is a guide for how long to cut. Cup your free hand around your wire cutters as you are snipping, to keep the cannon from flying across the room.
Next, I used a tooth pick to put a small blob of PVA glue on each gun carriage before adding a cannon.
Once dry, use a sharp knife to trim the excess from the gun carriages. Use your brown sharpie to retouch the carriage and then a black sharpie to color the cannon. (I may go back and hit the cannons with black paint before final installation).
Here's a finished gun, shown on a quarter for scale.
And here, in place as a bow chaser.
Or in place on the Upper Gun Deck.
NEXT UP: More Painting and Detailing!
Email Blog Entry
Go to Profile
Mark as Read
