DocRob

I like it a lot Kevin and I don't find it has too much contrast. With masks removed and decaling, the eye is more distracted and with a pronouncing weathering all will look good. Cheers Rob

Keep on the good roll with the PE and metal stuff Gary, Your detailing looks supercool and yes, I glued some track links on with no brackets at all , but also tried a more realistic approach once or twice. Cheers Rob

Very nice build. I like the metal finish with the Argentine livery. Great work on that tiny plane. Cheers Rob

I toured a lot of times with a good friend of mine, he on his Harley Sportster and me on my KTM 950 Supermoto. The only thing both bikes had in common, was the fun they made driving. We ate lots of kilometers over the years, on German, Austrian and Czech roads, doing week trips without using highways. Sometimes I went to the north sea in the first warm spring days, only to jump into the ice cold sea and ride back to Berlin, 700 km's a day, only for fun. The KTM was a blade, fast, light, reliable and could go around corners like nothing else and was able to go up to 200 km/h without wobbling, a hard to achieve thing, given the high Supermoto shape of the bike and no wind protection at all. One other prominent feature were the breaks, they did, what they were made for perfectly, even without ABS. Sometimes we exchanged bikes and I learned to steer the Sportster like you described Ernie. To go fast on curvy mountain roads with the Sportster needed a lot of cojones though, as the brakes were a nightmare and the acceleration was downright poor. That meant, no breaking, if it can be avoided, to not have to accelerate that chunk of metal again. Sounds terrible, but wasn't. I never would have changed permanently to a Harley, but it was real fun to drive her, sound and vibrations are absolutely cool and the low center of gravity makes them easy to handle (not the case with yours, I think). Would I have lived in the US, I think, I may had owned a Harley myself, but commuting in Berlin and having lots of bad or curvy roads, other bikes were a better choice. Fond memories as I have promised my wife not to buy a motorcycle on my island, where driving can be really dangerous. Cheers Rob

I can't find these clamps looking too bad, Gary. You are over magnified and sensible . These tiny parts will look great under primer and paint. Nothing wrong with the exhaust straps. They are no more than a welded piece of bent flat iron in reality. Cheers Rob

I second Gus, your Tram starts to come together beautifully. The solution with the floorboards is great, Miniart should have thought about it a bit more. It's hard to see at he pictures, but aren't there any beams under the floor, to form a chassis? I sometimes thought about buying one of the Tram kits myself, but I can't stand repetitive work, if it can be hindered. For the same reason, I skipped the Roden Greyhound bus, as much as I like the design and braveness to produce such a kit. Speaking in wooden ships, I would never do ships bigger than let's say a heavy frigate, certainly no HMS. Victory. Cheers Rob

That sums it up pretty good Hubert. I think, there was a big relief with the introduction of breech loading. The process of fixing, loading, hauling in firing position, aiming, waiting for a good roll of the ship, firing, cleaning, ..., must be laborious and dangerous as well, only added by noise and fume. Not nice, having a leg entangled when a 32 pounder is firing. I left the ropes for pulling the gun to the gun port out, by the way of simplification. In 64 scale, I think this is ok, not even knowing if these cannons ever were fired on the real one. Cheers Rob

Whatever OSHA is, the deck of a sailing boat is no dancehall . I wonder which curses the seamen had in mind for their decadent passengers. Cheers Rob

Thanks Peter, the ladder looks definitely better than before. I considered doing this for the main ladder as well, but you cannot see it, descending into the hull. I'm no expert for cannon rigging, but reading the thread above, Martin provided and other sources, these ropes should be taut. The cannons must always be fixed on a rolling ship, Fire is the worst enemy of a wooden ship, but the second worst is a loose cannon running free on the deck, so I think taut is correct. Cheers Rob

Speaking of full broadsides, it's mighty 12 pounds per side, I finished rigging the guns with simplified version. All guns got their breeching ropes. Then the gun carriages where glued to the deck. As I already prepared the on deck eyebolts for more rigging, I decided for the sake of a busy looking deck, to add some more yarn. I made some tackle ropes from black thread and glued the knots with CA. I decided against a more realistic approach with using blocks, as I don't know if I have enough spares. I like the result, the deck starts to look busy and I'm only beginning to add equipment. I'm very grateful, that I started with the guns. The rigging proved to be fiddly and I needed as much space as possible. Cheers Rob

Thank you Martin, this article is interesting and frightening at the same time. I will study it more closely later. There are so many aspects in rigging, like timeframe, nationality, ..., to consider. I'm new to the subject, the DoK is 1/64 scale and these four pounders are tiny, so I took the liberty to make things a bit easier for me with a faux rigging . Cheers Rob

The hopefully last assemblies for the decks will be the connecting staircases. I glued them together with CA, but decided to refine the parts a bit before. I found the front edge of each stair looked too thick, so I beveled each step with the disc sander and now they appear a bit finer and scale right. Here are both of them, this time with varnish on. I rigged two cannons in half the time, I used up for the first one (the left one). I had to rip out the eyebolts and made the assembly on my work desk, not on the deck. The thread is a bit thinner, but the method is easier to accomplish. In the picture, all knots still remain to be refined, ends cut and of course the eyebolts glued in. I will do that, when all six cannons are rigged this way. Cheers Rob

Thank you Peter, as you can see in the following post, I simplified the rigging a bit, because, I couldn't make it look equal for the other cannons. I think it will be sufficient as well. Cheers rob

Thank you Gary, to put together the deck equipment is fun, but very time consuming. Until this phase of the build, there was nearly no clean up needed. On deck things are a bit different, lots of char to remove and all amounts to build it in a good sequence to not corner yourself. It also involves some preparations for the fit of the masts and other pats, later. The cannons are nicely made, if you lay out the parts in front of you, they look a bit simple, which changes assembled luckily, with a little help of varnish airbrush and pigments. Cheers Rob

Nice bike Ernie, not my style, but as you said for eating up miles comfortably it's perfect and the looks are just wow, but I doubt, that you can go above 3500 rpm without nose bleeding. There's a more socially accepted variant of helmet. These were worn by German firefighters until the 80's or 90's at least, but not DOT approved. Cheers Rob

No metal barrel Gary, there is a one piece plastic one with slide molded rifling. Not too shabby, but it has a slight mold line. The kit sports Magic Tracks, luckily. Cheers Rob

Thank you Kevin, I read somewhere, that the breech ropes should be three times the length of the barrel. That is the case here, when the rope is finally attached to the barrel. On the other hand, I doubt that these cannons were ever shot. Cheers Rob

Yep, there is metal mesh with my kit. It's pre cut and there are PE parts as frames. The mesh feels rigid, I guess it's made from steel. The kit number is 6784. Some pics of the manual with the mesh put onto it. Cheers Rob

There were not so frequent updates, because I prepared the numerous sub-assemblies for the decks. Here you can see some of them ready to install: The cannon barrels where sprayed matte black and received a rub of Uschis iron pigments. The tiny PE-parts which fix the barrel I bent over a halved brass rod of 1 mm diameter and attached with CA, after the carriage was assembled and varnished. I enhanced the pumps by adding angle cut brass tubes as an outlet. They were painted bronze with the mechanics held in matte black with iron pigments. I will tone down the shininess a bit further. Then I pondered about the rigging of the cannons and made a prototype, which was time consuming and nerve wrecking. I only went for breech ropes, where I made some rings from 0,5 mm brass rod to be later attached to the eyebolts in the bulwark. I made a loop through the ring and CA'ed the ends together. Than I added a thin thread around the ends, like it's done on ships. The whole assembly was very fiddly and I think about a simpler way with a similar result, as I doubt, I can do that six times looking equally. The gun is not finally glued on and the breech rope still has to be slung around the knob on the end of the barrel. I have to glue the rope there and therefore will be sure, this is six times doable. On the following pics, I added most of the subassemblies to the deck, but nothing is glued yet. The winch drum was airbrushed matte black, then the rings were masked off and the part got a layer of desert yellow, followed by two different red brown oil colors, to make it look a bit more like wood. That's how it will look in the end, still with more details to come. There are cannonballs and some cleats and I also bought a little boat, made from spars and planks. I'm not sure, if the boat is too much, but I will try, how it looks. It's not a part of the kit. Cheers Rob

I measured the steel mesh from my kit and it has a ca. 0,5 mm spacing, perfectly sufficient. Cheers Rob

Looking good, I like the multi colored wheels Gary. Is the mesh you're waiting for the Thoma-Schürzen mesh? Cheers Rob

I would never have thought so Gary Cheers Rob

Splendid detailing and nice paintjob on this very tiny airplane. sometimes it's pure pleasure to scale down to 48 or 72 scale for a change. Cheers Rob

Thanks Super-Gary, I now have a picture of you in my mind, combat ready with blood stained eyes . The Proxxon mini lathe is only for wood working, there is no way to adapt the necessary cutting tools for working with metals, except maybe sanding them. You can work with wooden parts up to a diameter of 8 mm with the standard issued horrible plastic collets. You can add a three jaw chuck for more flexibility, but the machine has a lot of limitations due to the tiny size and power. As I have to prepare the mast parts, which often are conical and have indentions, it will come handy. If you plan to work with metals, you have to spend more, not only for the machine, but the necessary tools as well. I thought about buying a better lathe, but skipped it, as I don't use it often enough to rectify the money. Cheers Rob

Thank you Peter, parts count isn't overwhelming. There is a lot in the box, a mix of materials, but opening some of Dragons boxes is even more frightening. The different materials need a lot of different techniques to be attended, but there is nothing which can't be done until now with a bit of experience in working with wood, PE and resin. The way the kit is designed, brings it nearer to us plastic addicts through the extensive use of PE and resin. Time consuming processes like opening gunports for example are made easy here with pre-fabricated parts, which only need a bit of clean up and adjusting. I haven't tracked the time consumed by the build, but I'm astonished, how fast it went on. I worked on the DoK for a bit more than two month now, but have no idea, how long masts and rigging will take. I've worked longer on some plastic kits, for example, my Fokker D.VIII build took more than three month. Cheers Rob