DocRob

Nice Martin, I look forward to the result. never tried salt myself while modelling, but more often while surfing . Cheers Rob

Today, I moved to the bow, where I assembled the prepared parts. The whole assembly is a bit delicate and in the pics there are still missing two supports for the protruding catheads, which wouldn't like to fit like I wanted. There is a minor mistake in the manual, which claims to glue on the decorative wooden rails, which curls in front of the Lions foot. If you glue them on on both sides you can't add the figurehead later, like it is supposed. I glued the rail only on one side as I like to add the figurehead very late in the build for safety reasons. Here are two pics of the stern, one with additional wooden rails and one without. As I'm still not sure, if I will mount them, I'm interested in your opinion. I have a little tendency to go on without the rails Cheers Rob

Muchas gracias señhores. This kit builds like an onion, you start with a frame, first and second planking, wooden decorations, PE-decorations. You add layer per layer to finish the hull. The design is exceptional clever. Cheers Rob

I never thought it through completely, but wouldn't it be possible to paint the entire turtle in black, using a Molotow masking pen for masking the demacration lines and then spray the camo. If the Molotow masking pens adhere well enough, it should be possible. It was my first thought for a French Schneider tank, but then I changed my mind and will built it as Spanish Republican tank. Cheers Rob

Nice little kit, it came out great with the near monochrome paintjob, which let the eye focus on the details. Cheers Rob

To put it into a cheap rhyme, I love the look of your Stug . Earnestly, the tri tone camo is great and I can't wait for pictures with the figures and other details on. Cheers Rob

Again a beautiful result with the Fokker, showing the usual mikeness fashion, which is like a good trademark of your builds. Cheers Rob

I added some more decorations to the stern and put on the horseshoe and fish PE with pins and glue. I then prepared all the bow parts, which needed to be beveled in some cases and painted them black. The catheads were also painted and the holes, where they pass the bulwark were adjusted with a file. The Duchess of Kingston starts to look like a real lady, slowly. Cheers Rob

Thank you Kevin, if you are prepared and have a good plan, planking is demanding, but not frightening. When I understand it right, your Baltimore is a relatively modern ship, where there is paint on the planks, which is more forgiving, than a natural wood look. I'd like to see you Wip-ing your build. Cheers Rob

Very cool build with the lighting Kai. It is always a demanding task, to add lighting to a kit and prevent stray light and the usual installation probs. Seems to work out well with your build. I added lighting to kit only once, but it enhanced the appearance of the build a lot. Cheers Rob

After all that self inflicted stress, some relief finally. The stern fascia's glue hold up, even some wiggling couldn't pry it loose, phew. I added the ready painted PE-window frames and the gold PE decoration between the windows with CA. A few touch ups later, I added the wooden rail under the windows and could make it fit without a gap under resin decoration. I'd seen gaps there on other builds and didn't like the look and tried everything to let these parts meet closely. The kit supplies two more protruding golden rails under the stern fascia, like shown in this manual pic, but I'm not sure if I like them at all. If I decide to add them, they will be in natural wood, as I don't want to have golden decorations below a certain level. I prepared the lower halved ones yesterday and blue tacked them on and still am not sure, if the look benefits with these. Cheers Rob

Thanks Gary the stern piece is a true shape shifter, I will go to my cave now and check, not without a cloud full of thoughts in my head . Cheers Rob

Nice Gary, I also have a soft spot for these machines, outdated, absurdly improvised with more and more add on modifications, which lead to even more modifications, because of the increasing weight. I will follow your build, as I have a similar boxing in my stash and it's on top of my to build tanks list. Mine has metal wire mesh combined with PE for the Thoma Schürzen and a supplied tool for bending them correctly along Magic tracks and represents the late version. Cheers Rob

Very nice choice of subject, Hubert. Leipzig in Saxony has also blue and yellow painted trams. You may find some pics in the net from some old trams, like the MiniArt kit. Will you include the passengers? Cheers Rob

Thank you Gentlemen, I hope the stern solution works out, an area which I dreaded since two weeks. Hopefully the glue will be strong enough. Cheers Rob

After a calming breakfast, I decided to give the stern another try. I set the DoK in the lately rarely seen sun and let her sunbath for an hour, to dry the wood and be able to glue the stern fascia again. After I removed the rubber bands it looked like this, almost perfect, bummer that there is no more space to get some glue in between . I then applied some CA, wherever possible and now hope, that tomorrow everything will be good, but somehow have my doubts. Cheers Rob

I ran into the first real trouble with the DoK and I expected it to be troublesome since I addressed the stern fascia for the first time, two weeks ago. The wooden part was soaked then and clamped to dry on a corresponding tin, to have the right curve for the stern. The next day, I had exactly the right curve, but found that the part got 1 cm wider, even after the drying time. I never could have imagined such an expansion. I tried to further dry the wood with a hairdryer, which helped a bit, but something was always wrong in the end, curvature or width. This is even more problematic, as there are the resin and PE-decorations to fit precisely. If you ever build the DoK, be warned, NEVER soak the stern fascia, this will invite trouble all along. The resin decoration were pre bent by me, using a hairdryer and had the perfect curvature. Yesterday, I prepared the wooden part, which was bended correctly, but was again oversized, as it seems to expanse through humidity in the air after the initial soaking. I used a hairdryer again and got the size issue solved and instantly glued the resin decorations on, while the wood was still warm. After curing, everything looked good and both parts had the right curvature. Then I glued the parts to the hull with white glue and secured everything with rubber bands. Everything looked perfect. In the morning, I checke, how my method had worked and found the whole stern assembly absolutely straight, no curve at all, pure horror. I don't know what to do now. I will carefully try to soak the wood again from the inside and try to bend it again with some force and glue it again, but have no idea if this works out. I may add two or four pins as support. The worst option would be to fill the gaps somehow and live with a straight stern, which would look absolutely silly. Cheers Rob

Thanks for showing the rubber brushes, I will try them with pigments, as I can see the benefits. But mostly they could be a tool, I was looking for since a long time, for applying decals. Should be comfy to push on decals with these, to get rid of water or air bubbles, trapped under the decal. BTW, I love the Skoda turtle, such a nice, steam punk like design, but the camo will be a challenge. Cheers Rob

Thanks Phil, easy may not be the right term, but the well designed kit helps a lot. There are tough tasks to fulfill, but the build is so rewarding and somehow, there are no real dealbreakers. I built so many kits and some ended on the SOD, but with the Duchess of Kingston, I never had that feeling. Thank you Gary, I like the look too. Other than plastic kits, it's somehow more sensual to work with wood. It looks good, when it feels good, in the sense of being smooth and well finished. Thank you, the whole idea of my search for a good gold color was, it needed to be brush- and airbrushable. I wanted to have the same gold shine on all the parts. I tested some, from Tamiya , from Gunze (Super Metalic Colours II Super Rich Gold) better but not good, Scale 75's Elven Gold (good to brush, but not very good to spray) AK's phenomenal to spray Extreme Metallics gold (Too thin for brushpainting) and considered without testing AK's metallic waxes. The Vallejo Liquid Gold can be thinned (and cleaned) with Alcohol (white spirit). I thinned it only while testing, but used it decanted from the jar with a synthetic brush and sprayed it with my Infinity airbrush through a 0,2 mm nozzle without problems. The result of airbrushing is difficult to capture in a photo, but it came out decent, I think. Cheers Rob

Today I found the courage to add the two black strips (main wales) to the hull, a task, I dreaded, because there was so much potential to smear glue on the finished hull. The pieces come pre cut and fit like a glove lengthwise. The upper one fits into a nook in the back window decoration, which defines the distance to the bulwark pattern, like the manual claimed correctly at 10,5 mm. I cut some spacers of the size from plank residues and added them to the hull sides with tiny bits of blue tack. My precise cutter came in handy for the task. Then I glued the wale in position, using CA and that proved to be quite demanding. I glued in four steps and found the twisting in the bow area hard to compensate, pushing on the wale with my fingers until they got numb. As a security, I pushed in some brass nails, where I painted the heads black afterwards. I cut spacers again, this time three millimeter wide and used small cuts of tape to glue them to the finished upper wale. Then I glued on the second wale, which needed to be shortened at the stern. On the other side of the hull, I repeated the procedure, but found out, that the wood would fit more easily in the problematic bow area, when I twist it between my fingers centimeter by centimeter, which seems to soften the composure of the wood a bit and made it way easier to lay it flat to the hull. That's where I ended up, without causing bigger damage. I sanded the stern endings of the wales to fit and puttied a wee bit, where they lay on the hull. I touched up the sanded and filled parts along the pin heads and some imperfections on the gunwales. The figurehead is only loosely added for vanity reasons Cheers Rob

Thank you Gary, it was an eye straining task and due to the very thin character of the paint, there are some touch ups left to do. Cheers Rob P.S. Here is a stern mock up without the window frames.

Thank you Hubert, why not 'Philadelphia', by the time Elisabeth Chudleigh christened the ship to 'Duchess of Kingston' she wasn't the Duchess of Kingston anymore as her dead 'husband', the Duke of Kingston, officially was not anymore her husband, due to a bigamy verdict (Elisabeth married another man very young, but didn't accept the marriage as legal, later) in England. The ship's name was a kind of retaliation to the process, which Elisabeth felt injustice and alienated her to her mother country. Only to be exact about the color, it's this one among the many Vallejo colors. It can be thinned with alcohol (white spirit), but this was not necessary in my case. I followed the recommendations to use a synthetic brush and to decant what I needed from the jar. Cheers Rob

Muchas gracias, this gold color is my new go to for shining gold, you could paint an Oscar with it or some fake gold ingots in Fort Knox. It's even more shiny, than it looks in the pics. It is very thin and you have to be careful, while painting. Some people claimed, that it's very hard to use, but I found that not true. I used a synthetic brush, not too small, to hold some color, but with a good tip for details. I have to make some touchups with the blue base color, but I like the result. The Vallejo liquid gold was mentioned in the manual by Chris (and James), another hint of the quality of it mentioning even the best chosen colors. I tested all my stashed gold colors before and found none, which was good to hand brush and to airbrush sufficiently and the worst of all, was Tamiya's gold leave, where the pigments are as big as some details on my stern decoration. Cheers Rob

Nice Ernie, a bit scuffed, which is beautifully rendered. I wasn't aware, that the IP is so oversized for just the two instruments and some levers on the Fokker. Cheers Rob

Beautiful rendition of that aggressive looking snake. The OD came out great, near matte with just a little bit of shine. It looks like the killer bee it was. Cheers Rob