Duchess of Kingston - Beauty of the Seas - Wooden Sailing Ship 1/64

[DocRob]

8 hours ago, GazzaS said:

Whoa!  Definitely looking awesome, Rob!  I'm getting lost in all of this nautical jargon, though.  Bulwarks?  Catsheads? 

In the US Marines, we played the nautical game, too...  even thousands of miles from water.  The floor is the "deck", and the wall, a "bulkhead".  The ceiling was an "overhead", and the stairs, a ladder.

And heaven help you if your gear was "adrift".

Ha ha, the maritime terminology is a language in it's own. I read Hornblower and others, when I was young, so I'm a bit accustomed to the slang. To tell progress differently would not be very helpful with descriptions like 'the thing, made from wood, which is protruding from the upper front of the fuselage, which carries the ships breaking system' , so cathead is a bit shorter.
As English is not my mother tongue, it also helps me using the manual for vocabulary 

Cheers Rob

[DocRob]

Like every build, there are some mishaps taking place. When I narrowed the cabin front on the disc sander, I managed to break the decorations part. Luckily I found all the pieces and was able to glue them together on a glass plate, phew.

While test fitting, I found out, that the gunwales for the starboard side doesn't fit with my bulwark, the radius was too tight. I turned the DoK upside down and marked the correct contour with a pencil on a sheet of paper. After soaking the gunwale part, I clamped it down, the shape forced to fit the paper and let it dry overnight. Now it fits perfectly.

At last, something, I'm used to, masking. I masked off the areas on top, which will be painted bright red. An old foam insert from a laptop packet, was cut to fit, as a soft cradle for the painting jobs.

That's where I am now, the rims are painted red as well as the stern and I painted the inside of the gun ports red, which was quite nerve tangling. I used a cotton swab soaked with Tamiya XF flat red color to do this.
In the next step, I will add the rail patterns to the hull, where I brush painted the window framing with Tamiya XF flat black and the gun ports in red color.

Cheers Rob

 

[DocRob]

Decorations are on, at least preliminary. I attached them, using tiny nails into the pre drilled holes to align in different locations. Fit is perfect in all directions, except one cut at the bow, but that's by design. I'm not sure, if I use PVA or CA for the decorations, as it's easy to soil the painted parts. I think, I will glue, while pinned, using only the distance, the nail provides for putting the glue on. This way, I have a minimized risk of smears. I will work from the stern forward to the bow poco a poco.

I love the way, Chris designed the decorations layer wise, as there will be PE-window frames and PE decorations added onto the wooden parts. I searched the whole box for some clear acetate for the windows and found none. Not sure, if I will make them myself or leave them out.

Cheers Rob

[Landlubber Mike]

Looking really great Rob.  The painting and decorations look fantastic!

One alternative to using paints on wooden ship models - aside from using colored woods - is to use stains and dyes.  On my Pegasus I used black and blue stains from General Finishes.  I like the stains approach in that they go on a little thinner than paints, and so you can still see a little of the definition of the wood underneath and it will have subtle variations in color tone reflecting the variations in color tone of the wood.  Have to test any stain or dye out on scrap first, as they will look different depending on what wood you are applying them to.  Just wanted to throw that out there in case you are thinking about a future wooden ship build.

[DocRob]

19 hours ago, Landlubber Mike said:

Looking really great Rob.  The painting and decorations look fantastic!

One alternative to using paints on wooden ship models - aside from using colored woods - is to use stains and dyes.  On my Pegasus I used black and blue stains from General Finishes.  I like the stains approach in that they go on a little thinner than paints, and so you can still see a little of the definition of the wood underneath and it will have subtle variations in color tone reflecting the variations in color tone of the wood.  Have to test any stain or dye out on scrap first, as they will look different depending on what wood you are applying them to.  Just wanted to throw that out there in case you are thinking about a future wooden ship build.

Thank you Mike, for this build, I do not considered staining, because I read the Biography of the Duchess of Kingston, where some mentioning about her Yacht were made. This ship was an opulent yacht, to party on and I think, solid bright colors do that appearance justice. 
I want to use the same blue color for the hull, as is used for the background of the stern decorations and the figurehead, not possible with staining.

I really like the translucent look of stains on wood, it make the wood look rich, obviously different from opaque colors and I may try this on other builds, possibly in larger scales.

Besides lots of preparations, I assembled the decorative fairings on the hull. A picture of these will follow.

I primed the resin parts for figurehead and stern decoration, the latter has been bent slightly, to follow the stern contour with hot air. I then sprayed some Tamiya flat blue as a base for the gold painting.
Speaking of gold, I test sprayed Vallejo rich gold from the Liquid Gold range and it works. It thins with Alcohol. When brush painting this color, it looks first a little stained, but then turns to reflective gold, without showing any grain. The effect is smiliar to the Molotow chrome markers

Next on the to do list is adding the black painted gunwales, which are only test fitted on the pic, to determine, where I have to use some wood filler on the curved parts, which will be painted black after sanding the filler smooth.

Cheers Rob

[DocRob]

In the first pic, I filled and sanded the four areas between the next to add bulwarks.

Here the bulwarks are on and the filled areas painted correspondingly in matte black. To apply a bit of pressure onto the parts for a thorough bond, the sharp eyed between you will spot some tiny nails which were angled thrust into the underlaying wood through pre drilled holes in the gunwales.

 

Cheers Rob

[DocRob]

Slight change of plans, following the manual, next would have been adding two black wales on each side to the hull. I pre-bended these, but as I saw, how close they were to the waterline, I decided to first paint the underwater area of the hull in matte white, after priming. I again marked the waterline with a pencil and used Kabuki tape for demarcation. 

As the rudder has an underwater area, painted white , as the hull, I prepared the rudder with PE fittings, which were pinned to fit with tiny brass nails. The fit again was exceptional with the pre drilled holes to the etched fittings. You can see the pencil marked waterline on the side.

Cheers Rob

[DocRob]

Some more color onto the hull. After marking the waterline, I masked off the whole ship, to avoid overspray and primed with light gray Mr. Surfacer 1200. Then I sprayed on some coats of Tamiya XF-flat white and carefully removed the masking, as I prefer to do so, when the color hasn't completely dried.

The same procedure was used for the rudder and the opulent PE sheets, which will later be masked and painted red occasionally and more so in gold color.

Cheers Rob

[DocRob]

Gold, gold, gold,... Today was a, you probably guessed it, golden day. I sprayed all the golden PE-decorations and then painted the figurehead and stern decoration. Vallejo's liquid gold are exactly this. It's a phenomenal color and can be brush painted and airbrushed. There is no grain and the reflectiveness is unbelivable.
Even harder than detail painting is taking pictures of golden objects, which look very different with only slightly varying lighting conditions.

Figurehead

Stern decoration

...and PE

Cheers Rob

[belugawhaleman]

Coming along nicely Rob! The gold paint is A good match for gold leaf. This really

is A superb build so far and I've enjoyed following your progress.

[DocRob]

6 hours ago, belugawhaleman said:

Coming along nicely Rob! The gold paint is A good match for gold leaf. This really

is A superb build so far and I've enjoyed following your progress.

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 

[HubertB]

Hang on ! I thought she was named « Duchess of Kingston », not « Philadelphia » ???

🤪

Joking apart, phenomenal work on a beautiful kit, Rob. And Vallejo Gold duly bookmarked.

Hubert

 

[GazzaS]

Wow, Rob!  That transom is absolutely stunning!

[DocRob]

6 hours ago, HubertB said:

Hang on ! I thought she was named « Duchess of Kingston », not « Philadelphia » ???

🤪

Joking apart, phenomenal work on a beautiful kit, Rob. And Vallejo Gold duly bookmarked.

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

[DocRob]

5 hours ago, GazzaS said:

Wow, Rob!  That transom is absolutely stunning!

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.

 

[DocRob]

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

[Bomber_County]

Rob, you’re making this look easy, stunning…….

[GazzaS]

the hull looks quite stunning!

[belugawhaleman]

More great progress! By the way, can the liquid gold paint be airbrushed? If so, with what

thinner?

[DocRob]

14 hours ago, Bomber_County said:

Rob, you’re making this look easy, stunning…….

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.
 

5 hours ago, GazzaS said:

the hull looks quite stunning!

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.
 

5 hours ago, belugawhaleman said:

More great progress! By the way, can the liquid gold paint be airbrushed? If so, with what

thinner?

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

 

[DocRob]

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

[DocRob]

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

[Jackster]

Absolutely stunning Rob!

Cheers

Kev

[Martinnfb]

Rob, your attention to detail ever seize to surprise me. Good show !

[DocRob]

3 hours ago, Jackster said:

Absolutely stunning Rob!

 

1 hour ago, Martinnfb said:

Rob, your attention to detail ever seize to surprise me. Good show !

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