Steamer Ben Ain

[Guest]

Thanks for the kind comments Mankster. I guess if it's worth doing, it's worth doing well and all that!!

That level of detail though is unbeleivably time consuming so I have to keep my enthusiasm up and make sure the job gets progressed as it would be easy to become fed up and let my interest wander.

I would really like to get the bridge unit finished next time home and then I might really feel like I'm getting somewhere. That is probably going to be the most time consuming bit as well so the rest should progress a bit faster.

[Guest]

Just a quick comment to say how diffrent Ben Ain looks now, It's just getting better and better,

Jay

[Guest]

Just a quick comment to say how diffrent Ben Ain looks now, It's just getting better and better,Jay

Thanks Jay. Although there have been a few challenges, mostly of my own making, I am getting quite a buzz out of watching it come together. I need to maintain that level of enthusiasm for a couple more years though!! I did particularly enjoy putting the wheel house together and seeing it to a completion. I am deliberately not weathering the model as I go along as I want to do it all in one go to maintain the consistency of the finishes.

The wheelhouse had to be done though as it was all going to be covered over. One thing I didn't photo was a lamp I put on the chart table. Now at least the detail can be seen in the dark with the lamp on!!

[Guest]

Not been into boat models for a looong time and not scale. I am surprised at the enjoyment I am having watching this one go together.

[Guest]

Glad you like it Bob.

You make me feel guilty that it will not be progressing for another three months!

[Guest]

Nice work Richard,

I have always had a soft spot for Boats, In fact I still have a couple. Yours looks superb and is coming together nicely. I agree with the bit about getting a buzz of it building it too, Usually I get the same feeling when you can see a project really starting to take shape and coming to life...it's when you get that feeling that you really enjoy the labour of love involved in Model Making, which makes it all worthwhile

Looking forwards to seeing the finished Model.

Regards.....Mark

[Guest]

Richard!!!

How dare you have a workbench so tidy and damb discustingly clean?!!!!

There should be a law agin it#*%+##

Just joking mate!

The ship's looking fantastic!

Jason

[Guest]

It's just my obsessive-compulsive disorder!!

[Guest]

Richard-very interesting model of Ben Ain. I found out the drawings of Dorris Thomas in my book by Waine immediately,but not found the ribs cross sections there. Sorely it happens many times when drawings of ship are published.No way, anyway. regards Tom

[Guest]

Hi Richard, very nice and workmanship piece! I spent a lot of hours browsing through your pages , I didn´t left them till midnight. Congratulations. Tom

[Guest]

Tomarack, many thanks for your kind words. I cannot remember which book the cross section was in as I now have about five of those books each dealing with slightly different subjects and I am at work and away from my resources intil next March. The books are superb for getting to the detail of how such vessels were put together and giving excellent guidance as to how you can model them.

If you haven't yet looked try this link to a site that has a wealth of superb photographs of steam ships of the period I am interested in. Not only are there one or two of specific ships from the company that owned Doris Thomas but there are a lot of close up pictures that will be invaluable for creating the correctly realistic and weathered finish of the ship. They make you realise just how well used these vessels were.

http://www.rhiw.com/website_maps/ships_photos.htm

Look at the "Short Sea Vessels" section.

Apologies for not replying to your PM yet, I haven't forgotten it but busy at work so haven't had time. I will reply to it though.

[Guest]

I think it's a great idea to put build threads together. I was never quite sure where best to post them in the past, thanks Greyhead and John.

[Guest]

Hi Bunkerbarge.

Due to working a lot my Ben Ain Build has stood still for a long while. Things are easing off now so i can pick it up again.

Your progress has been supurb. The pictures will be very useful, as i'm still at the deck phase.

You have set the bar high for the rest of us to live up to well done look forward to seeing more pictures on the thread

Regards

Chris

[Guest]

Thanks for your coments Chris. I have just actually written the latest installment of the build thread with the progress so far and a couple of pictures from this leave. Glad you are getting back to your model and I look forward to seeing some picture of her. It really is a very rewarding kit to make and, although I am making a lot of modifications to mine she still looks good straight out of the box. Anyway here's chapter whatever!

Once again I find myself at the end of a leave and the Ben Ain not progressed as much as I’d hoped for. Never mind, Rome wasn’t built in a day but it was probably done a bit quicker than this model!!

This leave started with a go at a rowing boat which ended up taking far more time than I had intended so I had to make the break after a couple of weeks to get back to the steamer. Then, of course, I ended up doing a bit of work on the house for a couple of weeks so we now have a nice lounge but not a much progressed Ben Ain.

Having said that I have still put a lot of time into it but as with all my modifications to the kit they eat up time. The first step was to caulk the deck so I used a slightly modified method this time whereby I didn’t spread my glue mix all over the deck before sanding it down but I simply syringed it along the plank joints. This is strangely enough exactly the same way real teak decks are caulked so it must have something going for it. After the glue had set hard it was a lot easier to sand down to the wood level and after touching up a couple of air holes I had a neatly caulked deck again.

The next step involved making the flying bridge sidings which are supposed to be constructed of ply and then covered with a printed overlay. Once again I was not very impressed with the idea of an overlay so I glued the ply core to the deck first then I commenced the very time consuming task of planking the sidings myself with 5mm x 1mm stripwood. I cut the wood to length, 25mm, then carefully sanded a chamfer on each edge of the plank. This chamfer is necessary to allow the planks to appear quite distinctly separate and will allow a wash to flow into it when I eventually get around to weathering the model. I used 5 x 1 metre lengths of stripwood cut into 25mm pieces so you get the idea of where the time went. I also fitted a skirting around the bottom edge and a double thickness capping rail along the top edge. I still have to fit a decorative bead around the outside according to the plan which is the first job next time home. The skirting proved to be particularly tricky when it was fitted across the camber as the curve is quite significant and the plank required wetting to try to get it to conform. To help with this I cut the 5mm strip down to 4mm, which conveniently gave me a pile of 1mm strips to be used for the decorative beading! After the vertical planking had all been completed I then had the task of levelling it all and ensuring the front and back were both of the same curvature and they were level. To help with this I made a tool by glueing a piece of sandpaper to a piece of an old wooden yard stick and then proceeded to very carefully sand the tops of the bulwarks down to the required level. This actually worked very well and left me with a nice flat top to glue the capping to relatively easily.

The other main part of this work has been the fitting of the navigational lights and how I was going to get power to them. I ran some fine cable up through a box at the back of the wheelhouse which was then run into a channel along the back of the flying bridge, held in place first by the vertical planking and then finally by the skirting. The cables then had to be joined to the lamps so I had to decide how best to go about that. I bought some brass lamps of Ebay for the Navigation lights as I wasn’t too keen on the white metal quartered lamps supplied with the kit. I painted them up with primer then a coat of copper paint before a top coat of red or green. This allowed me to scrape a bit of red and green away and reveal the copper below which I then gave a dry brush with a Verdi Gris colour before a wash with a brown. The lamps were installed into the boards and the cables run through a hole in the deck before looping back up through another hole on the other side of the siding. This then gave me the two ends of the cables together and I then constructed a planked door which you will actually find in this situation on a lot of vessels which is there to enable easy access to the Navigation lamps for maintenance or, in those days, for lighting and extinguishing the Navigation lamps. I employed a little bit of poetic licence here and instead of just having an access door I incorporated the door into a raised box which then gave me somewhere convenient to make the electrical connections to the lamps, neatly and completely concealed.

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[Guest]

Well I actually got the skirting all finished and both Navigation light connection boxes finished today so next leave I have to get the equipment fitted to the bridge and a real attempt to get the bridge unit completed.