k.u.k. Marine Wien

[Corporal_Trim]

This is the JSC 1/250 Austro-Hungarian pre-dreadnought battleship Wien (Vienna). I have been debating with myself whether or not to make a thread about it. At first, I was doubting my skills and didn't want to make an ass of myself by announcing the build with fanfare and then falling on my face, or quitting the build partway to conclusion. Once I knew I could build it, I hadn't taken any in-progress shots, hence was reticent to appear amongst so many other wonderful tutorial-quality threads on the Ship Model forum.

But as there seems to be some interest in pre-WW2 ships, why not go ahead and show it ? Here goes, we will start the movie on the last reel. Here she is, represented in fancy Victorian livery, looking perhaps like some sort of deadly cruise ship.

 

[Corporal_Trim]

The Wien was a coastal defense battleship built in the 1890's. Of quite modest displacement (around 7,500 tons), the ship carried a 10" main battery and 5.9" secondary armament. She was torpedoed by the Italians in 1917.

 

[Corporal_Trim]

Another top-down view, towards the stern this time. I have been working on the ship off and on since December '03. I worked very steadily on it from 12/23/03 until the end of January. I took a break until March to work on cars, did a little more in March, knocked off again until last week. Right now. I'm finishing the installing the boats and davits.

 

[Corporal_Trim]

A view of "A" turret and the bridge. JSC's instructions are pretty good, in Polish, but also with a truncated sheet in English (or maybe it takes twice as much paper to express the same ideas on Polish. ). There are also some extra diagrams of the less intuitive parts, how to build the secondary casemate battery, funnel details and so on. Strangely, there was no such diagram for the turrets, an oversight. There is some tricky asembly involved with getting the guns mounted so that they will elevate, and how this gun mount is supposed to fit inside, I still don't know. I had to do a lot of trimming to make it fit, but things worked out okay.

 

[Corporal_Trim]

Looking at the funnel area from starboard. Had a problem with the weak portions of the side sagging badly out of shape just over the 5.9" gun shown here. In retrospect, it would be better to reinforce these areas. The same holds true of the decks. JSC does not have you glue the maindeck onto thicker backing. The internal box/bulkhead construction is sized to accomodate the deck without that, but it is very prone to bend out of shape when you install the hull pieces. Great care must be taken with that step.

 

[Corporal_Trim]

The rear portion of the upper deck viewed from port. The boats are rather crude. JSC's design for these davits needs improvement as well. The davit glues to the base, without any sort of reinforcement. I knew this would never hold the weight of the boats and fiddling to glue them in place. I cut slots into the davit bases. cut out the davits with extra tabs and this is sufficiently strong. Also, the parts sheet provides a 1.2mm wide 2x thick strip of cardstock to hang the boats, and again, this does not suffice from an appearance standpoint. I simulated block and tackle with of .015 brass wire, it looks a bit out of scale now that I see it in the photo, but looks okay to the naked eye, better than the strip would have been at least.

 

[Corporal_Trim]

Looking from directly aft. The aft bridge was a bit of a chore, the railings weren't scaled correctly and the supports needed trimming to fit. Strangely, the wedding cake assembly of the main bridge went together more nicely, although there were a lot more parts. Things look a little sparse back there. I will be installing the jolly boats and long boats on that part of the ship next, creating more Victorian clutter.

 

[Corporal_Trim]

One more parting shot for now (oops, looks like I've bent one of the 46 ventilators. No worries, it can be fixed easily enough ). One word of warning also for future builders. JSC instructs you to install the casemate/turret assemblies, then that area of gray deck between the casemate and upper deck. This deck did not fit well at all, better would be to install this first and snug the turret assembly up against it afterwards.

Next up after finishing the after deck davits/boats:

1) Torpedo net booms.
2) Masts/spars. Also some 47mm guns and other details to be installed on the mast platforms.
3) Rigging. I don't plan a fancy 1:1 rigging job recreating every last line, just enough to create the essence of it.
4) Flags. Then it's finished.

Sorry about the mediocre image quality. I had to resize a couple of times to get under the size limit and the qualtity degraded. I think I can do this part better in the future.

 

[barry]

Steve

Looks impressive I wondered what had happened to her. Glad your posting, after all I showed you my mistakes you can show us yours and we'll all benefit.

Look forward to the rest of the build.

If we all posted a bit more it would make it a better site especially for beginners.

Thank you

barry

 

[Corporal_Trim]

Thanks, barry. 8)

Regarding mistakes, it's funny how cruel the camera can be. I knew the boats were only so-so, but the mounting looked a lot worse to me on film. I went back today and did some edge painting of the boat tops and they look better. Not much I can do now about how the boats are hung from the davits without extensive rework, but I did paint the wire a lighter gray to ease that "sore thumb" look.

 

[barry]

Steve

Tell me about it I try to take pictures outside in the sun mainly because it's kinder to my unfinished edges. If the flash goes I think shall I post it ??

When Tak's finished I shall have to get my smallest brush and go round with the paint.

barry

 

[Ajax]

She looks beautiful, Steve! I've always liked the Victorian "deadly cruise ship" livery. :lol: Thanks for posting the pictures!

A few questions come to mind. When it comes to reinforcing decks to prevent sagging/warping, is there some "magic number" as to the thickness to which you should build up the card in order to prevent that from happening? Also, is reinforcement something you only need to worry about when it comes to the decks and baseplate, or do the sides of the hull need to be reinforced as well? And finally, I was wondering what you used to color the edges.

A.J.

 

[JRSeese]

Thanks for the pictures, Steve. I have a JSC kit in queue, the liner United States... I got no English instructions at all with her! So it will be an adventure to say the least.

I am also concerned about strength of the ship's hull / deck; it's almost designed to be built like a box kite, with a triangular strengthening beam running straight down the middle. Then you put the deck and side plating on like skin. Not sure which pieces I should reinforce

Your ship is a beaut!

Josh

 

[bwallaw]

Looks great Steve. Thanks for the photos.

The creator ALWAYS sees all the flaws. The rest of us are just really impressed.

About the card thickness. The ONLY boat I have built was the free Ambrose Light Ship (99.5% complete). This model had explicit direction for what thickness to use for all the parts and since it's part of Romans "DigitalNavy", the tolerances are quite precise. I cut corners :roll: and made the deck 0.5mm instead of the recommended 1.0mm and low and behold... the hull pieces were about 0.5mm above the deck. So I did some trimming. Cutting is what it's all about I guess.

So at this point, I am following recommendations (if provided) and otherwise do a lot of dry fitting to avoid disaster in the later stages.

 

[Corporal_Trim]

A few questions come to mind. When it comes to reinforcing decks to prevent sagging/warping, is there some "magic number" as to the thickness to which you should build up the card in order to prevent that from happening? Also, is reinforcement something you only need to worry about when it comes to the decks and baseplate, or do the sides of the hull need to be reinforced as well? And finally, I was wondering what you used to color the edges.

A.J.

Thanks, guys !

Reinforcing the deck to 1mm or so is a good idea, IMO. But you've got to play the hand you're dealt. Digital Navy might tell you something like, reinforce .2mm of cardstock with .8mm of something else to equal 1mm total thickness, so that's what you do. JSC doesn't do it that way. In either case, if you deviate from the design concerning the deck reinforcement, then you run the risk that your hull pieces on the side will be too tall or too short. biBill's example illustrates this perfectly.

What Josh described, JSC's construction system is the interlocking central box formers, with bulkheads which glue to the box formers on the inside and to which you attach your outer hull on the outside. JSC evidently feels these box formers give the model sufficient strength and that's all that's needed. I don't quite agree with this. The box formers are strong, but outside of that, the thin decks can sag with the pressure of the outer hull as you glue it, you can overcome this, but have to be very careful with this step of the build. As for reinforcing other things besides the decks, it's your decision so long as what you do will not change the overall dimensions. I put dowels here and there inside the Wien as bracing. such as inside the turrets to keep the top from sagging as I glued it.

I don't see a need to reinforce the outer hull strips themselves, as long as you avoid Larry's well-described "starved dog" effect.

I color the edges with acrylic paint, applied with a 10/0 brush. I paint wargames figures and German flats, so luckily I have about any color needed already available.

 

[barry]

If you are going to add thickness to the upper decks then leave an extra bit on the waterline of the hull sides then dry fit it and check.

You can always hide the mistake with a little paint or set it in some model sea.

Personally I prefer this to a floppy deck.

barry

 

[Ajax]

Thanks for the tip, Bill, about watching the effect on other parts. Hmm, if I ever have to choose between the two, I suppose I'd agree with Barry's point of view - I'd hate to have a floppy deck! I found a free model on the internet that's 17.5" long and has relatively few parts, but a lot of decks, so I think I'll experiment on that ship to get an idea of how well I can expect the decks to hold up.

Thanks for answering all my questions, Steve! And I've thought of another one as well. When you were cutting out long curved parts like the main deck, to get a nice smooth cut, did you find it better to use sharp scissors or did you cut it carefully with a hobby knife?

A.J.

 

[Corporal_Trim]

Ajax,

Scissors all the way. I also have a very sharp scissors made for snipping ship model rigging and these things are also excellent for cutting precisely to the edge of something. For example, when you are cutting out a series of triangular tabs, they work great. I use the x-acto knife frequently for scoring edge folds, of course. But cutting out parts with the x-acto knife I find to be tedious, and reserve it only for those situations where scissors won't work.

 

[Jim Krauzlis]

Great thread, Corporal Trim!!
She's a beaut, and as has been mentioned already, any "flaws" are noticed most by they who built them, not the admiring public!
I appreciated the input on thickness and cutting. I am still plodding along trying to develop my skill in card modeling and I can NOT get enough input on such things!
Good observation on the JSC series, they don't seem to use any thickening techniques on the decks or other obvious places, and sometimes it does give you a wavey deck, such as I saw with the Mexico Victory. Luckily it doesn't show too much (except to me, where it seems to be a fatal flaw!), but I have been toying with adding to the strudiness on a future project to avoid that. It will take a bit of dry fitting of the side bulwarks, though, since that will add some height that wasn't designed in, so I suppose I will have to reduce the frame heights a bit (JSC uses a different hull system, as most might have experienced or read about, and not the usual egg crate construction) but the boxes they incorporate into some of the interior for support will have to be adjusted very carefully!

Talking about cutting with scissors, after finding the xacto difficult for some of those long curves on the deck I opted for scissors and found them to be a lot easier to control! Only took a few trys to come to that realization. ops:

Superb model, Corporal Trim!! I have some models of German ships from this era and look forward to trying them in the near future...I seriously doubt it will come out as well as yours, but guess that's part of the learning curve.
Jim

 

[JRSeese]

Hmm... Wondering about an alternative to laminating the entire deck. If I cut notches in the top edges of the formers wide enough to accommodate two thick card strips running the length of the deck, it would provide additional support on a perpendicular to the formers and perhaps alleviate saggy deck.

Gears are turning, but caveat emptor as this is from the genius who thought to install a zap motor in his lighthouse

Josh