SS KRAKOW in 1:400 scale by JSC No. 42

cmdrted

Active Member
Jul 8, 2004
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Excellant work Jim, Great detail for 1/400, and although not my immediate forte, the work doesn't have to be a combat ship to be a masterpiece, thanks , T
 

Maurice

Member
Jan 16, 2004
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16
Great one Jim.
There's a lot of photo etch available in 1/350 scale for models in that other material. I have no experience of how suitable it would be but have you considered either using it direct or slightly enlargiing the paper kits.
Sorry about the lack of pics but at least I wasn't the only one to fail in the quest.:D

Cheers
Maurice
 

Bowdenja

Active Member
Sep 26, 2005
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OK Jim :roll: ............. Now that you are finished..........how about a picture of the microscope you used to build it with! :shock:

Man the scale and beauty of this build is really REALLY mind boggling! :shock: :D

Thanks again for sharing it with us. You really did and excellent job. :wink:

john
 

Jim Krauzlis

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Sep 26, 2005
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Well...finally...finished!! :D

@ John, it wasn't quite done yet, but hopefully the last shots of the finished model is worth coming back for another look. :D

@Maurine, that's alright, there were VERY few photos of the actual ship (one as far as I have been shown) but Simon was able to come up with that one, and a few of a model...I will post that one photo at the end. But I do appreciate your looking. :wink:

@ Rob...well, it's actually green, not red, and I'll never tell how I hid it! :lol:

So, before I get to the finished model, let me tell you a tale about making the life boat tackles. I tried something different this time as my usual way came up with tackles that just looked too big. They still look a bit out of scale, but it look's a bit better doing it this way, I think.

The idea is to wrap the silk line around a stiffened thread and then, when all is dry, to trim the stiff thread so that the piece left with the silk wrapped around it gives me the block shape. A little touch-up with paint and it's done. The trick was to keep the stiffened thread stiff enough under the stress of the silk wrappings, so I worked out a simple little jig for this, which I show below. Totally seat of your paints construction, but it seemed to fit the bill and gave me sufficient stiffness to get the job done. Actually, using this method was a lot faster to build the tackles than the old way, for some reason. :roll: Anyway, I hope it might be useful in making some parts for your models; you can adjust the distance between the "blocks" any distance provided the jig is wide enough.

As usual at this scale, some of the close-ups show the roughness of the techniques, and the camera lovingly shows these problems REAL well, but hopefully the overall appearance is okay.

So, here is the finished model. It was really a joy to build her, didn't take all that much, and it had some nice little features that I found attractive to show a typical tramp steamer...a workhorse from years ago.

Thanks to all who stopped by, and for those many folks that gave me quite a bit of encouragement along the way. I hope to see you all again soon as I resume work on my Constitution, which has been grumbling off in the corner of my work table as I tended to this little lady.

Cheers!

Jim
 

barry

Active Member
Jan 28, 2004
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Brighton Uk
Krakow

Jim

It is a wonderful model and if Idid not know better I would have said 1/200 I do not know how you do it. But do it again please.

respect

barry
 

Jim Krauzlis

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Sep 26, 2005
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Thanks, guys!

I was afraid I might have posted too many photos, but I was trying to make up for the delay since the last set and show a few angles to give you an idea of what I added in the meantime.

@ Barry, thanks so much, mate, you are way too kind, and I'm glad you enjoyed the thread. I've got a few ideas for the next new project, but I want to get going on Constitution too, she's begging for attention. :D

@ Gil, thanks! I should of thought of the bottle before I got her done...now I'll have to just bite the bullet and empty one lying around the house...a tough job, but someone has to do it. :wink: Actually, that's a nice idea, making a ship in the bottle out of paper! Got to give that one a thought.... :?

@ Bill, thanks! She has those classic lines, so I just had to add some smoke coming from the stack. I used some cotton from the tip of an ear swab, one brand name being Q-Tip, but this is the cheaper store brand.

One thing about that, when you pull the cotton out you sometimes get these little nibs of cotton, small balls, that take away from the impression of smoke...not sure if it's peculiar to the cheap brand or not, but I had to pull them out where possible because it just didn't look right.

I thought of using a cotton ball, might work, but a) I didn't have any in the house (now how can that be with a wife and child in the house? :lol: ) and 2) the ear swab cotton had a nice little twist to it that helped form the smoke shape. I unraveled it around a brass rod for forming, gradually thinning it out as I went, then gave it a quick shot of hair spray...after all, it's sort of like a clear acrylic spray, right? :wink: My wife likes this particular brand, seems overly expensive for my way of thinking for such a thing, so I sort of did it on the sly so she wouldn't catch me. :lol:

I then took a bit of time to add more shape to the smoke by gently pulling on it with a tweezer, and then, when I liked the shape, I glued the end into the stack. It was a lot of luck rather than skill, truth be known. :D

After I was done, I was pleasantly surprised that somehow it took on a fullness coming out of the stack and then gradually dimished with even a slight puff or wisp on the upper end, which I thought looked nice.

By the way, I finally added the bollards made of card and thread, I just hope they show up in one of the shots so you get an idea of how I made them...I forgot to take some interim shots! :roll:

Anyway, I hope you all enjoy seeing the final photos as much as I did building her.

Cheers!

Jim
 

Leif Oh

Member
Jan 27, 2004
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Goteborg, Sweden
Loved the smoke, but what really did it for me was the pincers. After all those photos, suddenly to realize her "full" size. I knew she was small; I didn't realize she was SMALL. Well done, Jim!

Leif
 

Bowdenja

Active Member
Sep 26, 2005
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Hey Jim.............Looks FANTASTIC. Called my wife over and she said WOW!............. then I scrolled up and she saw the picture with the penny and could not believe it.

Leif...... This thing IS small! And beautiful......

Okay Jim this is where you say "Did you know that it was paper?"

Really a great model Jim.

john
 

silverw

Member
Mar 15, 2004
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Saskatoon, Saskatchewan
members.shaw.ca
Quite a bit off topic!

Hey Jim....
Some comments were madeabout ships in a bottle.....

I know it's not paper, but , here is a real one, that my father-in-law made for us. He never would tell us exactly how he did it!

im0030720ej.jpg


He also made us a Tiger Moth.....

im0030795jm.jpg


This is what he trained in, before completing his 25 missions over Europe during WW2!

Actually, the ground below.... is Moose Jaw,.... where there was a tragic accident during an air show, last week.

I wish we had paid more attention to him, (and his models) while he was still with us.
 

bholderman

Member
Jul 21, 2004
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Jim,

Took me awhile to write a post in regards to your completion. Simply put, it looked like a great build. Then I relaize the tweezers in the photos for scale. That's a grand build.

Cheers,
Brad