Amazing site eh Seb? The thing is: there is never ALL the plans of a boat. it's okay for 1/350 but when you model those in 1/35 it is often a problem. So what you have to do is to recoup, class after class until you get what you want.

Anyway I worked a lot on the diorama this week-end but sadly thi is not the kind of work that will render in pictures. That's it i started the water and have plenty of coats to pour..

But then please note that in order to place the blockhaus at the right place, I made a plastic dummy of it in my form . i also test wether the whole is being waterproof!


Those Scale hardware rivets are just great to do these kind of effects


extra woodwork..

The steering wheel for Glenn

okay, today i *should* be able to finish the boat!

Beautifully done !!! This is going to look great in a sad but very cool way. The wheel looks perfect for a late 19th, early 20th century ship - perfect !!!
Oh and ... ah yes the dull parts of modelling, .... pour, ......... wait, ........ straighten, .......... adjust, .... pour, wait , etc. The patience is paying off though and I can see the finish already.
Le bon temps tout autour !!!

Glenn

"le bon temps tout autour" Glenn? so that's not only Cajun food you know about ?
thanks for the comments on the wheel, I know it looks a bit flat though, ah well..
Anyway yes i am at my 6th layer of resin, that brand I use needs 8 hours+ to set. I am halfway..

In the meantime I finished most of the boat:
now THAT was not easy..
First getting that bloody solder wire through the tiny holes of my solder done stanchions.

Then actually fixing them on their support (supperglue was of no use -I had to use 2 parts Epoxy glue). Once it's done, I had the upper railings in plastic to fix. I managed to bend them using my solder iron and putting the plastic close enough.


Anyway at then end the parts look like this:

Just wow! I am always inspired by your work and ideas. You are a true artist and craftsman!

-Mike

Thanks Mike hey the project isn't finished yet and I may well do a few mistakes before the end
Actually, i must be at 8 layers resin pouring for the water, things look okay but I don't post any pic until it's ready. I fear of a "colour slippering" compared to what I originally wanted. So that means I won't start to paint the thing until the water is completely done.

So i did a mast yesterday, I am not sure yet if I will include it or not. i had foreseen it's use by designing the right phototech bits -because once more it will look better with it.

Okay, more soldering







In the end, here are all the parts. the black stuff is Apoxie putty, the black one, it feels like you have been putting your hands in coal when you end up using it.
Very dirty but i am out of Magic Sculp!

the stuff dries overnight and then tomorrow i will finish it..

Well, finally I unmoulded the form and well, it seemed to have work! of course the water looks very rough -and not because of the wind- but after severe cleaning, trimming and sanding, it should be ready to be top layered and foam covered



I see in a few other threads here at Armorama some fear of water, don't mind, just pick up the best product, remind to do a really waterproof base before pouring it or you will ruin your clothes and ground.

In the meantime i had unfinished business with that mast of mine. So i had bought for another project those fine Tigermodels chains thanks to recommendations from a coupla pals from that same forum and those are great
So first I had to do some small bits of solder through holes dig in some bigger section solder (hell! hell! hell!), and fix the lot using superglue and epoxy glue.
Then I managed to solder bits of chain to the mast and then using gravity, I managed to superglue them to the stanchions.
well it's done now!






and now it looks like that:

What a tutorial!

Jean Bernard , this is such a extensive and detailed building Blog, we all have to thank you for taking the time to do all the pictures. And that takes real time away from modeling.

What brand of resin did you use? In the next years (probably) i need to model a river of nearly two meter lenghts, so i following all the water building methods with great interest.

Cheers
Claude

Brilliant work there, the resin is looking stunning already!

Impressive chain, 42 links per inch and only $3.50. I might have to buy some for my Singapore wharf diorama.

Looking forward to more progress,

Chas

Once again Jean, beautiful work and great progress !!!
I'm eagerly awaiting the water works to develope some more.
Glenn

Hello Jean-Bernard. Loving what you are doing and the techniques you are using. Eventhough, I´ll probably never build a boat like this (never say never!), there are so many ideas and tricks that can be used in other areas and not to mention the inspiration. Very enjoyable thread!!

thanks for the replies!
Frank: -actually there is more than one idea to combine water and tanks if it's water that interests you the most here! think about Tarawa (you've already be there or not far if i am remembering well), oriental Prussia etc

Glenn, the point is always to create a whole when it comes to colour, so here I first did the water, but then I will have to modify it as there is no sense of lateral shadow or highlight. I still have some upper coats to add to create effects now. But first I will have to paint and place the elements that will be embeded in water

Chas yes those chains look good, the mailing charges are a bit high if you consider the weight of the stuff but they claim they can't do otherwise etc. They've got a wide choice of width too and are apparently the tiniest on the market



wow Claude now that's impressive.. Well, this time I used epoxy resin and not polyester resin.
The difference? polyester is bad for the health when you pour it and keeps on pouring out toxic fumes practically forever (go and smell some old verlinden stuff, you will see the stuff still somewhat smells a lot). Epoxy is twice more expensive at least but really sets after one week (ie, doesn't stink anymore) and the brand I use doesn't really smell anything -another thing is that Epoxy mostly doesn't retracts while Polyester does.
Well, the health thing is not much important if that's a small resin fig, but for huge bits of water..
don't go and sleep nearby your dioramas!
I made the switch because I don't want the fumes to hurt the baby basically.
the prices:
Résine crystal Gedeo (Google for that): 35€ for 750ml
Soloplast Polyester resin: 22€ for 1 litter
anyway, I can't wait to see your 2 meters long river!!
At your service for more explanations

yesterday I spent a lot of time trimming and cleaning the water ! the opening at the centre was not big enough so I had to roll some very hard sandpaper of the kind that is used for wooden floors and scratch the inside of the hole..

Time to pull out the heavy metal!

that's it I needed my power tools to create the minor holes for mast and other stuff, the water is quite see through you see..
which is bad because i made something of a mess while pouring the resin once or twice, look below you will see what I mean

see all the indesirable stuff ? some foam will be needed to cover up the mess!

here is my paints mix.. which I have to cover up with more resin

In the end I get this

it looks okay but that's still the second step out of err.. 4 or 5

More coats on the water! i wait for the time the rsin is almost set and i apply coats with a modelling knife!

This coat was completely transparent, and really almost set (my hand still ache after having trying to detach the almost set resin chunks!)

here is the end result after extra coats yesterday evening. i still have some foam to add on the top of it.

The base coat for the blockhaus.. more on that later

Absolutely brilliant water effects. This is the most realistic water in scale I have ever seen! You have captured the movement really well. How much did you tint the very first resin layer and what type of paint do you use?

Yet more inspiration for my Singapore diorama...

Chas

This is looking amazing!

Absolutely fantastic.

In this short thread I learned more about what is possible in scale modeling than in the 5 years I have been modeling.

Wow.

I'll be following this one closely.

Marty

I haven't posted (much anywhere), but I've been checking in.

Wonderful water work. The colors and extra textures you achieve are great.

I know you must be thrilled at how fast this project is going. So far you've really made great progress.

Jean Bernard,

these are supplementar coats of what? Did i miss your explanation?

In the end, after 8 coats of resin , some coats of the other material , do you still have a translucent water surface. Turning the question around. Was it worth doing the first coats with resin ?

Cheers
Claude

Nice hat Chas! Well, I used some oil paints to tint the resin, but church windows paints work too. They must be transparent colours that is

Mike thanks!

Marty, here you are very flattering when you model your brain must know no limit!

Scott, you are more happy about the water than I am. it looks okay, but the colours slipped from my original idea, and this is something I thought I was beyond of when I started it. I work too fast, i forget to think and this is bad. But yesterday, I had to think about colours all over again. which leads me to ..

Claude! No you didn't miss anything I guess. the extra coats are extra resin coats, which are tinted and then let almost set before being applied with a modelling knife. As the resin is almost set it doesn't run so much.



That's the question innit? You are in holidays near the sea perhaps? now look at it. and where do you see transparency? you see it when the water is not that agitated -in my diorama that would be near the let part. On the contrary, closer to the hole I would need transparency enough just to show some foam layers, and that's finally what I got.
BUT indeed i made a big mistake -those extra coats are indeed some shadow highlight as applied to the water, but my shadow coat was too dense where I have applied it: on the tip of the waves. Which means that i will have yet to do:
1/ trim the top of the wave (and its sibling just behind) in order to add an extra transparent coat
2/ re shadow this new transparent wave, but being a lot more cautious when it comes to darkness
3/ darken even more the area behind the blockhaus so that there is a more obvious direction of light.
I ain't sleeping yet on that one

As for did the first coats were useful, yes they were. I need 1 cm of transparency, no more than that, but then I couldn't pour it in the way I show in blue sadly.
I will be using a bit more than 1 litter of resin..

a good reference for lighting!



like I said yesterday was the time for thinking, so I just added a sprayed white coat over the blockhaus, more on what i choose later on..



and thanks for the questions and comments !!

I know what you mean when your model doesn't match the vision in your mind's eye.
The color is nice, and the shape is excallent. I can see that you may want to tweak the color a bit.
Have you tested the bottom edge of the blockhouse in the resin to see if you can see any of the gray showing through?

hey Scott no, actually the bottom of the blockhaus was not supposed to be seen right since the start and now, uh.. no, you just can't see anything anymore, only a bit a the top -but when you look at it, there is certainly the transparency effect I wanted to have with those multi layered foam traces. The problem was with colours yes, so I still have to have a look today to see if what I tweaked yesterday worked,..

good, it seems a few of my colour problem are solved. I think i will really see if the whole clicks after I start painting the wood though..
i took again the same painting technique I used with the Sokol. not out of enthusiasm, but because i really had some troubles to get my paint and ideas completely right.
Anyway, first water


then black paint blended


then a whiter border


then some white again but mostly undiluted applied on the places that should be highlighted -the places that some drybrush though I never drybrush anything.


and *sigh* yet another coat of resin


a way to make it dry, at leats it won't be falling out.
the only pruprose of that layer was to correct the colours. i will post some pics tomorrow of the hopefully finished piece of water!
you can also see the mast that I completely forgot to photograph while I was painting it!


btw, the colours shown here are completely false! the blockhaus is grey-yellow! not that awful bluey colour. i just didn't corrected the colours on the pics

such a great water effect!!! It looks absolutely impressive, Jean! Good work

Wow, those last two photos really show how dark the water is. No question about how dark and hard to see through it is.

look so good JBA
I am enjoying this work.
Seb

-_- Awesome, the water just looks like real