To start next Tuesday I suppose,
thanks to Alex Kaiserine for the helping hand on the poster, now that guy knows a bit about lettering.

Hi JB. Looking forward to the new adventure. Good luck.

Jean-Bernard does Alfred Hitchcock?
Looking forward to "Birds" !
The title, of course is as cryptic as other JBA dio titles!
Let the story unfold...................


Cheers,
Charles

Bird on a Wire? Vivre Tout Seul.

Subscribed to the crazy world of JBA.

Wow, we´re waiting for the next great build!
Reminds me to Pixar´s "For the birds".

greetings...
Soeren

The imagination is running with this one.

Post bookmarked and subscribed to

Ok, I'am hooked on!

Greetz Nico

This is going to be nothing short of interesting!

Here he goes but once again. JBA, you have me, hook, line and wing. Now it's not fair to put all that mental consternation in a mind already run amok in imagination. Looking forward in antisapation my friend.

Thanks to all of you my friends I hope it will be worth all your bookmarks and trust

Well sorry that's the first time I post here in a while, I have been busy, kids, helping hand to colleagues, sub contractor to others.

I will try and do a diorama of regular size for me (14x18cm like the war of the same size) but yet more minimal than some others. The plan is to interrupt the build at some point in July, and then starting again around mid-end august so that I could end it up around mid September.

Indeed I need to sort of flex up the muscles before starting again some bigger things or more new ones. I won't be developing much new ideas or way of doings, this will be a regular diorama with ship, rust, shore, guy and birds.

I could even permit myself not presenting the boat I will use as I won't be using much of it, still..
let me present you the Carabinier, Spahi class, built in 1909.
The boat was typical of the kind of stuff that the French could put out to face Turks or Austro Hungarians. Its use and loss was riddled with the same kind of incompetence and ill fate that sort of characterized war at sea french side during the WWI.
Apparently the captain hated the admiral etc, anyway the boat got stranded near Lataquieh in Syria after a navigation mistake, worse even they were shot at by Turks even though we were on 13th november 1918 which apparently pissed the French a lot.
So my diorama will be situated roughly 3 years later -so that the rust really attacked it a lot
here is the Carabinier:


close up


Here is the Carabinier viewed from behind



Here is a close up uuuh, now I think I know why the boat was lost


That's all for today, I am going to sleep.

Well! This upcoming blog is the best excuse to get a huge new monitor for my devil box!

Q- doesn't the French navy get liquid 'rations' in the afternoon like the Brits and Aussies? Sounds quite civilized.....
Cheers!
Rick

You're right Rick, i post big pictures
I should have post a bigger close-up with the guys on the top of the platform because evrybody is smiling like they are doing a good joke, I really like this picture, they look oh so proud to pose for the picture

It makes me weird to post the following picture like this, it looks like nothing but I spent hours and hours on that one, doing the plans for photoetch is REALLY time consuming.


Well, let's print it on some transparent foil, cut it at the right size and take a photoresist coated brass sheet in sandwich between the 2 halves.
Then let's close the light and dip the brass sheet in some can with the liquid revelant in it (is it "revelant"? that's bad translated French, I mean the liquid which will develop the fret)


aha success, on the background is the house of my über rich neighbour!

After having made this nice plate, better actually etch the metal. So I built my homemade machine (the same old can for morning chocolate as ever) with an aquarium bubble maker plugged in it and an aquarium heater on the other hand to warm up the ferric chloride.

I took some risks actually : indeed the ferric chloride was *very* old, which means that it doesn’t etch so well and especially so fast, in the end I just knew the result would not be extremely precise which was actually the case.

Indeed the during the time it took to dig all the holes,the ferric also completely destroyed most of the tiny bits I had planned to use. Never mind, in the end I have photoetch looking a bit rough but which will be perfect for a mostly completed rusty boat.
I mean I don't design a B-17 ball turret this time.

Rheingold!

This is already looking to be a cool project.
The photo etch portion of your blogs never cease to amaze me.
It all looks so easy....but then again, I once saw a fantastic guitarist who made playing look soooo easy and graceful....I was certain I could mimic his playing as I watched, it was a very different story when I got home with my guitar.
Moral of the story: masters of technique make it appear anyone can do their craft easily, reality is a different story

Cheers,
Charles

You took my words...
I had no suitable words for this great work!
Yes, it looks very easy, but I´m sure, this is not easy.
Also your comparison is good!
I also have a guitar (bass), but playing my self is much harder.
Having a lot of selfmade-photo-etched parts could be a making "high".
I would be "in heaven", when I would hold my own parts for a kit (or build) in my hands.

greetings...
Soeren

Hello Jean

I really find it amazing how you design these brass frets. Firstly, how do you decide on what area or areas you are going to capture, then how do you measure the sizes? Is it simply by proportions and if it looks about right, or is there more to it?

I think your work is amazing.

All the best

Nige

[quote]Hello Jean

I really find it amazing how you design these brass frets. Firstly, how do you decide on what area or areas you are going to capture, then how do you measure the sizes? Is it simply by proportions and if it looks about right, or is there more to it?

I think your work is amazing.

I think the same thing. Amazing that even if 'about right proportional', there is the time to lay all your parts out on a plate that fits your 'bath'. Plus, these just aren't plain Jane parts what with all the ornateness and or other detail. would be career job for me!
Teach us more!
Rick

JBA, my friend !
Another wonderful modelling "adventure" begins again ! Looking forward to the progress and regular updates, my friend . Cheers !
Kenneth .

Salut Jean Bernard

Are you trying to piss off your Überrich neighbor with your toxic stuff ? LOL

Well, this is a lot of hard metal already for such a tiny dio.

Have fun!

Claude

hey Charles thanks for this, actually I spent 3 months during the building of my Sokol diorama ONLY trying to do photoetch, and then when I built some "efficient" machines it took me an extra 6 months 2 years ago with many fails to be fluent at it.

Now I can say I *mostly* don't fail anymore, a lot of time went down the drain trying this, but as you know, scratchbuilding my own boats I didn't have the choice if I wanted to get some really great results.

now my aim is to use photoetch the most i could, it really saves me a lot of time -it took me something like 5 weeks only to put out that Womb diorama because most of the tricky parts were already done thanks to this technique.

Thank you Soeren -honestly when what you do is building tanks available in the shops you hardly need to do your own PE! Voyager does the stuff so much times better.
Honestly this is good for scratchbuilding, other than that, I would prefer buying existing frets if I could.

Thanks Nige!
I think i should have make clear that once more I used the absolutely tops plans that are available for free download here at the french Service Historique.
The plans are of an amazing quality, so much better than what you can find in books!
Now what areas? I really like doing small dioramas, and yet I love modelling Big boats.. the thing is to find the right hotspot on the said boat. On the Spahi I particularly like the sort of very soap box cabin..
I read the other day in a British book "the French got their first decent destroyers when they got some captured German ones after the armistice" really the Spahi doesn't make too serious when you think of what the Brits or the Germans had at the same time -and the Spahi is not even the worse. But i really like losers kind of boats to make them as winner dioramas, hopefully aha!!

Ah thanks Rick, well the layout of the fret is something quite boring to do, you're on a computer and far from modelling, but still I can do this while working on other things job related and pretend this is job actually
I was particularly lazy with that one as most of the pieces I need for the diorama except the roof of the cabin are on the fret!

Thanks Kenneth friend! you should like that one, *plenty* of birds..

yes Claude and merci -really the point was to do the most of the diorama pieces on the fret
As for the smell, well you should not work ferric acid in a closed room but it sure smells less bad than epoxy resin!

Well after saving all the bits, it's really important to get rid of all the resin still on the PE bits or you can't solder it at all! I dipped all my bits in some Acetone bath and cleaned them with an old brush

Okay let me present THE bit that i suppose will be the most tricky part, that's the engine to fetch the anchor, I don't really understand how it works -with steam? there should be some gearing somewhere but I can't find where.
oh well, here's the real thing extracted from the plans on the left.
On the right I have already soldered the cylinders on which
I suppose the chain of the anchor goes, It gives the right outline.



then I covered the bits with Magic Sculp and rolled it against some cylinder of the same curve to get some perfect shapes.
Note that the "cylinder" is actually some tops soldering paste that i bought after some recommendations I read on the ML forums.

Well, they say practice makes perfect and you appear to be a fine example of that.
Your 'multi-media'creations with PE and putty are great

C.

Thanks Charles, that was indeed an investment, I spent tons of time doing this some time ago, and now I can do dioramas the way I like them pretty fast

The big problem with photoetch is of course its lack of thickness, never mind, let's create some. *
So i flattened some MS lumps at the right thickness, put on my bits on the top and let the stuff dry a bit.
then I proceeded to cut the mastic. here are all the pieces done with some thickness, including some "wheels" on my anchor thing..


while the Magic Sculp dries I need to do roof with round corners for my boat, it must also be very rusty with holes in it, so I thinned down and made holes in the roof with a Dremel

Then I glued that roof on some round corners done out of some round plastic. I will sure have to use plenty of mastic on that one..

Away for a week and I get to come back to this... nice.
Your work is always fantastic. There is never a doubt about that.
I have a question for you. The gun mount (I think) the PE part that you added thickness to; why not just start with thick styrene or glue a couple of sheets of styrene together? Once it's painted you won't necessarily know that it's metal vs. plastic. Are you more comfortable using metal or is there a 'master plan' where metal is a better material.

Thanks Scott, about your question, please consider this picture, this is a reject from last PE fret:

How on earth could I do that out of plastic without spending days on it and loosing my sanity?
There is a lot of reasons why I now use PE at the maximum possible:
1/ I master the technique and it's pretty fast to do, considering the price of evergreen it's not even that expensive
2/ you can actually solder brass and believe me it's WAY stronger than CA glue which is good because i tend to knock things over a lot.
3/ model making bores me, really. I'm not Jim Baumann or Adam Wilder, I can't build a model to save my life and when I do I'm phenomenally crap at doing this. Where can I make the difference? well painting and moods.
So the point is this: rush the actual building by using every cheap tricks imaginable, making the build real strong because my workbench is in such a mess that I destroy my stuff a lot, and then spending a lot of time on painting and moods.
Moreover it's extremely difficult to cut plastic straight when it gets beyond some level of thickness, I still have the same problem with filling the PE with MS but at least it's easier to cut down.


talking of which..

the cabin was put into shape in 15 secs..and the angles are absolutely straight etc.
let's put the border of the roof with a small evergreen rod
then plenty of Squadron white putty

.. and some extra rod and here's a good bit of the diorama finished