Wonderful stuff, cardboard...
As related in my livejournal, a friend of mine is building a cardboard model of the
Austro-Hungarian battleship Viribus Unitis, which was notable among
other things for being among the first to carry the main armament in
triple turrets. The kit came from the fine people at Marcle Models,
where one can, if one is of a mind, spend anything up to
£280 on model
kits. OK, granted, the ship that costs £280 is 7 ft long, and if you
waterproof it can be fitted with engines and remote control.
Actually, the one I rather fancy on their site is a kit to build the
Dornier Do X seaplane, which in aviation terms was an ambitious project
that, although not 100% successful, nevertheless paved the way for many
other seaplanes in the inter-war years.
However, before I got around to ordering that (and I will, in due
course, build it; it deserves recognition) the same friend had
discovered another source of cardboard models: Digital Navy. They do
soem impressive kits too, the difference being that you print 'em
yourself. In addition to a fine kit to build the USS Arizona, and
several other battleships (including the rather fine Russian
pre-dreadnought Oslabya) they also have some smaller vessels for free
download, and the Imperial Germany navy torpedo boat V108 caught
my eye.
On this page, I will put various photos and descriptions, as and when,
of the construction process.
The beginning - base and some of the ribs. The instructions say
laminate these parts to toal thickness 1mm. The card I printed it
on is about 0.25mm thick,
and to reinforce the main structural parts I had some picture mount
card which is actually quite thick, the total thickness of the parts
comes out at about 1.5mm. The result is that a few minior mods
need to be made, notably slots need to be cut 1.5mm wide, not 1mm, and
the ribs were cut down by 0.5mm so as not to compromise the deck
level. The parts are being stuck with PVA glue, which is quick
without being instant, so yiou do get a chance to reposition
things. The 2 parts of the base are theoretically held together
by the ribs, but I thought it'd be useful to reinforce the join, with a
couple of bits of the heavy card. This also serves to locate the
centre keel part. Note the other ribs awaiting cutting. Rib
#1, at the left as you see it, broke in half, but luckily I was able to
stick it in place and back together.
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Detail of the baseplate, showing additional blocks to locate the
ribs more solidly and accurately. You can see the adjustment made
for the fact that the ribs are now thicker than 1mm. This pattern
of blocks (cut from the heavy card) was repeated along the length of
the baseplate.
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The parts
completed in the first session. The main ribs are in place.
The 2 bits sticking up go through the deck and the upper deck behind
the bridge and end up, I reckon, half way up the funnels. Note that I've
been laminating. On the right is the for'ard part of the main
deck, on the left the upper deck which will eventually have the bridge
on the front part of it. The cross shaped rib section goes on the
bow and supports the fo'c'sle, while several other small parts are on
th eodd-shaped bit of card, laminated and ready to cut out. These
upper parts are laminated 4 layers of the thin card, which is as close
as makes no odds to 1mm as the plan requires. Doing them with the
heavy card would make for too many adjustments, and anyway, isn't so
relevant. You can see that the base part is warped, in fact it's
still fairly flexible. As you may have guessed by now, I'm
building the kit as a waterline model, and in due course the base will
be glued down onto a plinth, which will keep it straight. If you
were building a full hull, there's another set of ribs etc. to go under
this base.
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The main part of the deck has now been laminated, trimmed and joined to
the fore part. Once again, I've reinforced the join under the
deck. The upper deck now has its superstructure around it, and
the slots in the main deck and the upper deck have been cut out to go
over the main keel/funnel part. The fo'c'sle rib piece is
attached and will need some careful shaving to make apoint at the
front. If you look closely, you can see that I've already done
this on the main keel. The hull side panels need to meet at the
front, and as such the bow has to come to a point. The small
piece right in the middle is the next deck level up and goes at the top
of the piece to its right. It's had 2 supports added (which will
be hidden inside the superstructure eventually) which not only supports
it but makes it easier to stick in place. They're currently too
long, once the glue has dried well I'll shave them to match the curved
profile. They'll thus also support the curved piece on the
superstructure. The superstructure section (on the right) glues
down to the main deck, on the white shape you can see. The kit
has narrow strips of card to bend into an L shape for this purpose, but
they're very fiddly. I may opt instead for a pair of narrow
blocks made from the thick card, I reckon they'll be stronger and
easier to do. Another thing I need to do is hunt one of those big
packs of cheap felt pens with 273 colours, so I can colour the edges of
the card where they show - currently, the onyl bit that shows is around
the upper deck, which you can see as a white edge, this needs to be
grey to match the deck.
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More of those
little additional blocks. Above is one in the floor of what may,
or may not, be the charthouse. It's on the aft side of the
bridge. Below is one under the deck of the upper bit of
superstructure below the bridge.
And below again,
one where the part above will locate. None of these will be
visible in the assembled model. The interior of the charthouse
got some grey colouring from a felt tip pen, later, as it'll be visible
through the windows. I've yet to decide whether to try to glaze
the latter, it'll be a bit fiddly, it measures 10mm x 7mm.
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Most of today's
session spent on the bits above. The top one is the bridge deck,
and has tiny parts to assemble and fit on it before actually fitting
the front or roof. These include an engine-room telegraph,
the wheel, and summat else. The telegraph is about 6mm
high. I think some magnifying glasses and pointy tweezers are
going to be required. Below is the deck which the above bit fits
to, with another locating block, and the part fitted showing the blocks
being non-visible. In the first one, you can see the bit
mentioned further up, now with the supports cut to size and in
place. The bridge deck goes on the fore part of this assembly,
eventually. Oh, and by the way - the red spots on the deck are
for holes, which masts and things go through, and this brings me to the
point that the charthouse, if that's what it is, is meant to have a gap
in its aft bulkhead, the mast goes there. It also needs a recess
cut out of its deck, which isn;t marked on the plan - when it's glued
in place it covers part of the larger red spot.
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Today, we have a
plinth. I did consider putting a truly appalling pun in there,
but decided against it in the end.
The base
structure is now mounted on the plinth. Having looked at how the
main deck was going to fit, I decided to add some more support around
the sides. You can see a close-up below, basically just stips of
heavy card (about 1.5mm), cut to size and glued to the hull base
plate. They're not keyed in or anything and some are at slightly
random angles, but this doesn't matter. What they will do is
support the edges of the deck and keep it level.
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Ok, not much of
an update today, mostly just cut out a few pieces and found that I have
a spare door... Late last night, I stuck the main deck on, as you
can see below. Having spent some time shaving bits off the ribs
etc to make 'em all the same height, I concluded that in addition to
these issues (mostly solved) the main deck was slightly warped. I
daresay that laminating 4 layers of card has something to do with
it. However, suitable application of force has got it stuck down
nice and flat.
The other
thing I did this evening was to find http://forum.zealot.com
which has a
section on card modelling.
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Next stage,
attach sides. First the bit around the stern - cut a fraction too
tall, just in case... and in fact it's a bit under 0.5mm too
high. The small bulkhead for the fo'c'sle also got glued on at
this point.
Two more of those locating blocks in evidence at the base of the
bulkhead. The fringes on the sides are for the fo'c'sle deck
which is curved.
Next is one of the sides. This is quite tricky, first it has a
piece to attach which is another bit to hold the fo'c'sle deck
on. Then the side has to be stuck on, I did this from the aft end
and a bit at a time. I'm not all that pleased with the way the
joint came out between the 2 side sections, and the side/deck joint is
a bit iffy at one point, but there it is. Maybe the other side
will be better. Been busy this weekend, so this is a combination
of 2 updates really. It's starting to look a bit like a ship,
now, though.
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Next job was the
other side panel, and, after letting it dry, attaching the
foredeck. Foredeck didn't fit quite as well as I 'd have liked,
but it's not bad. The whole model isn't quite as good as I'd have
liked in several ways, though. That's the last of the
more-or-less easy parts (funnels look fairly easy too, bu there's other
stuff to go around them first) and the remaining parts are mostly very
small. I think this model will be put "on hold" while I have a go
at some larger scale stuff and learn some more techinques, also acquire
some very fine tools for handling tiny parts, and maybe some better
magnifying glasses. I invested the ruinous sum of 4 pounds in
some "+3.5" reading glasses in the chemists the other day - quite
useful; they only magnify about 1.5 times or maybe a bit more but they
make life a bit easier when looking at things around 1mm size.
Ideally want some of those magnifying specs that watchmakers
have... Anyway, here's the next picture and a bows-on one just
for amusement.
