Too Long At Sea

     I have been away from the blog for FAR too long. I have all the usual excuses; too many projects, too little time, too many thing demanding my attention in the "real world". I have got a few things accomplished however, as usual more by accident than deliberate planning.

     Below you see a by-product of my gnat-like attention span. I was working out some angles and techniques for making very small fortress models from blue board and I felt the need to work on something bigger. I had been in a discussion about a tramp freighter that was even trampier (?) than my last project so my thoughts turned to a short, stubby and shabby looking boat. A few minutes on the internet looking at "tramp freighters" through Google Images and this happened;

 

just a few quick cuts and a few passes over the 60 Grit, 

trying out ideas; 15" long, 5" on the beam

 

I moved the cabin back for more deck space in the well-deck 

there is a hold (carved straight through the foam block of the hull)

 

yes, I planked the deck, I'm like that

the main hatch is the lid from a Gerber baby-food container

 

adventure on the high-seas sometimes means fighting monsters

 

big, scary monsters 

(throw the dynamite Eddie!!!)

 

or, worse yet some idiot opens the sarcophagus in the hold

 

then there is the ever-present insect issues

     There is nothing really new about the techniques used. Refinements include using fancy cockyail toothpicks instead of straight pins from the railing stanchions and adding the rivets after giving the model a coat of flat paint; the rough surface holds the rivets to a much fuller shape and helps prevent "blurriness" that sometimes happens when the rivet is added on glossy surfaces.

      So a little more rigging and a lifeboat, then a heavy coating of weathering, and she will end up a battered steamer plying the south Pacific or perhaps a Q-Ship bravely hunting Imperial German U-Boats.