Jupiter, a Caledonian macBrayne Ferry

all three ramps have now been adjusted, base brackets fixed and side flanges added to stop ingress of sea water onto the car deck.......

next job will be to seal the added timber with sanding sealer and then to add the hydraulic rams, clamps and retainers before painting them and fixing to the vessel.

been fabricating the hydraulic rams [ none working] and retaining clamps for the ramps. these will be painted and fitted tomorrow, and then mated up with the ramps which will be fixed in the closed position over the weekend.

 Well done a great whooooops cover up Neil.

and here's another one Damien................the white lining tape just wouldn't stick to the hull for the boot topping..............think it was just too old...........so have masked the hull up and will spray it white tomorrow.

The ramps each have small flaps on the uppermost parts of the structures which hinge allow for the vehicles to exit and enter the car deck smoothly.

originally I had moulded the tabs onto the ramp main bodies but they were never strong enough to work and on most casts/ fell off with the slightest of knocks, and so I made them from fine wire and formed a ring to act as the tab.......seems to work ok and with some paint, they will be fine enough to carry muster.

the boot topping [ waterline] has been sprayed white, anchors fitted and the ramps partly painted, and then it was time for a play....

got out all my little toy cars and dusty as they were, I added to the deck.........might need to thin them down a bit when I get the model in the paddling pool or she'll go down faster than the Costa Concordia, but at the moment, all of the classic cars, except the Aston Martin and the little blue Fiat 500 are cares I have had the privilege of owning in my younger days of wanton carnage, lol.

That' s certainly a full load Neil. Hope its well balanced or the might all get a wash when she rolls over


Barrie

They packed 'em in tight Barrie....squeezed as many on as possible, lol.......Got a photo of my car on the real ship somewhere lol.

I doubt whether my rendition will take as many, but will find out in a few days when I get the pool out lol.

ramps have now been painted and are going to be fitted permanently later today.

All these pictures are making me think I need to book ferry tickets to see my cousin on mull. Love the trip over from Oban

all 3 ramps have now been permanently fitted with the rams in place, just the clamps to hold them on place to be glued on, but these have had to be drastically modified to fit into the space left by fixing the rams......early start tomorrow.

it's a nice sail up the Sound to Tobermory.........some beautiful scenery..........will be up in largs again this year, and usually go to Oban for a day trip..........have you been on Calmac lately..........if not in the past 2 years, you'll find the ferry fairs have been cut drastically

where as 3 years ago a return trip to Arun from Ardrossan would have been around 170 quid, because of the new rules laid down by Scottish parliament, the company is only allowed to charge what would be a respective price for fuel foe a car for the distance driven, x the number of passengers, and as such you are now looking at a fair of 75 quid return for car and 3 people....it's brilliant.

Yes I know. I try to get up once a year. My cousin lives in finnophort  right on the sea front. It was him who got me it to boat building. He's also steam trains running on a track in the back garden. Lucky sod. 
  Love it up there all your troubles seem to just disappear

been busy today, not only with the model, but helping my younger daughter with her last day of her A levels....she has been studying hard for two years and the culmination was the sixth form art show.......she has been studying photography, textiles and history.

I am amazed that she has never done either before but if I had been producing models as good and fine as her photography and textile design when I was 18, I would have been stupendous at model making now.

here are two examples of her design work, based on the sea shore, and rust and decay, for textiles, and the photography of the friend who modelled one of her design corsets.

she wants to progress further onto design, as a diploma and then in a year, possibly university, or an apprenticeship if she can find someone to take her on.  oh and she's far better with the computer than me......she's out celebrating and I haven't a clue how to rotate the photos....could one of my friendly mod team do it for me.....

and now back to my mundane modelling

the rest of the day was spent adorning the wheelhouse with all it's fittings.......still a few more to go on but my brain was frazzled by 22.00 hours and I was becoming impatient, so left the rest for a new start tomorrow.

Fantastic level of detail Neil

Barrie

  Another Show piece  Matey 

Damien wrote:

  Another Show piece  Matey 

not from close quarters it ain't matey..............paintwork a bit ropey to say the least.............and some detailed pipework missing, so am classing it as a "stand off" scale model............

but after 4 years looking at it, I'm just longing to get down to something I like........another lifeboat. lol.

Don't run ya self down mate it's great.

nhp651 wrote:

but after 4 years looking at it, I'm just longing to get down to something I like........another lifeboat. lol.

Just pleased to hear you are going on building - doesn't matter what

Barrie

cheers guys.....I bow to your lovely comments.

thanks.

the upper wheel house has now been completed with all detailing except for a couple of EPERB's to be attached to the ends of the flying bridge wings and some pipework on the engine room extractors which I might or might not fabricate from wire and some string lagging at a later date.

I have also added some passengers, and crew to the decks, more to follow, each little cluster having a chinwag whilst the ship makes her inexorable to and fro trips across the Clyde from Greenock to Dunoon and back.

Nice work. Where do you pick up all your figures. Will be buying some so for my yacht

Imcc wrote:

Nice work. Where do you pick up all your figures. Will be buying some so for my yacht

just off ebay under model railway section.........quite a selection in different scales and reasonably cheap too.

Hi Neil - I notice your daughter is on the bridge

Barrie

aye, barrie, but I bet you got the wrong one, lol.........she's the promising first officer next to the binnacle, lol

Well!!!, after nearly 4 years on the go, I can say that apart from a few odds and sods to put on to the model, she is 95% finished taking into account those small bits like adding the flags and pennants, small amount of pipework, oars for the lifeboats, the port and starboard nav lights, which will take me a day to do, and some more figures......and of course..........naming her and putting on the company logo's.......I left off the main mast so that I didn't knock it when I was taking the following photos.

the stringing of the life rafts took 4.5 hours on their own........got faster as the more I did, lol.

Absolutely stunning Neil.  
I did wonder if we would ever see it complete, but I am very pleased that we did. 
Now onto the next!

Barrie

And to think......Neil's done all this work only to leave the thing to a WOMAN DRIVER!!! They do say that daughters are kinda special, though.
Chuffin' good job, m'duck, and worth the four years it took to build.
Now please can the next one have one motor, one prop, one rudder and nothing else?
Dave M

inertia wrote:

Now please can the next one have one motor, one prop, one rudder and nothing else?
Dave M

...and he'll still ask you how to wire it all up

Barrie

inertia wrote:

And to think......Neil's done all this work only to leave the thing to a WOMAN DRIVER!!! They do say that daughters are kinda special, though.
Chuffin' good job, m'duck, and worth the four years it took to build.
Now please can the next one have one motor, one prop, one rudder and nothing else?
Dave M

thank you chaps......I finished her this evening but for putting the oars in the boats and raising the ensigns pennant and signal flag, which I'm waiting for.

As for a woman driver.........I doubt she will ever take it to the lake..he he......but last week she passed her "Advanced Onboard fire fighting Course in confined spaces" BA,and full fire suits order of the full week's course and today passed one of the hardest two part, oral and practical tests which goes by the acronym GMDSS...The Global Maritime Distress and Safety System  using all forms of distress signals including practical morse signalling..............so I would have utmost faith in her ability to crash it into the bank with aplomb, lol.

the next model will only have one motor as suggested........a big brushless driving a 3d printed self priming centrifugal pump with 4 outlets operated via valves.............an 1890's hydraulic water jet powered lifeboat called queen.........I'll keep it simple this time, lol.

it was continued encouragement from you lot that saw this finished, and to be honest, i'm glad you did because I like the finished product.

and here is the finished model, but for what I said earlier.

Wonderful job. When is she going on her maiden voyage?

Nice job mate!!  


Let me know when you get that pump sorted!!

Imcc wrote:

Wonderful job. When is she going on her maiden voyage?

it's first will be in the kids paddling pool.........but I got to mow the lawn first, and then dig it out from under a few half built boats in their wendy house. lol.

gribeauval wrote:

Nice job mate!!  


Let me know when you get that pump sorted!!

cheers mike............it will be sometime after Christmas, as got to make the moulds and mouldings first, and the plug needs some work first......... neil.

hi neil,  another well built ship  . it is nice to see you having some fun building again cant wait till you build the queen as i have looked at that a few times to build but the power source always puts me off. good luck on maiden sail  of jupiter.


david

She's a bottler mate or should I say a glass caser 

thanks guys.............there I was  this morning ready to take her down to Fleetwood for a sail, and went to the lake around 12.30...............
sadly no chance............even the  real calmac ships don't sail in this weather, lol.

At a guess I'd say a HOT wind as well?

no Damien, it was quite cold..........from 27c the day before it had dropped to 11c..................

The weather in England changes by the minute 

NOTHING in this life is ever plain sailing.


This morning whilst just making a few additions for extra detailing, I noticed that the starboard lifeboat was sagging on its davit.............looking closer I saw that the actual davit was "bending in the middle like a one string fiddle".....I looked at it and found that this one davit must have been in an odd mix when moulded and hadn't set properly and had bent..........tried straightening it up and it snapped............can't be doing with this and so found out the original masters, and am going to make two more out of plasticard and refit both sets of davits with plasticard built ones rather than the resin.............

may as well do both sets now rather than one set now and the other at a later date............bit peeee'd off though that this happened when she looks so well.

I couldn't believe just how pliable that certain mix of resin had been, as once I had dismantled the davits and taken off the fittings tha.I needed from the old ones I took a picture of one of them bent double...........

and then I got on to replacing them with a multi ply of plasticard, to give them a ridged structure.

just finished putting all  the parts onto them and then once the cyano has set later today I will put them together, and spray them white.





the davits were set distance ways so that I could  cut the cross stays to the correct length.




using the original masters I cut the white plasticard pair to exactly the same size in 3 layers





the plies were glued together using humbrol plastic weld.







and then all the accessories glued on.

just finished the plastic ones......much firmer and now set aside for the cyano to set for a couple of hours before spraying them.

The new davits have been painted, rigged and fitted to the deck, along with the boats.......just have to put the fall lines onto the cross bar.

well, after the problem of the bendy resin, it is fully and finally finished, complete with NO SMOKING notices on the car deck and the flags........yippee........I can now get on with a new lifeboat model.

Totally Ruddy Marvelous Matey. 

Truly amazing 

cheers guys. neil.