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Building the "Perfect Storm"

After thorough removal of the putty, and an intense smoothing, over I constructed the cover for the cargo hold in the center of the weather deck. I spiced it up a bit with L’Arsenal and Tauro PE parts. Then I went on to place the weather deck’s bulwark.

It is an Evergreen styrene strip that I found that is fortunately almost exactly having the height I needed. I pre-shaped it by rolling it up with a thin steel rod. The bulwark didn’t fit the deck edge exactly, so using the pre-shaped part was a bit harder to do than expected. Maybe it would be easier to fit the bulwark using straight strip and fix it section by section.



Well, it went OK, even though the bulwark is leaning a bit to the starboard inside of the deck. Actually all of the bulwark should be slightly slanted to the inside, but I did not know how to achieve a constant slant, so I went for a straight bulwark.

As the strips for the second bumper guard dried, I started to put on some hull detail such as the reinforcement bars along the stern and the portholes on the forecastle.





With the second bumper guard in place I drilled out the scuppers, added more of the reinforcements, the handrail along and support struts to the inside of the bulwark. I decided to stop detailing here as anything else would be too fragile to withstand handling. To blend the handrail with the bulwark I added two layers of Elmer’s to the gap between them. It worked out OK, even though this renders the edge of the bulwark a bit uneven.





Naturally, I had to turn my attention to the wheelhouse next. It took my about an hour to fabricate the layout of the wheelhouse with photo-shop. I printed the graphic onto a high grade paper. With my trusty Olfa-knife and a fresh blade I had not trouble cutting out the windows and the door on the side and back wall.

The sides and back were then folded and glued to the deck. After having all in good position, I infused highly liquid super glue into the paper. As a result it can be treated very similar to styrene sheet, but is much thinner.

The front of the wheelhouse is a separate part...As the front wall on the original vessels consists of 5 panels, each containing a window, arranged in a very flat arc, so that the front of the wheelhouse is ever so slightly curved. Something that’s very subtle, but essential to the look. The panels are very slim resulting in very thin struts between the individual windows. The easiest way seemed to be to cut one opening and back them with thin rod to simulate the struts.

I do not know, if I can manage to back the windows with clear styrene this way, but I’ll try. To the inside of the wheelhouse I added a dashboard complete with pelorus (wheel to be added just before closing it by adding the roof), a captain’s chair and a chart table to the port side of the back wall. One side board to either side of the walls were added, as well.