Welcome aboard Mr Heathwood. If it turns out as well as your builds I will be a happy little vegemite. (Aussie saying)

I am in a quandary.. I have just finished cleaning up the hull after its scuttle surgery and where I have cleaned things up the hull now has a nice, flat sheen due to all the fine scratches from the emery paper I used. What I am wondering is should i clean it up more to make the hull the same sheen all over or should I leave some plates rougher than others like that is what the plating was like when the ship was built. Any ideas?

How fine is the question. Fine enough and paint could bring them into scale and help with weathering. I'm not confident of my weathering, so I'd dig out a plastic polish like Brasso or Novus and start there.

Lol.. I know what you mean about weathering! Is easy on Tanks etc but much harder on these things,

I think I will give both parts a coat of paint and see what happens.

Thanks mate
Warren

He's baaack...
Welcome to another update on the 'Little White, Blue and Green Corvette'.. Well if I decide to use one of those camp schemes anyway. The paints are on order from the AIrbrush Company, but it has been a month and they still aren't here. One wonders why they are not answering their emails.. One is not impressed and has contacted Paypal for a refund..

But back to the build. For some reason I sent into the hobby room and got out the kit instructions and noticed the parts needed to be installed before the propeller goes on the shaft. I duly cut the pieces off the sprue then found I didn't need any of them as the GLS kit for the rudder and prop has a diecast prop and a brass shaft to locate it with. Here is the prop after a little clean up of the rough bits..



The shaft is just sitting almost in place as I need to drill the prop out as the brass piece doesn't really fit...

After that I remembered about the deck supports you have to glue in position to help support the deck, PE and plastic, but the first one I put in looked like it wasn't quite strong enough for the job..



"Bugger" I thought to myself, well the word may have been a little more colourful, but you get the picture. After thinking for a bit I thought that just gluing some sort of support material to the weakling support may just do the job. After a few minutes tossing ideas around in my head I looked and the sprues for the items and thought they may just do the job.



Then, using copious amounts of extra-thin cement and copious numbers of clamps I attached these handily shaped pieces of spues to the spreaders..




And after they dried and were inserted in the hull they looked like this..





See!! No bending any more! Cheap and cheerful engineering at its best!

As the PE deck sits on top of the plastic hull, not in it like the kit, the supports have to be glued in place in a higher position than if you are using the kit deck. Ti make it easier to locate the supports for the fore deck in the correct position, and give the supports a little more ... erm .. support, I glued some more pieces of sprues to the brackets in the hull to add more supports for the .. supports...



After all that I brushed on some paint on the areas where I had polished earlier and they seem to look the same whether there are the tiny scrathes or the original hull..



Bit more of a clean up to remove all the sanding detritus and all should be well for painting ... if the paints ever get here Mr Airbrush Company.. Did I type that before about how they have taken more than a month to get to me?
I tended to jump around today with this build and thought I would attach the support for one of the forward ventilator intakes. So here we have the raw diecast intake..



It is pity it is not resin as it would have been easy to drill out.. A little black paint will add the illusion of depth.

And if you were thinking "ah that is nice, just a little bit of clean up and all will be goodly" you would have been mistaken as when you turn it over, Houston we have a problem..



That hole ain't gonna buff out, so I fell back on my old standby for filling holes like this, thin CA glue. Like the ad said, it gets in..



So after some clean up it ended looking like this,, no more hole! Take that evil hole...

Then came the second bit of bending with this kit, the support for said air intake..



Nice, easy stuff. This then gets glued under the deck, but at the moment it is in a plastic bag with the intake waiting for a lot of work to be done with the deck before it gets installed. But more of that later.

Next up we have the begins of one of the Rope Winches on the fore deck. Now NORMALLY this would not need any soldering, but mine got specially modified when it fell on the floor after I bent it up. Guess where my foot landed when I went to push my chair back EVEN THOUGH I had checked the area and couldn't see it..



Anyway, this is the first ever time I have soldered brass anywhere but for work and it was very easy with my temp controlled soldering iron. Hopefully the rest of it will be that easy as well.

* Top Tip *
Don't forget to remove any remaining flux after you finish soldering as it is corrosive and won't do your brass work any good at all if you leave it there any length of time.

And then I did one of the scuttles.. Four bends on a piece of PE you can't even see (the inside bit with the fake wing nuts) so I have a feeling I may not be doing any more of those. And instead of having to mask up the windows after they are installed I will use crystal clear or similar AFTER the hull is painted.



Well I can't do anymore on the main deck UNTIL my auto punch gets here and I get a chance to form approximately eleventy thousand rivets on the deck. After that is done there are another s&^tload to do on other parts of the decking. Joy.... But in the meantime I will continue with the scuttles.. only 40 of them, in the hull at least....

Stay tuned for another update

Cheers
Warren

Update.. The Airbrush Company finally got back to me and they are sending two more sets to me.

Great problem solving with the deck supports there, Warren!

Could the brass deck go over the old plastic deck, or does the plastic deck absolutely need to be left out?

I reckon all those sanding marks on the hull will disappear under the paint, as long as you've used something finer than P400. I usually find a rub with P600 and a shot of primer hides all the sanded/non sanded areas quite well.

Looking forward to more progress!

Russ

I was thinking the same thing with the deck but I think there may be too many lumpy bits moulded on.. But it could also just not go in the right place.

I will investigate further Sir!

Cheers
Warren

Nice bit of work Warren!! Clean work on the prop and vent! Great seeing you pull out the solder! Keep those fires lit on the bench over there!

Don't worry Todd the fires are running hot at the moment.

Great work. I'm still making my Corvette and its taken me 9 months already.

9 months!! Blimey! Are you using all the DJ Parkins stuff as well?

Coming on well Warren,

Neat trick on the deck supports, looks like this is going too be an interesting ride.

Cheers.

Si

Hi Simon.

Yep, I think you may be right there.

Does anyone know what diameter the rivet heads were that were used on the Snowberry's deck?

Cheers
Warren

Looks like someone paid attention in engineering school...

Strange thing is I am not a mechanical engineer...

Yes all the available PE. In fact I've reordered some PE to have a second go with the bridge and the 4" gun and the pom pom! Still wasn't 100% satisfied with my efforts. But if you're going to do something properly.....

Why is it that I can be typing away at a blog entry and all of a sudden a new window opens and it has all disappeared?

Greetings from Downunder.

Welcome to another edition of 'The Little Grey, Blue and White Corvette'.

First up, the porthole problem. Why would Matchbox decide to make the portholes in the rear half of the model a different size to the front half portholes? Who knows..

Did GLS pick up on this and put it in the instructions? They have been very thorough with everything so far but not with this one.

Am I just a whinger who should shut up and get on with it?
Well it is my blog and I will type anything I want (within reason) in it.. No fear or favour here my lad!

Here are some pictures of a ruler sitting on a piece of plastic (the hull) and a piece of PE (Scuttle Set).



Notice the width of the scuttle which is a little under 4mm in width.

Then we have a scuttle in the forward part of the hull..



About 3.5mm which gives you a milli-bees-thingy to work with when glueing the scuttle in place. All well and good.



Then we have a porthole in the rear half of the hull..
Hmmm.. 4.5mm which means that the scuttle just falls straight through the porthole when you try and glue it in position.. Marvellous...

So after a little thought about filling portholes using plastic sheet and punches I came up with a plane which I hope will be much easier. Have any of you floaty thing buildiers heard of Canopy and Window adhesive? It dries nice and clear and has good gap filling properties. And this is what it looks like after you first apply it..



Don't worry it dries nice and clear..
And here is one half of the stern hull with the portholes filled with the adhesive.



Then we have a piccie of the front half of the hull with scuttles installed..



We will see how it goes later.
While I was waiting for that to dry I decided to bite the bullet and do the rest of the rivets in the deck with an old fashioned metal punch and blunt object (hammer) seeing the awesome automatic one I bought died in the bottom.
The weird stuff in the last photo is the photo-etched anti-slip in the brass.







This was the bit I had been dreading in this build, soldering the edge of the deck to the deck after bending part of it up.

I used the solder paste for the first time and it worked very well once I got the hang of it. Then I used a wire wheel and later a sanding disk in my power tool to clean it all up..







These are the biggest items I have soldered but it seems to come out fine.

Hope the rest of it is as easy!

Oh, and I just won a Premium Edition Corvette on Fleabay for under $130AUD.. Cheap eh!

Cheers
Warren

Nice Rivets, Warren

Coming along very nicely.

Thanks Russell.

Ahoy Warren

A great looking project I am following along with interest from the other side of the Tasman Sea.

Cheers


Sean

Nice work on the detailing Warren! Nice to see you getting started on the soldering! Off to a great start. Flux is the key brotha! If there is a more fluid part to the flux, this works the best as it flows into the cracks excellent. Not sure if you scarified the area with a sanding stick first, but that helps as well. Keep it going!

Welcome aboard Sean!

There may be rough seas in the ditch but I am sure the crew can navigate the Tasman Sea safely in the end.

Cheers
Warren

Hi Todd.

I have discovered this marvellous new thing called solder paste. It seems to be about 80% flux and the rest solder, and as you said it flows into cracks very well. You can add a little normal solder as you go as well just to add some strength.

Cheers mate
Warren

Nice! Now let the fin begin!!!