Admiral's Gunboat Thread - Some painting Update 27. Nov.

[Admiral Benbow]

Been a bit late, chaps, but didn't have time to take pics till today. Well, I always wanted to build my own Nile Gunboat, and this contest is the perfect excuse to start one. I will try to build the "Abu Klea", one of Kitchener's gunboat flotilla for the battle of Omdurman, not a real scale model, but a somewhat shrinked wargames ship. It should be similar enough to be recognized, but simplified enough to be playable. Will be mainly build from sheet styrene, strips and parts from my (now well known ... ) parts boxes. Don't know if I will make it in time, but last weekend's start looked quite promising ...

So, here is the original ship on a contemporary photo (from Osprey's Omdurman Campaign book):



Started the hull from medium thick sheet styrene in a laminated fashion and used styrene strips as spacers between the two hull pieces. The deck piece was "wood planked": first heavily grinded with coarse abrasive paper in one direction only for the wood-like grain structure, then scribed with a scribing tool to similate the separate planks. You will see it better once painted and weathered. Side walls of the lower hull were added and thoroughly glued with liquid polystyrene cement.





The Abu Klea was a stern paddlewheeler, so on to the paddlewheel. I needed some time to think about a simple but convincing solution for that, and only a good search through the scrap arsenal discovered two old Historex 54 mm (1/32 scale) gun wheels from a french napoleonic howitzer carriage (from my very early modelling beginnings some 35+ years ago ...). Using those as a start, everything else was just working and glueing some strip-material from Evergreen.



The miniature is just for comparing the size, and was painted by the great Steve Dean.

I had most fun building the boiler and engine unit for the ship. This is by no way anything which would work in the real world, just simply looking good! Parts were taken from an Airfix 1/72 scale airfield tanker and some old 1/48 scale tank engines from the early Bandai WWII range (yes indeed, ages ago I had them all collected, but after some years I decided I could make better use from some of their parts ... Ahhh, heretic! 



Yesterday evening I started the main deckhouse from sheet and strips, but not much to be seen here.



That's it so far. Let's see when and how this will continue, depending on finding some time. Next days will be quite busy, so maybe next Sunday.

[OSHIROmodels]

Looking very good and if it's as good as the steam crane then I think everyone's got their work cut out 

cheers

James

[gamer Mac]

Oh thats it the big guns have joined the competition
The Prof and now the Admiral, we don't stand a chance

Great start to your project.  
Love the paddle wheel,    looks like hard work though, fiddly
The engine looks great as well.
  This is going to be a great competition

[Hammers]

That will be a thing of beauty.

[Driscoles]

Looks fantastic. When will this be finished ?
Björn

[odd duck]

That engine looks great

[Dan]

I'm so jealous of your progress and skill  . I think I will retreat to the background and hope nobody remembers that I volunteered to join in.

[Anpu]

Absolutely great!!

Anders

[former user]

wouldn't know why You shouldn't manage
I guess You'll have it done for Crisis 

"gun wheels from a french napoleonic howitzer carriage (from my very early modelling beginnings some 35+ years ago ...)."
oh come on, be honest, You simply took the gun out of the showcase and cannibalized it 

[Admiral Benbow]

Alright, had some time over the weekend to proceed to this state of affairs:



Main deck structures have been built for the lower deck including main and front cabins, and the paddlewheel has got its sturdy frame to connect with the ship. For the basic frame I used some rectagled sprue piece from a kit; this is already right-angled and more durable than some single strips glued together. You can see the rest of the sprue on the next pic in the background. Then I added a kind of driveshaft/piston plus universal joint for the wheel drive, looking reasonably operable (I hope ...  )





Cabins have been constructed quite sturdy with some inner spacers to prevent warping later, and of course right-angled. I added some thicker styrene strips to the upper wall ends to get larger glueing surfaces when glueing the upper deck in place later.







Upper deck was cut from 3 mm sheet styrene and a wooden structure and planks were engraved with abrasive paper and a styrene groove cutter.





So, on to the upper deck structures and weapons now. I will use the very nice 6-pounder QF-guns and Nordenfeldts from Eureka and will use two of each. This is a bit generous as Abu Klea only had one older muzzle loader plus Nordenfeldts, but -hey - such a large wargame toy with only one gun? Are you kidding? 

I also found a nice online shipmodels supply shop and will order some brass deck rail posts there soon.

To be continued ... 

[Svennn]

Tremendous, sumptious, gorgeous - need I go on. You had - get it finished

[former user]

mar-ve-llous

[Bugsda]

Wonderful model, can't wait to see it finished 

[Captain Blood]

You are an engineer as well as an artist. What a happy combination! 
Looking brilliant already.

[Geudens]

Don't glue all the parts together yet, Admiral!  First talk to Vitrix or the Perrys to turn this into a plastic kit that will benefit us all!!!!!

Rudi