Nobel Prize for Extraordinary Achievements in Workbench 2009: Admiral Benbow

[Hammers]

The Academy of Workbench are today awarding Admiral Benbow for exterorn..., extraordnar...,  really good doings in the line of Workbench. The Academy has taken a little longer than the fellas in the other academies to come to this decision because, well, OK, we may not be as brainy as them chaps. OK, we admit it. We are more people of our hands rather than the head, you know what  I'm saying?  But have you seen them other guys slot parking their cars?! The lads and I always have a good laugh about this when we congress over at O'Leary's each Thursday.


Anyhoo, here goes: for work on this here boat, Admiral Benbow is awarded with the Nobel Price medal of 2009. The Academy of Workbench's motives are that the guy is really good at what he's doing. Really, really good. Super good, you know.  Like 'WOW!' good if ya know what I'm saying? I we tought that having a compressed thread would also be beneficial to us all. Cheers.

And here's the boat:

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.

2009-10-21

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 ...  

2009-11-10

So, back from Crisis and the wonderful show it's time to proceed with the gunboat. Hadn't have too much time before Crisis, I was able to work a couple of hours yesterday and that's the state of affairs now:





Upper deck house was finished, the two main guns detailed and smokestack construction started (it's way too long and will be cut down later). All main components are still unglued to ease painting.



Detail shot of the 6 pdr QF-Guns from Eureka. Very nice models, but look at the boring and uninspired original gun shields. Had to make my own from sheet styrene and some rivets. There is a nice contemporary picture showing this kind of gun shield on a steamer in the Osprey Omdurman book.



The decks have been measured and marked for all the deck supports and rails, and everything has been drilled already. I've got 40 turned brass deck rails from a ship modeller's supply, and very nice they are! I'll show you next time.  

2009-11-12

Some hours working time on the ship yesterday, now she is looking more and more like a gunboat. Main components are finished now, deck houses glued onto the decks, sun roof construction above the upper deck finished (- and being the most fiddly job of this project). Here she is:





Here's a shot of the sun roof. The biggest difficulty was to construct the main (dark grey) support beams as the deck house and it's roof where glued together already, so everything was free floating and I had to construct a kind of jig to fix the beams together firmly. The three wooden supports are a bit of artistic liberty as the original ship had another small deckhouse there, but my version is slightly shrinked, so no room for another house ...



There is no real historical information or material available for the Nile gunboats, especially for the older ones, so apart from my original photo of Abu Klea I don't know any more detail photos or drawings. So the pupose of the small tower on the foredeck has always been a mystery, and I decided to build it as a kind of conning tower. If someone has any other ideas or evidence, just let me know.



As promised, a (macro) shot of the excellent turned brass deck rail posts with two pre-drilled holes for 0,4 mm silver wire.



Last shot from a more low angled view:



On to the details now, the Nordenfeldts, supports and deck rails, undercoating everything, first painting stages and so on ...

Thanks for your continuing support and interest.
 

2009-11-23

Here we go with another update of building the Abu Klea. This will be the last one of this kind as most construction is finished now and only minor parts have to be build, like the deck supports. As I can't do that before painting the decks, it will now be a continuing process of painting and fixing the last parts, and bringing it all together in the end. So maybe I'll show the one or other step from painting the parts ...

This is how the ship looks now with railings, guns, ladders etc. in place, but still not glued together:









The Nordenfelts from Eureka, cleaned up and with their muzzles drilled open. Nice detailed miniatures, I really like them.



I built some ladders from Evergreen stuff and a railroad fence set, hand rails were added from stiff steel wire:



And now all components ready for painting. Everything was spray painted a flat acrylic white colour to uniform all parts and get a slightly "rough" surface where all following colours could nicely adhere to.



Then the lower deck was put into a plastic bag to save from overspray, and all parts around the paddle wheel were seriously masked with Tamiya tape. It would be the easiest way to paint the wheel black with my airbrush, using a brush would be nearly impossible or very time-consuming ...



Painting has started now, and airbrushing the wheel cost me ten minutes for a nice even coat. I repainted the main white structures with a slightly off-white enamel from Model Master, and used a wood tone from Humbrol as basic colour for the three decks. That was a bit tedious especially when painting around the rail posts and under the sun deck area. Slightly thinned enamels were used as they tend to flow better than Acrylics into any recesses like the wood grain on the decks. I will continue to use inks for washes and acrylics for the details. But as I said, no more progress shots of the ship till after the competition, maybe the one or other pic from detail painting.

With two weeks time till contest ends, I'm confident to finish the ship in time ...
 

2009-11-28:

Fresh from the workbench - I finished painting and weathering the boiler and machinery:







This boiler has indeed seen better days! The former redish paint is barely seen, and the rest is a heap of rust. But the old engine is working as reliable as ever, that's what I've heard from the Captain at least!

It was a real lot of fun to practise some of the techniques I've learned from the masters of railroading craftsman: rubber cement masking to get old paint layers, pastel and alcohol treatments and pure pastel rust finishing.

Only one week left and still so much to do ...