Still prepping

It doesn’t seem like I’ve gotten too much done on the ship since the last update, but there’s a lot of prep work to be done before the hull can be glued together. I’ve been working on the other half of the hull since the last update. I have been drilling the portholes and shaving off the rivets and molded on railings.

I have managed to scratchbuild new propeller shafts. The existing ones were totally wrong. I used several references and I am quite satisfied with the look of the corrected parts. The top picture is of the original shafts, and below that is the new correct layout.

The Queen now has a base to sit on. The wooden base is made of mahogany and I have had it around for quite a few years looking for something to mount on it. When it is finished it will be much darker. The brass stands are called lamp shade risers. These are meant to raise up a lamp shade if it hangs too low on the lamp. They were bought from an online lamp store and will work great.

Also coming in the mail recently was a few spools of fly tying thread. This is very fine and strong thread which is very close to the correct scale of lines and wires for the ship. This thread is normally used to make fishing flies. You know, those fuzzy fishing lures some people make when fly fishing. Where do you get such thread you may ask? Well, at FlyMart.ca of course.

Next up:

- Propeller shafts for the other half of the hull

- Clean up and sand both hull halves

- Join the hull halves and probably add some internal supports

What the hull?

Here's my first actual work in progress post. I've started to work on the hull and it might even be a few weeks before I can glue the two halves together because of all the work I need to do.

So far only worked on one half of the hull. Here's what I've done so far:

- drilled out all the portholes (nearly 500 per side) The Dremel rotary tool wasn't very accurate so I ended up using a pin vise and doing them by hand.

- opened up the windows on the main deck near the stern (tourist class promenade)

- cut off the railings molded onto the hull

- sanded off all the molded on rivets (these were way out of scale)

- removed the propeller shaft assemblies and filled the gaps with styrene and putty (these were totally wrong and will be rebuilt from styrene)

- filled all the windows on the promenade deck (I was thinking of just opening these up, but they are two part windows with a smaller upper section and there was no way to model that in an open position. I will make decals to simulate windows)

- smoothed out some dimples in the bottom of the hull with putty

My next steps will be to scratchbuild propeller shafts and make promenade deck decals. Of course I haven't even started to modify the other half of the hull yet.

Also on the to do list is how I'm going to mount the model. I have a nice mahogany base and need to find some brass stands or finials.