Airfix St Louis

as usual your work is outstanding gene

Gene,

You are very welcome!  Your work justifies the gift.  As I have said before, I am a huge fan of your work!

Bill

All I can add is another Wow Gene. Beautiful work as usual.....Cheers Mark

I'm also very impressed with your work but have a question about something else. Above your display cases are two prints of paddle or side wheeler river boats. Do you recall where you got them? I'm looking for something along those lines and from what I can see in your photo they look good.

Outstanding work and collection.

Thanks for all you nice replies, guys. I'm just a shaky old guy, trying to keep the paint brush from doing circles. 

   jeffpez, Yes, I know where I got them. I can check but it was the Howard Steamboat Museum in Jeffersonville Ind., or Ohio, I will check. They  Bill Reed's paintings & are the best steamboat pictures you can find. They are from his steamboat picture book & it has a bunch of his paintings. A lot of his pictures are in the hotel bar in Marrietta Ohio. That is a neat place. If you like riverboats, that's where to go' I have a big print of his Betsy Ann framed in my model den  I am still building it too. If you tap the picture it will enlarge beautifully.

Here's Betsy,                                           Gene

Very nice!

Gene, I continue to be astonished by both the quality of your models and how quickly you build them! This one's going to be another beauty.

What gold paint do you use? It looks terrific.

Don & John, Thanks. John, it is MM gold enamel. It has done the gold on all 10 ships & there is still 1/2 left.  It is the easiest trim paint I have ever used, because it hardly runs. It is great on the small gold work.

    John, sometimes my hands get shaking so bad & I just hold my wrist on the table & brace it that way to paint. It works & I sure don't want to stop painting or building. The shakes don't bother the building unless I want to thread a needle. But then I have a needle threader. 

   One problem I had this time was painting the  black raised bands ( forgot the name) as they had a groove on each side & the paint ran under the Tamiya tape. I burnished the tape down & still had problems.  I like to paint the center first & then mask & hand paint the small stuff, bands etc.

One trick on masking tape edges is to seal those edges.  Use either the color the masked band goes over, or a clear.  Do that before painting the different color in the masked area.  If there are any weak spots in the edge the leakage will not show, but the leakage then seals the leak, as long as it is a minor leak.  That seal coating can be done either with a brush or airbrush.

Thanks Don, that is great. I will use the color. You jogged my memory & I remember  many years ago using clear to do that. The color sounds better.

Hmmm;

 Holey Bovine , Modelman .It's a beyootiful colored chip ob de see ! LOL.LOL. Very nice .  T.B.

Gosh TB, you are beginning to spell like me. We need to talk about riverboats some more. I just ran across a picture I took of the restored workboat Snyder in Marrietta. Have you been there? I got a bunch of riverboat stuff. 

   That Howard museum I mentioned above in Jefferson ville Ind. is right on the Ohio/ Ind. border just north of Louisville. They made a couple R E Lee's there & floated them over the falls of the Ohio. I had never heard off them, until I saw them. 

  I also have a picture of my grandparents on a riverboat in the late 1800's. 

That is a real beauty, didn't know of this kit, is it still available, you are doing a great job on it.

Hi kpnuts, No the St Louis is an old Airfix kit & is not available unless you have a special friend who gives it to you. Look on ebay as they come up now & then. I never was lucky enough to score one.

 I just took these pictures to send to Warshipguy & figured I would put them here too. The St Louis might be the prettiest model of all the Airfix kits. I still have the sails to do, but am going crazy trying to put several furled sails on the 2 front mast's 

The last picture shows where I put a short wire in the mast to hold the spar on after the sail is put on. It works great.

9 ship's in one year , gene , my god !! . you sure have an amzing out-put of work . and every-one is a stunner .

  Steve, you are my best fan along with Warshipguy. I want to see more of yours & it's 11 ships in 11 months.  I don't rig like you, I'm crazy enough as it is.

 I have been talking to Bill, warshipguy, about furled sails. Between my wife & Bill I finally got them done. I used kleenex & put 2 coats of hairspray on each side & drew a trapazoid of the sail size I needed. I cut it out & rolled it up rather loosely & added a small extra wad of kleenex in the center 1/4. I glued the edge with Aleenas tacky glue , after I had spray painted it, & glued it to the painted spar. I then tied it to the spar in at least 6 places , as needed. I then worked the slightly soft sail with my finger nails to give it more groove like creases. It drooped a little more in the center because of the extra small kleenex I added. The trapazoid shape made it smaller at the ends.I will dullcote it heavy now.

It really looks good & I will send pictures when I get the rest of the sails on. This is a combination of Warshipguy, Tilley & my wife & several articles I read on the net.

    By the way steve5's new ship is beautiful. It is great on everything he has done.

Here are a few pictures of my nearly finished St Louis. I show the Kleenex furled sails, which I am working on improving. I like a thin paper much better for this because you can do more with it.

   I still have a lot of things to do to finish it up, but it is a pretty model. Maybe one of Airfix's best looking.

Here are a few more of the St Louis after I did some more work on her.

The last picture is one of my Sirene that I still have the running rigging to do. This is also the first successful use of the rigging tool to make the shrouds/ ratlines. It did work out great. Also I made the furled sails out of Kleenex, which I think worked out pretty good.