Advice Needed Cutty Sark Build

Well, let's take up the questions one-by-one (realizing that any answers I give are nothing but personal opinions).

There are lots of ways to deal with ejection pin marks - and they can indeed present a problem especially on a kit that came from 1959 molds, as the Revell Cutty Sark did.  Which approach is appropriate depends on the individual situation.  Sometimes it's possible to sand a relatively large area surrounding the mark, without destroying any detail.  Sometimes you can get away with scraping the surrounding are (consider using a small chisel, or maybe an x-acto blade ground down to a custom shape.)  Sometimes there's no solution other than filling the depressed area.  In that case, I find the best filler is slow-setting CA adhesive (aka superglue), with help from a drop of "activator" or "accelerator" (two names for the same stuff).  Put a little of the adhesive in the middle of the ejector pin mark.  If it doesn't dry right away, add a drop of accelarator.  Then scrape, sand, or file the resulting projection flush.

Regarding the deck - first, are you sure you meant to type the word "boxwood," rather than "basswood"?  (Boxwood is an extremely hard, dense, yellow carving wood that's hard to find and quite expensive.  Boxwood is much softer, and is sold in most good hobby shops.)  In either case, in order to offer a suggestion about the sequence of assembling the hull and the deck I'd need to know just how much you've done already.  The main and poop decks of the Revell 1/96 Cutty Sark consist of three parts, with butt joints between them; the difficulty of eradicating those joints has been a plague on people who've built that kit for fifty years now.  (Geez - this is the 50th anniversary of that kit's initial release!  I feel old.)  Applying wood planks over the plastic deck parts is an excellent way to get rid of the joint problem.  I hope you didn't glue the three deck sections together and plank them without mounting them in the hull first.  (If you did, you're liable to get a nasty surprise when you try to mount the deck to the hull.  The deck has to assume a gentle vertical curve, which it's forced into by the gadgets that are molded into the insides of the hull halves.  If you've planked the deck outside the hull, the action of bending it to match the ship's sheer is likely to break some of the planks loose.)  I would strongly recommend planking the deck after the deck is attached to the hull - and I guess that pretty much answers the question.  If you have in fact planked the whole maindeck before installing it in the hull, my suggestion is to install it in the hull now.  There may indeed be a problem with the deck parts twisting as they're installed, but I'd be more worried about what's going to happen when they get forced to match the sheer of the hull.  The deckhouses, deck furniture, and fittings aren't really difficult to install after the deck is mounted to the hull.

One job that I would recommend tackling before installing the deck:  paint the interior of the bulwarks and the waterways (the edges of the decks that are molded integrally with the hull halves).  The interior of the bulwarks is white, up to the level of the main rail.  (They are in reality made of sheet iron.)  The uppermost sections of the bulwarks are made of wood - varnished on the inside and painted black on the outside.  The waterways are iron.  The teak deck planking is laid on top of the waterways; if you used 1/32" thick planks, they'll stick up just about the right amount.  After the planks were installed the waterways were filled with cement, which was scraped to a sort of dish-shaped cross-section.  I wouldn't worry about that detail on the model, but I would suggest painting the waterways in the prototype color, which, surprisingly, is a rather bright red. (At least it was the last time I saw the ship.  It's entirely possible that the research in conjunction with the current restoration has revealed something different.  There may be something about it on the ship's website.)

That's about the best I can offer on the basis of what you mentioned.  Good luck.

Thanks for the tips.

I did in fact mean basswood. I have assembled the deck outside the hull and used the 1/32" thick planks. The reason I did this is just as you have said. I found it impossible to cover up the butt joint in the plastic sections.

Now I'm worried! I have fitted it to the hull a few times now and so far haven't had any problems with the planks so hopefully all will be well when I do it permanently. Given the problem you point out, I will install it now, hopefully without breaking anything loose and then attach the deckhouses.

 I have in fact already painted the bulwarks so that shouldn't be a problem.

 I will try the CA for the ejector pin marks.

 Thanks.

Mike

The best way I found to remove the ejector pin marks is using acc glue, let dry and file it down.  If the area is to tight to get a file info, use squadron green putty to fill and use the tip of your hobby knife to scrape it down.  In place of the green putty which sometime tend to shrink so folks say.  Go to our local auto parts store and pick up a tube of red glazing compound to fill the area, it seems to work better.

Jake

Thanks for the tip Jake, I will try the ACC

I can offer three other suggestions for smoothing out small protrusions (like ejection pin marks - or the blobs of CA or putty that fill small concavities):

1.  The glitzy way:  use a miniature dogleg chisel, such as the ones made by Dockyard Model Company:  http://www.woodcraft.com/product.aspx?ProductID=17N60&FamilyID=1361 .  They're nice tools, and come in handy for all sorts of things.  But I wouldn't recommend splurging on a set just to deal with occasional awkward ejection pin marks.

2.  The not-as-glitzy-but-not-exactly-cheap way:  use a bent riffler:  http://www.woodcraft.com/product.aspx?ProductID=07T51&FamilyID=3222 .  A set of rifflers is a mighty nice thing to have around a modeler's workshop, and the set sold by Woodcraft is pretty reasonably priced.

3.  The cheap-but-smart way:  go to the cosmetic department of your local drugstore (better yet - ask your Significant Other to do it) and buy a package of emery boards.  Slice them up into thin pieces.  While you (or she) are at the drugstore, check out the "nail polishing boards."  Such a thing consists of a piece of stiff foam rubber with a sheet of extremely fine abrasive stuck on each side - just like the "polishing sticks" sold by the hobby tool dealers, but cheaper.  Slice it up into thin strips and it will be capable of eradicating just about any debris left over from the removal of the ejection pin marks.

If you've test-fitted your basswood-planked deck and the planks haven't sprung loose yet, you're probably ok.  In that sense, basswood actually may be better than the harder woods (like box and holly); basswood is soft enough that the adhesive you used probably penetrated the grain and gave you a nice, permanent bond.

Hope that helps a little.  Good luck.

Thanks again for the suggestions,

when gluing down the deckhouse walls on the deck, would you use regular plastic cement or CA?

Mike

There are two basic ways to adhere styrene to wood.  One is to use some sort of adhesive that sticks to virtually any surface without penetrating it - e.g., epoxy or CA.  The other is to use an adhesive that sticks to plastic by softening it and penetrates the grain of the wood.

CA will certainly do the job of sticking the pieces together.  My reservation about it in this particular case is that, if you make even a small mistake, you'll end up with an ugly smear of glue on the surface of the deck - and that smear may be difficult to remove.  But if you make sure the parts fit together precisely and apply the CA to the inside of the bulkheads rather than the exterior, everything probably will be ok.

Brush-on styrene cement probably isn't the best for this particular application.  It should work if the cement actually softens up the edge of the plastic part sufficiently to make it a little gooey, so the goo can soak into the pores of the wood a little bit.  But applying that much cement to a piece of styrene is an invitation to trouble.

When I have occasion to stick a piece of styrene to a piece of basswood my adhesive of choice is one that few "advanced" modelers seem to acknowledge exists:  plastic cement in a tube.  Here are some photos of a model I built many years ago (and which, I'm sure, many members of the Forum are thoroughly sick of by now):  http://www.hmsvictoryscalemodels.be/JohnTilleyHancock/index.html .  It has a carved basswood hull "planked" on the outside with strips of styrene, held in place with Revell tube-type cement.  Those "planks" have now been in place for slightly over thirty years, and show no tendency to come loose.  The cement bonds to the surface of the plastic (by dissolving it ever so slightly) and soaks into the wood.  Unfortunately Revell "Type-S" cement hasn't been available for a long time.  I recently had occasion to stick some styrene to some wood and, swallowing my pride and dodging the glances of the self-proclaimed experts, bought a tube of Testor's plastic cement (the stuff in the orange tube - the "non-toxic" substance in the blue tube doesn't work nearly as well).  Testor's has never been my tube cement of choice; it tends to be thick and stringy.  But it seems to be sticking just fine.  (Hint:  to make it less thick and stringy, mix some bottle-type styrene cement with it.)

If I were trying to mount the deckhouses and other fittings on a Cutty Sark with a basswood deck, that's the adhesive I'd use.

Oh, for the return of Revell Type-S tube cement (or for that matter its competitors from Pactra, Ross, Ambroid, etc.).  I've heard that Ambroid still makes plastic cement in a tube, but none of the places around here sells it.

Hope that helps a little.  Good luck.

Mike,

If you have dry fitted the deckhouses to the model and they fit real good, you can use a small drop of the ACC glue applied by needle tip or other small wire like tool, in a few diferent spots, there will be no type of stress put on thies peices, so only a few spots would be needed. I use a dental scribe/pic myself. One thing to remember is that around the deck houses the real ship had a "tar" seal at the base to keep out the water this extended about 4-6 inches outward fromt he walls and 4-6 inches up the walls  You can se this n my model. 

BTW would you care for a copy of the write up on the model it goes page for page with the Revell instruction snad give some paint tips as well as modified instructions for some things Revell got wrong?  my direct email is

jbgroby@charter.net I'l email you back on Monday.

Jake

Jake,

I'm curious about your source regarding those tar seals around the bases of the deckhouses.  The Campbell plans don't mention them, they don't show in any of the photos I've found on the ship's website, and I don't remember them.  The latter two points actually don't mean much; the ship's deck has been replaced so many times that what we see today can't be completely trusted, and my memory, which isn't good for much under any circumstances, has even more trouble than usual remembering stuff I haven't seen in about twelve years (or has it been thirteen?).  Anyway, it sounds like you may have found some pictures or other info that I haven't seen.  Could you let us in on it? 

I doubt that I'll ever build another model of this ship, but I do have a long-standing interest in her - as you know.  Thanks.

Jake, I have test fitted the parts several times and I think they fit really well. How did you replicate this tar strip? Thanks for the tip and I will email you separately re the write up on the model which I would like to have.

On the issue of the nail polishing boards that Jtilley suggested earlier, my wife not only knew what you were talking about, she had about a half dozen extra that she gave me, saving me a trip to the cosmetics counter!

Mike