Ship Display Stands. What do you Prefer?

Konigwolf13

How do you prefer to display your boats ship sorry. Most I see in mags and displayed on the net are either laying along a row of wooden chocks or bolted onto a base. I cant see any reason IMO not to mount them on their OOB stands if done well.

Andrew

1)  There are few, it any,  resin & brass ship kits which come with pedestals.

2)  With few exceptions,  there are a rare few plastic kits which pedestals that don't have a significant seam.  I have seen few which have been done well.  The time and effort to smooth & metalize the kit pedestals is far outweighed by the relative cost of the pedestals,  about a buck, buck & a half each.

3)  Wooden bases with drydock cribbing are also relatively inexpensive, especially if you have access to wood working capabilities.

4)  Pedestals and/or drydock cribbing are classical ship model presentation methods.  IMO, cradle mounts  look cheapand like you worked hard on the kit but treated the display as an afterthought. 

Ed thanks for input as always.

 The two ships currentley on my bench or in stash are all plastic and provide stands, never had any experience with resin kits, thanks for the heads up.

Both my dragon 350 ticonderoga and tamiya 350 yamato have seamless stands. Though in the case of the ticonderoga I 'm guessing its due to th elack of thickness. The Yamatos stand is perfect. A recent bismarck (Airfix 1/600) I built for my father inlaw had seams from hell.

I didnt realize the bases with ribbing were simulating dry dock . Now I will try not to appear so thick. Also my wood work access it limited to a powersaw (ok a couple of more but much really).

Personally IMO a well done plastic stand should be able to stand up with the others and not look cheap. The the Two ships currentley on my bench I'm planning on using the plastic bases to with one improvement, Velvet padding on the contact area to protect the paint work.

The above are my opinions and prefrences (like the topic heading)

I tend to mount my 1/350th scale ships on wooden blocks - 10mm wide by 10mm high by 5mm thick - and 5mm apart. Depending on the size of the finished model I use between 12 and 24 blocks. To mount the ship to the blocks I get a pair of long bolts, approximately 1.5" long, drilling holes in the bottom of the hull, and supergluing the bolts in place. The trick here is to mount the bolts so that they are perfectly straight. (Upon completion of the ship; nothing would look worse than to have it canted either port or starboard.) This necessitates finishing the base first. in order to drill corresponding holes through two of the blocks and the completed base. This is where a caliper or set of dividers is a must.  I then counter sink the bolt holes on the bottom of the base (once the ship is competed, it can then be bolted to the base without the nuts protruding onr the bottom )  I normally use oak, with a dark walnut stain, as a base and finish the blocks the same. After sanding down the base and getting a coat or two of stain down, for a finish I use a variation of what is called a French rub using Miniwax polyurthrene with mineral spirits mixed 50/50. I use a piece of old Levis to rub the varnish mixture onto the wood until it gets tacky. Let it set overnight, and using 600 grit wet sandpaper and minteral spririts sand it down. I then let the spirits evaporate and rub with an old white t-shirt. I repeat the above procedure to the point I get some depth to the finish, usually between 12-14 coats, although I have gone as high as 25 coats. Once I get the finish on the base the way I like it, I mount the blocks and drill the holes. A drill press would come in handy here. Although it is time consuming the end result of the finish is equivalent to what you would find on a high quality piano and is worth the effort. My theory is that once you have put in 200-400 hours on a ship you're proud of, you should display it on a worthy base. To finish things off, I normally have a local trophy shop make me a brass plaque with the name of the ship, date of commissioning/decommissioning/sunk and mount it on the base.

DickMcC

Hi, I will start out by saying I almost never use the kit supplied stands. I build mostly scratch, but when I do kits I do the same thing.I use twisted crystal lexan or plexi rod to make a four point stand.I don,t like centerline stands as they can break a hull in certain circumstances. The other method I use(primarily on wood sailing ships) I take lamp finials and rig them to support the vessel.When they are polished to a high gloss I clearcoat the polished brass and it keeps it,s shine.The other method is to waterline the ship and put it in a water type environment Mine aren,t that great unless they are at least a sea state 4.Kinda rough on the crew huh? Most of my clients like the crystal 4 leg stands I make as I mount a bolt at each location and screw them to the ship, then when finished I put screws into the bottoms.The crystal can be threaded for this with no problem.       tankerbuilder

Tankerbuilder,

I'm intrigued by your four leg stands.  Is the crystal lexan or plexi rod clear or colored?  I was wondering if clear, then the screws would show, which may be detracting.  Can you post any pics?

Thanks, Rick

Dick McC2 Thanks for the rund down, written like it sounds doable with evan a basic tool setup. I might try it with my next ship that goes to my workbench.

Tanker Builder, Could you please post a picture of one of these 4 post displays, would love to see one.

ED, I apologise if I may of came off rude, It wasnt my intention I was just try to explain my reasons for only going plastic stand so far. I started this thread to learn more options not to come off rude.

Andrew

I bought a couple of sizes of plexiglas/acrylic rod.  I use somewhere between 1/4 and 3/8 inch for most scales. I have used lamp finials, but you have to turn the end off of them.  The plexiglas rod looks nice and is simple to make. I use a wooden block in the hull to give better support than just a drilled hole in the hull.  I drill the block before mounting, drill the hole in the hull, stick the acrylic dowel through, then glue around inside of hull, then press the block in place.  Holes need to be drilled in stand before gluing rods to model. I drill a pilot hole through both hull and wood block at same time, to get accurate spacing on both.

Pedestals always look classy, but on large vessels I understand people's concerns about only attaching along the keel, especially if it is plastic! The builders' decorative models of the 20th century usually used a four-point attachment; i.e  fore, aft and two close to the turn of the bilges either side amidships. Here's an example http://www.nmm.ac.uk/collections/displayRepro.cfm?reproID=F7804-002#content (I purposely tried to pick a 20th century model)

On a flat-bottomed hull you could use this method utilising propriety pedestals of same height without problems, but anything with a fair bit of deadrise would probably require you turning them yourself!

Builder's often used the chock method of mounting on hull-only cdesign study models. This wasn't usually to scale- as can be seen here on an architects model of the famous clipper Thermopylae http://www.aberdeenships.com/image.asp?Id=13563&Size=Full

A century earlier it was somehwat more common to build models of the slip and launching cradle to the scale of the vessel. I don't know enough about the subject, but safely launching a vessel was very difficult in this period and I imagine a lot of attention was paid by the builders to showing how this was proposed to be done! HMS Bellona was certainly an unusually fine example of this type of model used as a demostration model. Ostensibly to show how copper plating could be applied, it would not suprise me that her detailed launch cradle was represented for the same reasons (several British battleships had been ruined by poor launching techniques round this date) http://www.nmm.ac.uk/collections/nelson/viewObject.cfm?ID=SLR0338 These pictures don't show that the wooden case has a small drawer at one end that allows a launching slip to extend for same distance astern the vessel again. I have spent almost 1/2 hour just staring in awe at this model at Greenwich.

Anyhow- I suppose what I am saying is that the choice of particular mounting can go a long way to setting the 'tone' for the model. Aforementioned brass pedestals on hardwood bases recall the 19th century builder's model, wooden chocks recall Admiralty models. I like my models, even the plastic ones, to somehow recall the age from which they came (I mainly model sailing vessels of 18-19th century)

For an obviously 'high tech' model built from a 21st century plastic kit, bristling in p/e, I'd personally be quite keen on experimenting with something more modern- arcylic pedestals, or maybe brushed metal of one type or another.

Will

A couple of times I built fishing vessels and designed a reasonably close imitation of a marine railroad, cradle and base looks good u got the idea from a a couple pics I took while  sailing in Maine

IMHO I think models should be shown in their native habitat.  I usually display them as waterline models.  When people look at a ship they see it from the waterline up unless they frequent shipyards.  Many ships look so beautiful because they were designed to look fast and waterline displays really show this off.  Water is easy with a little practice to model.  Try it, you'll like it.

When I do these, I use clear or smoke colored material.There is a brass foil band at the top and bottom to help hide the bolts. If it is something that would be detracted from by the bolts or bands I EPOXY the rods to the hull ,then to the wooden bases. I don,t have the picture thing down pat yet so please bear with me.The rods are solid ,but you can use tube style also and the block you put the bolt in can be slid up inside the tube then glued in place.Just make sure that you plan for this when the ship has the deck off.You need to put doublers in the area where it contacts and fastens to the hull!

Water........water is my preffered display medium---real water....

HERR MANSTEIN, I do say I believe I know why you feel that way.A sub would look weird running around with clear poles hanging down from the hull right?,Speaking of which, did you EVER finish the tanker?    tankerbuilder