Lighting Up The Titanic

It can be done in various ways, but I would wager the hardest part will be making sure light does not 'leak' through parts you don't want it too. I think the reason many people chose fibre obtics is because you have more control of the individual 'spots' of light, which goes some way to representing the differing intensities of light between different types of light of the real vessel. I have seen models completed with a single, large light shining through every opened hole and to be honest it rarely looks great!

Will

Tory,

I've done that for a customer, the light bleed through is the issue. ESP where the upper deck mates to the mian hull, the gaps are a real witch to hide,  I used white glue and painted.   The only way to control it is with Fiber Optics (FO).  You need not fill is every window with light about 20% should be realistic. BUT the main two spots that you need to rebuild is the mast tops each had a white light light and the port/starboard nav. lights. 

You NORMALLY can't use the kit supplied parts becasue you cannot drill then out, You have to build a telescopetic set of tubes, solder and putty.  HOWEVER you can cheat be laying ONE single strand of FO on the backside and paint over then with black first then the brown.  On the P/S light you have to add a small piece of styreen to creat the backside of the reflector anyway to be right.

Anything worth doing is worth doing as right or as "best as possible".  Look at it this way, you only need to run a few strands a day, soon it wil be finished and you will have the model you realy want.  Is there a rush? 

Here's one I did but NOT lit up.

http://home-and-garden.webshots.com/album/556497477PLHUEe

I understand the light leakthrough problem- it can indeed be a problem.

I wonder if spraying several coats of aluminum paint on all interior surfaces might work.  Aluminum will reflect the light around the interior, but aluminum paint is quite opaque, and should not allow much to leak through the parts.

Go to TRMA Titanic modeling site. There are a lot of examples.

I did it about 15 years ago on the Entex Titanic. I drilled out all the portholes with an electric drill and bit. I had to use a slower speed cuz the plastic melted like a snake wrapped around the drill bit. It was a long process. I painted the undersides of the deck black so the light wouldn`t show through and lined some aluminum foil on some of the upper decks to "contain" the light within the hull. I put 4 6 volt bulbs and their holders inside the hull and ran the wires out of a hole I drilled where the diplay stand attaches to. I had an old Bachman train transformer and glued the plastic control ina position that produced about 5 volts.

The result was a sucess. It was a time consuming effort, but well worth it. I also thought about installing a small house current bulb in the hull like on the old ITC United States model, but this just would not do.I sold the model  to a collector who wanted a model of this ship after the James Cameron movie came out. I won`t say how much I got for it, but it was substantial! Sometimes this hobby can be profitable.

I built mine years ago and I used miniature light bulbs for general illumination and fiber optic for the lights on masts, posts, promenade hall lights (I  don't remember how many but for sure thre was > 100). I took special care to fill any open seam and painted the interior with a highly reflective paint to avoid light coming through the plastic. Here is one pic.

If you have any Qs feel free to ask.....

Happy modeling,

rea00cy

I vaguely remember there being an ad for a kit to do just this in FineScale several years ago.

Nice.looks like a scene from the movie. I assume it is a waterline model on a base.

Actually it is an A/B waterline model. Here's is another view:

Nice looking model. I have been researching these LED Flexible Light sheets. They can be trimed to a shape you may want and they put off quite a bit of light. I have seen these used in Star Trek models. Now to find a company that sells this stuff at a reasonable price. If a fiber optic line could work from that lightsheet, you could route a light up the mast. I will post more around my research here if anyone may be interested. Oh, I did visit the Titanic we page, but they did not have much on lighting the kit up. More later. THANKS to you all that have responded to my post.

Hello,

   I am new here and I been member of the TRMA (Titanic Research & Modeling Association) for many and many years and I was researching over the lighting and fiber optic to useful on any models and I was done testing with small thing on the fiber optic for 1/350 scales. Fiber Optic is one of the Best and able be easy for you to do it... than spending on lot of the painting to cover it without any leaking lights thur a thin or thick plastic walls or floors and ever Hull too.

   I was planning to do those Fiber Optic on my model of 1/144 scales Titanic and Titanic's sister name HMHS Britannic (Hospital Ship) As I show how hell big monster model that I will build it with fiber Optic!! :P

 Regards, William Barney

Hey, I found a site that sales lighting kits. (http://www.microstru.com/Experimenter-Kits.html) This looks promising. The light sheets can be trimmed to shape. I think this might work for the interier light. I think I will order one of their sample kits to try it out. More later. Thanks for all posts.

I actaully found what I was looking for on eBay. I have a sheet of EL Flexible Lightsheet enroute that I will  be testing in the hull. I also bought a light rope to test. I will be interested in how these will look and especially if you can also power fiber optics from this light sheet. More later.

AHA ! I thought I was somewhat nuts when I drilled out all those holes .(gosh there were sure a lot of them!) My "TITANIC" sits proudly on the mantle as a salute to the builders.(She,s on the keelblocks , but , fully lit.) I did mine probably 20 years ago and I stuffed her with fibre optic and whatta job . Now one effect I really surprised myself with was suggested by my eye doctor ! He said if I was careful and tried very hard I could get the light to shine on the stacks by creating a lense curve on the ends of some of the strands. He showed me how and the spots now light up the stacks . I took black acryllic and painted everything that might leak light and then drilled one small holein the bottom ,  as well as twelve around the circumference of it for airflow to cool the bulb.I have a small cooling fan mounted below the mid aft stack that vents gently upward and it can,t really be heard so she lights great and stays cool .I will NEVER do that again though! The thing was as bad as a set I built for a client ! I do enjoy folks faces when they see her all lit up sitting there though .       tankerbuilder

Tankbuilder...using fiber optics to the portholes...how did you mask the portholes, etc, when you painted the hull? Also, I was not sure you could sand those fiber optic strands without affecting the lighting capabilities of the strand. I had planned to use fiber optics for the lighting up of the funnels as you indicated, but had not yet determined that process to do so.

Another question...did you rebuild the masts? Thanks (another tank builder too)

Well..sad news on the flexible light sheet...while a neat device and most likely would have worked, the light is too blue. It does not give off the light of the fine models that someof the guys have posted here. So I guess I will be following their lead on this score. Sure would have liked that light sheets. Hey, for Star ship warp engines....they would look GREAT!....another project for another time. Thanks for eveyones input on this. Torybear.

Check out Cold Cathode Flourescent Lights from Miller Engineering in the US. They come in 4 and 8 inch lengths and can easily be mounted inside the hull to provide light for all the portholes. As for for fibre optics, I'm using LED's as the light source and running the fibre optic cables throughout the hull and deckhouses to provide the lights on the deckhouse bulkheads.

Best regards,

Bob McFarlane