Containership and USCG 270' Cutter Final Pics

Beautiful work!

Very nice work indeed.  

A very realistic scene, specially the water! What did u use to make the water?  Did u cut and assemble the plexi case yourself, if so, how did you cut the panels and what did u use to glue them together?

Looks really great!

I had printed my own container decals. I had saved the artwork for awhile, but just recently erased it. I should have posted it somewhere.

Don, That would have been great to find that on the net with more container companies. The white Ensign decals were great, but a few more companies represented would have been a more diverse model.

PJ,

If you go to my blog, I have a few more pics and tips on making acrylic display cases. I will probably post another article on my blog at some point as I have a few more cases to make. The glue is called Weld-On #16 made by IPS corporation. I used a Ryobi Cordless Circular saw with an Avanti plastic blade to cut the acrylic sheet. The water was a piece of textured acrylic typically used for bathrooms or shower stalls. The wake was simply done with several layers of a 50/50 mix of Patch and Paint spackle compound with water. I painted the bottom of the water acrylic with dark blue, and the area where the wake was going to be was painted a hunter green. I used my dremel tool with a dremel plunge router attachment to cut the channel for the display case pieces in the wood. I never used this before despite owning it for a few years! Lastly I used an acrylic scribe tool to smooth the edges before gluing them with the Weld-On.

Thanks for your comments from everyone!!!

HB

HB

Excellent work and thanks for the explanation. I've been wanting to build a couple of plexi cases. I have the new Revell of Germany Type IXc U Boat in 1/72 scale on pre order and will definitively need to build a case for it.

I'm looking forward to more pics.

There was a site on the web that I found by searching for "shipping container logo".  It had the logo for just about every company involved in tri-model (container) shipping.  Just had to resize them and fit to proper color background.

Don,

I must admit I thought about doing that, but since the White Ensign decals were less than 10 dollars, and I needed to buy more sheets of the testors film, it seemed far easier to just buy them. If I was going to do this ship again, I would definitely print my own, maybe in addition to the White Ensign decals. It is ashamed that the kit manufacturer didn't make any efforts to add a separate decal sheet. It would have been pretty nice if Revell-Germ. had offered some optional parts to make a varying level of containers instead of the "all full on every stack" look they have. Still, I won't bag on any company for putting out a rare commercial vessel, as they don't seem to be very big sellers when compared to the military ship model market.

Thanks for your post Don,

HB

Here are a few last pictures starting with the display case fit up.

All others are available on my blog. Thanks to everyone who stopped by this thread to look!

I suspect that Revell (G) might have had to pay licensing fees for each shipping company whose logo they used.  That would account for the lack of other decals.  They already probably had to send bucks to Hapeg Lloyd that would include container decals as well as hull.  

Hey Boats

Nice job, very original concept for a diorama.

I'm unfamiliar with the container ship model kit. Could you post the length of the model, just curious.

Thanks

Mike M.

Very interesting and just how many containers did you build? Wow.

Mike, the Colombo Express is just  a hair shy of 19 inches long.

Geezer,

Fortunately the containers were all molded in symmetrical blocks. Painting and decaling them was another story completely...

This is a pic of how the ship looks built out of the box with not mods. (And with some of the containers ommitted!) It looks like whoever built this one put the lifeboat stack with the groove for the boat in the wrong place.

Thanks for your interest everyone.