Nantucket Lightship by Lindberg - 1:95 scale build

Very nice work, and Happy New Year to you Fright

I was able to work on adding some of the deck parts this weekend. I now have the three boats and davits to go and then on to the rigging. 

A Very Merry Holiday Season To All !!!

Superb work Robert!!!

I like her with the Lighting Kit you installed. Very nice.....Cheers mark

My wife gave me a hand in installing the deck into the hull. I put a big smile on my wife's face when I realized that I had soldered all of the connection and forgot to run the wiring up through the hull! LOL What a dunderhead !!! Anyway, after correcting my mistake, the deck fir pretty well into the hull with only a slight gap between the deck and hull. A little CA glue and tying it with string until dried and... Wallah! Now I can start gluing parts to the deck and get the rigging on. I did another test in our bathroom to get an idea of how it would look like at night. 

My Micro Set and Micro Sol arrived earlier than expected, so I worked on adding the ship's name to the hull. I masked off the lower two-thirds of the hull and sprayed the upper hull with a clear coat. After it had dried, I cut up the name into individual letters and started in with the deacals. Everything went rather quickly! 

Gene1 - 1st off: "Merry Christmas" to you and loved ones! 

I had no issues with paint' bleed' when spraying this kit this time around. I also made sure that I rubbed down the edges several times with a circle end clay tool and toothpick. Lesson learned from previous model! I like your tip about using a clear coat to seal the edge of tape.

After getting a couple of tips from rcboater and GMorrison, I ordered Evergreen .219 inch round tubing to create my two mast towers. I used my Xacto knife with new #11 blade to cut off the two small lights on the forward original tower and then used my round file to shape to fit 'new' tower. I used a leftover piece of 1/32 x 1/32 strip of wood from my Bluenose to create my electrical cable that runs up the masts towers. I 'borrowed' a few of my wife's jewelry carft rings for the towers as well. The 'electrical box?' that sits on the forward tower was made from a styrene strip that I notched out to fit over the wood electrical cable and then glued in place. 

This photo may be a cause for confusion the way that I posted it. On the right is the kit's forward mast tower. I was just using it as a guide while I was making the 'new' electricol box from the styrene strip. What did I learn from this: The electrical cable on the tower could be created by possibly gluing/soldering small cross wires (that would simulate the cable connectors to mast) onto a larger wire wire and then glue it all to the tower? 

It's not perfect, but I'm trying to be as accurate as I possibly can. I really want to thank the wonderful people, such as yourself, who have been kind enough to follow along, offer support, suggestions, tips etc. that have helped me to move forward with my kits! Cheers !!! 

Robert, Your painting looks really great & your masking had to be as good as it could be. Your hull is beautiful. I like the colors you chose. 

   I don't quite understand what tool you used to gut the wire notch on the mast. I will read it again. I am behind times on a lot of tools. My Foredom drill is over 50 years old & still works beautiful. Everything I have is old.

 Robert, I read it again & must have been asleep when I read it before. . That was not an exotic tool you used.

Robert, You are really putting a lot of nice detail into this model. I want to see some more full ship pictures. You had trouble with leaking masking tape & using Tamiya curve tape. I have used a piece of glass & a 12" Ho aluminum ruler to cut regular tamiya tape to any size I want. I like the HO aluminum ruler because it is very thin & works well. The glass is double strength & about 9" x 12". I cut with a #11 Scapel or a regular hobby knife.  I buy single edge blades at Lowes , 100 for about $8 & use them at times.

    When I mask I burnish good with a toothpick & use M&M glosscote to seal the mask. Sometimes I will put 2 coats on. 

    Merry Christmas to you all.   Gene

I had some time before leaving for work and I glued the radar unit in place atop the aft beacon tower. Once again, I wish that the Lindberg directions had shown this unit in their plans! I also wish that the model companies would name the parts as well as the numbers to help one learn what it's function is. LOL My wish list to Santa. I'm still looking for the 'clause' in the fine print!

Someone in one of their posts made mention of the electrical wire that runs up the beacon towers to power the lights. He also mentioned the little 'box' that is attached along the wire as possibly being a breaker box. That was the one thing I was not able to cut off from the original tower.

Long story short, I sat down with a strip of styrene and anchored it into my vise. I then used my Xacto saw and notched a grove down the middle of the strip just big enough to fit over my 'wire' cable running my new tower. I also used a round file to help shape it to the tower. I colored the notch just so it would show up in the photo. A little sanding and it was glued to the tower. I'll paint it in the morning.

CAUTION: On the sprues in the kit, there are some parts that do not apear on the instructions.  Neither are they shown in the pictures on the 4 sided instructions. Lindberg really needs to correct their instruction sheet, an/or, show you the option of using these parts!!! It turns out that they go to the tower nests and also include three pieces that are for the radar, which was installed during WWll. Needless to say, I am going to try to incorporate the radar  unit on the aft tower. I sanded a forty-five degree angle to the base of the unit and this will allow it to snuggly sit into the top of the aft tower.

Wilbur Wright - on my previous  model, I used only Tamiya yellow masking tape and I did have a couple of spots that had some paint bleed issues. I tried the Tamiya Curve tape for this one and, and after burnishing the edges several times, it seemed to work fine.

Mark - Thank you for taking a look and for your kind compliment. Cheers!

Bill - once again, thank you for sharing this historical information on these light ships for myself and others to read and use. I also want to thank you for helping me along the way with respects to the lighting. Your beacon tower lights are more accurate than mine due to that processor and circuitry that you used in your build I just didn't feel confident in giving that a try. Your Nantucket RC model really looks fantastic in the water! p.s. Your USCG Cutter project is another keeper as well 

"Good Holidays" to Everyone !!!

Have just caughht up with this Build. Very nice work.....Cheers mark

Darkhorse

That’s the answer I was hoping for! Thanks

Bad news, I’m afraid.    LV -117 did serve on Nantucket Shoals station, and was a sistership of LV-116, your Chesapeake.    

But the Lindberg kit is a model of LV-112, the ship that was built to replace LV-117, when the latter was rammed and sunk by the RMS Olympic in 1934. The replacement ship (the subject of the Lindberg kit) was quite a bit bigger.  She was 149 feet long, versus 135‘ for the older ship.  More importantly, LV-112 had a displacement about 65% larger (1050 vs. 630 tons) which means she had a much fuller hull shape than the old one.  

LV-112 was a unique Light Vessel- built bigger and stronger than any of her contemporaries, designed for duty on Nantucket Shoals, a very hazardous station. If you want an accurate LV-116, it would be less work to scratchbuild one than to start with the Lindberg kit.

Now having said all that, if you took the Lindberg kit and made some minor alterations to make it look more like LV-116 topside, and painted it red with big white CHESAPEAKE on the hull, 99.9% of the people seeing it wouldn’t notice or care about the inaccuracies.  (Just don’t take it to a Lightship Sailors Association reunion!)

-Bill

The ship looks great and is a very interesting subject.

One has to be very careful with the Tamiya masking tape for curves or it will leak a little. There is a learning curve to it which I have not completly mastered.

Nino - I used 1/8 " Tamiya Curve white tape for the edging and then I used ScotchBlue 1.5" tape covering over the large areas of the hull. I usually use Tamiya 6mm masking tape on most of my needs. Thanks for taking a look and I wish you GooD HoLiDaYs !!!

Your masking for the Hull boot topping realy turned out well. The Tamiya masking for Curves tape would seem to be a great product.

I suspect for heavily curved sterns the thinner widths of Tamiya's Curve tape might be best. Do you recall what thickness tape you used for the Hull painting?

     Nino

Wow !!! I got locked out for 6 or 7 days !!! Great to be back. Final test run with all lights wired. Only the pilot house and both beacon towers are glued to the deck. I hope to get the deck installed sometime this week. The one light that is hanging below deck will help illuminate the engine room skylight and random portholes under the deck. I blacked out most of them by gluing strips of painted flat black styrene over portholes. A few of them have been covered with translucent yellow film to give the effect that some cabins are in use.

Sure you could. I have lost track of which ship the Lindberg kit is, but if it is 117, that ship was built in the same yard at the same time as 116 the Chessie ship. They look pretty similar too, so for your purposes it looks to me that changing the name would suit your purposes.

I would suggest rub down letters. You can't print white ones without getting tricky with white decal paper and red outlines.

Hi,

I don’t mean to sidetrack this thread, but how difficult would it be to alter this kit to change it to the CHESAPEAKE lightship do you think? My wife is from Maryland, and I‘d love to build some of the ships that are in Baltimore’s Inner Harbor.

Steve - thanks for following along on this one   This is my 1st attempt with lighting and it's been a good learning experience for me with this lightship. Evan Design lights have made this very easy to install! I have to say that, if it were not for sites such as this, I would not be at this stage today with this kit.  

really enjoying your build robert , very clean work , I should learn from you . 

Forward cabin is finished. Port and starboard navigational lights are in place. Both beacon towers have slow flashing lights now installed. Forward tower shown in picture.

Bill - I was surprised with how nice the running lights looked when lit up. Many thanks for your tips on the LED lighting. All of my lights and connectors came from Evan Design. I was a little intimidated in trying any type of circuit board for controlling lights at this point with my electrical skills LOL.

Your RC lightship is amazing and your current work that you are doing on the USCG Cutter is looking fantastic. Thanks again!!!

Robert,

I think you’re doing a great job with this kit- the best I‘ve seen!

Aren’t LEDs fun?  They are easy to work with, and will last 10-20 thousand hours before burning out!

Keep up the good work...

-Bill

Steve5 - thank you! This kit is my learning process in wiring lights, but I'm also trying to improve on a few things as I go along, to the best of my ability