Thursday, June 07, 2012

Model boat presentation

Boat on plinth


My plan for the Canberra involved proper presentation. This model wasn't going to sit on the plastic stand that Airfix intended, that might be fine for a teenagers bedroom, for a proper model, the presentation should be of suitable quality.

The plan was to mount it on a couple of brass pillars on a wooden plinth.

This was supposed to be easy to arrange. I would purchase a plinth from the man who is always at a local market and mount it on that. Sadly he wasn't at the market. Or the next one. Or the one after that.

Which made things awkward. The fixing method would be a couple of bolts through the plinth screwing in to nuts fixed in the bottom of the boat. As time went on, I needed to fix these but didn't want to do this without the plinth.

Finally, the decks had all been painted and I need to move on so it was off to the local hardware shop to acquire a length of wood from their quality offcuts box. Half an hour with a plane and power sander then 6 coats of Ronseal varnish to get colour and shine.

A couple of holes were countersunk in the bottom so the bolt heads are inside the wood. In the hull, a pair of brass nuts are held in place with epoxy glue. To separate the two, some brass tube has been carefully cut. Now it all looks nice and I can take it apart for polishing and hull painting. Best of all, those decks can now go in.

1 comment:

neil whitehead said...

Oooh! That's lovely and shiny, Phil. When I made the kit I drilled out some of the windows, glued some tracing paper behind and popped in a couple of 3v bulbs and then re-enacted the sinking of the Titanic as in the film A Night to Remember.