Friday, November 20, 2015

Painted barge

Vac formed Barge

Painting the barge took longer than building it.

First, there was a spray of Halfords matt black.

Next the cover received a coat of Railmatch Weathered Black to contrast nicely with the hull.

With the Humbrol paint from the Bantam tug still on the bench, I used the red and green on the front and back. Where I needed white, it's 147 as usual. All needed 2 coats to cover, event the thick red.

Finally the we have what I thought were stickers but turned out to by vinyls requiring cutting out and fixing with UHU. To be fair, they are very flexible with no problems on the curved bits.

The finished model has a certain charm. I'm not sure I'd want to use it on a layout as it's not very sharply detailed, but that's more to do with my style of modelling. Lots of people would be perfectly happy and it easier to produce good results than with the balsa wood kits on the market since there's no grain to hide.

Another option might be to just use the hull and scratchbuild the top. Since these parts are a pretty good shape yet hard to make from scratch, compared to other options, it could be a cheap move for anyone wanting canal boats.

Finally, there would be space for radio control in there if you used small and light batteries. Just a thought.

Kit from Sarik Vacform.

5 comments:

Chris Ford said...

I note that Odds is just slightly scathing in the post below. He knows about boats and I don't, so to me this looks quite good, especially for the money compared to the mega bucks charged by some other kit producers for narrow boats. For a background item in 4mm for seven quid... not bad at all.

Christopher Payne said...


Can I please ask if this is the 4mm scale kit or the 7mm offered by Sarik-Vacform?

Christopher Payne

Phil Parker said...

CF - I'd agree with both of you. If I wanted a foreground boat, it would be something very different. As a fun and inexpensive kit, it's not bad. I'd rather people used this and made something than used a horrid ready made boat from China. Being vac-form, it's not a kit type many people will have tried nowadays.

Christopher - I'm flattered it's not obvious. This is the 4mm version. The 7mm kit looks better than this in a the packet and is even better value.

James Finister said...

On the other hand his own canal modelling is rather good http://oddsoracle.blogspot.co.uk/search?q=canal

Jim said...

Suspect you're just being a windup, but aren't barges 14' wide, as opposed to the 7' of narrowboats such as this?