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12-05-2010, 01:08 PM
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Black Pearl Static Build Log
Hello all. I have been a member here for almost a year along with a couple of other model ship builder sites and was IMPLORED by members of those sites to begin a build log. After breaking the "rules" at those sites (definetly not intentional) a few dozen times I learned the basic etiquette and try to adhere to those as much as possible. Although I was very reluctant to begin a build log of my work due to the fact that I am still a newbie, it has proven INVALUABLE for me in developing skills and techniques in the hobby and I wish I would of created logs for the other ships that I have built. That being said, I would like to share with the members here my current build of the Black Pearl from the "Pirates of the Caribbean" movies and get a different group of builders opinions, critiques, and suggestions so that I may improve skill wise . If anyone here is also a member of any other sites (not sure if I am allowed to say their names) you might notice that this log is the same as on those sites, just a little condensed since I won't be including discussion from those forums. If I am posting this in the wrong section or not doing something in the proper fashion I ask that you politely inform me of my mistake and I will make every effort to remedy the problem. Thank you.
The Black Pearl This is a kit made by Z.H.L. (no one I have spoken to has ever heard of these guys , but it is THE ONLY BP kit that I have ever seen after months of searching) and I purchased it off of ebay. The only contents of this $200 box that I have decided to use however are the walnut strips, the cannon barrels, the angel figurehead the captains cabin ornaments, and other odds and ins. Everything else has been modified (EVERYTHING). This is my first ship without one of Chuck's practicums and the kit contained no blueprints so I am working off of a lot of pictures and drawings. I am at the point in the project were the details are driving me crazy because I think that I can really turn this into a beautiful model but there's just not enough info. The purpose of this log is to learn, from you guy's, the little things that can be done (or should be done) to make a model go from good to GREAT. I will be asking a lot of questions, but I promise I am not asking out of laziness and I assure you that the questions I ask have been 'Googled" prior to being asked. I won't waste your time I promise. Bear with me on some of the terminology as well. The scale we will be using is 1:64. I have already built the entire "body" of the ship. I've planked the hull and deck and I have added the captains cabin. I will display pictures of my work so far along with a brief description of what's being shown. I am not great with computers so bear with me on the pictures and order in which I post them. Feel free to suggest a better/simpler method if mine is horrible. With all of that being said.........Here are the pictures of her after hull/ deck planking. She has not been given her final coats of stain yet. The outer hull is double planked with ebony stained walnut above the wales, below the wales is painted black to add contrast and simulate tallow (not sure if I am wording that right or how accurate this might of been. It's actually only a justification for me covering up a HORRIBLE first attempt at hull planking). The deck is walnut planking stained naturally. |
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12-05-2010, 07:42 PM
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Re: Black Pearl Static Build Log
You guys will have to bear with me if this log is broken up into separate posts. I have to work on these logs when I have a spare minute at work and I get interrupted sometimes with calls to run.
Anyways, the captains cabin was made off of the model and applied after the details were added. I made the basic frame of the structure and added the screen to the inside to form the windows. A piece of wood that I painted black was layered behind that with a piece of packing tape over it to add a shine and simulate glass. The roof was multiple pieces of stacked wood that progressively got smaller (kind of like a pyramid), wood filled, and sanded. I have not painted it gray yet and am still playing with the idea of taking small pieces of copper tape and somehow forming the fish scale look. Might be too big of a pain and I am not sure how it would look. The ledges under the roof and windows were made from concave and cornice doll house molding.The very bottom of the cabin needed a cover piece of sorts. The parts that jut out are where the ornamental angels will go. Small strips of thin wood line the inner gun ports to add detail and the rail on top of the bulwarks was placed on top with double beaded molding added to the edges making it overhang slightly. Here are the captains cabin entrance. The windows were castings from the kit that I wish I could do over. The doors are made from layered 1/32" basswood with nails for door handles. There are two column pieces that go on the outsides of the doors that I carved from square stock. These were my first ever attempts at carving and I was somewhat pleased. Also pictured are the face planks at the break in deck level at midship to forecastle deck. This was an addition that I made on my own accord to add a little detail to the area. Bottom layer is planked with walnut and painted black. 1/32" strips added to create a little detail. The rudder was totally my discrepancy as it is rarely seen in the film (if at all, in detail). I choose to make a bigger version of the Sultanas rudder because I really liked it. It is progressively layered with a rectangular box/slot design on the end. No pintles or gudgeons yet. I've never really enjoyed that job and am thinking of possible game plans. I really don't care to learn to solder right now. Also shown are the gun port lids and kit supplied hatch gratings. I have opted for smaller gratings and will have them up soon. Pictured as well is a rough draft of a hatch cover. Same as Sultanas, just colored differently. I will not be using these particular ones however. After sitting on them for a few months I think that I can do better. Be sure and let me know what you think when I get the new ones to compare them to. And finally, the unfinished binnacle. The original doors and compass were not to my liking so I removed them. The rough shape will remain the same however. Also below, the kit supplied captains wheel compared to the Amati wheel that I found for under a dollar. The kit wanted me to take those three flat metal wheels, glue them together, and paint. I think the choice is pretty easy. The stand was made from the grating strips that I replaced the kit supplied strips with. The stand is simply pieces of strip wood cut to plan and the winding mechanism is a piece of dowel with a hole drilled through the center with painted rubber bands on the ends to form ledges. It was finished with black rigging line that was drawn through a gray pastel to add a worn look without fraying/ fuzzing. The stair case is nice looking and definetly an eye catcher....however it was a total pain in the a**. I thought that getting the angle correct would be the hard part but it wasn't. The hard part was matching up the hand railings to the top railing. Everything was cut and carved by hand. The kit supplied railings and rail stanchions ( I think that's what they are called) were too short and would've looked too "manufactured" anyways compared to the rest of the ship. The stanchions on the ledge and down the railings have all been hand carved in the same manner as the captains cabin doorway columns only at a smaller scale. You would of thought that they'd get prettier as I went but they didn't. |
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12-06-2010, 01:17 PM
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Re: Black Pearl Static Build Log
Hi all. Figured I would drop by and add a few of my most recent additions to the deck fittings for the Pearl. Fortunetly, the call volume at work has been relatively low so I've been able to finish a few little things and get a lot of reading done. Especially in the area of sails. Adding them, not adding them...furling or clewing...the list goes on and on. The best part, as I was doing all of this researching (with literally every engine on the Net) I saw a lot of absolutely beautiful models in the process. It really was amazing and very humbling, but at the same time served to rejuvenate my motivation. I get kind of lost some times when I do deck fittings because I am wanting to rig things so badly. The funny thing is when I get to the rig I will probably be on here daily cussing and screaming.
Anyways, the only thing that I have done to the hull in the last few weeks is touched up a things or to. OH, AND I CUT A GIANT HOLE IN THE DECK, THROUGH THE BULKHEADS AND BULKHEAD FORMER. That just sounded kind of funny when I started writing it. Its really not that giant of a hole and it was intentional. I went ahead and bit the bullet on the staircase leading down into the deck at midships. It just didn't seem right to spend all of that time carving the spindles for the stairs just to cover up the hole with planks. I forgot to take a picture of the finished result, but its really not that interesting yet. I just cut a square hole that was a little smaller than the staircase coaming, drilled dozens of holes through the bulkheads to weaken it, and removed the unwanted material so that the stairs had the clearance to fit in. I painted the inside of the exposed area under the deck black and, in natural room light, it appears that the stairs lead down to a "mysterious" darkness. Alright, maybe I am embellishing it a bit, but the overall effect is good I think. Not as good as having a real deck below, but defintetly better than lazily covering it up. I will post pics after the fittings are installed. In the meantime, here are pictures of the staircase below. The coamings were made to the dimensions required. A smaller "lip" on the bottom inside of the coaming was made with 1/32" strips to fake thickness. The rest was made with 1/16" strips except for the spindles. They were carved from a square dowel. I've really enjoyed carving thus far. Granted, it's very crude. The top rail was added and strips of double beaded moulding glued to the edges for added detail. I just happened to have some lying around and liked it. I might add a few simulated "heads" on the top of the spindles that are on the ends and in the corner similiar to the heads on the railings. I'm still undecided. I decided to post the pics of the railings that I was fortunate enough to finish. They are pretty straight forward. The stanchions I decided to carve in the same manner as the timberheads (not yet pictured). Just a simple half diamond cut with the edges and tops beveled with a sand pad. It's amazing how much a 1mm angle will turn a clunky piece of work into a presentable piece. The belaying pins are walnut and unfortunatly didn't want to accept the stain that I used for the deck so they are painted burnt umber. They look okay. Stained would of been preferrred however. Those two pins that aren't exactly even on the right of the main rail are just too loose to stay in place and I don't want to glue them. Otherwise they all sit evenly when right side up. |
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12-06-2010, 07:53 PM
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Re: Black Pearl Static Build Log
This is a picture of the bell stand. It's pretty simple. Just little stacks of rectangle and square blocks beveled on the corners to add detail. The top is made from balsa that was soaked and bent around a paint bottle and allowed to dry. The rest is boxwood I think. I just used the balsa because it handled the bending a whole lot better and was somewhat pliable after shaping for final adjustments. It helped A LOT to cut the strip from a balsa sheet paying close attention to the grain of the sheet. I found that bending with the grain was much easier as long as not too much pressure was applied that would cause the strip to snap. The top was layered with more boxwood to solidify the curve and add more detail. A hole was drilled through the sides of the legs to accomidate a large toothpick that I found lying around in the kitchen at work. The bell was 25 cents from Amati and is attached to the toothpick with an "O" shaped piece of 22g wire that fits into a pre-drilled hole in the bells top. It was then finished off with sanding and flat black paint. All except for the bell, which I sprayed with flat black spray paint. The smoothness of the spray painting added a little bit of contrast to the stand and kind of has that iron look to me. Maybe....maybe not. You be the judge.
This is the steering wheel. It too was purchased for a couple of bucks from an Amati distributor. The stand was made from 1/16" strips. The bottom was made from the same grates that the hatches are made from, painted black after assembling, and coamed with 1/8" strips (I think). For all of the hatch coamings on the BP, I decided to make them in the same manner they would have been in real life. Instead of mitering the corners like I have in the past, I shaped the ends to lock where they meet. I've read Chuck suggest making coamings like this when he decides to stain them, and even though these will be painted, I figured the practice would be good. The mechanism that the rope/string winds around was made from a piece of dowel that I drilled a hole through to accomodate another one of those crazy large toothpicks that were lying around. To make the lips on the gear that would keep the rope from winding off of the ends I found two rubber bands that fit perfectly and glued them in place. The only problem with that decision was that the rubber bands were red instead of black and didn't accept the paint easily. If I would have thought of this problem ahead of time I could have used black bands and left them unpainted. The flat black of the rubber untreated probably would have added a little bit of contrast and matched the bell. Oh well, live and learn. The black rigging line was ran through a gray pastel to knock down the fuzz and add an aged, worn look. It was then run through a hole in the grate underneath the mechanism, wrapped neatly around the entire gear, and then lead back down through the grate again. The wheel actually turns which I thought was kind of cool. If anyone ever starts poking their fingers around on the deck and discovers this feature on the finished ship I am sure I will have a stroke It was entirely incidental, but kind of neat I guess. And last, but not least (lastly for now...the fittings are far from all completed) my favorite of the new additions, the capstan. This one is kind of unique though, at least to me. It goes around the main mast. I've only seen them stand independently so, at first, this whole part of the project had me stumped as to what in the world I was trying to build. From what I can tell, it revolves around the same principle (pun intended and is built accordingly. I found a still picture from the movie to show you guys, and to all of those familiar with the movies, it is the part of the ship that Jack Sparrow was handcuffed to before being consumed by the Krakken at the end of the second installment. The top is made from assorted circular discs of different thicknesses and widths. The part were the spokes would fit into the capstan was made from a thicker disc with notches cut out around the outside forming a gear looking shape. Two thinner discs of the same diameter fitted to close up the top and bottom and create the peg holes. Two more slightly wider discs glued on top of those to add the outer lip. This piece sits on top of a piece of balsa that was rolled into a tube around the dowel that will later be the main mast after being soaked and allowed to dry. The bottom is made frrom more discs of different thicknesses and diameters to add detail. Aligning these pieces was a pain in the arse, but was accomplished by using the mast as a guide. The main difficulty was the glue wanting to seep through, adhering the piece to my unshaped mast dowel. As the glue was drying I just kept turning the capstan in circles so the glue couldn't take hold. The whelps were then added. There are chocks in between the whelps and aligning those to appear as one uniform piece is painstaking, but very doable. I formed a disc the required size and cut little pie pieces out carefully gluing them around and inbetween the whelps in pre-measured and marked positions. When I was done I rotated the mast with the capstan attached to see how evenly the lines flowed across it's circumference and was satisfied after a few tweaks and repositioning of chocks. The handcuffs are made from shaped pieces of thin copper. I took small snips of metal wire and glued them to the outside middle to form the cuff's hinges (probably could of omitted this step , but it gave me more surface area to attach the chains). After shaping eye bolts with a small gap to allow the chain to hang with 28g wire and gluing them into holes drilled with a pin vise, the chain was hung around the capstan. The chains that the handcuffs were attached to were then hung on the same eye bolts and the eye bolts were bent closed in a circle. Everything was then painted black. The chain however was spray painted black in the same fashion as the bell and for the same reason, to add contrast. I did try a little something though. After being spray painted I left the chain outside for a few days to allow a little bit of rust to form. I liked the way it came out. It is a bigger challenge than I originally thought it would be to paint a vessel primarily black because everything starts to blend together after a while. The minor differences in the shades of black really help out. The spokes that would be inserted into the square holes on the top of the capstan to turn it by the crew have not been added on the piece yet and I haven't decided if I will include them on the capstan, lying about on the deck, or not at all. I am open to suggestions. I hope that this all makes sense. |
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12-26-2010, 11:39 AM
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Re: Black Pearl Static Build Log
Here's more deck fittings and hull work. If anyone has any questions, feel free to ask.
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