1/300 Langton Dutch Gunboat, Pt. II

This bizarre pic - when I first glimpsed it in my photo library it took a few seconds for my brain to decipher what my eyes were actually looking at - shows my mini-vice, with a brass photo-etched sail in the jaws, and a small thin length of wire being 'super-glued' along the top edge.

The reasons for this were several: after agonising over how to proceed with both rigging in general and the rigging of the three for'ard sails in particular - the other sails, or 'shrouds' (still learning the nautical lingo!) were glued to masts/spars; whereas these three had to hang from ropes - I opted to complete this initial part of the rigging with fine wire.

This was a butt-clenchingly difficult job in the end, made marginally worse by three or four hours of slow, painstaking work being wrecked in the tsunami of my wife's return from work.

I chose the wire, originally purchased for use in my scratch-built tree-building programme, for several reasons: metal is rigid; the wire is about the right gauge to visually match the photo-etched rigging that's already part of the model; it was the only suitable material immediately to hand!

I was warned off using cotton thread, as it sags too easily, and fibers can fray, looking messy. And I wasn't able to get any fishing line, as suggested by a local model-making buddy. 

I had also, inevitably perhaps, googled the topic, and after a bit of research I now feel I would like to try EZ-Line, or something similar. But that'll have to be some other time.

In the meantime I opted to use some wire I already had sitting in one of my several modelling sundries boxes. This wire actually has a flat rectangular profile in section. So it ain't round, like rope! But then again neither are the photo-etched ratlines. It turns our that this wire has a profile that fits quite well with the photo-etched rigging.

Everything about actually doing this turned out to be very difficult and frustrating: cutting the wire to length was tricky, as the model is fairly advanced in build-terms, making access fiddly; the sails had been bent, to appear as if billowing - so I had to straighten the edges to be glued to the rigging using the mini-vice; gluing stuff with cyano-acrylite glue is, I find, really maddening; once the sails were glued to the rigging, positioning them 'twixt bowsprit and the main mast took aeons, as holding these awkward shapes in place as the glue goes off is hyper-fiddly. Things fell apart many, many, many times!

Still, I'm hoping the combo of metal wire and superglue will reduce the likelihood of sagging, and perhaps even add strength to the finished model.

I still have no really clear ideas on exactly how I'll do the remaining rigging. I might try fishing line, as my pal suggested. Although I do now know a bit more about one potential way I might do it!

The evenings session ended with a very slapdash coat of gunmetal grey and a lighter wood colour, all with Humbrol enamels, for the rather cute little cannons, and a black base-coat for the newly attached rigging and forward sails.

Having looked at some other builds, e.g. this [link] sloop, via TMP and other sources, I can see that I'm going about this in a less than ideal way. Chiefly I'm thinking about how hard it's going to be to paint fine detail in amongst all the fiddly and hard to access deck, and the overlapping shrouds, etc. 

At least I had the sense to paint the guns separately! I also chose to file down the undersides of the cannon, so they would sit better, with the barrels poking through the gun ports. Whils this might make them look a little odd on close inspection, it ought also to mean they'll be better anchored to the deck.

In respect of anchorage, can anyone advise on attaching the anchor? 

Misc: Langton 1/300 Dutch Gunboat

Some years back, after reading Napoleon & The Invasion of England, pictured above, I got a yen to acquire some French Napoleonic vessels.

Looking into the idea I discovered that Langton Miniatures make a number of 1/300th Napoleonic naval stuff. Baulking at the £280 asking price of HMS Victory, and anyway wanting something for the other team, I opted instead for one of their cheapest/smallest kits.

I figured this was as wise as it was thrifty, seeing as I know just about nothing about naval warfare or model making. It meant I could learn on the job without too much at stake.

The box, showing a nice looking image of the completed kit. And above that, info on the rigging.

So I ordered the model listed as a Dutch Gunboat in French service. It's currently showing on the Langton website priced at £32.50. I'm not sure if that's what  it cost though, as I got it many moons ago. I think, in fact, that I persuaded Teresa to get it for me as a Christmas or birthday gift. Anyway, as soon as I had it, I began to build it.

Now, as I've said before, I don't like to be critical of the work of small producers - passionate specialists whose enterprise and skill I certainly admire - but by the same token, I also feel it's only right to be truthful. 

Although in many respects the kit itself is a lovely thing, the major gripe in this instance is one of poor or lacking instructions. 

I don't know if my kit was delivered with anything missing or not. I did contact Rod Langton, but this was all so long ago now I forget what transpired! I only know that a reasonable number of parts listed in the 'kit contents' list (see below) didn't appear in either of the two instructional diagrams.

The rather meagre instructions, relating only to construction of the hull and deck detail, and the list of parts.

These line drawings - one of the rigging, and one of the hull/deck - were the only instructional components in the kit, as I received it, and neither are clear or comprehensive enough for a landlubber like me! 

One thing I do recall, after my chat with Mr Langton, is that I was still none the wiser regarding several elements of the kit. The upshot was that the build reached a certain point and then simply stalled.

Returning to the present (in more than one sense!); having just moved home, and having had to contend with moving masses of unfinished models and wargaming miniatures, I decided today, on a more or less random whim - basically just 'cause I happened to see this particular model sitting there, dusty and unfinished - to resume working on it. Quite quickly I recalled why I'd stopped before. But this time I thought 'sod it, I'll just have to busk it!'

In the pics above and below you can see pretty clearly the three major elements of the kit: the resin hull (already base-coated in a 'wood' brown Humbrol enamel), the white metal (masts and most smaller detail elements, plus some larger ones, like the furled mainsail), and the brass-photo etched parts.

Pics showing the photo-etched brass shrouds and ratlines [1].

I did try finding some useful ref. online, but failed. So I just went at it, with a will. And the pics in this post show where the model's currently at. Since initially posting this, I've worked out what to do with a few parts that previously had me stumped, and added them.

The parts in question transpired to be the two ladders, from the main deck to the rear raised (poop?) deck, the gun port hatches, and the grills that go over the hatches on the main deck. I worked these elements out visually, with the aid of the 'kit contents' list, as they're not referred to in the hull/deck assembly image.

This still leaves me in the dark about how to properly mount the small rowing boat (is this known as a 'jolly' boat?), which seems to me too big, and the anchor.

There's also the issue of how to do the rigging, which element of the build also affects the addition of the front three sails, which remain as yet unattached.

Most of the shrouds are single thickness sheets of photo-etched brass. But a couple are double thickness. I believe this is done in order to show detail on both sides. 

Whilst this is good from a detail point of view, it's less good from a consistency perspective - some shrouds are thin, some thick - and does entail the rather tricky and messy operation (at least I found it so) of super-gluing the two faces together. I managed to align one pretty exactly. The other is out by microns, but it's amazing what the eye picks up. 

These sails also need shaping, and of course small thin sheets of brass don't share the same properties as large expanses of woven canvas! Still, I hope, with some judicious trompe-l'oeil painting, that I might make them look more 'billowing'.

If anyone's built this model and can advise me on a few points, I'd be very grateful! In the meantime this Dutch Gunboat joins my armada of unfinished stuff!

Above and below, the boat as it now is. Next step, fore'ard shrouds, and, er... rigging... I guess?

Can anyone advise re rigging: shall I use thread, or perhaps that stuff (sorry, don't know what it's called!?) that model aeroplane makers use for wire? It's a kind of stretchy rubbery stuff. I think it comes in a tube?

Another small grumble is that the kit is illustrated with a beautifully finished model - nothing wrong with that in itself - except it appears to differ materially from the kit as supplied (e.g. the boat hanging off the rear appears to be both smaller, and not hung in the same way as the kit allows for). 

In conclusion, for the time being at any rate, although this is slowly building into a nice boat, it hasn't been straightforward. Better more comprehensive instructions would be a real, and I feel very necessary, enhancement.

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NOTES:

[1] Langton products seem, in my experience so far, to assume prior knowledge of naval and nautical terminology. Landsman that I am, I was constantly looking up terms. Still, it's helping expand my vocabulary.