HMS Unicorn Build Log 7 - Hull Painting

Hull Painting

The whole painting process has been uncertain, and it ends up to a result not even close to my previous planning. :P

After a real lot of times of painting and sanding and painting and sanding and painting and sanding, this is what I end up to.. An 1824 HMS Unicorn colour scheme. :)

Comparing to the real ship.. which is quite close to USS Constitution and HMS Trincomalee also :)

I always think that showing the natural wood colour will be best for this ship, but due to my hull planking mistakes I'll really need to use dark colour to cover those errors.

Here shows the progress:

Hull is painted to white as previously planned. Around 6-7 layers are applied.

A thick black wale is added by using 4 x 4mm black wood strips, and the 'nose' is painted to black too. Anyway, when I wanted to paint the gun port area, the paint that I bought couldn't paste on the wood equally, and caused all the clouds and prints all over the area. I sanded and repainted, but still return the same result. So, I thought of changing a colour scheme... :( 

I found that the 1846 HMS Unicorn would be nice to follow too, so I started to work it out on port side. I started by extending the wale area, so that it's touching the waterline; and narrowed the gun port area down to the height of gun port.

Here's how it turned out. At this point, I still couldn't get a good mix of red ocher.

Two-face :P

I searched through my store room, and thank God there is still a unopened of red ocher paint in it :) I applied 2 layers on it.

When I was think about what modification should I do to the bow, I found another inaccurate plan about this kit. The bow that showing on the box is different from the instruction plan. As you can see, there are actually 2 gun port lids instead of the ladders. I'm currently planning to follow this one. :) 

Anyway, after long hours and days of working on the colour scheme... I've finally done it. Although it's not the scheme that I love the most, but the result is still satisfying for me.

I will continue on the beakhead and stern modification next. :)

Thanks for viewing. ^^

HMS Unicorn Build Log 6 - Hull Planking and Gun Ports

Hull Planking and Gun Port Making

I've done some terrible mistakes on the hull planking, and caused me take more time to fix them. Thank God that the curve can still go correctly. :) Since the hull planking is not done correctly, I'll skip the progress. Anyway, it's how she looks like now.

Still looking good from a distance, but if you watch it closer you can see a lot of flaws between planks. I then continued to cutting off the gun ports.

Can you see the marking? :D lol... The gun port size is 10mm * 11mm, and I made a 'mold' out of plywood so that I can marked all of them in equal size on the hull.

I done them in some hours, but the edges of the gun ports don't look even, even after sanding.. so, I decided to make gun port frames to cover them. 

I made a rectangular block which is 1mm  smaller in both dimension than the gun port to help me produce the frames quicker. For the frames, I used 0.5mm * 3mm walnut strips.

Since they are thin enough, I did not cut them into four pieces and glue them on, instead I just bend them.  

Gun ports in place and glued. And then I painted them to red with tape below to prevent unwanted paint to the hull.

And then, finished them with 2nd planking. 
Those marks on the bow are caused by CA glue... I used it because it dries faster than wood glue, but the marks really screw up the ship's exterior. :(

Another shot of its starboard.

Thanks for viewing! ^^