Hi all,
Been dormant from model railways for the past few months due to many reasons but I've jumped back in as my grandad has started re-building his layout into the loft of his home. Being a large layout he would of course like the very ubiquitous dock area and I'm adding a small marina onto the edge of it for some variety. The other reason may be I work on leisure yachts so I want to see some in iniature around!
Looking online we saw 4mm scale yachts were rather expensive so I have taken it upon myself to populate this new marina with yachts etc. As I build various yachts I wil update this thread with each one and aybe do A few tuorials of thats what people would like to see maybe?
Bavaria 34 Cruiser.
The first yacht is a small one to test the waters and bring my modelling skills back up to scratch. The Bavaria 34 is a small cruiser yacht found in many places over the UK and abroad for its entry level price and relative sailing ease, which is why I've chosen it as my first marina occupant. My model isn't am exact scale model, it uses the plans of a 34 cruiser but bits and pieces are changed here and there for ease.
First of all, I printed out the plans at roughly 4mm scale of the yacht and marked out the hull shape onto some thick balsa.
Shaping the hull is the next step by cutting and sanding away all the excess balsa. Highlighting the excess with a highlighter helped me distinguish how far I could keep going with the blade.
All nicely shaped (except the rear hull chamfer) The coach roof is only sat onto top at this point, it is a thin sheet of balsa cut and sanded to shape according to the plans.
This is how she sits at the moment at the desk with her coach roof attached and the rear deck carved out carefully with a chisel shaped craft knife blade. Being a fractional gaff rigged boat, the rigging shouldn't be too complex to model but I shall keep you chaps updated. Being a marine engineer, I specialize in engines not rigging so famous last words and all that! I'm sorry the pictures are a tad naff but phone cameras in the dark don't always work too well I'm afraid
Until next time,
Lloyd