homepage Forums SimHQ Community RC & Scale Modeling Titanic 1/400, full steam ahead Mr Smith!

Now, this is going to be a seriously slow build. My daughter decided i needed this for my birthday a few weeks ago, truth be told i reckon i did, she's a good looking liner. The kit seems fairly basic and needs some additions like photoetch railings, brass masts, cranes and possibly some window trims and whatever else i stumble across in my Titanic build travels. Surprisingly large as well, i didn't think it would be bigger than my 1/350 WWarspite, 643 feet and 36,450 tons loaded versus 882 feet and 52,310 tons. Even in the smaller scale it makes Warspite look small.


The kit.

I am fairly sure from what i have researched the kit is an Academy repacked as Revell, hoping so as there isn't a 1/400 Revell wooden deck, only the Academy.






He has seriously unsure squint..a bit like me when i first opened this present.





Some goodies that came with the kit, supposedly reprints of the originals. A lot of the pictures in the brochure, possibly all, are of the Olympic.







Hungry for some roast squab and cress?






The Plastic, being Revell it's the weird soft stuff.






Lots of this will be replaced with photoetch











She hasn't even left the yard and managed to bungle the front end. Maybe Rose jumped off. All the portholes will be drilled out as i intend to light her up with some leds.





Some rough work here lads, what we call a Friday arvo after the pub shift.





I thought this may have needed to be sliced off ...



But pictures show it does not. The top arrow pointing to the circular section of the hull, not sure what that is yet, rope/chain tie point for docking? Space cannon to fight space battleship Yamato?



Those vertical raised hull lines are a bit stark as well, i think i may need to knock them all back a bit.


Day 1 was just trial fitting the two hull pieces, sanding, checking gaps and any warpage before braceing and glueing. Let the hull sit overnight and then spent many hours fine tuning the main deck piece, not a chance it would fit neatly out of the box. Had to sand and trim the rear and forward mounting points and then make sure the front and rear upper deck sections would align when needed later. Set the deck piece in the hull, thank you extra thin near instant glue, a real lifesaver for niggly stuff, and then taped the absolute balls out of it to sit for another night. The rigging will all be tackled at the end unlike what the lower pic recommends. I expect much teeth gnashing then but it will be what it will be. I'm not working around loose rigging everywhere for the next however many months it may be.









Size to my 34" monitor and Warspite








One thing i need to decide, do i make a water base or mount her and show off the hull, rudder and props. I'm really tempted to do a very deep dark ocean type of feel which would go awesome with the lighting..but that rudder and lower rear end that would be hidden is pretty sweet looking as well. She would look nice either so i will leave that decision until i'm further along.

You're gonna need a bigger shelf,

You're not wrong!

Threads like this are why I still come to SimHQ.

My guess was the outlet of the 3rd class dunny, put at the front of the ship in yet another design blunder.

But it's something to do with anchor cables according to this:
https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/cxgmjd/what_is_this_hole_on_titanics_bow/
It's on the internet, so it must be true.

I thought it must something like that, cheers Mike AskHistorians is a good sub, not anyone can post there, very strict rules overall for replies.

Rails off.







Fairly messy front end, nothing will be glued here for a while, just all dry fitting, sanding and cleaning up at this stage.










Rear end is all outta wack and needs work.










Rear deck
















Getting all of these areas shipshape is what i'll be working on for the next little bit and then drilling the portholes and sorting out some lighting. Really should have done that before glueing that centre deck i suppose..but i'll work with it. Pretty sure i can cut the guts out of the centre section if need be. Sorry Nixer, i'm a landlubber and it really shows!

You are thorough.

That thought may change Grog..


Ok, so you all hang with me here, not all of you are engineers so i have to break this down as basically as possible. For the laymen.

Cheapest led strip i could find with enough lights to even allow those peasants in third class to see the rats. 31 bucks for 5 metres, which i won't need, but i'll see if they have anything smaller and what other options are out there on my weekend sojourn to the outer world.





Now, the engineering plans.




So basically, a water base, surrounded by the typical model ship wooden frame, hollow centrally under the ship with a chunk of lower hull cut out so if i need to get in there over the years to address lighting issues i can.


I'm open to all and any cheap suggestions besides just jamming a torch in the hull.

Rather than a strip of all thoseLEDs, I would consider just doing a less number of 4 or 5 LED bulbs. Easier and cheaper, but nowhere as quality as what you do.

I thought there would be a few options for a complete basic lighting kit with wired up leds like that but i didn't find anything in my dinner time perusal of the net. We have a nice little electronics shop down the road i will hit on the weekend so fingers crossed.

Just so you know or maybe you already do, those LED strips as pictured can be cut off right where you see the 4 copper strips there's a line. They can be joined together by adding lead pins there as well though that would be tedious at best.

This is probably over thinking LED's, but you might pay attention to the colour temperature of the LED light. If it's those programmable LED's this is probably moot. But if the LED's are just white, you probably want a "warm" white as opposed to "daylight" or "cool" white. I assume the bulbs in the day of the Titanic would be a warm white that is more yellowish in hue.

Wizard

Thanks both Regards lighting colour, i definitely need a warm, yellowish colour. There is one guy who does a deep dive on the lighting and has this..

Titanic's tantalum-filament ​bulbs would have had an even lower color temperature than 2,700k- probably around 2,300K. Seen from a distance in 1912, the light emanating from Titanic’s portholes and deckhouse windows would have had a noticeable amber-yellow hue to it.



He ends up with this, which looks amazing.




I will not be going anywhere near as crazy as this chaps build though, his 1/350 model took 13 years and is as good as you get.

A yellow translucent tube with a LED in one end or both ends.

Possibly something basic like that for the hull. Upstairs i'm going to have to approach a bit more fancily. The more i look the more i realise i don't think i can cheapskate out as much as i would like.

Probably not something helpful for this build, but I thought it might be of interest:

First full-size scan reveals Titanic wreck as never seen before
https://news.yahoo.com/first-full-size-scan-reveals-202441149.html

Maybe that's something that Ajay could pivot to if the build doesn't go quite as planned.

That's an incredible piece of work. Visually stunning and impressive technology.

With my patience and modelling skills, my attempt at building this would unintentionally end up looking more like the images seen in this scan!

How is the build going ?

Extremely slowly

Just moved my 2400 by 1200 modelling table (big old solid thick conference table) into the gaming room as i needed more area when swapping between simming and general gaming. My old three piece table ikea setup was only 600 deep with two by 1200 long and one by 800 at 90 degrees. There just was not enough room to get comfortable with peripherals all setup. So, they are all now setup as the modelling table in the garage in a u shape.

Currently dissecting an old and cheap pc chair to set my joystick in between my legs similar to the Monstertech chair style..without the 1k pricetag. The ship in question is about 3 feet from me staring down...waiting.