1:30 Scale Nax Fishing Vessel - NTKJ MODEL - Part Two

In Part One we got the basic hull together 

Sanding and More Sanding

As I mentioned the hull is made of straight ply planks and there are a lot of gaps and seams which require filling with wood filler.  I bought a tub of 151 wood filler which I thought was going to do the trick and I was dissapointed that it was more like wall filler than anything else.  Still I persevered and ended up slapping on a ton of the stuff.  

In hindsight I would do this totally differently.  The filler oozed between the planks and ended up inside the boat hull trapped between the frames which then dried and fell off.  I have in effect created a boat shaped maraca.  

This necessitated opening up the deck under the wheelhouse in order to release the now rock hard filler.  This might sound like major surgery, but as the deck is so thin it was easily acomplished with a sharp craft knife and a steady hand.  I made sure to keep the offcut as I have plans for that later.

The way to tackle this is to use the old superglue and baking soda trick to fill up the gaps.  This of course only works if you are painting the hull.  If you are going for the natural wood finish then you are going to have to get better at laying the planks. 

Painting

Painting the boat in sections is unavoidable at this stage.  I carefully masked off the deck and gave the now smooth (ish) hull a spray coat of white primer followed by a couple of coats of white gloss.

The airbrush then came in handy for painting the decks with a Vallejo Burnt Umber wash.

The remaining wooden pieces for the wheelhouse, deck covers and the gunwhales were then extracted from their boards and sprayed with the same Vallejo Burnt Umber wash. 

Adding Some Colour

I imagined the boat a sort of tri-tone with a red top stripe white hull and black or red hull bottom.  In the end I just gave it a stripe of red on the sheerstrake plank and continuing around the transom.  Masking this off was a tricky exercise as I only had some really nasty cheap painters masking tape.  I will have to come back and do some tidying up by hand later.

Trial fitting the wheel house accents and deck hatches really makes the boat come alive.

You might beable to see in the photo above that I managed to glaze all the windows with some clear acetate from some recycled packaging.  I glued this in using my now favourite hobby glue UV Resin which I picked up in my Wish Hobby Products 2024 experiment.  This stuff is amazing.

Adding the Lights

Last year I picked up some micro LED lights for another project (which I have yet to start).  These are incredibly tiny and come pre-soldered onto super thin magnet wire.  I quickly soldered a couple of these together with a CR2032 coin cell battery holder and a latching push button and stuffed it into the hole.

I will probably tidy this up with a piece of perfboard at a later date as the circuit is tiddly. I am also undecided if I will add any navigation lights.  For the uninitiated this mean a RED LED for the left (Port) side of the boat and a GREEN LED for the right (Starboard) side.  I have some 3mm LEDs from another side project but these might be too large, we will have to see.  Adding them to the circuit should be no problem and might even add some much needed resistance to bring down the brightness.  

The LEDs were then routed up through the floor of the front wheelhouse and up one corner.  One LED illuminates the interior and is bonded to the roof with the UV Resin and the other goes outside in front of the cabin as an exterior deck light.  I will need to find an appropriately nautical shroud for this exterior light as they are suprisingly bright for their size.

Oh did I forget to mention that I added a salty seadog to steer this fine boat across the treacherous seas? 

He is one of the many 3D Printed accessories I covered in part one of this mini series.  A fine free model although he is now sealed in his cabin for all eternity as I have glued on the roof and floor.  

In the next, and final part of this mini series we will add all the accessories masts and rigging.

1:30 Scale Nax Fishing Vessel - NTKJ MODEL - Part One

In my recent foray into buying modelling supplies from Wish.com I mentioned that I had ordered a little wooden boat kit but that the order got cancelled.

Needless to say, I found a different seller on AliExpress and snapped it up.

This is a fun little kit and my first foray into making a wooden boat with a planked hull.  I made a balsa wood sailing yacht from old model engineering plans, decades ago with a lot of help from my dad, but I can't remember if we ever finished it.

The NAX Fishing Boat or should I say NAXOS Fishing Boat

The inspiration for this model is clearly that of a mediterranean coastal fishing vessel of which there are many models.  The kit is made by NTKJ Model and sold through various etailers.

This is plenty of inspiration for me to commence making this kit.

Meet the Parts

The kit comes as a set of 6 laser cut wooden sheets, a couple of dowels for the mast and a reel of cotton for the rigging.  A set of pictorial instructions with quite well translated text completes the package which cost the grand sum of £5.94 which in 2024 money is less than a Big Mac meal.  

Steps 1-4 - Making the Deckhouse

Whilst the first 4 parts seem fairly self explanatory and involve removing the deckhouse parts and assembling them, the parts are not numbered.  There is a disparity in the plans, in particular the inner bulkhead seems to have a large notch behind it which intimates a part fits into it but the instructions offer no assistance as to what goes in here.   

The wheelhouse fits to the deck with 6 pegs and matching holes.  Dry fitting the parts to the deck helps keep the wheel house square and stable whilst gluing the instrument panel back wall and the top visor.

I left the roof unglued to enable me to paint the inside and out and to glaze the windows and doors with acetate.  

This model is ripe for replacing some of the clumsier laser cut parts with 3D printed ones.  In particular the boat has some cowl vents which are made of laminated wood but they look awful and it will be so much easier to find some on the web or even scratch build.  The same can be said for the portholes and life preservers.  

• Cowl Vents - Cults 3D - A collection of vents of different shapes and sizes.  The two large vents at the front of the boat are 20mm tall and the one on the rear of the wheelhouse is 10.3mm tall. 
  
  
• Life Preservers - Thingiverse - A good looking life preserver model.  You will need to print six, two at 10.5mm across and four at 12.5mm across.
  
  
• Boat Anchor - Printables - This anchor seems to have the same shape and dimensions as the wooden one.  However, the model is huge and will need to be scaled down to fit.
  
  
• 3 Bladed Screw - Thingiverse - This will need to print this on a resin printer at about XX scale  The original prop is about 11.5mm in diameter.
  

Steps 5-8 - Laying down the keel 

Now the serious work begins.  The frames are all numbered and from 1 to 10 and are slotted into their corresponding slots in the keel.  Be careful when removing theframes from the sheet as the protruding sections are prone to breaking due to the orientation of the wood grain.

The diagonal slot at the stern of the boat I thought might be for the stern tube but there was no mention of it on the plans.  The kit comes with two diameters of dowel.  The thin one should be for the stern tube and it is a good idea to add a 1¼ inch length at this point as the keel is relatively thin and likely to snap as you insert the frame 8.  Ask me how I know...   

You could add the rudder at this point but the stupid thing has one mission in life and that is to snap.  It is much better to leave this until after you have planked the hull and either fit it or replace it with a 3D printed part.

Once all the frames are fitted you can add the deck plate.  Before you do STOP! 

Take the time now to add some cardstock or a thin piece of styrene to the back of the deck plate.  It is incredibly thin and the laser engraved planking makes some of the edge planks prone to detatching.  The slots that the frames fit in are also too thin and not in exactly the right places for the frames to slot into so you are going to have a whale of a time gently coaxing them into place and you will probably snap a few.  Don't panic.  Take some time out to put the stand together and have a cup of tea.  

The next step is the one I've been both dreading and looking forward to in equal measure.

Steps 7-8 Planking the Hull

That kettle you just boiled is going to be handy.  We now need to steam the first couple of planks.  These are the wide ones with the little oval holes on the planking sheets marked IV.  The holes go at the bow (the front) of the boat and you will need to hold the end of the plank in the hot steam to soften it and then gently put a curve into it. 

This is incredibly fiddly so be patient.  With these straight planks being made of plywood they really aren't made to go around these curves.  I glued 8 planks down from the sheerstrake (the wide one) and then the remaining planks up from the bottom.  These all had to be shaped at both ends to fit.

There will be lots of gaps.  When we shape the hull planks by sanding we are going to use some wood filler to fill in the gaps.  Real wooden boats have caulked seams and they are designed to swell when they get wet and thereby get tighter.  The hull is going to be painted so you won't be able to see the seams.

More 3D Printed Accessories

Fisherman with ships Wheel - Thingiverse - I spent a long time trying to find a suitable helmsman for my boat and this one conjurs up the same vibe as the Lovecraftian fishing horror game Dredge. be

To be continued...

Can You buy Good Hobby Products from Wish.com in 2024?

Earlier this month I blogged about my experience buying hobby products from AliExpress in 2024, this time I turn my attention to Wish.com.

104pcs Simulation Static Grass Tufts Model Mini Grass Cluster - £4.06

My basing game has been pretty weak of late.  Trix Robot Rider needed some desert vegetation to add a little va va voom so I chose these mini grass tufts.  Herein lies the problem when you are buying stuff from Wish, you are entirely reliant on the chinglish descriptions that the vendors provide.  They often list multiple pack sizes or products in the same listing and sometimes it's hard to know what you are buying.  

The upside is of course at these stupidly low prices you can often order multiple different options all for less than the price if you were to go to a big box retailer like Hobby Craft.  If you want to try out a hobby product for not much outlay the online vendors on Wish.com are a fairly safe way to do it.

These tufts are quite small and measure 5mm in diameter.  This might be what the number 5 on the box refers to.  In their defence it does say mini... 

I added a few of them to Trix's base and I really think that they add a certain something.  

Perhaps on a smaller miniature base they would have much more impact.  I will try to buy some bigger ones in future. 

50pcs DIY Craft Party Alligator Clamp Wire Clip - £3.74 - 3/5

I had seen GroundAffected suspend his resin parts for priming on these alligator clips so I bought a bag of 50.  To be honest the clips are not really strong enough to safely hold larger parts but for small 32mm miniatures they are going to be a godsend. 

There are obviously 2 parts to any painting jig, the thing that attaches to the bit you are painting and the thing that that thing attaches to, lets call it a base.  Having a sturdy base is just as important  

Clearly I am going to have to design and print some sort of hobby clip base or print out something like this Alligator Clip Stand by retro-stingray.

If I were buying again I would opt for longer wires as I think the ones I bought were mainly designed as table card holders.

60g Six Colour Flock Adhesive Nylon Static Grass Powder - £2.51

Wow this is great value considering a similarly sized bag of grass from a well known retailer is 3 times the price and only comes in one colour.  I now need to build a static grass applicator like Luke Towan  

UV Resin - 50g UV Resin Ultraviolet Curing Epoxy Resin Crystal Clear - £1.28 5/5

I have wanted to try out some of this clear UV resin for a while.  I have a large bottle of the stuff for my 3D printer but it doesn't set quickly enough when making things like pools of lava or green ooze.  This little bottle was cheap enough that I don't care if it works that well.

I am glad to report that it works really well, just 5-10 seconds under my pretty weakass UV torch and it sets rock hard.  I have a big lava base project in the works and this will be just the ticket for greating that glossy flowing lava.

A DIY Funny Wooden Sailing Boat Model Kit 1/50 Scale Ship £5.42 - 0/5

I would love to say that this is an amazing model and a fun way to spend a Sunday afternoon, but I can't.  Sadly the vendor cancelled the order unilaterally.  This happens from time to time on Wish.com, often when the price is too good to be true.  

I've seen this kit on AliExpress so maybe I'll try another order... ooh a stirling steam engine!

5 Free D&D Things I Bought on Wish.com - Part 1

Sometimes you do CRAZY things and today I ordered 5 random D&D things from Wish.com.

The Rules

Yes, there have to be rules, without rules there would be "Anarchy in your D&D".

1. I can only buy items which list for the search term "D&D"
2. I can only buy items with a list price of free, no limited availability items and shipping must cost no more than £3 per item.
3. I can only buy 1 item of a type, so no buying 5 different sets of dice.
4. No NSFW items please, we're British! 

Please wait 6 to 8 weeks for this post to conclude...