Dazzle Disruptive Camo Elco 80ft PT Boat

[Don Boose]

Mighty nice. I gotta try to build me one of these some day.

Don

[airdave]

Been a while since I updated, but work still continues on the Disruptive PT Boat.
Progress is very slow now, but heres a catch-up...

I decided to put in the fore deck guide railings/wires that I left off of my first PT Boat build.
In photos, many PT Boats have this rope/wire removed.
Probably just got in the way for the crew.
Anyway, I made some supporting masts from toothpicks and used straight wire for the railings.
Unfortunately my wire lengths were too short to reach the bow point.
But since I am unsure of how they attached at the bow, I decided to leave it this way.



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I assembled the big AA cannon and fitted it to the stern deck along with a few other deck bits.





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I also finished up the Exhaust Mufflers/Pipes, etc



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And, I got both Gun Turrets completed and added the upper Railings.
Instead of wire this time, I went with paper railings.
Yes, these are pretty small and thin...very delicate.

To make them I used the printed patterns provided for the wire railings and coated the prints with craftglue (PVA).
Once the surface was dry, I coated the back sides of the paper patterns.

And once dry, I cut out the printed railings, using a Hobby Knife (#11 blade)...very slowly and carefully.
I left a little bit of white edge so the railing lines were thicker.

Then I glued them in place...gluing one attachment at a time, and forming the railing into a curved and bent shape.

[airdave]

Next up I built and added more components, like:

Machine Guns and Torpedo Tubes



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Radio and Flag Mast



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Smaller details including the Torpedo Tube Firing Charge Canisters




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And a Life Raft on the front deck.



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I have two more Torpedo Tubes to build and install.
Thats about it I think?
Might be some other small details, but nothing too important.
Then I will take some final photos.

[herky]

if mine turns out half as good as that i will be happy.

[palindrome]

I think I'd wind up having seizures if I tried to build that one. That's worse than strobe lights...

[airdave]

I gues thats the point.
I saw a short film about dazzle paint jobs on ships in the first World War.
It illustrated how the disruptive striping pattern caused a visual shifting appearance at a distance.
As if the shapes were moving and angles were changing.
It just makes it very confusing to target the ship at a distance.
You don't know which direction its moving or if its coming or going!

Assembling the model is not that bad.
The stripes don't really cause any visual problems.
The annoying part (for me) is finding stripes that don't line up or don't look quite right.
Since the real boat was painted/striped as a whole, the patterns would have matched across certain objects.
It was very tricky during the model design phase trying to make sure the patterns carried across parts correctly..
Now that parts are assembled, I see there are a few areas that I would have striped differently.
But the overall effect is what its supposed to be.

[Don Boose]

Great work, Dave, although the pattern definitely disrupts my equilibrium.

Don

[BobRo]

We have a couple of dazzle ships in Liverpool. A ferry and a pilot boat. The ferry camo was designed by Sir Peter Blake who designed Beatles album covers

[airdave]

Well, I'm sorry to say, I still have NOT finished this Boat!
LOL
Now I am sidetracked with the Saladin Armoured Car build.

The Disruptive PT Boat ended up on the shelf, out of harms way, for the time being.
So, I snapped a couple of photos for the store listing.

I figured I might as well share those with you.
One day, I will hopefully get the other Torepdo Tubes done.
Maybe add some Depth Charges too!