CCGN Cove Isle, Papershipwright, 1:250

[Heiner]

Good evening, Gentlemen!
Although I am busy with two other projects, I simply had to build this vessel, when David Hathaway at Papershipwright published it as a free Download on his website. Many thanks, David!
Before we begin, I strongly recommend to spend some time with the journey of one of her sisters, the Gull Isle, across the Lake Huron, that was shown here, there are lots of details shown here, that served as an inspiration for further refinements of Davids´ already brilliant kit. Time (and lazyness) prevented going further into details, but I left some little footprints.

[Don Boose]

David's models are outstanding. I look forward to seeing your build.

Don

[Heiner]

As always, we start with the skeleton of the ship, which fits together just fine. I realized, that the sides of the bridge end in some bulwark, that was not part of the kit and added this with Inkscape to part 5. Doing so, I could as well place the plaque of the Canadian Coast Guard a little bit higher, where it belongs to.
If You have not yet built a kit from papershipwright: don´t bother too much about the numeration of parts; David has a way of a habit to leave some out or to show the wrong number at the wrong place, so just think a bit ahead and don´t stick too close to what is written down there- You will find Your way round for sure, anyway!

[Heiner]

(The) one little fault with the hull is, that the bow looks not quite the way, that is given to us. I ad a close-up of it from "Marine Traffic.com", another great site for lots of pictures with breathtaking resolution and lots of detail.
My way out was to add a dogleg at the waterpass into the hull and glue the lower part together, until this connection reached back to the baseplate of the hull. Part 10a, the bowplate, was then cut down to a triangle with about 6 mm leg lenght and glued to the working deck; from there I could flap it down to be glued on the frontend of the hull and cut off, whatever remained to be too much.

[Heiner]

Next I added the walls of the superstructure, the upper deck and the rear wall of the bridge. As You have noticed (I hope You did...), I cut out the windows, so the upper part of the central former had to be clipped, which I did already in the beginning; it would have cut the bridge in two halfes and had no avail, anyway. I find, that inserting a stiff foil instead of the printed windows gives so much stability to the bridge, that these formers most often seem to be obsolete.
Adding the shades above the windows meant as well nearly using up the last parts of the kit, that could be manipulated without any tweezers; from now on, we go somewhat smaller, as with the anchor winch.

[Don Boose]

Your narrative and images will be very helpful to anyone building this model.

Will you provide feedback to David?

Don

[Heiner]

To finish the bow, the crane had to be added and finally the bulwark, which I spared until the small parts there were in place.
As You wll see, searching for further photos online. there hardly is any position, that the crane had not, while the vessel is moving, except maybe the folded-up position, in which David shows it. I decided to unfold it, which meant to replace the hydraulic cylinders with some pieces of bright wire and rolled-up cardboard.

[Heiner]

Originally Posted by Don Boose

Your narrative and images will be very helpful to anyone building this model.

Will you provide feedback to David?

Don

Hi Don! As soon as I am finished, I will send David the file with my alterations and hope, that he will find them useful. I´m pretty sure, anyway, that he knows already about this problem.
Besides, I feel a bit intrusive about it, as he created the kit with a certain picture of it in his mind, and suggesting to change that without being asked to - well, it feels a bit like lack of respect, if You know, what I mean. Who am I to tell him, how to do his kits?

[Heiner]

Coming up to the state, the CI is in right now, I added detail to the upper deck. Most of it was provided by David, except the 3 red "buckets" aft of the "stack", I found on a picture of the Gull Isle.
The firefighting monitor has an interesting shape with double tubes to form a ring (shown here, for instance, so I decided to form something hopefully similar to it. Pod, double tube and the barrel are simply wrapped from red paper around a needle, the bright wire is the same I used on the hydraulics and the black ball is a painted drop of dried glue - nothing special, but I like it, anyway.

[Heiner]

The next days, I will add the mast and its rigg (which is from photos nearly a modell in itself, with bunches of antennas...), radar and the search lights, to be done with most of Davids´parts. The lifeboat is something I would like to do with other parts, but have not yet decided, which to use.
Besides I did drawings for some lasercuts, that I hope my wife will deliver soon. With them, finishing this vessel should be a matter of days, but I´m not a fast builder; what I presented here took me about 2 weeks yet.