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Old 10-14-2020, 03:03 PM
Kommi Kommi is offline
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Fill and sand for a boats lower hull?

I've seen some people use putty and sanding to make a very nice lower hull for their paper boats. But no discussion of how its done or what to use or prep work or anything. So I was looking for some tips on how to do it. I'm building up HMV's SMS Nassau kit and really not happy with how the lower hull came out.
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Old 10-14-2020, 04:48 PM
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You are looking at a lot of putty and a lot of sanding. Sanding works best when the object (shell) is rigid, so one can not simply build the hull as-is, and then apply additional putty to it and expect it to work - the skin will deform during the subsequent sanding and you will not be able to achieve a smooth surface no matter how hard you try. The common ways are to provide support to the skin by either (a number of) additional layers of card, resin cast, balsa, expanded foam fillers, or anything else you see fit, before using the putty. I will leave the details to experts of these construction - I am not one of them.

What I can help is on the double bottom construction, which is also worth considering. It's quite popular among some of my friends and is sometimes even included as part of the ship model itself nowadays. It essentially backs the skin with additional layers of card, it requires little sanding and filling and uses the original skin parts. For an example refer to here:
IJN Akizuki 1944 [Answer 1:200]
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Old 10-14-2020, 05:28 PM
Kommi Kommi is offline
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Hmm... Seems I might be in deep guano then. The lower hull really looks kinda like trash, at least from how I normally build things. Might just drop it and stick to water line for this kit, and try your method the next time.

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Old 10-14-2020, 07:38 PM
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It looks almost okay, if you share your build process we can see what can be improved. I know quite a few that build the hull as-is to a perfect finish, so it is definitely achievable.
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Old 10-14-2020, 10:45 PM
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Mostly I built it up as exactly told in the instructions. But it seems HMV uses fairly lightweight card stock, and I didn't bother to reinforce it or anything like you did with your double bottom and building up the skeleton. Most of my issues came up when trying to slowly fold in the large hull plates, which lead to some dents in areas. The weird overlap chunk in the center is just due to how the plates go together really.

First thing I'm gonna change when I build the upper hull and superstructure, is figure out a way to reinforce the hell out of the skeleton with some cardstock. Not sure if my hands can survive cutting as much 1mm card as you used with the laser(?), so thinking just some very heavy weight paper. And try to save for a glowforge in the future, lmao.
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Old 10-15-2020, 01:36 AM
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It is important not to rush it and double check everything when building superstructure. If superstructure has errors it will make skinig a pain. It is also important to preshape the plates of the skin and dry fit constantly. If needed file down the superstructure. Check against the light source to see how the reflectinons goes over the surface to see how it follows up.
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Old 10-15-2020, 04:27 AM
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Ah HMV... Its design is known to be (unnecessarily) difficult, in my view. Supporting the hull using only normal card makes it difficult to finely adjust the shape. One thing worth trying, is to build the skin without the internal supports, so you can iron out any irregularities from both sides and achieve a smooth finish. Only insert the internal structure afterwards to provide rigidity. It is a daft technique but I have seen it work, otherwise I don't have much to offer for HMV style hulls...
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Old 10-15-2020, 05:03 AM
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Kinda why I was thinking coat it in mod podge before coating in some kind of super easy to sand putty and going to town with very careful sanding to be honest. When I get to the upper hull section, I'm going to be going a whole lot slower and dryfitting the crap out of everything I can. As well as likely printing barrels, and soldering together a nice mast from brass rod.

Next time around... Think I'm going to make a buck, and build the hull over that.
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Old 10-15-2020, 06:38 AM
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If the interior of the hull is accessible you might try applying super glue to the unpainted paper skin. (It will take a lot of those little tubes!)
The glue fills the pores in the paper and stiffens it up.

P-lite
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Old 10-15-2020, 06:54 AM
Kommi Kommi is offline
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That's not a bad idea Panzer! Thankfully I have a couple large bottles of Starbond too, lmao. Just need some applicator tubes and I can punch small holes through the hull, stiffen the skeleton and then do the putty and sand method I think.
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