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Vintage Submarine Redux
For those of you interested in the century-old card models published by the French firm of Imagerie d'Epinal Pellerin, I offer this new interpretation of the Grandes Constructions Bateau Sous-Marin, Pellerin #385. For a look at a beautifully-built version of this model in its intended form, see cdavenport's Vintage Submarine piece in this forum. My effort essentially took two of the classic models and kitbashed them into the Sous-Marin you see in the attached photos.
I wanted a larger and more imposing model than that originally designed, so the simple combining of two models seemed like an easy way to reach the goal. My Mark II Sous-Marin has a few features not found in the original boat, such as its twin conning towers, four torpedoes, a four-bladed propeller and custom metal piping. All this extra jewelry lends an air of authority to my 12 1/2 inch model.
The modern firm of Castle In The Air offers a print of this model in its original form, with the same weight of paper and dimensions, namely 16 X 20 inches. And while I'm sure these prints are lovely, I did not use them for this model, but instead turned to the web site called gallica.bnf.fr This is the site of the Bibliotheque Nationale de France and they have many of the old Pellerin models and single sheets on display. Worth a visit.
The gallica scans can be enlarged, and that is how I built this model. I broke the large scan into five or six sections covering all the model's parts, and saved them to my computer. After printing them out on my ink jet, I sealed the pages with two light, quick-drying coats of Testors Decal Bonder Spray, #9200. I do this with all my home printed models as it seals the ink without making it run, and it helps when wiping up any glue spots should they occur.
The trickiest part of this model is trying to figure out how the torpedoes go together. This problem is largely the fault of the placement of the parts on the page. The two parts marked " I " go together, and the two parts marked " I' " follow suit. Their positions on the page would suggest otherwise, and almost all the built-up versions I have seen show the torpedoes as simple flat parts glued against the hull. It was pure dumb luck that I figured out the solution before I surrendered to the problem.
Well, that's all for my first posting. Now all I need is a little more luck when I try to load the pictures.
Score and fold,
Thumb Dog
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