'Ship of Dreams'

Oh yes here it is my little pet project! Designed to keep me quiet whilst I'm recovering.

OK so this is a 1:350 scale model of the ill fated liner R.M.S Titanic. It measures two and a half feet in length. Well if you are going to build the Titanic an itsy bitsy model just will not do, you need the biggest one out there! Oh and of course the most accurate historically.

So this first picture shows the hull completely untouched and exactly as it comes out of the box. Now I have never made a modle before so I am roaming into completely unchartered territory here...bit of a mans world thing this really.

So my first job wat to trim any rough edges from the moulding process and of course to admire all the little Portholes which are two sizes..0.8mm and 1.2mm as shown below....

OK so it's not the best picture I know but, you can see how many of the little devils there are. Now every single one of these needs to be drilled out and I work on the theory that if you are going to do something then do it properly. You can paint the hull with the portholes not drilled but, i figure that it's just not going to look the same...

Bear in mind that I am planning to import from the United States the Photo Etch (Brass!) Railings and benches for this thing.

So moving swiftly on, a good two and a half hours later and a lot of plastic dust. I finish drilling out all the Portholes in the Hull. No I did'nt count them. What I can tell you is that if you look at the photo of the bow and at the top layer shall we say, before the cut out section...you can just make out the Portholes of which there are 15, now work your way back to the clearly visible 16 Portholes below the windows, ok so I am guessing I drilled a lot of Portholes yesterday!!!!!

So here is the result of all that drilling. That's the bow seen from Port Side. I have assempled the base that comes with the model but, at this time I am currently thinking that if this comes out the way I want it to, then I think a better quality base will be needed. I have also been told that once complete a Plexi Glass case is in order as the thing is a dust magnet!

Hmmmmmmm......

The finished Hull, trimmed and drilled and now ready to be masked of to spray paint.....

Sitting on the supplied base that I will use as a working environment till completion. Hopefully today I will start preparing the deck ready for glueing.

The original Titanic never completed it's voyage..hopefully mine will.