Brunos Modelltechniken

[bgire]

French armoured cruisers? My beloved Anteater "Dupuy de Lomé"? You have maybye a model of this ship, have you?

Dupuy-de-Lôme ?
I just lack a plan view of the spardeck to start a kit... I found one in Service Historique de la Marine (Vincennes) and I ordered a copy... still waiting.

Below are some pictures of my making of French early ships. I'm currently working on :
- Battleship Hoche
- Battleship Bouvet
- Armored cruiser Pothuau
- Armored cruise Jeanne d'Arc
(each ship at both 1:700 and 1:350 scale)

I started from the official Navy plans. I put the files in my computer and extracted the hull frames and longitudinal sections. Here's an example with Hoche :



then I computer generated the whole hull structure at both scales (again the Hoche) :



I photo etched my project to get a full set of frames and bow + stern structures (Here's Bouvet @ 1:700) :



I assembled both hull parts (I planned a waterline option, hence the two parts). Here's Hoche again :



Then came the filling stage. I used sawn blocks of "prototypying board", which is a silica bonded polyurethane resin board used in the industry to make prototypes for casting. This excellent product is worked like balsa wood, but remain stable and watertight for wet sanding. Blocks roughly traced using the brass frames as templates, then roughly cut with an electromagnetic vibrating wire saw and glued in place with Zap-a-Gap, with brass photo etched frames inserted.

The sanding step was very easy : one had just to sand the block until the paper touches the brass frames which are harder, making a different noise on them. This "rumble noise" was the signal to stop. Using this simple way I managed to shape the hulls quickly without using any gauge, template, measurement and I got a shape accuracy about 0.1mm.
Here's Hoche "before and after" :



Here's the 1:350 Pothuau under assembly (both hull parts simultaneously) :



"My" fleet (1:350 and 1:700). From to bottom : Jeanne d'Arc, Bouvet, Hoche Pothuau



I'm now doing the decks, hull sides and superstructures, using sawn blocks of bonded resin entirely covered with photo etched plates. Doing all this photo etching is very long, although I just have to redraw each part directly on the original plans (almost no measurements + 100% accuracy).
Here's Pothuau again. On the bottom are shots from the original plans inserted into my CAD software. Above are the drawings, scaled down to 1:350 and before doing the planking. This method should sound very familiar to Harold...



Hope you'll enjoy it.

[harold]

Sorry, I unvoluntarily did eliminate t-g's answer to your phantastic work you have shown (hope he will take my apologizing) -
but - Bruno! - such brilliant ideas as yours must not be hidden in a mere say-hello-corner!

For that reason I did start with your post a new thread here, and so I hope that a lot of our modelling community take the chance to watch carefully your phantastic techniques -(and soon will ask you a lot of questions!  ) !
Harold

[t-geronimo]

I will repeat my answer here.
(And Harold, you owe me one beer! )

Respect!!!!

[Spee]

Phantastic!! Absolutely outstanding work!!
Please show us more!!

[Ralf]

WOW! Im totally speachless!!! BRAVO!