Hi guys,
I thought I would show you the plastic and metal parts for my new diorama.

This is actually a wreck of a Sokol class destroyer, with parts of the hull, 2 guns and one of the 4 funnels.
What could interest you here is that I had to do some home made photoetch so I could reproduce the pierced metal gun cradle.
Home made photoecth is hell to make, the bits of metal you see here must have been my tenth try :unsure:

You may notice that all the parts here are actually cut at 2 cm from the bottom, hey this stuff will end up under the water :D

The original Sokol destroyer was built at Yarrow for the Tsar in 1895. Then there was a good dozen of copies built in Russia. From what i check, a few of them where sunk during the Russo-japanese 1904/1905 war, while the surviving numbers where finally put to scrap around the early 1920's. 2 or 3 were eventually snatched by Finland after 1920 too.

Hope you are all well and that you will enjoy!
JB

:o wooooo scratchbuilder..actually which part on the ship this thing located.. :D

Nice work JBA. Looking forward to more of your updates here.

lots will be impressed by this... You have to show us how you made your own PE...

Another masterpiece in the making.... keep it up... ;)

Simply fantastic work. :)

Mind sharing the process for the home made PE and the materials needed? Might come in handy oneday... :D

Cheers and happy modelling :)

Definitely another beauty in the making. Many thanks Jean-Bernard for sharing this one with us. The naval guys here will love this one as well. I was figuring how to scratch the drain hole decking on a U-boat conning tower at 1/35th for a little vignette so a way to make homemade PE is definitely of interest.

Superb and Smart.....can't wait to see the complete product ;)

This is amazing, wish to see more update soon.

Thanks a lot for your great comments my friends, you're all quite heart warming :)

to do Homemade photoetch, you need a few things:
-first being fluent enough in some computer drawing software to be able to design the plate: mine looked like that
messing up with those softwares is a fair part of my day job, so no real problem there -but it could be for anybody who cannot do this!
-then you photocopy the drawing on some transparent plastic sheet -any photocopy shop can do that
-then you must buy some brass sheet that has been treated with photoresist material, I found mine at a French mail order specialized in trains, it's not that expensive really -i paid 8€ for a 25cmx12cm plate, and you can do quite a few tanks with that.
-then the trick is to expose the treated brass a few minutes to the sun, on each side with the transparent plastic sheet as a mask. (3mn if the sun hits hard!)
-then you must dip the plate in this liquid photographers use to reveal their pictures (not very expensive too). And eventually you get a "printed" plate with in black, the exact drawing you made.
-then you put this in a bath of FeCl3 -easy to find ain electronic shops as it's an acid that is used to create some printed circuits.

-after a few hours, you have what i hold in my hands above :)

So you see, the thing is to invest, because none of the ingredients are expensive, but you need quite a few stuff. but then after that.. did you notice all the nuts and bolts and stuff I have been cramming on my plate?!!

I could write pages and pages about this as what i have been writing is the theory, now i failed quite a number of times on stupid issues, and I will eventually post here the dos and don't about the whole thing, but not before a few months, when i write the article for that specific diorama :)


more litterature about the subject here


[edit] woops Blackheart, i forgot to answer your question! here's a Sokol

the parts I have been modelling are the 5 meters after the first 5!

Wow!!! That's a very crowded PE plate you got there, and a very good example of using every space available to the max. Thanks for the brief how-to's as well. ;)

The Sokol looks interesting as well. I'll be following this thread closely. Don't want to miss anything on this interesting scratchbuilding.

JB you've got most of us scratchbuilders here drooling already, myself included. :D Definitely looking forward to the article at HF as well. Merci for sharing this one with us my friend.

Thanks for sharing your knowledge. :D

Thanks JB ;)

wow!! nice scratch building!!
thanks for sharing!!

Thanks guys!
Druid_99 -when doing such a plate you have to crowd the space to the max: in fact you can reuse the acid until it's clogged -the less the acid bites into the metal, the cleaner it stays for a reuse -so you crowd the space!
JB

JB,
I am just eagerly waiting for your to pour on the magic!!.
Magnificient as usual even at this stage when its not finished. The summary on photoetching is really helpful. Now I am curious to try my hand on it...Bravo