Just a little quick one here to show how I went about making some life belts.
One concern I had with the steamer was the weight of the white metal components high up such as the ladders, life belts etc which were all going to adversely affect the stability. I made the ladders out of wood and I wanted to have a look at the life belts as well This would improve the stability issue and produce items that were a lot more accurate in detail. Another enhancement was the attachment to the bridge structure as i wasn't prepared to simply glue the things on. They all sit on brackets of some sort so I wanted to produce something considerably more scale.
First job was to turn a bit of scrap wood down to 20 mm OD on the lathe. Suitable sized dowel could also be used but I turned mine down. Next was to drill a hole down the centre of 12 mm, giving me a cylinder of 4 mm thick walls. Finally I parted the wood off into 4mm pieces so I had rings of 4 mm x 4 mm with an OD of 20 mm, which matched the original white metal items. The final part of this step was to smooth the corners down with fine sand paper to produce the flat rings, typical of the correct shape.
Next I marked out the 90 degree quadrants and painted the sections white and red humbrol matt enamel as per the picture.
The stringing came next and to make it as easy as possible I glued the grab rope, a piece of rigging string, around the perimeter with cyano, making sure I left it loose enough to grab. Finally the bindings were added by simply wrapping cotton around the ring, holding it taught with tweezers and putting a blob of cyano on the back. When all four bindings were done i trimmed off the tails and I had a ring I was much happier with and which was considerably lighter than the originals.
Next came a mounting. I used wooden coffee stirrers for the stock wood and cut up the pieces as shown. The two arms were first glued together and, when set, the bottom part was added to the trimmed arms. The hooks were made out of 2.5 mm copper cable core from domestic cable, bent into a 90 degree and glued into a drilled hole in the arms. Finally for this part white paint on the copper and a coat of coloured varnish on the wood.
It was then at this point that I noticed a picture of the Ben Ain that clearly showed that she was fitted with a differrent type of ring holder on the bridge wings at which point I could have screamed, stamped on the brackets, shot next doors cat, etc..etc.. Then I decided that what I had made was typical of the time and did the job perfectly and there were very few people who would know anyway. Apart, of course, from everyone who reads this!! Anyway I do not make models to please the rivet counters, I make them to please me so I decided to go ahead and use the brackets I had made.
So the final job was to glue the rings to the brackets and then the brackets to the bridge. At the end of the day who'se to know the brackets weren't upgraded during one of the ships many refits over the course of her life.
Author
Topic: Life Belts (Read 8038 times)