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[Phil22]

Hi MBM,

A second project arrived last week, a Billing Boats Zwarte Zee (Black Sea) BB592. I've added some info about the kit in 'what's in the box?'

https://www.modelboatmayhem.co.uk/forum/index.php/topic,68612.0.html



Making our Banckert was a great learning experience and having looked around at models from other brands, I circled back to Billing's as there's familiarity with what to expect. Another ABS hull was a must, living in an apartment block with sensitive neighbours, the hammering required for trying a POF hull wouldn't go down well. That's one thing to look forward to doing down the line when I eventually have a shed, and a garden for that matter. =)

For the walk to the local lake, I originally wanted something similar in size or smaller than the Banckert (65cm) but the lines of the ZZ gripped me. It's a magnificent looking shape.


Source: https://www.wssrotterdam.nl/nieuwsbrief/Zwarte%20Zee/ZWARTE%20ZEE%20NLD-33%20DEEL%206%20%2B%20ZWARTE%20ZEE%20NLD-63.pdf

This time around I'm taking care to keep the laser cut ply in a more intact state. If any replacement parts are needed they should act as good templates. All ply sheets have been photocopied for backup.



Made a start too on getting some of the electronics together.




Again, I'll document the building process and will appreciate any input and guidance along the way.

Thanks for looking.
Phil

[Capt Podge]

Hi Phil, thanks for putting this one up and hope all goes well with your build 


Ray.

[Martin (Admin)]

A venerable kit.... be interesting to see how it actually goes together.   

[Alan52]

Hi Phil

Looking forward to the build. Always remember the Zwarte Zee as Plank on frame. Nice to see they have updated the kit

[JimG]

Hi MBM,

 Another ABS hull was a must, living in an apartment block with sensitive neighbours, the hammering required for trying a POF hull wouldn't go down well. That's one thing to look forward to doing down the line when I eventually have a shed, and a garden for that matter. =)

Unless you are building to a rather large scale there is very little hammering needed for plank on frame. In most cases the sizes of wood used allows any pins to be pushed in without the need of a hammer. I generally don't use the provided brass pins just using glue and normal sewing pins to fit the planks, if you can use clamps then they can be better as they don't leave holes in the wood.

Jim

[Phil22]

Thanks all =)

I appreciate your input Jim. With your advice a POF hull would be doable for me at home. I'll have to look into it more for the future, the range of build options will definitely open up. Nice one!

Regarding the hull's trim line, I find this line shown by the masking tape to be of much interest due to both 'the plunge' and the fact that it isn't parallel with the keel. Referencing the manual and other threads online, the line sets the height for the rear deck.

The approach in mind is to get the bulkheads fixed in first, (the stern bulkhead looks to be 3mm below the trim line). Temp fit the rear deck then carefully plane and sand the sides down to level. Before I can do this though, I'll need to order a propshaft and measure that up for fitment.





Stern area: Plastic molded bulkwarks are provided and wrap around sides in 1mm ply.



Interested to learn some more about electronics, I picked up a breadboard and some components:



Cheers!
Phil

[Phil22]

Hi MBM,

The past few evenings have been spent removing the laser cut parts from the ply sheets and studying the manual. Like with the Banckert, the instructions are workable but updated versions from Billings would be welcomed, wink-wink. I'm sure things will become clearer when the items needed for each step are in hand and have had some thought.

Sum total of the wooden parts



Made a start with the base of the funnel

[Phil22]

Hi All,

Things are progressing at a gentle pace
Here’s what has been done in the last week.

This 3D puzzle makes up the towing winch. Found that the 2 brass 'drumheads' are missing from the kit so I've requested them from Billings.



I replaced the kit parts to be doubled up with solid wooden blocks.
I've since decided I'm going to do them again with a wider, flatter profile. A little beefier looking, something you could whack your shins on.



For all plastic and brass fittings, where possible they'll get painted separately later on.











4 days on and while waiting for some parts, I thought I'd work on the rear deck structure.
Momentary grumble incoming... it might not look much from the pics but the laser-cut uprights were a mess, width and height!!



I'm thankful not to be cutting parts out by hand, but considering the model's price I'd expect better.
I either got a 'pants' copy of these parts, or I suspect the plot for the laser needs reviewing.
Building to square having shortened the width for the 34s, 35s and the 36, you can still see the vertical misalignment. The Sydney Opera House sprung to mind.







As well as the uprights, parts 39a (left) and 37 (right) needed revision.
For future builders, take a moment to double-check these parts before doing any glueing.

With some work the structure started to come together correctly and my enthusiasm returned hahaha.



Some more shaping, filling, and light sanding are needed in spots throughout, but with my grumble now forgotten, I'm loving having this new project to work on.



Thanks for looking.
Phil

[Alan52]

It’s certainly coming together Phil.


Must say the quality of the parts look extremely good. Your photograph’s are exceptional.

[Phil22]

Thank you Alan! Photography became a hobby of mine after moving to Tokyo.
There are so many incredible views here, especially in the city at night with all the neon lit up.
My main interests are photographing temples and architecture, and more recently tiny bits of plywood again hahaha.

Here are the results of some more steady progress, starting off with the ship's crane assembly.
I wedged an extra piece of wood into the top of the pipe. This helps things in a few ways, to offer a bigger contact surface and can lessen the event of glue oozing out of the join.





The main towing gear going together



Getting cut ends squared up







I'm still not 100% sure how this'll marry up to the next level deck, but it's my interpretation of the drawings provided. I'll add a note later on with the result.





This is how the lower cabin took form



[Between the blocks] The left edge of the smaller piece needed a chamfer putting on it which I missed (on both sides).
They should align with the base template. Not a biggie though.



The brass ballast left over from our first build is very handy for this type of work.







I must admit I was apprehensive to see this long piece of veneer when I first opened the kit. When doing the Banckert, I'll admit I never knew the common knowledge about soaking before bending. Cue splitting wood sound effect.

I left the part in water for 2 hours and 'clamped for the best'. The laptop's weight and profile worked great in getting the curve where it needed to be while drying out.



I completely missed part 44a (noticing a pattern??), which is designed to work as a guide when wrapping the veneer across the front. 

This time armed with information from the MBM folks here is the result, I'm really chuffed with how it turned out. A light application of wood glue has been added on the inside to the bends.



When gluing, the contact area offered by the L-shape side pieces (non-kit) worked well to quickly grab the veneer.  44a might still get its day as a cover to tidy things up. We'll see after the next deck gets put on if it'll add anything.  In the interests of weight saving though maybe it'll become a 'paint stirrer'.











Thanks for stopping by.
Cheers,
Phil

[Alan52]

Hi Phill


Your photography hobby certainly shows. The quality of your pictures is what I wish kit manufacturers would use. A lot of the time you are trying to decipher small fuzzy photos. I should imagine you are not short of beautiful views where you are. Build is coming on grate. Look forward to the next instalment.

[Phil22]

Cheers Alan! Rosie turned out beautifully, really enjoyed following your progress and I’m looking forward to seeing how the CM build goes, especially as it was one of the kits on my shortlist when choosing the ZZ =)

Many thanks to Billing’s for getting the missing winch parts quickly sent out. Good service!



Things are coming along and ZZ’s starting to take shape. All of the internals bar the 2S Lipo are on order, so to keep me occupied until their arrival, I’ve been having a dabble with her lighting setup.

The main mast has an upper diameter of 4mm (wood supplied), I want to install 3 yellow LEDs here but with space being too tight for 6 wires (replacement plastic pipe), I’ve gone for this approach.





Main mast: Testing with a 9V battery a single resistor, so far the 3 yellows (1.8V x 3) and 1 green (2.2V / nav light) all have a good luminosity, not too bright and next to no heat anywhere.

Connected to the bread board, it works well but I’ll need to figure out something that looks OK to hide the protruding ends of the wires once the anodes and cathodes are shortened.



For the ship’s lighting the overall plan is:

(All LEDs 5mm)

Main Mast: 3 x yellow
Navigation: 1 green, 1 red
Second Mast: 1 white
Main winch area: 2 x white
Bridge: 1 white (heavily dimmed)
Cabins: 2~4 white/yellow (undecided)

Stuck point: For the remaining LEDs, it is worth still going with a couple more 9V batteries on separate circuits or not? I’m sure there’s a more straight-forward / better way of going about this… still very much a noob when it comes to the practical side of electronics. Any suggestions from your experience would be great.


This was my first go at attaching what I think is the wave deflector (correct term welcome).



We left it off the Banckert as we preferred the look without it. For the ZZ, I wanted to have a go. It is a challenge to bond edges on the angle with no additional supports. After a soak, and starting from the centre, I alternated between spots of superglue for the initial tack, and quick drying wood glue for the hold.



I’m fairly content with how it turned out. It’s going to need some filler in areas to even things out more. Any tips or advice will be gratefully accepted, as there’s another set to do on the bridge.



The housings for the navigation lights were remade slightly larger. I’m sure there’s going to be variances between builds in terms of these curves, so the kit ones do act as good templates to start from.




Here is the bridge going together.



Looking online at past versions of the ZZ at a bigger scale, I really like the look of the 7 rectangular bridge windows. The 1:90 kit has them square and spaced too wide I feel, so I’ve made a plasticard version with 6 windows that I think emulates things better at this scale.



Nothing is stuck together at this stage, some structures need some filling here and there before I get going with the primer.

[Alan52]

Hi Phil

Build coming on really well. Curved timber is always a problem, but it has come out fine. I am no expert on electrics, but I am sure you will get some guidance here. Stan has helped me a lot with electrics in the past.

Looking forward to the build and more of your excellent Photo's.

[JimG]

For the mast lighting you should look for thinner wires. If you can find any the wires from BT telephone cable are ideal although they are less flexible as they are generally single strand. If you can get hold of an old transformer the varnished wires in the primary coil are ideal, again single strand so are really thin, in the past I have used some that is around 0.15mm diameter. The LEDs don't take much current so you can use really thin wire without problems. If you check out EBay you should be able to find thinner wire than you are using.

Jim

[Fred Ellis]

Hi
For LED's I use 0.2mm cable, for multi number of LED's of the same colour I wire them up in parallel.

[Phil22]

@Alan, yes Stan's experience is worth its weight in gold. I'll be fiber-glassing the bow of the ZZ, as he recommended I did with the Banckert.

@JimG, @Fred Ellis many thanks for your information and advice. I bought some 0.26 gauge wire this weekend from a local stockist, and could achieve the mast setup as I originally wanted 





Installation gave a few laughs as the wire emerged out of the wrong end 







I was going to wait on trimming the hull but curiosity won so I made a start. I went around several times scoring about 5mm above the trim line, until the excess could be removed, then continued with a mini plane. It's almost there, the ABS too is quite sturdy.



The plunging rear deck line is much less concerning now as it first appeared.





A test fit shows some adjustment is needed at the stern. The deck will almost get into the required spot but a noticeable kink forms. Over sanding, I might opt for a saw cut along the length to remove some material. This should help narrow the piece, I'll try with some cardboard first and check.









Thanks again!
Phil

[canabus]

Hi Phil


Only see one problem is sealing the aft deck from water.


I am having problems with my Smit tug which I bought second hand.


Some foam/rubber seal set up before installing the deck ???


Harry

[Phil22]

Hi Harry,
Nice one for pointing this out. I'll definitely be paying special attention to the area, so some form a sealing will be put in place.

Cheers!!
Phil

[Phil22]

Hi All,

For the masts, building the railings for each platform without stanchions was a challenge, the heat from soldering (which I’m not the best at) would cause my previous joins to come apart. Both are a bit skew-whiff in spots but I can live with how they turned out overall. If I were to do them again, I think I’d try to make my own stanchions with holes for the rails.



For the main mast I constructed it a little differently. I opted to build the base section square instead of tapered as in the instructions. The kit parts are naturally all cut at right angles, so when it came to the tapering, gaps were appearing. Sanding/filling to fit is an option true, but it went together a whole lot more easily with some straight 5mm section for the front and rear uprights. The front has been finished with some 10mm beading. The sides will get a few additions to bulk them out more at the base.







Brass housings have arrived for 5mm LEDs to be added later.








I’m starting to get the hang of bending veneer haha.











Light filling and sanding is finished so the majority of the parts can now be primed.













I wasn’t expecting solid results with these details. Being required to drill 3mm holes into 5mm ply on the cross section is a bit daft. They chewed up then began to fall apart. I’ll use plasticard or balsa instead.



It wasn’t until it arrived that I realized I’d ordered a shaft that’s threaded at both ends. This doesn’t work with the solid coupling which I definitely want to use this time around. I’m now on the lookout for a plain ended version.



The sides of the hull have been sanded down further. 80 grit sandpaper is your friend when working with ABS, get the gloss sheen off and down to a ‘furry matte’ to get a good bond.



Have a great weekend!

[Alan52]

Really coming on well Phill. Love the masts. One thing I always hate doing is putting lighting in masts, so fiddly. Can’t wait for the next instalment.

[Phil22]

Hi Alan,
Many thanks for your kind comment. LOL I realized that for me, the tiny stuff requiring patience is the thing I like doing the most. That is bar soldering (grins).
Working to set the deck levels at the moment.



I’m interested if any builders of this kit also had to remove material to get the laser-cut deck to fit inside the hull. In the instructions I can make out that the rear bulkhead sits down about 3mm so when fitted, the deck sits flush with the ABS sides. Perhaps other folks have the deck sitting on the ABS, not sure. Wherever works though I guess.





The rear deck spans the middle bulkhead which needed a few mm taking off it too. It fits well now, but I need to address the hatch opening to square it off again.



When assembling the main winch, I left the wall separate until I knew how these parts went together. Looks like I got it right with the instructions. The winch butts up flush with the deck.





Main deck test fitting next.



Cheers.
Phil

[Adam]

Please us the correct green for the steeldecks, and not the green Billing Boats advices...
Very nice build by the way.. 

[Phil22]

Nice one for the comment Adam. I'm not sure yet what colour scheme I'm going with but it won't be the deck colour on the box. I've seen one build online with an orange and red hull, it sounds wild but it was done well.

Fitting the main deck took some thought and patience over a few days. In my case, it was necessary to remove 10~12mm off the top of the forward bulkhead, the deck is now in place and without having had any cuts made nor sanding.

Doing the portholes was an interesting and rewarding task. A few different arrangements were tried on strips of A3, these worked to give a good visual on the model, and to check if any of the holes would hit the main deck's mounting points.

I'm sure there was a structural reason for their location on the real vessel but I find them a bit too random looking towards the bow. In design terms, my eyes are hunting for symmetry and a landing spot that isn't there (this harks back to my former days as a signmaker). I reworked their grouping into 3 pairs then the remainder together with slightly wider spacing. There are now 24 per side, 1 less than the original.



The supplied portholes are 6mm ø requiring a 5mm hole. The template was gone along putting a pin through each of the centres so they could be marked on the hull.







It could then be flipped and the other side marked up.

I really wanted to get the holes lined up as well as I could, so I used several bits starting at 0.5mm and incrementally worked up to 4mm which was the largest I had. I made a quick dart to the DIY shop and got a small set with a 5mm in. Back home this is where things nearly went pair-shaped. Until this stage I'd been carefully going up in less than 1mm increments to widen each hole. Yeah, it did take time lolol.



Going direct from the 4mm to a 5 just tore through the ABS without the bit spinning. The hole it left looked more like a triangle :(    My fault I should've tested it first on an offcut. I filed it back to circular then thought I'd try to recover things with the 4~12mm step-bit from the new kit. I'd not used one before ... it worked well to rescue my mistake and did a very pleasing job of the other 47. Lesson learnt =P



Lucky charm!




When drilling initially I noticed a "rogue" out of line and sitting lower than the rest. I purposely stopped working on this one until those either side of it were finished. I could then remeasure, file the hole upwards then carry on the widening process. It's now back in line!
 
 







Some overall pics during this process. "Rogue to port!" 









Have a nice weekend all!
Phil

[RST]

Hello Phil,

That's looking rather good.

You're right to check porthole spacing -what's right on the real thing might not line-up with what's inside (been there many a time).  Nobody will notice the difference in the end anyway.

By the way as you're into building now -for future builds you might want to consider a couple of tapered reamers in your tool kit?  Mine cost a few £££ each but they last donkeys years, once you drill the pilot hole they are very accurate for enlarging out in wood, thin steel, brass, ali, plastic, GRP etc.

I have a couple from HALL amongst others but very sure you can find similar in Japan.  My HALL stuff seems the best, one is something like 3-12mm (same as in link below), the other 12 to something like 25mm.  They are nice to hold in the hand and you can "direct" the hole by applying gentle pressure one direction or the other...

https://uk.rs-online.com/web/p/hand-reamer-bits/0600672(for very mall holes -"bead reamers" are handy to have also)

All the best,

Rich

[Phil22]

Hi Rich @RST much obliged for your thoughtful advice and the link to the reamer. I'll be sure to have a look around and see what's available in Tokyo.

Kind of related like going to a foreign supermarket on holiday, it's interesting to compare the items sold in DIY shops here versus the likes of B&Q, etc back home. The range of pull saws aimed at pros is extensive, but I don't often see tenant saws. Hand-drills are another, I've only ever seen one in a dozen places. My running conclusion is that the average household doesn't have or need many tools. From what I understand from friends, woodwork and metalwork are not subjects taught in Japanese schools, so many folk are very limited in their practical knowledge of DIY. A common one is wallpapering, this is almost exclusively done by professional decorators here. This is a shame really as I do believe that many people want to have a go at things themselves. On the other hand, trained Japanese carpenters are extraordinary at their craft as can be seen in this documentary on temple construction: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3BQ5uRor72E

Next is working to get the electrics in and positioned. The Banckert has a 750kv motor installed and I'm more than happy with the speed and handling performance. When pushing it on the rare occasion, it does reach a point where the increased revs don't affect the speed. This should be expected I guess. At 25cm longer and likely to be heavier when ballasted, I want to have some more performance on tap for the ZZ so have gone for a 930kv.



I could rework this motor mount, a mistaken purchase from my first build.







It's already looking close to being at the right height for the propshaft to exit the hull. Sadly the grub screws in the coupling chewed up without much force applied at all. The piece is a 'gonna' so an alternative has been ordered.



(stern bulkhead still to go in)



At the prop end, these 3 sections have been epoxied together.



It might be a good heads up for future builders to think about a prop's length if the kit one isn't used. For me it's a close fit but some material could be taken away from the upright.





Following Stan's advice again, the bow has been reinforced with fiberglass. 

 







Cheers,
Phil