Airfix Golden Hinde
Airfix Golden Hinde
Hi everyone - here is my latest kit bash - the venerable Airfix Golden Hinde. I have wanted to build a sailing ship for a while and this one had slipped under the radar when I was young. The kit is quite ancient and the moulding quality is commensurate with its age. There is plenty of online information but in reality nobody knows what a post-medieval armed merchant ship actually looked like as the only source materials are a handful of salvaged wrecks, a few contemporary documents, and a varied selection of often stylized paintings and drawings. I spent some time looking at other modellers' builds and the various full-sized replicas and combined the different ideas into mine. The Airfix kit itself is a pure flight of fancy with elaborate decorative ornamentation and I, too, make no claims to accuracy but I wanted to build something more mundane, faded and weathered. By some accounts the expected lifespan of such a vessel was no more than ten years and I wanted to reproduce an end of life vessel with an owner no longer prepared to spend any money on repairs.
This has been three long months in the making and is nowhere near completion but I will update as I progress. What I have gained, having cut and recut almost every component, is enormous respect for the shipwrights who put these vessels together with nothing more elaborate than hand tools.
The two hull halves - deciding what stays and what goes.
Everything removed and upper hull planked.
Inner bulkheads planked.
Decks planked.
Stern rebuilt and Caldercraft gratings.
View astern with gunports cut in.
Beakhead rebuilt.
Strakes, toprails, decorative tracery, and rudder.
Masthead build sequence.
Kit versus scratchbuilt.
Sternrail completed.
Finally into paint. I have never painted such a vast expanse of timber before so it was all a shot in the dark. I sprayed Vallejo umber, black, grey, green and blue, and Tamiya mid-grey and deck tan. This was followed by endless washes of umber and black oil paints to suggest weathering, whilst the tracery was picked out with thinned blue and white oils. A topcoat of Tamiya matt varnish pulls it all together. The photos make it look a bit washed out but in real life I'm reasonably happy. There's still more deck furniture to add and the rigging when done will take the eye away. Thanks for looking - back when more done...
This has been three long months in the making and is nowhere near completion but I will update as I progress. What I have gained, having cut and recut almost every component, is enormous respect for the shipwrights who put these vessels together with nothing more elaborate than hand tools.
The two hull halves - deciding what stays and what goes.
Everything removed and upper hull planked.
Inner bulkheads planked.
Decks planked.
Stern rebuilt and Caldercraft gratings.
View astern with gunports cut in.
Beakhead rebuilt.
Strakes, toprails, decorative tracery, and rudder.
Masthead build sequence.
Kit versus scratchbuilt.
Sternrail completed.
Finally into paint. I have never painted such a vast expanse of timber before so it was all a shot in the dark. I sprayed Vallejo umber, black, grey, green and blue, and Tamiya mid-grey and deck tan. This was followed by endless washes of umber and black oil paints to suggest weathering, whilst the tracery was picked out with thinned blue and white oils. A topcoat of Tamiya matt varnish pulls it all together. The photos make it look a bit washed out but in real life I'm reasonably happy. There's still more deck furniture to add and the rigging when done will take the eye away. Thanks for looking - back when more done...
- JamesPerrin
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Re: Airfix Golden Hind
Very interesting take on this subject. How you’ve treated the woodwork appears to be very successful
Classic British Kits SIG Leader Better to fettle than to fill
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- Tim Reynaga
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Re: Airfix Golden Hind
Wow! This is almost a complete rebuild - practically a scratchbuild! I'll be watching with interest.
- Clashcityrocker
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Re: Airfix Golden Hind
A very extensive rebuild. Looking good so far.
Nigel
Nigel
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Re: Airfix Golden Hinde
WOW! I have this kit partly built in the stash too - it'll never look as good as this one, excellent work!
Stuart Templeton I may not be good but I'm slow...
My Blog: https://stuartsscalemodels.blogspot.com/
My Blog: https://stuartsscalemodels.blogspot.com/
- DavidWomby
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Re: Airfix Golden Hinde
Obviously a labour of love and it shows. Wonderful.
David
David
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Re: Airfix Golden Hinde
Clearly this one sailed under my radar, Alan and what a first class build, this is excellent work.
Doing - Tamiya 1/35th Universal Carrier.
Work is the curse of the modelling classes!
IPMS#12300
Work is the curse of the modelling classes!
IPMS#12300
Re: Airfix Golden Hinde
Hi again - more slow but steady progress adding the rigging.
Top mast shrouds.
Simple cardboard jig to space ratlines.
I tried tying each individual ratline to the shrouds but at this scale, and despite using the thinnest thread, each knot looked a bit unwieldy. Instead, a tiny drop of superglue was used.
Dummy lower mast shrouds to locate position and spacing.
Foremast lower shrouds added. Ignore what looks like any curvature and kinks on the shrouds - the iPad isn't happy photographing thin diagonals for some reason. It's all very repetitive work at this stage and exceedingly fiddly. One shroud can be attached to its deadeye on the workbench and then fitted to the chainwale but, as in real life, it then passes around the masthead and down to the chainwale to be fitted to the next deadeye. This can only be done in situ on the model and is a real test of patience to maintain tension whilst securing. It gets slightly easier with practice but if I ever do it again I might opt for a different assembly method.
The model requires rigging blocks. I had inherited some wooden aftermarket ones in an old kit of the Cutty Sark that a cousin was about to throw away but they looked too large. I attempted to thin them down but the wood kept splitting so, instead, I made some simple replacements based on a real life example from plastic card.
Forestays added. There are many references online as to how a model of a post-medieval ship may be rigged and some online examples are very elaborate. There is, however, one interesting proposal that a newly commissioned ship would be over-rigged in so much as the rigging supplier would use that ship to advertise their proficiency. Once launched and in regular service, though, the master and crew would duly simplify the rigging plan for both ease of use and lower maintenance costs. Working on the principle that my model represents a ship approaching end of life I, too, aim to fit a slightly more simplified rigging plan.
Main mast backstays being tensioned.
Back soon...hopefully.
Top mast shrouds.
Simple cardboard jig to space ratlines.
I tried tying each individual ratline to the shrouds but at this scale, and despite using the thinnest thread, each knot looked a bit unwieldy. Instead, a tiny drop of superglue was used.
Dummy lower mast shrouds to locate position and spacing.
Foremast lower shrouds added. Ignore what looks like any curvature and kinks on the shrouds - the iPad isn't happy photographing thin diagonals for some reason. It's all very repetitive work at this stage and exceedingly fiddly. One shroud can be attached to its deadeye on the workbench and then fitted to the chainwale but, as in real life, it then passes around the masthead and down to the chainwale to be fitted to the next deadeye. This can only be done in situ on the model and is a real test of patience to maintain tension whilst securing. It gets slightly easier with practice but if I ever do it again I might opt for a different assembly method.
The model requires rigging blocks. I had inherited some wooden aftermarket ones in an old kit of the Cutty Sark that a cousin was about to throw away but they looked too large. I attempted to thin them down but the wood kept splitting so, instead, I made some simple replacements based on a real life example from plastic card.
Forestays added. There are many references online as to how a model of a post-medieval ship may be rigged and some online examples are very elaborate. There is, however, one interesting proposal that a newly commissioned ship would be over-rigged in so much as the rigging supplier would use that ship to advertise their proficiency. Once launched and in regular service, though, the master and crew would duly simplify the rigging plan for both ease of use and lower maintenance costs. Working on the principle that my model represents a ship approaching end of life I, too, aim to fit a slightly more simplified rigging plan.
Main mast backstays being tensioned.
Back soon...hopefully.
- DavidWomby
- Modelling Gent and Scholar
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- Joined: May 1st, 2011, 8:09 pm
- Location: Florida, USA
Re: Airfix Golden Hinde
Looking brilliant!
David
David
- Clashcityrocker
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- Location: Adelaide. South Australia
Re: Airfix Golden Hinde
It's going to look great when finished. It does already
Nigel
Nigel
- JamesPerrin
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Re: Airfix Golden Hinde
Thorough work paying off
Classic British Kits SIG Leader Better to fettle than to fill
(2024 A:B 5:2) (2023 13:8:7) (2022 21:11) (2021 15:8) (2020 8:4:4)
(2024 A:B 5:2) (2023 13:8:7) (2022 21:11) (2021 15:8) (2020 8:4:4)
- Stuart
- Raider of the Lost Ark Royal
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Re: Airfix Golden Hinde
WOW!
Stuart Templeton I may not be good but I'm slow...
My Blog: https://stuartsscalemodels.blogspot.com/
My Blog: https://stuartsscalemodels.blogspot.com/
Re: Airfix Golden Hinde
Fantastic workmanship
Besting 60 years of mediocre building of average kits in the stand off scale