S.S. Oriana Model Ship

This is the C.C. Lee Oriana Model Ship in her Orient Line colours. My Uncle had sailed on this ship when he was a young man and I had to make it for him as soon as I saw it . Revell hadn't re-released this at the time but I had managed to find this kit on ebay for $10.00. Unfortunately I don't have any construction photos of this kit but I do have to say it took a lot of extra work to get everything to fit tight. I worked on this model off and on for just over a year and had made a quite a big mistake while I was gluing the main deck onto the hull. That had caused me to shelve it for quite some time. My family kept asking me when I was going to finish it for him so I had some pressure on me to keep going. The model is the smallest scale I had worked on at the time so there isn't a whole lot of detail on this kit. I did add 1/450 scale brass photoetch parts from gold medal models to spruce it up a bit. The moment I opened the kit I noticed it wasn't the best quality. A lot of the parts didn't quite fit together as I had hoped. From the upper bridge deck to the funnels has approx. 14 pieces if I'm not mistaken. It took a lot of sanding and filling for that section alone. When I started with the hull it came as one piece. (That was nice). I then primed the entire hull inside and out. I do this because you want the plastic hull to represent steel. When you hold a painted model up to the sunlight without primer you can see all the flaws in your paint job not to mention the transparency. I actually try and do this for all the pieces and then sand or file where I'm going to glue. Remember to lightly sand between each coat. The yellow I used for the hull is a bit darker than the actual colour. I only did this so it would stand out better. There weren't any lines on the hull to mark the water line so I pretty much had to eyeball that one. The only actual set back I found on this kit was fitting the superstructure. I used tacking glue in various areas so I could see where I had to sand and fill. Unfortunately when I was tacking the superstructure I had spilled glue down the side of the hull ruining all three paint jobs not to mention the main deck as well. That is what caused the model to sit on the shelf for a few months. So after that it was back to redoing the entire hull and fixing up the deck. I put clear plastic in behind the windows and painted them black on the back. Again, you don't want to see through the ship. I noticed when I had finished the model I could of done that in other area's too. (Next time). The build went pretty smooth after that. I built the structures separately for the most part. I used tacking glue when it came to gluing some of the structures to each other because it doesn't melt the plastic and ruin the paint. I only recommend that where you don't need it for a whole lot of strength. I try to use regular model glue as much as possible. The lifeboats were the easiest part of the kit. Only because I had my girlfriend Jayme paint and glue them in. According to her they weren't much of a problem. After I had built the upper decks it was time to fit it all together to finally complete my uncle's ship. When I went to do that I noticed a big gap between the two decks. No matter what I did it just didn't want to fit and if I glued it together the second funnel would've been on quite an angle. I ended up gluing it as is and filling in the rest. This required some more bondo and repainting the upper deck. I'm really glad I did though because it turned out the way it should've. I then added the railings and stairs and gave the model a couple of coats of dull coat. This hides the brush strokes and the residue from the tacking glue. I then finished it off with flags and decals which aren't shown in any of the photographs. I had a local plastics shop make me a display case for it. I then cut up about 15 balsa wood planks and stained them to make them look like actual blocks. I tacked the wood planks to the base and the model to the blocks. Needless to say my Uncle loved his new model. It's funny because the first thing he pointed out to me on the ship was the bar.

Please stayed tuned for some more projects I have on the go. Right now I have just finished the Trumpeter 1/144 scale Sea Wolf submarine and am working on the Revell Queen Mary II. Also stay tuned for Jayme's M/S Batory from Mirage Models.