And now... For something completely different!

Between the ideas for dioramas I have in my mind there always have been some non-space-related ones - even watery ones, ever since the day I finished the Liberty Bell 7 pick up scene. Discovering the transparent acrylic paste was a tiny revelation, I must say. It gave me the opportunity to create a water-like surrounding without much difficulty. And there's so much you can try to depict at the water.

There were several ideas that sprung to mind after that particular Liberty Bell 7 diorama. First, the epic shots of a lighthouse in an autumn storm, a wave crashing around it in white foam:

Photo © Toby Melville / Reuters

Looking at the frizzy foam around the lighthouse made me think of how it might look in acrylic paste and I had a vision of a cauliflower in my head... Hm... I realised this might take some more practice and this was something to think about long and hard before even trying, so I looked further and came with a second, almost similarly epic scene, the emergency surfacing of a modern submarine. In such a situation the boat kind of throws itself out of the water before crashing into it again, more or less like humpback whales do (hey, that's another nice one to consider…) This is a nice example of such an event:
 

I decided to try this emergency surfacing as a starter for trying to create white water and splashes. I found a good submarine in U-Don's USS Los Angeles class attack submarine. It is a model in 1/144 but when I printed one page as a test to see what kind of cross section that would give me, I was in for a surprise. This was one huge beast. Even in this small scale it would have been more than half a meter and it certainly would have been too big for my diorama purposes.

So, I reduced the model to 1/300, which in size gave me something of the average launcher I have on the shelf, a cross section of about 2,5 to three centimeters. I chose a large oblong frame for the diorama and just started the build.
more after the jump.

 

The model is very precise and quite easy to make. The hull is mainly cylindrical and the forward end is a blunt cone shape that, after finishing, has a very nice curved shape to it. I might say it is even better curved than some of the nose cones of the rockets I have built.
After the main hull I had an idea of how big the hole in the base plate should be. I wanted to put the partially built submarine through this hole because then I didn't have to guess what angle I should use cutting off the hull to fit it onto the base.

A test of a small mock up part of the model to see how it related to the base plate in size and angle.

 

hull parts

The actual assembled hull tested in place on the base plate. 
It has a certain ... je ne sais quoi about it, doesn't it?

I studied the available pictures and clips on the web to find out how far the sub could "jump" out of the water and I found out it actually was quite far. I decided to show the tower in its entirety, instead of cutting it off diagonally at the back.

The build so far was not any problem. Pretty easy, actually. The biggest challenge in this one will be the non-paperwork part. We'll see how I pull this one off.
First I have to finish the sub.

PS. Since this is just partially paper and for a great part acrylic stuff and other materials, i consider this build not particularly a paper model, just one with paper involved. So this will be an exclusive PK's blog only build report. (makes you lucky you know this place huh? (-;  )