The Ship Model Forum

Hi Martin, SG1, Dan, Pieter and Marijn!
A big thanks to all of you!
It is really motivating to read nice comments about my humble work from some of the finest modellers out there.
Mariijn, special thanks for the interesting video.
I will post pictures of the completed diorama soon.

Fantastic work George! :thumbs_up_1: :thumbs_up_1: :thumbs_up_1:

And great that you could finish it in time for the Moson show.

Here is a sneak peak of the diorama on youtube (at 00:38): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vncNurjUhuc
Congrats on the gold medal! :thumbs_up_1: :thumbs_up_1: :thumbs_up_1:
It looks like the quantity and quality of ship models at the show was as good or better than ever.

I'm very sorry I couldn't be there this year... (but hopefully finally again next year! :smallsmile: )
So for now I'm looking forward to the photo's of your diorama very much! ;)

Nice build. Must try the decals on foil technique next time I am doing flags and rigging.

Outstanding is the best description. Good photography as well.

Outstanding, well done! HMS Griffin fully weathered and finished with crew and railings is really beautiful. Glad you made it in time for the model show. On standby for the diorama pics.

Bravo! Well done! Looking forward to the pictures of the diorama.

This is the final post describing the construction of H.M.S. Griffin.
The choice of PE railing proved to be a hard one – RN destroyers had railings with horizontals unevenly spaced, like all post WWII RN warships. There only a few offerings in the marketplace to reflect this feature, my usual choice, GMM Gold Plus not being among them. I bought two generic modern RN railing sets. The one from Big Blue Boy was too low, while EV Model’s product was too thick to my liking.
I ended up cannibalising WEM’s upgrade set for Tribal class destroyers in my quest for correct pattern railing. You can see it attached in the following pictures along with masts fashioned out of thin brass rod, and yards from Master Models’ turned brass yardarm set.
The first two pictures with masts but no railing on the decks.
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Another two with railing
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Crew members, 62 in number – PE figures from Eduard, FlyHawk, Lion Roar and Five Star, suitably thickened by applying gel type superglue to their torso and detail painted were added, in combat readiness manning the main and AA guns and the bridge. The CO is sitting in his chair and one rating can be seen in the crow’s nest. Rigging is made of lycra (signal halyards, antennas), stretched sprue (mast and funnel stays) and Caenis (more mast stays).
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The White Ensign and signal flags are decals from Hawk Graphics and Five Star applied on aluminium foil, cut, given a wash of light grey and shaped to give an impression of “blown by the wind”.
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This final step marks the end of the construction of H.M.S. Griffin. I was in a hurry trying to finish my diorama in time to be able to attend a local competition and did not take many photographs. Two of them show the model in its final position, in the seascape, partly finished in these photographs. Thanks to all who have been following this build. I will post pictures of the completed diorama soon.
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Thank you very much, Martin and Marijn!
I have made more progress but I could not find time to post pictures.
I am in a hurry to finish this diorama for the upcoming Mosonshow here in Hungary.
I hope to see you there, Marijn, to have a chat about the exceptional work you perform with your Trafalgar dio!

+1!

I also like the paintwork a lot! :thumbs_up_1: :thumbs_up_1: :thumbs_up_1:

So much detail packed into such a small palette! She looks great!

Final assembly has begun.: lockers, bridge equipment, ladders, searchlights, Carley floats, davits, TSDS gear, torpedo tubes and Vickers mgs were added.
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Some more details: 3” AA gun, some railing in these better-quality pictures.
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SG1, thank you very much!

Excellent progress! Great painting and weathering job. It works! :woo_hoo:

Martin, thank you so much for your kind attention to my work!

She really looks the part of a busy, war weary destroyer that's seen hard service. Great work! I'm enjoying following along.

After some masking WEM 507C was sprayed over the superstructure parts. Funnel bands are from TL decals according to the suggestion of Jim Baumann –thank you, Jim! Their bright red colour will by subdued at a later phase. Adding some details like brown name boards, black light AA barrels, sidelights, white foremast top, etc. completed the initial painting.
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Next, washes from the AK line were applied: in all six colours were used, in a different fashion to the decks and the hull. A small amount of chipping and rust streaks were added
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then shades have been accentuated using the AK interactive shading oil paint. Highlights were drybrushed and painted with middle grey over the dark grey, and white over the light grey surfaces. As a last step of the painting process, matte varnish was sprayed all over the hull and superstructure parts.
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Here is the description of the painting.
At first I thought I would paint a disruptive camouflage as shown in Alan Raven’s ‘Warship Perspectives’ Volume One. This would have been in good accordance with the other ships in the diorama, HMS Barham and HMS Valiant. However during the build I stumbled upon a very nice build of a member named robgizlu at britmodeller.com. He had built HMS Griffin based on the 1:350 scale kit of HMS Glowworm by Atlantic Models. His account proved most useful to me. I hereby wish to express my gratitude for his helpful insights. He had discovered that HMS Griffin was unlikely to have carried the camouflage shown in the Raven booklet at the time in question. Instead she probably had her hull painted AP507A, her upperworks AP5017C, so I chose this option. I found a very grainy photograph of HMS Griffin online which, I believe, shows her in 1941. It shows her in the camouflage described above with a false bow wave, one band on the fore funnel and two on the after one.
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The colour of the funnel bands cannot be ascertained to my knowledge. Based upon some information gleaned from the internet, I opted for red. I had to determine the deck colours, which is a kind of hit or miss. For the base colour I chose Humbrol 87, for the parts covered with Semtex, Humbrol 92. The latter’s original colour is a very light cream, but it was often mixed with pigment and after much time spent on looking at models, most notably the ones built by Norman Ough, I chose dark grey.
I sprayed the steel decks H87, masked and applied H92.
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With hindsight a reverse order would have been easier with regard to masking.
The black (in fact very dark grey) parts came next,
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then the hull’s 507A (somewhat lightened WEM paint).
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The next picture shows the false bow wave sprayed on and deck details picked out with WEM 507C using a fine brush.
Pendant numbers are kit decals modified (from H37 to H 31), Plimsoll marks are Five Star decals. All decals were applied over and covered with a layer of gloss varnish.
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Dan, raggs, thank you for your kind words!
I wrote what I wrote because I sensed a bias for USN and IJN subjects and capital ships here.
In fact I am surprised at the interest generated by my humble work!

Agreed. Dont sell yourself short zs180. PE has always been my [b]P[/b]ersonal [b]E[/b]nemy, but that is nice work in 1/700. Congrats.

Paul

That is some very nice work.