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Topic review - DKM Scharnhorst - 1943 Op. Ostfront - Dragon 1/350
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  Post subject:  Re: DKM Scharnhorst - 1943 Op. Ostfront - Dragon 1/350  Reply with quote
This thread is about Scharnhorst, and the weathering opinions dealt with him. Of course, other ships differ in weathering, U- boots returning from lengthy patrols for example. The statements above regarding weathering are already apparent. :heh:
Post Posted: Thu Sep 05, 2013 11:24 pm
  Post subject:  Re: DKM Scharnhorst - 1943 Op. Ostfront - Dragon 1/350  Reply with quote
That's why I posed the question. I most strongly disagree that ships are over weathered. In some ways AFVs are over weathered. (The fine arts approach popular with the Spanish School armor modelers puts great stress on ways to make the model appear as 'deep' as possible - like a painter might want in a landscape. The problem is that if you dump a few tons of dust and dirt on an AFV - and that happened fast - you ended up something that was uniformly dirty and really kind of washed out. That's history, but you pay a price when it goes to the "wow factor" when people see good photos of a Panther that looks like it came off the Sistine Chapel.) Aircraft are often badly weathered - too much on panel lines, not enough on exhaust and general fading.

Ships are seriously under weathered if we are talking about vessels that served in wars. The RN and the USN (especially in the class of 44) ships were at sea for an unprecedented amount of time. I think the photo evidence (much of which is in true color for especially the USN) shows severe "distress" (that's the word the AFV heavy weather fans like) in almost every clear photo. This was not true in prewar vessels because they spent so much more time in port and, as noted, officers wanted to keep men busy. (Although I'm sure when large vessels were sent on very long prestige voyages they were showing some visible wear.) Think about it gents - ships live in salt water and salt water doesn't like metal or paint. Add in the extra crewmen found in wartime and you have hundreds more feet running about to mess things up. And during wartime if you're in enemy waters (which for US or RN ships could be almost anywhere) those extra souls are doing their best to stay awake to maintain advanced states of readiness. Heavens look at pics of RN vessels operating in the North Atlantic - some looked like they were ready to sink.
Image
Here's a US attack transport late in the war:
Image
How about the Missouri in Tokyo Bay?
Image
Or an I-Boat that just surrendered in August 45 (think it was I-400)
Image
This is a tiny sample as photos like this are easy to come by.

Also, as I've mentioned on this forum, I drive by the Richmond oil terminal three times a week and there are always ships unloading which I can see very clearly and at length. Some are pretty clean. Others are in dreadful shape. This is particularly true if the ship has been pumped dry and it's riding very high in the water and you can see what the elements do below the waterline. Fading to beat the band and usually lots of organic materials. Not so much rust as seriously discolored areas - many leading all the way up to the deck. I'm sure the owners know what is needed and what's not in the oil tanker business, but it's powerful testimony to what oceans can do to ships.

What I think happens is that because ships take so long to make properly, there's real reluctance to take a chance and have a weathering step misfire. (One thing nice about using acrylics for weathering - they're much more forgiving.) Hence a reluctance to harm the model as a display piece which is an area where ships are only equaled by biplanes. (They're usually under weathered too.)

I have come to the conclusion that a ship done with full hull should be weathered only to emulate shadowing. It's simply too abstract to show a model of a ship in action dominated by its invisible portion faded, rusted etc even though it probably would have looked exactly like that. I've seen full hull ships done with serious weathering but I think it takes real skill (A sub would work, but that's the way people think of them.)

I also realize that many warships after refits or if often in harbor were well tended for: I would weather a USN ship class of 42 much more moderately than one from 44. (Perhaps this was the case with Scharnhorst, although the more I think of the effects of an arctic fall on a ship, the less I'm thinking pristine.) And naturally every ship was new once. Indeed, I have plans of doing a couple of "commission day" models down the road (think the Bronco Ching Yuen would be a good candidate: can't decide what to do with Mikasa) just to see if I could pull off a really clean build. So, if you want a clean ship fire away. If you're trying to picture a ship as it actually appeared at the end of a serious naval campaign, I'd think things over.

In Ivan Musicant's wonderful biography of USS Washington he quotes one of the crewmen as noting there was genuine surprise when their nicely tended warship first appeared in Halifax to do some time on convoy escort and the men saw how tired and beat up the RN and RCN vessels looked (including a BB as I recall - maybe Rodney). And then noting a few months later that nobody would have made the same remark. That says something.

Eric
Post Posted: Thu Sep 05, 2013 10:54 pm
  Post subject:  Re: DKM Scharnhorst - 1943 Op. Ostfront - Dragon 1/350  Reply with quote
Agree with Olaf and Stein. :thumbs_up_1: Considering the lengthy down time and pride of the Kriegsmarine in its ships, ship maintenance and painting kept the crew busy. Except for weather interference and sorties, the ship was kept in a clean appearance. Sometimes I think weathering of models is overdone and for the sake of showing weathering skills.
Post Posted: Thu Sep 05, 2013 5:44 pm
  Post subject:  Re: DKM Scharnhorst - 1943 Op. Ostfront - Dragon 1/350  Reply with quote
Agreed!
In my opinion there seems to be too much heavy weathering around. I'm not an expert on painting, shading or weathering, but remember that it is easy to overdo things, especially in 1:350 or smaller.

Your paintwork is superb and better than I can hope to achieve.
The only thing I think you should consider improving is rigging. You have only starteed, so it's not too late!
I would go for stretched sprue - not difficult at all when you learn how to do it, - or thin line: For some of the thinner lines Caenis 20 is a good choice.
I always keep some samples of copper thread of know diameter for comparison!

Keep up the nice work! :thumbs_up_1:

Stein
Post Posted: Thu Sep 05, 2013 4:51 pm
  Post subject:  Re: DKM Scharnhorst - 1943 Op. Ostfront - Dragon 1/350  Reply with quote
Eric, I've seen onboard photos and close-ups of Scharnies second-to-last and last scheme, and apart from some wear and tear plus a few rust streaks on the hull, she looked pretty good. Maybe towards autumn '43 things changed a bit as I understood the cold temps made refreshing paint jobs problematic.


Happy painting ~ Olaf!
Post Posted: Thu Sep 05, 2013 1:43 pm
  Post subject:  Re: DKM Scharnhorst - 1943 Op. Ostfront - Dragon 1/350  Reply with quote
Wow! What an incredible build! I would love to see how it turned out too!
Post Posted: Thu Sep 05, 2013 10:13 am
  Post subject:  Re: DKM Scharnhorst - 1943 Op. Ostfront - Dragon 1/350  Reply with quote
Not sure if there is an answer to this query. I'm undecided on what scheme to give Scharnhorst. North Cape garb is good history. But the scheme is so busy that it makes the vessel appear to my eyes a little odd - like someone let a kid paint a battleship. The scheme worn until July 43 which has a white bow/stern and a gray vessel has a businesslike lethality that I kind of like.

It would be helpful to have some idea of what kind of conditions the Scharnhorst's crew were dealing with in Norway. As I understand it the ship had a proper refit in the Baltic in late 42 and arrived in Norway in March 43. There were some kind of tender vessel there because some repairs were required and the ship was given it's final camo job sometime in July. I've been told by US DD vets that when given a proper refit they came out good as new. Conditions with destroyer tenders was quite different. They could fix what was needed but it was a no frills approach. I'm trying to imagine what kind of shape Scharnhorst was in during the summer or fall of 43. We thinking "good as new" or the kind of weathered harbor queen look that some IJN ships had in 1944. Can't imagine Norwegian weather being kind to a ship, especially one that had such severe fuel shortages that sorties were highly limited. There are a fair number of photos online but they're not a clear guide.

Eric
Post Posted: Thu Sep 05, 2013 2:50 am
  Post subject:  Re: DKM Scharnhorst - 1943 Op. Ostfront - Dragon 1/350  Reply with quote
Eric,
Sorry. Apparently the three view attachment is too big to attach in this forum, and I don't know how to make it smaller as its on my iPad. Perhaps you can find it elsewhere in this forum or someone has one in a file size that's acceptable. I have posted one view of a model I like.

Dave :mad_2:


Attachments:
image.jpg
image.jpg [ 77.98 KiB | Viewed 2214 times ]
Post Posted: Sat Aug 31, 2013 1:36 am
  Post subject:  Re: DKM Scharnhorst - 1943 Op. Ostfront - Dragon 1/350  Reply with quote
Eric,

I think it is difficult to pin down exact colors for the Scharnhorst for late 1943 because regulation paints were often not used, and even regulation paint varied by lot and manufacturer. I believe most writers agree the camo on Scharnhorst varied from white or off white to greys to dark grey, although at least one author opined that there were some blues instead of greys, but this doesn't seem supported by eyewitness accounts, and may be due to lighting conditions and a blue component to some greys. I go with the following, which I believe may have been proposed by Olaf Held:

Weiß (white) RAL 9002 - add a bit of dark gray (rather than black), since it will have a small amount of blue in it as well. Straight black/whites were seldom used.
Hellgrau 50 (light grey) RAL 7001 (normally used for the superstructure in the so-called peace-time or 50/51 livery, on top of which normally every camo was applied to).
Dunkelgrau 51 (dark grey) RAL 7000* (normally used for the hull in the so-called peace-time or 50/51 livery, on top of which normally every camo was applied to) - (it's not really dark, it's more a "medium grey") with a subtle hint of blue.
Dunkelgrau 2 (dark grey) RAL 7024* (this was a camouflage paint, e.g. dark bow/stern + turret tops on Bismarck), this was lighter than the dark grey metal decking, and has a subtle hint of blue.
Dunkelgrau 1 (dark grey) RAL 7016 (which is the shade for both the boot-topping and the dark grey painted steel decks), it was darker than RAL 7024
Schiffsbodenfarbe III Rot 5 (ship's bottom paint/antifouling) RAL 8013 (the "8" indicates that it belongs to the range of brown colours in the RAL system. It had some red in it.
*RAL 7000 and 7024 has a slight blue tone and sometimes (when the weather is sunny and clear) they look like blue.

I've attached a copy of top and side views of Scharnhorst done by A. Toller and A. Bonomiare in 2008 that I like. Also, Steve Wiper's Warship Pictorial of Scharnhorst has a couple of photos at the end of that shows the camo and difficulty in pinpointing colors.

Hope this helps. :smallsmile:
Post Posted: Sat Aug 31, 2013 1:27 am
  Post subject:  Re: DKM Scharnhorst - 1943 Op. Ostfront - Dragon 1/350  Reply with quote
Splendid build here. I'm going to build the humble Tamiya 1/700 rendition with the same paint scheme. I've read through the various threads on Scharnhorst colors on this board and I think I know what isn't there, but I'm not really sure what is. So here are the color questions.

1. Is white white (RAL 9001) or something a little "off" like US "insignia white?"
2 I take the dark gray along the hull to be Schiffsbodenfarbe Grau (sometimes called Dunkelgrau 53) Anthracite Gray (RAL 7016). This color fades into something darker toward both stem and stern - are we looking at black or a black/gray?
3. Is the light gray on the hull and part of the superstructure Dunkelgrau (RAL 7000) Squirrel Gray? Or maybe Dunkelgrau 52 (RAL 7024) Graphite Gray?
4. Are there some areas on the superstructure painted Hellgrau (RAL 7001) Silver Gray?

Even with a model having a small portion of the DML kit part count, it looks like a pretty complex build. Sure be nice to get the colors right.

Eric
Post Posted: Fri Aug 30, 2013 11:56 pm
  Post subject:  Re: DKM Scharnhorst - 1943 Op. Ostfront - Dragon 1/350  Reply with quote
Simply incredible you do great work thanks for posting...
Post Posted: Sat Aug 24, 2013 5:36 am
  Post subject:  Re: DKM Scharnhorst - 1943 Op. Ostfront - Dragon 1/350  Reply with quote
All i can say is wow. I know thats gonna look nice where ever you put it. Even next to ten other builds. Great job so far.
Post Posted: Fri Aug 23, 2013 12:04 am
  Post subject:  Re: DKM Scharnhorst - 1943 Op. Ostfront - Dragon 1/350  Reply with quote
Yes, Kuba, would love to see the lasting building and the final product! :wave_1:
Post Posted: Thu Aug 22, 2013 11:51 pm
  Post subject:  Re: DKM Scharnhorst - 1943 Op. Ostfront - Dragon 1/350  Reply with quote
@kubaro:

Was wondering: what is the status on your build? I was really enjoying reading your updates. Did you get bogged down, or is the Scharnhorst completed?

(Here is hoping that all is well! :thumbs_up_1: )
Post Posted: Fri Apr 26, 2013 6:44 am
  Post subject:  Re: DKM Scharnhorst - 1943 Op. Ostfront - Dragon 1/350  Reply with quote
I am really enjoying your updates. Well done on some really great work: you've managed to combine a very clean build with realistic weathering. - Simon.
Post Posted: Mon Jul 30, 2012 4:02 am
  Post subject:  Re: DKM Scharnhorst - 1943 Op. Ostfront - Dragon 1/350  Reply with quote
very nice work Kuba , it'll be a superb model
best regards
nicolas
Post Posted: Sat Oct 22, 2011 1:35 pm
  Post subject:  Re: DKM Scharnhorst - 1943 Op. Ostfront - Dragon 1/350  Reply with quote
Very greatfully for those kind words, gentlemens..... :smallsmile:
Post Posted: Wed Oct 19, 2011 4:22 pm
  Post subject:  Re: DKM Scharnhorst - 1943 Op. Ostfront - Dragon 1/350  Reply with quote
Superlatives escape me at the moment....I only wish I had your talent.
Post Posted: Wed Oct 19, 2011 2:30 pm
  Post subject:  Re: DKM Scharnhorst - 1943 Op. Ostfront - Dragon 1/350  Reply with quote
Kuba, glad to see you back at work on Scharny and posting updates for us to drool over. That is some seriously beautiful work, man. I wish I could make my PE look half that good. Very clean. Bravo!

Bob
Post Posted: Wed Oct 19, 2011 2:07 pm
  Post subject:  Re: DKM Scharnhorst - 1943 Op. Ostfront - Dragon 1/350  Reply with quote
Great progress Kuba, it's good to see you are still plugging away.
Rob.
Post Posted: Wed Oct 19, 2011 1:43 pm

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