Thank you gentlemen, I really appreciate it!
Neptune, I was also experimenting with how to get the right bow sheer and at this scale, this seemed to be the best solution. Although I do recommend filling all of the spaces up with styrene pieces for additional support. I didn't really do that and had two slight bends in the deck that I had to fix later on. Since I just used 0.5mm sheet for the deck, you can even see the spaces almost 'lit' up as the light shimmers through the deck in one of the close up bow pictures above.
Since the ship is nearing completion, the cat will unfortunately not get anywhere near it anymore
Today's progress: Paint.
If you look closely you will see the reflection of the 76mm gun in the "windows". I first tried out this method on my
USS Bataan and thought it worked well so I gave it another go on this smaller ship. Each window is a separately cut out piece of clear plastic sheet with painted backside to simulate the smooth reflecting surface of a real window.
Difficult to align all windows at this scale
I decided to use US haze gray for the vertical and deck gray for the horizontal ones since the PN navy is heavily influenced by the USN but right when I started painting I thought that the Royal Navy gray might actually be more accurate, since the three ships of the class were originally in service with the RN Hong Kong squadron... Too late now, but it shouldn't make too much of a difference in the end.
So much for today. Only the decals, rigging, antennas and a few smaller details are missing. More updates coming soon!
