The Ship Model Forum

Another handsome ship !

I've tried to build the hull using styrene frames, but the central one was to thin (0,75 mm) and the hull was warped !
I returned to my usual method : solid wood

I finished the hull and turrets. I was not very busy

wow, nice building here

The tower is finished : wood turned on a lathe and photoetch

A very nice Cruiser, the Italian ships were designed before such ships were overgrown with small and medium AA. The possess the clean lines of say, HMS Hood.

A fun scale to work in. I many years ago I built a USN DE (Whitehurst) in thins scale, with only a ruler, a knife and a pair of pliers, from styrene sheet. My 1:192 Alaska came out very nice, waterline like yours, of styrene sheet, by having a base sheet screwed to the build base.

Keep up the nice work! Tom

I made the catapult with photoetch.
The gratings are photoetch too, painted with Humbrol radome tan.

The funnel caps where vacuum formed

Definately good looking. I'm also a fan of such "crude" ships, without all the clutter of AA and radars etc. Love the techniques you're using, did you make that PE yourself?
Vacuum form worked splendidly as well. You don't see it used so much, apart perhaps for lifeboats, but it worked for these funnel caps for sure!

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The merchant shipyard

Thank you Neptune !
yes I made my own photoetch .
I'll make the boats with vacuum forming, with this method you can make thin curved funnel caps. And you just need a hair dryer !

I've finished the 100mm guns (20 parts each) using custom photo etch, styrene and albion alloys tubes.
Finally, to raise my morale, I put on the ship all the parts aleady made.

I'm terribly slow, but it's taking shape

Finished at last

I don't know that I have seen too many ships in 1:500, but in some ways possibly a good scale. You can still work in decent detail such as you have. I made my Whitehurst railings from wire stanchions and human hair and they look very good!

It's not a race to complete, slow is good!

Cheers: Tom

Very finely built model of a handsome ship!

Excellent work, there!

It's funny, really; the Italians sure knew how to build sexy ships...it's such a shame the weapons they had to put on them were almost all crap.

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Sean Nash, ACG (aircraft camo gestapo)

On the ways:
1/200 Trumpeter HMS Nelson
1/700 Tamiya USS Yorktown CV-5

In the stash:
1/35 Italiari PT-109
1/35 Tamiya "Pibber" Patrol Boat
1/350 Trumpeter USS Yorktown CV-10

I don't know that the Italian Naval Rifles were crap. The 15" rifles of Roma et al. had very good velocity and range. What the regs marina lacked was OIL to leave port and drip, drill, drill. Much like the vaunted IJN of early WWII, hard to keep any edge at all swinging at anchor as the war wore on.

Cruisers were always mixed bag protection wise. HMAS Sydney was sunk with all hands by the raider Kormoran off the West Coast of Australia. Except for the Atlanta's The only major difference between US heavy and Lights was counting the number of turrets and the frequency and size of the arriving splashes.

Lacking the huge small AA complement, a very clean and pleasing design was possible in the gist of interwar ships such as Hood.

Keep up the good work, a really lovely model of sleek ship!

Agreed - I think the issues with the cruisers' gunnery were more related to the mountings - specifically, use of a single cradle for multiple guns. The Kirovs were similarly notorious in this regard.

The later Condottieri groups, the heavy cruisers and the Littorio class were all extremely handsome vessels with very appealing lines. This model does them justice

Thank you all! I now wonder what's next, either a steam cargo or the most handsome Italian cruiser : Bolzano

USN had similar issues with early interwar Heavy Cruisers and some Battleships with the multi mountings in a common sleeve causing salvo dispersion. Even with separate mountings a millisecond delay between firings unproved accuracy a lot.

Same problem occured with the french 330mm and 380mm