The Ship Model Forum

That is looking very splendid !!
ahhh... GMMM gold plus railings--I too was having a bit of a panic there....

meanhwile;
>> AK’s blackening solution was used for the longitudinals of the railing on most decks which led to an acceptable thickness. The brass should be >> absolutely clean and free of any grease to get a satisfying result. The stanchions were hand painted individually.


That ought to work with the GMM G-P rails also for even thinner results...?
I have hitherto not painted them either --but drawn black ink permanent marker along ( carefully!)
the rails -- on a taped to-bench tissue paper to absorb excess ink...

( the ink is very very thin! )-- but probably not as thin as chemical blackening!

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....I buy them at three times the speed I build 'em.... will I live long enough to empty my stash...?
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Jim, thank you very much.
I think blackening should work GMM GP railing too, provided they are brass and not stainless steel.
I tried it with WEM Ultrafine with moderate results, but the brass was probably not clean enough.
It is worth applying several coats of the blackening solution to achieve satisfying results.

My experience with blackening is that 1) can come off 2) too much and the blackening starts to "build up".

Having said that, what youve done with railings looks fantastic, and so simple I wish I thought about it.

Best idea I had was to just give railings a black wash, but this is very nice and keeps them thin. What a brilliant way to go about it.

I recall I did blacken a whole fret in past because I hated when paint came off somehow, and you could see the brass. But this is on another level.

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- @Shipific on IG
my gallery

Pascalemod, thank you for your kind remarks and useful insight. I know blackening is not a cure for every problem, just tried it out in this build with nice enough results.
I had to to touch up with black paint at several spots not adequately blackened, though.

Construction has indeed sped up in the last few weeks. I usually enjoy this part of the build the most: final assembly. All the work spent on preparing and painting countless individual parts pays off: the complexity of a battleship which has always fascinated me takes shape before my eyes.
First the lower levels of the bridge have been built up and the signal platform fitted with 24” searchlights, signal projectors, semaphores and flag lockers. Inclined ladders and Carley rafts have been added. Two boats were affixed to the rear of the forecastle deck.

Next, the after superstructure has been glued to place. On top of it HACS towers, searchlight platforms, railing and a small deckhouse adds to the overall cluttered appearance. The bridge has received its remaining tiers. I have carefully puttied, smoothed and painted the joint between the admiral’s deck and the conning tower level. One can spot a smattering of putty in one of the pictures but in the end the joint became pretty much invisible. With rangefinders, pom-pom directors and inclined ladders added, the bridge equipment was still missing at this phase. These are a pain to scratchbuild in such a small scale and turned out somewhat overscale. Despite most of them being reduced in height, they still hardly fit into their place. The two front HACS have been put on their platform too. I had a hard time squeezing them into the confines of the railing attached to their platform previously.

Sometimes it is hard to make the right decision when it comes to the most convenient order of fitting things. The hangar top houses several boats and the funnel in the middle. The boats are secured to their chocks by thin chains (instead of canvas straps seen on other RN ships) represented by thin strips of stretched sprue. I elected to fit the boats first because their inner side would have been blocked by the funnel, had the latter been added first, rendering fitment of the securing chains impossible. This decision had the drawback of making fitment of the funnel, itself full of fragile details like a long ladder on both sides, sirens with platforms at the front, searchlight platforms at the back, a delicate exercise. With too strong an adhesive (gel type superglue) applied, this resulted in a very slightly forward tilted funnel, which resisted all efforts of rectification. To be honest I did not try very hard for fear of destroying the fine structures present everywhere in this part of the model. The tilt is not really noticeable, though.

The 44” searchlights (five in number, fitted to the bridge front, funnels and after superstructure) and the armament has been added last. The main turrets B and X had their roof embellished by scratchbuilt AA platforms carrying Vickers quadruple 0,5” machine guns. After fitting the 4,5” between-deck mounts only the platforms of the octuple pom-poms have been glued to place.








I will prepare and add the crew first, then the last missing items: pom-poms, masts, cranes will complete the assembly. Making a rigging, adding the White Ensign and signal flags will round off construction of this model hopefully in the not-too-far future.

Fantastic! She looks great, and I love all the little details you've packed into her. They really make her come alive.

_________________
Martin

"Tomorrow is the most important thing in life. Comes into us at midnight very clean. It's perfect when it arrives and it puts itself in our hands. It hopes we've learned something from yesterday." John Wayne

Ship Model Gallery

Thank you Martin!

Hi, fellow modellers!
Here is an account on the finishing steps of this build.
A crew of 87 PE figures were added. I selected them from Eduard (Naval Figures and Royal Navy Figures), FlyHawk, Lion Roar and Five Star sets. All of them were thickened by adding two droplets of gel type superglue to the back and one to the front of their torso according to Marijn van Gils’s method. They were sprayed dark blue then details were picked out by a fine brush. I put them around pom-poms, Vickers quad mounts, signal deck, open upper bridge, CO included.



Some other figures populate the catapult deck, six of them trying to turn a Swordfish.

You can see one crew member exiting a WT door at the superstructure under the shelter deck,

two climbing up inclined ladders and one opening the canvas cover in one of the aft HACSs. A group of four men can be found on the forecastle deck on the starboard side of barbette ‘B’, one handling a camera.

The famous film recording the demise of HMS Barham is being shot.

The last remaining kit parts, the cranes and masts were added next.


Rigging was done combining stretched sprue, Caenis and Lycra. The latter provided the signal halyards (painted light grey-brown and doubled, as on the real ship) and the antennae between the masts (coloured black by a marker pen). Caenis was used only when strength was required, i.e. two strands at the foremast counteracting the pulling force of inter-mast antennae and two lifts of the fore lower yard which is pulled down by ten halyards. The rest is stretched sprue including the rigging of booms and cranes. Pulleys, insulators and helm indicator gear were formed by small blobs of white glue. Finally I added a White Ensign (Hawk Graphics) and signal flags (Five Star) indicating “affirmative” and “I wish to communicate with you via Morse signaling by hand-flags” as a reply to HMS Barham’s signals. The ensign and flags are decals applied on aluminium foil, cut, given a wash of light grey and shaped to give an impression of “blown by the wind”. The ship is mounted on a temporary base until it is ready to be put into the seascape of the diorama.

most excellent-- and what gratifying result after all that hard work

figures look good-- not intrusive-but complementary . Rigging( very excellent btw !! )
has sharpened up the profile
and gives the model a feel of ... ' edge '!

Bravo !!

JB

_________________
....I buy them at three times the speed I build 'em.... will I live long enough to empty my stash...?
http://www.modelshipgallery.com/gallery ... index.html

IPMS UK SIG (special interest group) www.finewaterline.com

Some detail shots:




And some head on and from aft:



This was the last chapter of the construction of this model which has taken me 19 months. Although very long, compared to the four-and-a-half years for Barham it was relatively rapid. After some time I will begin building HMS Griffin, the third ship of the planned diorama. Being a destroyer, I hope she will be completed in considerably less time than her battleship consorts. I will post better pictures to be taken by a friend who is a professional photographer in the ‘completed models’ section soon.

Thank you very much, Jim!

SUPER! The rigging is spectacular. The figures' distribution looks very realistic and they are very well painted. A jewel of a model, Congrats!

SG

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http://www.3xblackcats.wordpress.com

Wow! Amazing model. A crewed HMS Valiant. 19 months of work has yielded something quite special. I especially like little extra details such as the tri-podded movie camera which make this so much more than just a model warship.

Wow! The end result was worth the journey - what a beautiful model. The figures and the exquisite rigging really cap things off. Can't wait to see it in the final diorama with Barham.

_________________
Martin

"Tomorrow is the most important thing in life. Comes into us at midnight very clean. It's perfect when it arrives and it puts itself in our hands. It hopes we've learned something from yesterday." John Wayne

Ship Model Gallery

Hi!
The result speaks for itself.
The many small details and self-construction add a lot to the model.

I'm really looking forward to the finished diorama!