The Ship Model Forum

Kindly gifted to me by a family friend last year and so far a pleasant and unproblematic experience to put together. There isn't any specific aftermarket for this kit, and I'd like it to a quicker build to knock out of the way, so I plan to limit modifications to the following:
- PE portholes since the kit portholes don't have eyelids
- Piping along the funnels which is missing from the kit
- AA weapons replaced with spares from Flyhawk
- 102mm barrels replaced with brass parts
- As I want to depict Calcutta with her 3-tone camouflage scheme, I will have to add splinter shields along the superstructure

There is probably more of the kit which can be replaced or improved but that would probably exceed my time/financial investment in the model. I'll see how I go in the end. Thus far I've only gotten to the portholes and gun barrel replacements.

As always, feedback on my work is welcome

Nice and clean build so far.

Been working on and off on this one, hence the belated update. Mostly just cleaning up parts and some more portholes.

I find this work to be more tedious than difficult. If I misalign one porthole part I can easily remove it and try again, but the fact that there are so many of them makes for a draining experience. Not looking forwards to doing this on a battleship or carrier.
I did however find that positioning a strip of tape as a guide above the portholes helps quite a lot. It's not perfect but it makes it such that you can't really see misalignments unless you were the one building the model.

Also managed to do a bit of railing on the superstructure. Recently I picked up a book by Dai Sasahara which included some interesting tips on working with generic PE rails. For those unaware this guy possesses an objectively superhuman level of attention to detail even for 1/700 modellers. Instead of bending the rail into shape with tweezers, he recommends cutting the rail at the bend point and then placing each part separately at the requisite angle. The idea is that this eliminates the slight curve you get when bending rails - overall quite time consuming (especially trying to figure out where to cut the rail) but the finish is definitely a bit nicer.

The hope is to somehow have this finished by June in time for the Australian Model Expo - probably doable although my grades may suffer...

I cant stand the porthole thing and I just dont do them on 1/700 (same for railings on funnels). People who do them in 1/700 are saints in terms of patients surely. The misalignment is guranteed in my case, so probably im just not good enough to do them. Well done for you!

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- @Shipific on IG
my gallery

To be honest I find funnel rails to be much harder than portholes. Especially the ones that come from flyhawk/fivestar etc. where there is no solid attachment point with the plastic. Nightmarish stuff

Some say funnel railings can be skipped in 1:700 and instead drawn with pencil. I did this few times and liked the result! Could be an alternative.

_________________
- @Shipific on IG
my gallery

Funnels done, masts and shields are next then onto painting