Today is the 75th anniversary of the sinking of H.M.S. Barham.
I deemed it appropriate to start this thread today as it will deal with the construction of this famous battleship.
It’s been quite some time since I last made an appearance here. I moved into a new home and it’s taken more time than anticipated to establish the circumstances suitable for building models.
Although still not completely furnished, I now have a separate room devoted to my hobby which is a great improvement over the conditions that prevailed in my previous one-room-flat. With considerably more room available now it is even possible to think about 1:350 scale construction…
This time however I still hold on to 1:700 scale. Many years ago I was fortunate enough to purchase a kit of H.M.S. Barham from Waveline. At that time it was among the best resin kits in 1:700 with delicate castings. On the other hand smaller parts were made of less than pleasant white metal and (in my example) no photoetch was included. Later I decided to depict her shortly before that fateful torpedo attack, accompanied by H.M.S. Valiant and H.M.S. Griffin.
In the meantime Trumpeter’s Version of Barham became available. It was inexpensive so I bought one and made up my mind to build this instead of the Waveline kit because the deck pattern of the latter is quite irregular. At last year’s Scale Modelworld show at Telford I had a chat with Jim Baumann about my plans and he persuaded me to have a go at WEM’s Barham which (being available) he generously sent me later.
Now I’m in the enviable position of possessing all three 1:700 versions of the ship.
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In the picture below from up to down the Trumpeter, Waveline and WEM versions (the latter with Admiralty Models main turrets) are shown.
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Books and plans used for refence:
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Photoetch sets from various manufacturers including WEM, Gold Medal Models, Artist Hobby, Flyhawk, Lion Roar,Starling Models, Five Star and Rainbow many of which will only supply one or two components and brass barrels from Master, (resin parts from Admiralty Modelworks also planned tu utilize not shown):
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Prior to commencing construction I always make a plan summarizing the solutions chosen upon scrutinizing available sources. It’s an old fashioned hand drawn sequence with a text (for some strange tradition, myself being Hungarian) in English. It may look like a fool’s diary but proved extremely useful to keep myself organized and prevent me from missing anything out during the lengthy building process. This plan took me about a week to prepare (after working hours, in my free time).
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While planning the construction I relied on the superb builds of Mike McCabe, Geonsup Yoon and, most notably on the lovely 1:350 scratchbuilt work of Dino Carancini. Thank you making accessible pictures of your excellent models!
The pictures were shot by my Canon EOS 450D camera and will be reduced in size to conform the rules of this forum.
I must warn anyone interested that this is going to be a really protracted build report – the amount of my free time has not increased so I will proceed slowly this time as well.
George Pék