The Ship Model Forum

This is my second attempt at 'modern' ship modelling, ie., utilising after-market add-ons which didn't exist when I last constructed a model from a kit. I have a dim memory of making a Tamiya 350th something or other, but it must be 30+ years ago.

Why Dreadnought? Most people reading this will know about this ship and the philosophy behind it so I won't bore you with too many details, but my take on history is that at the time this ship was envisaged, the Admiralty was instructed by the government to maintain a fleet that was equal to, or superior to, the combined firepower of the next two largest navies in the world.

The introduction of this battleship wiped that slate clean and at a stroke, the score was reduced to 1-0. The ensuing 'arms race' was a contributing factor to the outbreak of WW1.

And I also just like the look of her.

The kit.



Aftermarket goodies & accessories



















That I think is everything I need. The PE sets are designed for the Zvezda kit, but after much deliberation and comparison, most of the individual items should fit as designed. We'll see.

Cheers Jabb.

_________________
HMS Hood, the big one!

I used to be indecisive, now I'm not so sure.

Mornin' Jabb,

Boy, you sure have a ton of goodies there. Ought to keep you occupied for quite a while. But, No, you don't have everything you need. You also need patience and a lot of time. And, if you aren't proficient in the fine art of profanity, well, you will undoubtedly learn that as well.

Have fun!!!

_________________
Larry Steiner


Completed: 1:200 USS Missouri (Monster Mo)
Next project: Definitely NOT another big ship!!

Patience I've got, time a-plenty I've got, profanity - well lets just say, modelling has been temporarily suspended!

I have always been reasonably careful when using tools, but broke one of the golden rules just before I took the final photo in this post.

'Keep your fingers behind the cutting edge'. Chisel blade to the bone! The air was blue and the model red!

Any way, some more pics of the goodies:-









The quality of both sets, Pontos and WEM is superb, it will be hard to decide which to use when there is a choice. The WEM is etched on slightly thinner brass and the detail seems to be slightly better on some parts, Pontos on others. No conflict though up to now as I haven't had duplicates yet.

Progress so far. I have used the thin CA from zap a gap and I apply it with a nose-hair in a pin-vice! For the plastic I'm using Tamiya extra thin.

Got the tiny drill-bits (0.1mm to 1.0mm) of evilbuy, 1p + p&p





I have been trying to determine whether the torpedo net shelf was removed from the ship when the nets and booms were removed in 1915. Nothing definitive yet, but photos I have seen show that the attachment points and brackets were still there. Pontos has them in the set, so they were folded and attached.









That takes care of the hull prep, gluing it together next.

Cheers Jabb

_________________
HMS Hood, the big one!

I used to be indecisive, now I'm not so sure.

This is the first Trumpeter kit I have used, and I am very impressed. The 'one sprue, one bag' packaging is nice to see and if there is something delicate on a sprue, it is protected with foam.

I test fitted the hull halves together and was impressed by the fit, a little bit of distortion at the bow and stern, nothing too much, is this normal?









I think a few quick strokes with a file and that joint will be good to go!





I put the hull to one side for 24 hours or so to thoroughly dry and will then fill and file to perfection!

Both sets of PE include hatch and access covers. I have seen a review of the Zvezda Dreadnought and that has no detail on the deck-wares, the Trumpeter kit does, so I removed that in preparation for the detailed hatches.





The Pontos set supplies skylights for various rooms and that necessitates deck detail removal.



That's where I got to! That obviously needs cleaning-up and will be attended to upon resumption.

Hope you're enjoying so far, and please tell me, is this too detailed, about right, or too skimpy?

Cheers, Jabb

_________________
HMS Hood, the big one!

I used to be indecisive, now I'm not so sure.

Jabberwock
Am in the process of building the 1907 Trump. kit. Am using the WEM and Pontos sets.
A word of caution - both sets are not a perfect fit, so you will have to make quite a few
modifications and alterations. In fact some of the pontos "bits" you won,t be able to use
at all. The best analogy i can think of is trying to repair a Ford using Toyota spare parts !!!.
Having said that, i am making slow but reasonable progress. Your project may well do
your head in, but keep going and you should come out the other end with your sanity
in tact. Am battling with masts at the moment, and am sure these will be able to be built
without any problems. Am well ahead of you at this stage, so if you encounter any real
problems, feel free to pick my brain. Good luck !!.
Tim

Thanks for viewing and feedback Tim.

Will bear in mind what you say! Although I haven't had hands on with the Zvezda, from what I have seen posted and reviewed, the Trumpeter has far more detail, meaning more work to remove details before putting the details back on! Contradiction in terms that, but I'm sure you know what I mean.

Cheers, Jabb

_________________
HMS Hood, the big one!

I used to be indecisive, now I'm not so sure.

Managed to do a bit today. The hull had been left to dry and harden overnight so I tackled that first, filled and sanded the hull-joint which I have to say was a joy to do, the halves went together superbly well and I hardly had to do any filling at all. Next I moved onto the deck fitting which was actually not that straight-forward, the fit was not too good. Then onto the propellor shafts which I played about with.



I am using Perfect Plastic Putty, its water soluble and ready to sand in 15 mins.



I removed the detail from the super deck in preparation for PE replacement using a combination of chisel blade and half-round file.





In the centre of the super-deck, there are a pair of interesting looking doors on both sides. I had a good look at the plans of the ship as I was intrigued to see where they led to. These double doors open to reveal a corridor which crosses the deck and has doors which allow access to both the fore and aft areas. I have a plan to open up these double doors and add some interior detail.

Will mull that one over!



Time now to fit the deck, the front fitment was slightly tight and I gently removed some plastic from the edges to allow for a good fit, however, when I dry fitted the deck into position, I found this:-



I had to remove quite a bit of material to get the stern deck to fit correctly, no huge problem but just shows the benefits of dry-fitting. Is this normal for Trumpeter or others? I don't remember reading about this problem in other build threads of this kit?





I then fitted the bilge keels by attaching at one end and working backwards, half-inch at a time as they were slightly distorted.

The next stage was to fit the propellor shafts, I noticed straight-away that they were very flimsy and delicate. I decided to fabricate replacements from brass rod. I measured the diameter at 0.7mm, fortunately I had the right diameter brass tube on the shelf so I carefully removed the existing plastic shafts and gingerly drilled the fairing out with a mini-drill by hand, taking note of the angle at which the shaft leaves the fairing. I am not a fan of power tools when modelling! These were then cut to length and aligned with the shaft bearing housings. I will remove these when priming and painting as I think they look good in brass. Maybe not quite prototypical, but I like them!





Thats it for today, progress of a sort. Once everything has hardened-off, a quick clean-up and then its out with the air-brush and do a bit of priming!

All comments, tips and ideas welcomed

Thanks for viewing.

Cheers, Jabb

_________________
HMS Hood, the big one!

I used to be indecisive, now I'm not so sure.

Looks nice Jabb! Very professional.

_________________
Larry Steiner


Completed: 1:200 USS Missouri (Monster Mo)
Next project: Definitely NOT another big ship!!

Very nice work.

_________________
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

Nice work so far. The Dreadnought is one of Trumpeters goodies ... unfortunately, don't expect the same level of packaging and fit from most of their other releases.

Paul

_________________


http://paulbudzik.com/current-projects/Neptune/Lockheed_Neptune_Model_Budzik.html
http://paulbudzik.com/tools-techniques/outside_the_box.html

Thank you all for viewing and especially for the kind remarks!

Started detailing the super deck tonight and came up against the WEM or Pontos detail quality issue as already mentioned. I was looking into opening the double doors in the middle but came to the conclusion they would not be seen, so I followed a different tack.

First the quality/detail issue. On the top row left is the WEM opening door, outer skin, on the right is the equivalent effort from Pontos, just a plain door. At the bottom is the door frame and the back of the open door. The idea is to fold the back and front and glue together to form an open door.



To my eye, the Pontos door etching is far superior, but the WEM inner door and frame are good for extra impact, so I attached the Pontos outer facing door to the back of the WEM inner door (if that makes sense!). Same thing with the double doors. On the left WEM, in the middle Pontos, put them together (on the right) and you have super-detail!



I fitted the open door to the rear of the deck, drilled it out and reduced the thickness of the plastic around the edge as you can see.





Finished off by adding the doors, portholes and a hose reel. I used CA to join the etch sections and slightly diluted PVA to attach the etch and porthole surrounds.









Thats it for tonight, hope you are enjoying this, I know I am!

As usual, all comments welcomed.

Cheers, Jabb

_________________
HMS Hood, the big one!

I used to be indecisive, now I'm not so sure.

Looks good. Wish I would have done the same with the Pontos doors on my Iowa. I'll be watching this build.

_________________
Scott

Salisbury, NC
USS Iowa BB61 1943 post refit
1:200 Trumpeter w/ Pontos detail up with deck
USS Missouri BB63 1945 1:350

In planning T2-SE-A2 tanker AO-82

Thanks for the kind comments, most welcome.

Not much of an update today, but a question, to which I would like some feedback.

Look at the following picture and select which you think is most effective at portraying the searchlight lenses.



Select left or right, obviously the centre one is not an option

Cheers, Jabb

_________________
HMS Hood, the big one!

I used to be indecisive, now I'm not so sure.

Gee, I can't see a whole lot of difference. I'd guess maybe the left. The right looks like there are small imperfections in the lens. In all actuality, the lights are so small people won't be looking at them anyway.

_________________
Larry Steiner


Completed: 1:200 USS Missouri (Monster Mo)
Next project: Definitely NOT another big ship!!

Thanks Larry.

From the left, a Hobby Craft (a craft store in the UK, I'm sure you have similar across the pond) stick-on plastic jewel, inserted in a drilled hole with, respectively, clear nail varnish, CA and then PVA.

Thats the searchlights sorted.

Cheers, Jabb

_________________
HMS Hood, the big one!

I used to be indecisive, now I'm not so sure.

Have been looking at some of the other builds in this section, think I'll give up and take up gardening or something. Absolutely stunning!

Anyway, back to my humble offering. I have attached the PE and torpedo net shelf to the hull and super-deck, and have primed them both (details to follow), so I thought I would start on some of the ship details, namely the 12 pounder armament utilising a couple of the add-on 'goodies'.

The Trumpeter secondary guns are not actually that bad. I have seen far worse attempts.



But with this build I wanted to go down the route of adding extra detail and challenging myself to improve my modelling skills. Hence this add-on:-



Included in the Pontos set is a packet containing brass barrels for both the main armament and the 12 pounders, but I read somewhere on here that the main barrels were not accurate. Consequently, I looked around and found a Master Barrel set at a giveaway price so purchased those. On comparing the two, I see no real difference other than the material from which they are made, brass from Pontos, aluminium (with an 'i') from Master. However, there is a noticeable difference between the smaller barrels:-



The picture may be slightly misleading, but to the eye there is a definite difference between them. The Master barrel (on the right) is far superior, much finer and the surface finish is quite smooth, the Pontos ones are really quite roughly turned, so I obviously decided to use the Masters.

Onto the guns themselves, North Stars' product is very nicely moulded, the only problem area is the barrels, but as they are being replaced anyway that minor let-down is not a big issue. The instruction sheet shows the correct pattern for the pivot under the centre of the gun which slots into the mounting.



The barrels need removing and this was carried out extremely carefully, first by fitting a new blade and then lightly scoring along the lines of where the barrel and range finders meet, top and bottom 15-20 times, using no pressure at all, just the weight of the knife is sufficient. Similarly at the bottom which I believe is the recoil mechanism, to then allow the resin barrel to be removed. Once the above details are separated, the point of the knife is pushed in at the joint of the barrel at the three open areas, avoiding the detail.



On detaching the remainder of the mechanism from the resin sprue, every time you try to cut the gun off the sprue, the nicely formed pivot breaks off. Despite care, the attachment point is obviously weak. The first one I managed to connect to the deck mounting OK with CA, but the next one just would not stay in position, even with the thin, quick-setting CA and just drooped. With 20-odd of these required I had to ensure that they are going to be sufficiently strong enough to be put in place on the ship.

I decided to form a new pivot. Using brass rod, I found that the hole in the mounting was 0.5mm so I used 0.4mm because when cut off, the end of the rod flares out and would then be bigger than 0.5mm. The requisite area on the gun was cleaned off and a hole drilled out to accept the rod.





As long as care is taken, it is pretty straightforward to carry out, and gives that added strength required.





I also added the WEM side details as this includes the firing cables dangling down. Six completed so far, I must calculate how many I need!



Thanks for viewing, I hope that by showing you what I have done here, someone, somewhere will benefit from this method.

Any comments gratefully received.

Cheers, Jabb

_________________
HMS Hood, the big one!

I used to be indecisive, now I'm not so sure.

Quick update. I worked out that I need twenty-four 12 pounders.

Each one consists of two resin parts, extremely careful removal of the barrel, two 0.5 mm holes drilled to accept - one section of brass rod, cut to length and a Master brass barrel, two pieces of WEM photo-etch, bent to shape and three pieces of Pontos photo-etch, again bent to shape.

The first one took approx an hour and a half to complete, the final twelve, once a production-line was adopted, were completed in about 3 hours.

Here they are, ready for primer:-



Work on the hull continued with the selection of the torpedo net shelf which I have decided must still have been in place after the nets and booms were removed in 1915. The different offerings from WEM and Pontos are shown below, the Pontos offers greater detail, but unfortunately will not fit the Trumpeter model, the WEM however, is a perfect fit.





Once dry, the hull and super-deck were carefully washed with soapy water, allowed to air-dry and then primed.

I have read plenty of reviews and watched countless youtube videos on primers in the past and have used 'Halfords' car primer, (a UK car accessory shop), a glass primer I saw recommended, Vallejo and Tamiya rattle cans to reasonable effect. All of these are now in the bucket! I have found Ultimate primer, the British version of Badger Stynylrez, which is absolutely superb. I urge everyone to try it, you will not be disappointed. It dries quickly, is self levelling and sands perfectly. Check the reviews on youtube!

Primed hull:-



I am a huge fan of wood veneer decks and am fitting the Artwox version to this kit. I cut out the relevant sections of the backing to enable a dry-fit to be carried out, and once the deck is fitted the plastic backing can be used as a mask if and when required.





I know some modellers on here don't like the wooden decks, and I have the highest admiration of their painting skills, far superior to anything I could manage with either hairy stick or air-brush. Detail below:



Thats it, masking and hull colours next.

Comments and tips always welcomed.

Cheers, Jabb

_________________
HMS Hood, the big one!

I used to be indecisive, now I'm not so sure.

Looking nice and tidy, I too love the wood decks they certainly add to the model

1944

Onward and upward!

Thought I would get started on some of the details, funnels, turrets etc.

I always try to add extra detail or improve on the kit when and where my limited skills allow. One of the first sections to construct are the funnels. I placed some lengths of etched ladders inside them to replace moulded detail and sprayed them black inside. I will be doing the rigging as per the thread that I started:-

http://www.shipmodels.info/mws_forum/viewtopic.php?f=2&t=162474

So I drilled the holes to accept the loops.



They should be 0.2mm but I only had one bit that size and I broke it off after one hole! So 0.3 it was! It doesn't sound that much but if you look at the hole at the right of the right funnel half, you really can see the difference between the two. I then inserted the loops.



I took the opportunity to prepare the parts for fitting the Pontos etched strengthening wiring as this looks far better than the moulded line. Another Trumpeter/Zvezda issue I came up against was that the front funnel is slightly taller between the flares at the top and bottom, and consequently the PE parts, if cut off the etch correctly, would be too short. I overcame that by cutting the part off the backing leaving the connecting 'pip' attached to the part, effectively lengthening it to match.

There are a number of vertical pipes attached to the stacks, the moulded parts are reasonable, but I viewed these as a further opportunity to add sharper detail. I am assuming that these are probably steam pipes, possibly from the pressure regulators or something like that. (If anyone knows, please enlighten us). I decided to replace these with brass tubing. I carefully drilled out the tubes to give the tube walls a thinner appearance.

Brass tube as supplied.



Tube after drilling out 3-5mm from the end.



The pipes have strengthening hoops around them and I replicated these with masking tape, cut to the appropriate size, wrapped around the tubing and secured with a touch of CA.

The top of this steam pipe has a cowl at the top, replicated with slightly thicker tube, again drilled out to accept the main pipe



The completed funnels:-





I obtained some brass propellors for my last build and, to be honest, was not that impressed. I will be using the kit ones but thinned them down a bit.



As previously mentioned, I got the superb Master barrel set but this has raised another problem. The kit barrels have the blast bags moulded on and use these to attach the barrels to the turret. I looked at the possibility of drilling out the barrel and leaving the bag to allow the metal barrel to be inserted through the hole and attached to the turret that way. However, the thickness of plastic at the front end of the bags is far too thin to allow this, and I am certain that I would not be able to drill out all 10 to the required accuracy. The Pontos barrels have an attachment that fits into the turret base on the Zvezda so no help there!



I thought about the problem over a glass of wine and initially thought about using filler to secure the barrels in place. The Master barrels have a spigot on the end and I eventually came up with this solution as shown in the next post.

_________________
HMS Hood, the big one!

I used to be indecisive, now I'm not so sure.

I initially cut a piece of 40 thou plastic card to the right depth, sufficient to allow the barrels to sit at the right angle but thin enough to allow the turret bottom to fit correctly. I secured this in position on its edge with CA and started to drill the required hole for the spigot. It was a bit weak and wobbly, and then it hit me, I need some square section to the right depth. A quick visit to my LHS and some square section plastic rod sorted it out. I have only done one so far but now I have the method and measurements it won't take long to do the rest.



The next item on the agenda is the funnel caps, however I will get three chances at these and will be choosing the best from Trumpeter, WEM or Pontos.

That will be the subject of the next post.

Thanks for looking, as usual, comments and tips eagerly sort.

Hope you're enjoying this so far.

Cheers, Jabb

_________________
HMS Hood, the big one!

I used to be indecisive, now I'm not so sure.