It's been a long wait but I finally have the new Pontos Hood detail set in my hot little hands... it took me about 30 seconds after opening the box to know what my my next project would be. All I have to say is wow... this build is gonna be something special.
My plan is to model Hood as she appeared in the months before the battle of the Denmark Strait. I am aiming for a high but still realistic (for a model) level of accuracy and I want to push very hard to make my version of this famous ship look convincing up close as well as at a distance.
As I did on my previous build (HMS Nelson) I am setting a goal to do something on this project at least once a week, no matter how small to hopefully keep this build progressing and I am going to try to update this thread just as often. This is gonna be a LONG build though... I'm estimating this one will take about a year to finish. So let's get started!
Step one is to "detrumpeterify" the hull (or in other words make a big mess of a pricey piece of plastic
). I am going to redo the hull plating to be more realistic and rework/replace the portholes. Rather than try to sand off the way too thick plating like I did on Nelson, I am working the other way around and am filling it with Squadron Putty. I am not obliteriating every line on the hull, just the molded deep rectangular runs which pass as plates on the stock kit. After smoothing it all out, I will replace the plate lines with the "tape and filler primer" method.
Anyway, a couple hours and an entire tube of putty got me this:
More to come!
):
) that I will use to ring each porthole before final painting though I will likely have to make the "eyebrows" as they are longer on Hood, coming almost half-way down the sides of the ports. 
