HMT Devonshire

[Jim Smith]

Well, some time ago I promised a 'great white ship' (see s.s. Salween also on this forum).

Here she is - HMT Devonshire built by Fairfield Shipbuilding and Engineering, Govan, Glasgow and owned and managed by Bibby Line.

She is shown, as built in 1939 (again, thanks to the excellent plans in John Bowen's book 'Miniature Merchant Ships) and liveried as a troopship.

It has taken about 6 months to complete and follows the construction Evergreen strip over a balsa wood core. Aftermarket parts were brass masts from Master, gravity davits from Hasegawa, railings from Tom's Model works and bits and pieces from the spares box.

Hope you like it.

[MartinJQuinn]

Nice! That's really cool.

[Timothyo]

Very nice! I would love to see more pictures!

[finnfan]

Very nice job Jim. Take no notice of the people who tell you not to scratch. Hope to see it at the Telford show.

Don

[Jim Smith]

Don,
My plan is to show it on the FineWaterline stand at Telford - just need to put it on a base.

A word of advice to anyone contemplating building a merchant ship - you have to like stanchions, stanchions and more stanchions (there's about a hundred on my model)!. Oh, and you need to be able to source lots of lifeboats (I scratch-built mine from basewood).

Having said that - give it a go.

And for Timothyo - here's a few more pics

[Pieter]

Nice to see that there are still John Bowen fans around. And good result as well.

[Timothyo]

So nice....thanks for the additional pics! I would like to do a liner, but not sure how to make convincing windows, so it always helps to see how others have approached it.

Regards,
Timothy

[Jim Smith]

Timothy,
The way I approach doors and windows is simple. I used the 'drawing' element in Microsoft Office/Excel and drew them on the screen.
It takes quite some time to set up, but you can vary the size of the windows and the colours of the doors simply by the 'colour fill' . Multiple windows are made by drawing a box, 'filling' with black and window frames added by drawing white lines through the black boxes.

Once you've got a reasonable row (or two) drawn, you can use the copy and paste option to get a page full. Alterations on size can be done on the 'Print - scale' command. (Remember to annotate your worksheet with the print percentage - it helps for next time!).

I then print these on to Self Adhesive address labels (available from any stationery store) and cut with a scalpel to suit the model. Look closely at the close up of the bridge picture - you will see that the superstructure windows and the doors are stuck on.

Hope this helps.

PS: I also use the same function to produce the funnel markings and house flags for my merchant ships.

[Quincy]

She looks very elegant, Jim!





Bob Pink.

[Rob]

nice one Jim, looking forward to seeing it at Telford

[JIM BAUMANN]

A very evocative ship--great looking livery!

The Telford fest is a-looming!

JB

[Targetsailor]

Beautiful work, Jim. It looks like photos of the actual ship.