Midland1965

Thanks very much. Armed with your previous photos, I'd worked out the Terrex AC35 and actually found a manual with dimensioned plans and side elevation but couldn't identify out the others to even start to find dimensions. Some tiny vehicle scratch building awaits!

That 1/1200 looks very tidy. I would be very happy if I could get such a clean finish. Can I ask for your help on a couple of questions? What primer-filler do you use? I've not found one that sands well. Can you suggest any references for the deck vehicles? I'd like to include some on my model but, whilst I've founds a few photos, nothing to be able to scale off so far to scratch build them - I'm assuming I can't just buy them in 1/1250.

I just stumbled across this today. I can only echo what the others have said: fantastic job. As it happens I'm wrestling with a 1/1250 model of HMS Queen Elizabeth at the moment so this is inspiring, useful and a bit humbling in equal measure.

Not sure about railings but if you know where I can get some crew figures about 1.45mm high, I'd be interested.

Thanks very much for the comments. I'm not sure about railings at this scale - people do add them but I think it might be a bit too fiddly for me and hard to avoid them looking out of scale. I quite like the idea of having some crew on deck though... I'm working on that fleet! Aside from some tidy up and paints, I've got a couple of Airfix Tribal class destroyers that have been stalled for a while and I'm trying to make a reasonably accurate HMS Queen Elizabeth from the Mountford resin kit - a bit of an uphill struggle, unfortunately. My longer term plan is to make a representative of all the post-war RN frigate, destroyer and carrier classes. Not sure what to make next - maybe a "could have been" Type 43, now I've got the hang of making Sea Wolf directors or finish off the T22s with Batches 1 and 2. In the meantime, here is HMS Cornwall with Manchester and Devonshire. And a line up of recent models.

I have been making a 1/1250 Type 22 Batch 3 Frigate, HMS Cornwall, over the past few months and have finally finished it and sorted out some pictures. The build thread is in the Work in Progress section: https://www.britmodeller.com/forums/index.php?/topic/235059421-hms-cornwall-type-22-batch-3-frigate-in-11250/ and there are further details on my blog: https://midlandshipyard.blogspot.com It started off a rebuild and tidy up of a Skytrex model but, apart from the funnel, mainmast, 4.5" gun turret and the Sea Wolf launchers, everything else has been scratch built. The original white metal hull is in there but almost completely covered in brass, plasticard or Miliput.

Thanks very much for the kind comments and encouragement. I spoke too soon in my previous post that everything was ready for painting. No sooner had I airbrushed the main Light Weatherworks Grey and brush painting the decks that I snapped off one of the rather too fragile GAM-BO1 guns, leaving a crater in the deck as the glue and paint lifted off around it. Tiny wedges of plastic glued to the surface was obviously a mistake. I shaped the replacements by filing the end of some dia 0.75mm brass rod, leaving a small circle to represent the base and a reduced diameter extension below so I could secure it to a hole drilled in the deck. This time I soldered the barrel on (trimmed afterwards) and glued the plastic rectangular piece on after gluing them in place. I'm really pleased with the technique of making small pieces from brass rod held in a pin-vise. The handling is easy, the 4 cuts in the jaws give a reference point for square or rectangular items and, once the shaping is complete, you can just step the rod out a bit and file a recess to give a location spigot and part it off. After that and a bit of repair work, I could complete the painting. The flight deck markings and pennant numbers are decals from Skytrex - applied over Kleer and bedded in with Micro Set and Micro Sol. The waterline was hard work. I was using a lining pen, held at an angle and loaded with slightly dilute black paint. That worked well previous times I've done it and the first side went smoothly but the paint blobbed and spread on the stern and second side, needing a couple of goes and paint brush repair work. The whole was mat varnished with Rowney Soluble Mat Varnish. I've tried loads of different varnishes but this has proved the most reliable. I'll post some more pictures up in RFI.

After a long gap, I have progress to report. I was stalled for a while on this, expending quite a lot of time without actually getting anything usable. First of all, thank you especially to Chewbacca for the explanation of the removal of the STWS - with that, I can now make sense of the various undated photographs. Following that better understanding, I decided to make my model to depict their earlier appearance, before the torpedo tubes were removed and the conventional ship’s boat replaced by another Pacific 22 RIB. Most importantly it meant I could use the original, rounded, 4.5” Mk.8 turret rather than the later faceted Mod.1 version. The first difficulty was the Type 911 SeaWolf radar-optical directors. I wasn’t able to find any definitive dimensions so relied on scaling of various drawings which, I eventually realised had different and incompatible dimensions. My first attempt looked far too big so I set that aside and decided to sort out the Harpoon launchers first - four tubes, how hard can that be! The picture below shows a variety of 1:1250 Harpoon launchers. Top left is the original Skytrex / Triton launcher - I wasn’t very impressed with these and wanted to do something better. Top right is the double, moulded together, set of launchers from a Mountford Type 23 kit. The plastic injection moulded ones are from a Hobbyboss Spruance - I thought these looked pretty good and tried to make something similar from 0.35mm brass rod and plasticard - after a huge amount of faffing about and failing to get the four tubes perfectly arranged, I gave up and decided to just use the ones from Hobbyboss - I’ll worry about what to do to replace those later! After that, I had to return to the Type 911s. The first step was to decide on some rough dimensions - I have still not been able to find anything definitive. I printed off a variety of drawings and photos I’d found online and one I had taken myself from a Brittany Ferry passing through Portsmouth and decided on some compromise dimensions from those that I thought would look about right. Within those bounds, I made a basic, very simplified, block drawing in Microsoft Excel to define what I’d actually make. This is version 2. Originally I had the octagonal platform as 3.4 mm across but when I tried the first one against the model it looked far too big compared with some aerial photos looking down on the ship - I’m not sure why I didn’t check those before instead of relying on side and oblique views. Recalculating from those photos gave a platform of 3.1 mm across and re-making for that looked much better. The original, larger one is on the right in the picture below. I wouldn’t have thought 0.3mm would make such a difference but it really did and looked obviously out of proportion against the model. The final version is still marginally over-size, I think, but not excessively and I’m happy with the overall look. My original plan was to make one master and cast multiple copies but I decided it would be too hard to get a good casting with such sharp internal angles so just made two - actually making two together didn’t take much longer than making one on its own. I’m not very excited though about making the next 8 that I need for the T22B2, a T23 and a T43 that are on my to do list. One of the better original bits of the was the funnel. Unfortunately I made a bit of a mess of that by drilling too deep from bottom to add a location peg so I had to re-make the top details with brass tube and plasticard. At the same time, I made davits from bent brass rod which allowed me to carve away some of the excess metal from the original model to give a better appearance. The STWS were simply made from brass rod on a round plastic base to represent the turntable. The Oerlikon GAM-BO1 20mm are two small pieces of plasticard and some 0.2 mm wire cut to 2.4mm length with a blob of epoxy to secure it to the top of the upright. I initially tried to include more detail but at such a small size it was almost impossible to see. With the addition of life rafts (stretched sprue) and some tiny bits of plastic to represent the Sea Gnat decoy launchers, everything was ready for painting.

I'm a big fan of R&R's elegant original lines and will be following this with interest. I'm thinking of doing a similar back-dating project myself with an Airfix 1:1200 HMS Hood.

Thanks very much for taking the time to comment and for the kind words. The thing I'm really trying to work on is getting a sharp, clean finish on these small components. It is really hard as the slightest burr or nick is really visible but I guess practice will (eventually) make perfect. Thanks to Ex-FAAWAFU for explaining the diesel exhaust covers and UAA1 ESM. I like to know what the different parts are, even if at this scale the representation is a tiny brass or plastic approximation to the rough shape of the original! Maybe you (or anybody else) could help answer another question that has been bothering me: Amongst the references I'm using are photos of HMS Cornwall here http://www.seaforces.org/marint/Royal-Navy/Frigate/F-99-HMS-Cornwall.htm Although general T22B3 plans show STWS2 launchers either side of the funnel, and they appear in photos of some of the other T22B3 ships, there is no sign of them on these photos of HMS Cornwall. Instead, that position is occupied by an Oerlikon GAM-BO1. Were the tubes removed and the guns moved later in the ships life and was there any replacement for the STWS2, like the magazine launcher on T23?

Nicely done. Always liked the Mk. XV.

I made a start on the Sea Wolf director and found that my dimensions, scaled off a whole-ship plan, were way off so I've been concentrating on other details whilst I try to find some better information. The first thing was the main mast. I changed the spars to the thinner 0.2mm piano wire to match those of the fore mast. I don't know what the large flattened-tube like structures are half way up but the original cast-on ones were blobby and the wrong size so I replaced them with plasticard. I'd intended to make these open-ended (at least at the top) by bending foil around a half-length core but that proved too fiddly and I settled for solid pieces. This area will be painted black so I don';t think this will be too noticable. I also made the bulwarks (is a fence like this still a bulwark when not at deck level?) out of a strip of foil, using my PE bending tool to get sharp corners. In the photos, you can also see the jib crane, attached to the corner of the hanger, for handling the RIBs. This was made from more 0.2mm wire, soldered to a right angled triangle with the top edge continuing past the short vertical edge to fit into a hole I drilled in the plastic of the hanger. I wasn't happy with my first attempt at making an Atlantic 22 RIB and decided I actually needed two. The picture below shows my first stage in making these, with a 2mm wide strip of 0.5mm thick plasticard shaped with a pointed end and the edges rounded off then a row of holes drilled down the middle. The lower hull, transom, engine compartment and steering position are each made from additional pieces of plasticard. The other detail part I've made is a Goalkeeper CIWS. This started off with the central piece cut and shaped from 0.7mm thick plasticard with the multiple barrels represented by a single length of 0.2mm wire - given that this scales up to 250mm, even that is probably over-scale, hi-lighting the balance to be struck in these small scales between making things genuinely to scale and getting the look right. The sides were shaped from a 1mm wide strip of plasticard, angled across the width from 0.6 to 0.4 mm then cut to a trapezium with a 1mm wide base. The conical base is the end of a piece of dia 2mm sprue, filed to a cone then cut off 0.5mm thick.The radar dish is dia 0.7mm stretched sprue - it should really be a forward pointing cone but I couldn't see how to do that at such a small size. I'm still not really happy with the RIBs. As can be seen in the photo, the shapes are slightly different and I'm worried this will look a bit odd with them close together on the same model so I guess I'll have to make another one and see if that comes out a better match to one of them. These extreme close-up pictures really show every blemish and I'll have a lot of cleaning up to do before final painting!

Since the late 1960's, RN hull and superstructure vertical surfaces have been BS381C-676 Light Weatherwork Grey. This is a light, slightly blue, grey but the appearance seems to vary enormously according to the light and surrounding colours so I'd suggest the main thing is to find a colour that you think looks convincing. The squares below are grabs from various photos of modern RN ships and I think this illustrates how hard it is to get reliable colours from photos. For my 1:1250 models, I use Vallejo Light Grey (990) with quite a lot of white added - I should have added more as my mix is a bit too dark, especially at this scale, but I'm reluctant to change and make the models I have already painted stand out as different. Another suggestion I have seen is 20 parts Vallejo Air 046 Pale Grey Blue; 6 parts 057 Black; 3 parts 001 White but that just sounded too much trouble to me! https://midlandshipyard.blogspot.com/2017/09/hms-manchester-type-42-b3-skytrex.html

I wonder if anybody can help with this please? I'm making a 1:1250 model of a Type 22 Batch 3 frigate and need to scratch build the Type 911 Sea Wolf directors and the Goalkeeper CIWS. Whilst I have lots of good reference photos and even some basic line drawings, I'm struggling for basic dimensions to scale everything. I just need a couple of reliable and clearly identifiable reference sizes for both and I can scale everything off those. I had made a dimensioned sketch of the director but when I started work on the components for that yesterday evening, I soon realised my sizes were well off. If anybody could provide either some real dimensions or even some taken off a (I hope accurate) large scale model it would be a great help. As my model is 1:1250, I guess these items will only be 2 or 3 mm high so I will be making some major simplifications and I am trying to work to the nearest 0.1 mm so the reference dimensions don't need to be super-precise - just good enough that my overall proportions are OK. https://midlandshipyard.blogspot.com https://smallitalianwars.blogspot.com

I've just finished my replacement mast. The main part is an old bit of sprue, filed square then tapered and cut to length. To improve strength and give me something to key it to the structure below and into which I can attach the Type 967/968 radar, I've drilled through it axially (before doing the taper) then stock some 0.75mm brass tube through the middle. The concave conical bit below the circular platform is from another, bigger diameter, piece of brass tube. It is really hard to keep everything straight an on-axis. At this scale an error of 0.1 mm shows up and I certainly have at least that. The cross-pieces are 0.20 mm piano wire (several holes in my finger tips thanks to these, before I filed the ends flat) which pass right through, including the brass tube. Originally I intended to re-use the Type 1006 navigation radar from the original model but in the end made a new one from brass, with the T soldered then super-glued into a small hole in the platform. As well as remedial work to get back to where I though I was a week ago, I've made a bit of actual progress. I've been making the Harpoon launchers, though I'm tempted to use some from a Hobby Boss Spruance kit that I have in the stash I've also made some sketches for the dimensions of the Type 911 Sea Wolf directors. This was helped enormously by finding some multi-view orthogonal plans online of a digital model at a large scale that helped me make sense of the multiple photos I have accumulated. I find that doing a basic dimensioned plan like this helps a lot in deciding what simplifications to make and keeping the overall proportions about right. My intention is to make one master and cast multiple copies. As well as this model, I plan to do a Type 22 batch 2 and a Type 43 so I need at least 8 and I certainly can't face making then one at a time. I've been a bit disappointed with my castings before - making 5.25" and 15" turrets for a model HMS Vanguard - but I suppose the only way to get better is to learn form the mistakes and keep trying. https://midlandshipyard.blogspot.com https://smallitalianwars.blogspot.com

Absolutely astonishing craftsmanship. I didn't think this level of detail was possible by hand.

Thanks all for commenting. To answer Courageous / Stuart's comment about magnifiers - yes, pretty much. Sadly my eyesight isn't quite what it was and I need bit of help for painting and modelling small details. Last autumn I got a Kemot 5 diopter (2.25 x) magnifying lens surrounded by LED lights off Ebay. The negative points are that flex is a bit short and comes with a continental plug (since cut off and the reach extended with a junction box) but for a bit less than £35 it is brilliant - for me, the perfect balance of magnification and depth of field for figure painting and detailed modelling. I've made a bit more progress, adding the aft part of the main superstructure with the SCOT radomes and structure from Skytrex and some extra details to represent hatches. There is an extra, slightly smaller radome just in front of the SCOT radomes which I filed from some 0.75 mm brass rod. Despite thinking everything was looking OK through the magnifier, the close-up picture below shows a different story, with some serious deterioration of the top of the Skytrex mast. I can't believe I missed it before. Two steps forward and one step back: I think I'm going to have to make a replacement.

I agree about not liking buying paint online but there are plenty of UK stockists of Vallejo, either bricks and mortar stores or attending modelling or wargames shows. I have occasionally bought Vallejo by post and found eModels in Stoke very good - you can also call in and buy at their warehouse if you are nearby, though it isn't a shop where you can wander about to browse. Alternatively, I had a look for a paint equivalent chart and http://www.creativemodels.co.uk/paint_conversion.php?manufacturers_id=1 suggest Humbrol Matt 121, Pale Stone as a close equivalent to Iraqui Sand. I know you specified acrylic but Humbrol enamel certainly ticks the readily available box.

The usual acrylic recommendation in 1:1250 modelling and the one I use for holystone scrubbed teak decks on my 1/1200 and 1/1250 models is Vallejo Iraqui Sand, 70.819. It brushes on well (a couple of thin coats normally) and Vallejo regular paints seem fine for airbrushing too, appropriately thinned. Although it is supposed to be mat, I find it prone to drying slightly satin when brush painted, so I sometimes add a touch of ordinary talcum powder, as originally recommended by Martin on the Waving Flag wargames figure painting blog.https://blog.vexillia.me.uk/2011/05/painting-tips-5-talc.html. https://midlandshipyard.blogspot.com

I'm a little late in starting this as I'm already part way through so I hope you'll forgive the lack of "before" photographs. This is based around a second hand model so there are none of the traditional box shots either. I've always liked the T22B3 Frigates for their elegant lines and powerful, for their day, armament. Eventually I hope to make a model of every RN escort type from the 60s onwards though at the current rate that might take me a while. Tribal Class frigate, County Class and T42B3 destroyers are done so that leaves quite a lot on the to do list! I bought a Skytrex / Triton model T22B3 a while ago off Ebay. The assembly had been rather hurried and the paint thickly applied so my plan was just to clean it up and repaint but, as with my HMS Manchester, when I actually came to compare the Skytrex model with scale plans and photos, there was a lot more that needed to be done to make a satisfactory model. The Skytrex parts that didn't need much modification were: the 4.5" gun, Sea Wolf launchers, masts and funnel. Everything else - oh dear. The Skytrex hull was much too short (114mm when it should have been 118.5) mostly in the mid-section, and narrow but the biggest error was that the sides - noticeably vertical in the original - were flared and not symetrical. As with my model of HMS Manchester, I wanted to have the openings at the stern properly open but with the bigger overhangs on the Type 22, I thought plasticard would be too fragile so built a new flight deck, including the characteristic widened section, from brass - thus giving the correct overall length. I cut a waterline outline from 0.020" plasticard to give the near-vertical sides around the middle then filled in with Miliput. The next job was to plate the sides with more plasticard to give a smooth finish, correct the beam and get an even transition on both sides from the flared bow section to the more vertical middle. Finally, I made a new stern piece from more brass which allowed me to have the corner pillars realistically thin but still quite strong. The forecastle deck also needed a lot of changes. The gun was slightly too far back, the bulwarks far too thick and not extending far enough back and the anchor arrangements were nothing like those of the real ship. I corrected the bulwarks by adding a blob of solder on both sides to extend them aft then a lot of filing and carving. I cut off or filled the anchor chain handling details (the chain itself wasn't represented at all) and made everything from scratch with brass rod for the bollards and cotton thread. The final bit of hull detailing was to make new anchors by cutting and filing flattened brass rod. The finished anchors are 2 mm x 1.7 mm. The forward superstructure was too short, the bridge too narrow and lacking in detail so I made a new one from plasticard. The Sea Archer electro-optical trackers were made by filing some 0.75mm brass rod, held in a pin-vice - I really should get a miniature lathe! The Skytrex masts weren't bad - I just had to make the cross-spars, the extension to the mainmast (from 0.35mm brass rod with some short rings cut from brass tube to suggest the UHF antennas) and a replacement 967/968 radar (from soldering a T shape of brass rod to rectangular-section brass) with the platform cut from scrap plastic sprue. I carved the BAE Systems / Halmatic Pacific 22 RIB from plasticard. Starting with a strip of 0.20" sheet, cut and sanded to the correct width, I shaped the bows then cut a drilled two small holes and linked them up to make a channel that would become the inside of the boat. I rounded this off to make the circular cross-section of the inflatable part before cutting it off, sticking the hull on (a wedge-shaped sliver of plasticard), shaping that and the stern then adding two more small pieces for the transom and a rectangle representing the seats and engine. For reference, a Pacific 22 is 6.75 m long with a beam of 2.44 m so 5.4 x 2.0 mm in 1:1250. Since these photos were taken I've given the hull a spray of primer which highlighted all sorts of blemishes, blobs of super-glue and stray bits of fluff that all had to be cleaned up. I've started on the last bit of the forward superstructure now to go behind the foremast. After that, it'll be on to the details like the Sea Wolf Trackers, 40mm guns and Corvus launchers. There is a bit more detail on my midlandshipyard blog with higher resolution versions of these pictures. Edit: I've replaced the pictures here with the bigger ones from the blog. https://midlandshipyard.blogspot.com https://smallitalianwars.blogspot.com

Amazingly neat work. How do you manage to get the edges of the plasticard so sharp and square? However sharp a scalpel blade I use, I always get burrs then round off the edges a bit by removing them. Also, how did you cut the circular platform - again so neatly and burr/rounding free?

Really pleased to see another of your WIPs. I'm looking forward to watching the progress and hoping to pick up some tips.

Almost there now, despite a slight setback when the carpet monster ate one of the ship's boats. I used some PE anchors, after being dissatisfied with previous scratch built efforts but they were so thin they almost disappear under the thinnest paint so I think I'll revert to wire and plasticard in future. The paint scheme is for HMS Derwent in October 1942. I'm just waiting for some more boats and carley floats to finish this one off.

"I just need to now the the specific destroyers of this class that will have RGM-84 Harpoon installed." In that respect, I think your crystal ball is as good as anybody's. All the T45s are wired for and have fixings for Harpoon. Which and when they get them fitted will, I guess, be a matter of where they are sent and the expectations of whether they might be needed, as is already the case with fitting them with Phalanx. In time, I'd expect all of them to get Harpoon until/unless it is replaced by something else.

Here she is with the wire detail in place. One problem was how to represent the depth charge racks. Solid representations just don't look right - it is really crying out for some PE but I had none. I started off by glueing some net curtain material with a 0.5 mm mesh onto a 0.5 mm square plastic strip - bear with me on this one! With the excess material trimmed off and cut to length these started to look a bit better. Here the depth charge throwers and reloads are in place. The depth charges are represented by sprue about 0.25 dia x 0.7 mm long - a bit too long really. Ready for priming with Valejo Air primer. I'm not very impressed with this - it is OK if everything goes right first time but any attempt at sanding to correct errors that only become visible after priming just makes a mess. Can anybody recommend a good primer for all these mixed surfaces that covers well, can be sanded and won't wreck my airbrush? And with a light coat of primer, which depressingly shows up every flaw in the finish. The guns are just resting in place - they and the boats will be attached after I've finished the camouflage painting. The carley floats are on order ready to fit to the supports either side of the aft deckhouse. Overall I'm very pleased with the effect of the depth charge arrangements, although the net didn't go on quite square. I hadn't planned to include anything to represent the steps leading up to the forecastle and bridge but their lack is rather too obvious in the second last photo. Any suggestions gratefully received. Happy Christmas https://midlandshipyard.blogspot.com