Vlad

That looks very crisp and well painted, good job on your return to ships.

Not in this case. While I tend to agree with you, it's also very easy to make those sort of details overscale in 1/700, and I haven't done rigging in this scale for years as it's difficult. For some time I focus on making my 1/700 builds neat and tidy but otherwise OOB to keep them less stressful and enjoy collecting. Every once in a while I will do a "special" project where I go all out with photo etch. I have such a project in progress, I may attempt rigging on it. And soon I'll start another 1/350 ship that will definitely get "the works". 😜

Thank you! The pencil effect is something I've been doing for a while as an easy cheat to bring a bit of 3D life to solid plastic parts that represent open lattice structures. @k7rkx I do it for solid windows too, for example the rear conning station on Dorsetshire. @ArnoldAmbrose the high freeboard is something I struggle to like visually about this class, but obviously it's important functionally and they were very useful ships for what the RN needed at the time. All the various refits and accumulated differences between class members are fascinating, I'm sure I'll end up doing more eventually.

Thank you. Yes, there's a lot of plastic in this box because it's a reissue using the Norfolk hull parts and a bunch of new sprues to correct the scale (their first release of Dorsetshire was wrongly sized). It has nearly complete duplication of superstructure parts, with some Norfolk sprues thrown in but largely unused.

Magnificent! Not sure how I missed that. I especially like the foil to make the blast mats on the bridge. One thing to watch out for when you get to that stage on Resolution, you need to remove the "eyebrows" from the turrets since she did not have the modification to increase elevation to 30 degrees (neither did Malaya but too late there and it's a small detail many wouldn't notice).

Oh, you did a kitbash/scratchbuild of Malaya, also in 1/350? I would love to see that if it is finished.

Amazing detail on the boats. But more importantly, I see you got the the really hard part (in my opinion) which is scratchbuilding the bridge. Aside from the stern this is probably the area with the biggest differences and least kit part re-use 😛 and plenty of opportunity to pack it with even more detail, with all those open platforms.

When I first started looking at building a County class cruiser I was not deliberately planning to model this unfortunate pair. But it seems a few choices and coincidences with kit availability have aligned, with the result that I have now completed Dorsetshire (joining my previously built Cornwall) just in time for the anniversary of their sinking. Some of you might have seen this coming since I was asking about Dorsetshire's camouflage, a simple but quite attractive scheme in my opinion with sharp contrasting lines. It's been a while since I've used this much masking tape on a build 😅 I was pretty happy with the Aoshima kit. Some of the detail is not as fine or sharp as the Trumpeter Cornwall kit, and it doesn't have a small PE fret. But it is crisply molded and easy to build, and seems accurate in shape and dimension (this is the re-issued one not the first release that was underscale). It also doesn't have the ugly oversized hull paneling. I didn't custom mix the paints this time. The main colours are Revell 76 for 507C and Revell 74 for 507A. I compensated for the lack of PE crane and catapult by shading the "holes" with pencil. I could be tempted to build a Norfolk too (for which I have also been gathering camouflage research), but I think two Counties in 3 months is enough of this class for now 😜

Alright alright 😅 I'll see if I can dig them out from the cabinet. Good excuse to give Repulse a dusting too, she's an old build and for a long time too big to be inside a cabinet. Cheers! The pictures are grainy but you can just about make it out in the one of her leaving Singapore, I think I put it in the right place and picked the right kind of flag. Philips was only acting admiral so I wondered if the flag should be vice admiral instead.

Lovely build, looking smart in that deceptive two-tone. I must admit the Counties have only grown on me recently, but I do like the hangar ones for some reason.

Thank you very much! Many of the colours are mixes, some not. Here's what I used: Camouflage: MS1 - Revell Aqua 78 507A - mix 50/50 Revell Aqua 74 and 79, with a tiny bit of 56 to make it more blue MS3 - mix Revell Aqua 45 and 75 and a little Humbrol 78 to make it green MS4 - mix 50/50 Revell Aqua 45 and 75 507C - Revell Aqua 76 MS3 mix I am the least happy with, next time I will try something based on Revell Aqua 67 Other: Steel decks and turre tops - Revell Aqua 77 Hull antifouling - Revell Aqua 47

Looking really good! What are the paints and mixes you're using for all the colours?

I'm starting a Gneisenau 1940 build and looking to update my paint matches as best as possible. Hellgrau 50 is usually equated to RAL 7001, but I assume this is only a "best match" in the same way many colours are given as FS references? Revell brands their satin paint 374 as RAL 7001 but the instructions for their 1/350 Bismarck call for a mix based on 90% Matt 76, which admittedly is very similar. Both of these paints have a faint blue-ish tint (like Compass Ghost greys). On the flip side, Sovereign's paint charts show Hellgrau 50 as a very neutral, almost dusty-beige grey: On a previous project I used Humbrol 64 light grey for this colour. Does that sound better or worse than e.g. Revell 76? Any other possible matches that anyone can recommend? Would something like Gull Grey or Medium Sea Grey be too dark or off the mark? As for Dunkelgrau 51, the RAL 7000 equivalent leads to Revell 57. Again comparing to Sovereign, I wonder if something like Humbrol 145 (which is a tiny bit darker and more blue-ish) would fit better, and provide better contrast depending on which paint I decide on for Hellgrau 50. I'm probably splitting hairs unnecessarily given any off the shelf Humbrol/Revell paint match will be approximate by definition, but I just wanted to open this discussion and see what input I get anyway. In particular on the question of whether Hellgrau 50 should be more blue-ish or more neutral-dusty.

Pre-war Ms.1 calls for wood decks to be left as they are, not sure when deck darkening began exactly.

Pretty sure this one is from the 1923-24 world cruise.