Chewbacca

Many moons ago as a baby Midshipman I was a guide on board HMS VICTORY while I was on holdover (the alternative was watchkeeping in the Ops Room in Port Stanley). My training for the role was to do 2 tours with a more experienced guide and then learn it on the job! So yes, treat anything the guides tell you with a degree of scepticism. I think it is slightly better now in that in the busy summer months there are no guides at all. You get an self-service audio guide to walk around with which I was assured a couple of years ago had been put together by the curator of the Museum of the Royal Navy so I would hope was underpinned by a little more research than "just do a couple of tours and then you're on your own"!

Note to self. Must stop taking holidays. It happened 2 years ago when we were fortunate enough to have 4 weeks off and went to the Caribbean. I got back and for about 8 weeks completely lost my modelling mojo. I think it was a combination of having not done any for a good while, coupled with all of the other things that I needed to do having been away. And it's happened again. We booked a 2 week cruise to the Canaries and Spain/Portugal getting back just over 24 hrs ahead of the new travel limitations kicking in and since we've been back which is 2 weeks now, haven't been anywhere hear the bench. I keep thinking that I ought to but can't seem to get my head around what I need to do next. I'm only posting this in the hope that by telling others about it it might kickstart me into gear! What I did do though while I was away was read several good books all of which have piqued my thought process for future modelling projects. So I finished reading Atlantic Nightmare by Richard Freeman. From that I now really want to finish off the 1/72 Flower Class Corvette that I started in about 1978. Churchill's Admiral in Two World Wars (the biography of Admiral of the Fleet Lord Keyes by Jim Crossley) has got me thinking about a Zeebrugge diorama with a scratch built HMS VINDICTIVE alongside the mole. Harrier 809 by Rowland White had me looking for Kinetic FRS1 to finish in 809 Sqn Barley Grey whilst the last book I started but haven't yet finished, Taranto, the latest book from David Hobbs, definitely has me wanting to do a 1/48 Swordfish. But then with all of these I keep thinking that I have well over 20 years' modelling sitting in my stash. Wouldn't I be better doing one of those instead?

Wow. It's been a couple of months since I last caught up with this and I must say it's coming along beautifully. The 3D printed parts are sublime - I only wish I'd had my printer when I did the Wasp rather than having to scratch build all of those parts. With hindsight, I wish I'd had the nerve to get rid of all of the doors on mine rather than just the pilot's but I was nervous that it would all fall apart if I did. I didn't think about cutting everything away and replacing the central strut with styrene. And in answer to the question about 2 pages back, the Wasps did fly without doors most of the time both to extend endurance and make it easier to get out in event of ditching. Once the clamshell flot bags inflated, it was impossible to open the rear doors and difficult to open the front. But even with the doors off, a Wasp carrying 2 Mk 46 torpedoes had an endurance somewhat less than 15 minutes. Great work - hopefully won't take me so long to catch up in future.

Thanks. It's a wee bit smaller but I know what you mean. I spent the best part of 15 months a few years back repairing one of those models after a Sea Cadet leant on the case it was in and the case collapsed destroying all of the fragile bits (guardrails, radio and radar aerials, Seacat launcher, Wasp helo, ensign staff, Limbo mortar and even the bridge roof and 4.5 inch turret) Unfortunately the before photos are really quite poor quality and don;t show the extent of the damage, but this is it after it was out of the dry dock. Annoyingly, the Sea Cadet Unit CO said he was going to get a new case made for it - that was nearly 5 years ago - and it is still sitting in the Unit wardroom open to the elements, dust and cadet pawprints. I have refused to repair it a second time.

What I've found helps is a torch that actually came with my last car. It's only about 5 inch long and the lens is less than an inch diameter, but it produces the whitest, brightest light I have ever seen from a torch. The technique I've found is to hold it horizontal to the floor and scan around - it will show up pieces as a shadow.

Hi Jeff, Well when the torsos are only about 1.5 mm long and less than 1 mm diameter, are coloured light grey and my modelling area has a dark and light grey speckled floor (I know, not a great colour choice but it was there before I moved the bench) it's quite easy .

Like I said, beginning to wish I'd not decided upon this setting! I'm sure an at sea scene with just half a dozen matelots working part of ship in No 8s would have been much easier. But then I never choose the easy route

I think I'm starting to wish I hadn't decided to set PUMA in a Navy Days setting. 223 (not that I'm counting) 1/350 3D printed civilian figures later plus another 20 ship's company, and I haven't even started to top coat them yet. There should be more but around 20-25 have either been eaten by the carpet monster or failed the surgeon's scalpel removing the supports. A few ended up headless but they were easy enough to fix - it was the missing legs and torsos that proved a little more challenging. How that other BM'er (sorry, I can't remember who) carved his figures from plastic runner I do not know! Anyway, they're all primed now and ready for top coat together with a Land Rover and ship's Mini van plus a Pusser's coach that will be parked on the jetty. I also did a small rendition of a 20 x 10 ft Pusser's issue canvas tent to be erected close to the brow for the visitors to have their bags checked and to leave pushchairs etc. This is most of them. There are about 20 on another length of card that I did earlier as a test piece Need to repair the coach roof. I had to join the front of one to the rear of the other and still needs a wee bit more filler And especially for @Ex-FAAWAFU, one (well actually two but the right hand one is much better so is the one that I will use) QM's table. You can just see the officers' in/out board on the front although the photo's from the wrong angle!

Thanks Crisp, and sorry for being slow to respond. I wasn't sure whether they had those QM's cabouches in the early 70s - to be honest I don't think I even remember them in my earliest ships in the early 80s either. I had printed a QM table but could I find it so have recently reprinted a copy ready for primer. As for the in/out board... Work pressures have meant very little time at the bench in recent weeks but where I have been able to find some time, most of it has been printing and cleaning up more of the figures (I think I'm up to about 180 now) and some of the ancillaries to make the jetty look busy including the ship's minivan. I definitely remember ALACRITY being loaned one of those from the motor pool when we were alongside in Guz in 1983/84 so felt it not unreasonable that they'd have done the same in 1970. Spoke to one of the old boys in the local Royal Naval Association and he remembered ships being loaned cars when alongside in base port in the 1960s so that was good enough for me. I've also got a Mk 2 Land Rover and "pusser's coach" which will be painted dark blue to be parked on the jetty and a large army tent to be pitched close to the brow for the visitors to leave push chairs and have their bags searched etc. Think I'm very close to getting them all into the spray shop. Thank you Thanks for your kind words and good to see that you too are starting to making good progress already Chris. I love that Micromaster turret. It's not too late for me to go down that route though as you can see here from one of the photos I posted a while back when I was doing a dry fit, I have largely got my turrets ready for installation. Best rgds

I presume that you meant the phots that I took. Sadly not, they were all taken on the works camera and the film when unloaded from the camera was sent straight to MOD. All I ever got back was a contact sheet with comments like "frame 3-6 under-exposed 1 stop, frame 11-14 under-exposed 2 stops". We rarely got to keep copies of any of the photos that we took.

First I'd heard of them was reading this RFI which used Five Star parts and which look very good: Sadly, the thing that would put me off using them (at least from that eBay outlet, auroramodelshop) is the open claim that they advertise that they state on the customs declaration that it is a gift under $25 and if the buyer gets caught for import duties, bad luck. That despite the fact that there are almost no Five Star or Shipyard items that fall into the sub $25 category. Now I know that none of us like paying tax, but surely that is blatant fraud and I'm sure that by entering into a sales agreement with them on that basis, HMRC could make a case that we knew what they planned to do and are therefire an accessory to the crime? I wouldn't use them out of principle.

Very nice. I especially love the way that you have created a sense of depth in the water through the clever use of colour. I've been up close and personal with a couple of these (taking photographs from about 100 yards) and this captures the meanness that they are in the steel.

I'm not normally a fan of IJN ships but that is exquisite. Some of the best modelling I think I have ever seen.

When you find one, do let us all into the secret please. Zap extra thin isn't bad but even that has its off days (see my PUMA WIP thread for the latest evidence of that)

Interesting capstan arrangement. Don't think I've ever seen a layout like that before and i wonder what the reason was?

Some fabulous modelling going on here and the delicate PE work is exquisite. Please don't take this as a criticism because it's most definitely not, but aren't those whip aerials a little on the heavy side? I presume they're kit items but wonder if they could be replaced with brass wire to give a more scale appearance? Having said that I couldn't find any half-decent photos that showed the after superstructure and those that I could find didn't appear to have any whips there at all but it does all very much depend upon the time period that you are portraying. I presume from the hull colour scheme it is ~1945?

Thanks both for your comments. I must confess I didn't know that you could get either threaded or sagged guardrails in this scale so I'm afraid I cut the old ones off and have replaced them with standard 2-bar metal guardrails. They're not authentic but I think they do look a little better than my original attempt. I also realised that when I fitted the brow safety net that I'd forgotten the shot mat that is placed over the deck edge to prevent chafing but fortunately the net was only lightly attached and I was able to release it lightly from the deck edge, put the shot mat underneath (made from a 5 mm square of kitchen roll painted burnt umber) which you can just see either side of the brow and then reattached the netting before fitting the brow itself. Also painted up the ceremonial perry buoy and added that to the cruciform which now sits at the dockside end of the brow. Both the cruciform and perry buoy were 3D printed. Next job I think will be to finish painting the figures and start getting those positioned. Thanks for watching

Excellent weathering

Brow netting fabricated and fitted and the dockside guardrails added. The actual guardrails are traditionally individual galvanised steel stanchions that simply drop into holes in the dockside joined by a double layer of chain so that each one can be taken out to allow for ropes, wires and brows to be positioned. They are often quite loose and depending upon the wear in the hole usually are not vertical. So I tried to replicate that by drilling holes in the dockside and adding individual stanchions made from 0.2 mm brass wire. I certainly achieved the random angle look that I wanted but them the difficulty came in adding the chain. My first attempt was Uschi van de Rosten line but it was so fine that it didn't show up at all. Then I tried 0.2 mm fishing line, but that simply wouldn't attach with the CA I was using but given that it is nylon monofilament I was not wholly surprised. And so in the end I used stretched sprue. Before painting And after painting But for some strange reason, I could not get the sprue and wire to attach neatly with CA. I was using Zap extra thin which is my preferred CA but nothing I could do was getting these components to stay together. I think it was simply that there was so little contact area and so little adhesive that by the time I had put the applicator down and picked up the stretched sprue, the CA had cooked off. So I swapped to a CA gel and accelerator which worked but as you can see, even using a tiny pin and putting on what I thought was a miniscule amount of adhesive, I've still ended up with some nasty blobs. the ones on the top row I can probably cure but I've got no chance with the lower row. And more importantly, at times the two rows are far too close together. And so I am going to try to swap that out - if I can without totally destroying the dockside - and go for Atlantic Models PE railings. I accept that they are unrealistic because they are too even but I think they will end up looking better than these. They also won't have the characteristic sag of each line of chain but I failed to achieve that with the vast majority of the stretched sprue so nothing lost there!

I have a similar project running for GLASGOW having both commanded her briefly and been her XO back in the 90s. I've completed the WW2 version and have the Atlantic Models 1/350 T42; I have yet to get the Combrig WW1 Town Class. Interestingly when I was XO of GLASGOW, one of our officers had previously served in GLOUCESTER and was forever telling tales "when I was in GLOUCESTER...". In the end we grew so fed up with it that I banned the use of her name in the wardroom; instead she could only be referred to as "the other G ship" with a fine for anyone who transgressed. Probably wouldn't get away with that these days -it'd be deemed bullying and harassment!

Some of those kits bring back the memories Dave. Is TIGER a conversion from the Airfix or is she the 1/700 Matchbox kit? Also what is that ship that the Ikara conversion is leaning on? Would have loved to have served in TIGER or BLAKE. Sadly I joined just a wee bit too late

In the mid-late 80s, the RN did experiment with different coloured anti-fouling and boot-topping on a couple of ships (light blues and greys) but by the time that MONTROSE entered service they had reverted to the traditional red and black.

Looking really good. I've been looking for this (in the smaller sizes) for months after @Jamie @ Sovereign Hobbies highlighted it but it seems that it's out of stock everywhere and I wondered if YX had stopped making it and simply hadn't updated their website?

Great work. The shot from the stern really emphasises the busy-ness of a carrier's flight deck and is very realistic.