Ngantek

Superb Chris. This one is a real masterclass in fading with the brush. I never know how you're able to drybrush and not introduce 3d texture. What's the matte coat again? Andy

Where's the 'toys out of cot' emoji when you need it! 😄

Nice to see the wings on. I think when the span exceeds the breadbin length, it's time to change for a larger one. Where's the 52kg of depleted uranium going to fit though? Andy

This continues to come along beautifully. Wandered through NMM Greenwich the other day, which always reminds me to come an check on this build. What is this this where can I find it who makes a kit I'll take one in any scale right now heres my bank details please thank you.

wow onto the fiddly bits already. Very nice work as always, that upper wing preshade has come out really nicely in particular. I tripped and fell the other day and somehow catapulted one of these onto my stash shelf. Andy

Coming along beautifully Alistair. Fantastic sharp detail on the interior, and with that and the canopy masking and fettling out the way, one hopes it's all clean sailing from here on! I really like that you're doing this and the Gannet in parallel; two loveably goofy-looking favourites of mine. Andy

Yeah but I think the effort taken in correcting even minor problems, as shown above, explains the quality of the final model, which really is at a level where someone needs to pay you to put in a brochure. Lovely work. Andy

Lovely work. Just interested in your process from paint to decals to final finish; the AK real comes out, what, satin after all that nice surfacing work? Decals straight on (?) and then a coat to blend their finish with the rest of the paint? Such attention to surface finish really shows, but the dealing with the decal bumps is always a source of potential problems for me on gloss or satin finishes. Cheers, Andy

Lovely work, thanks very much for posting. I agree with you on taking pictures being a paint but these are really well done. I love SBS's kits too, and have this one waiting in the wings; glad to see it's turned out so well. Beautiful aeroplane, wonderful kit, built and finished immaculately and shown off with great photography. Well done! Andy

Lovely work Jeff. I always like that point in your whiff builds where the silhouette comes together and we get to see what it would have looked like. A beast in this case! Andy

Looks great. I'm quite tempted to grab this one of the shelf and start building, watching this. Yeah those lines do appear a tad more pronounced here than on the Vampire kit. In their (slight) defense, the toned down versions don't do an awful job of giving the impressions of plate lines from a normal viewing distance, I think one of the pitfalls of particularly 700th scale is we have a tendency to assess them based on zoomed in photos rather than how they're perceived with the mk1 eyeball. Our eyes don't really grok any difference comparing the photo of a model filling the frame whether it's 1/1200, 1/350 or even 1/72. But yes there seems no obvious reason that Tamiya couldn't have moulded them as overlapping plates if they wanted them; that seems a relatively new innovation to the world of IM kits oddly, despite the fact that most 'panel lines' are just replicating an overlapped join. Perhaps because modellers love a panel line or ridge to wash against. Anyway I digress, looks lovely. I too am building a similar class ('brazilian H' from IBG) and kinda just rolled the dice on a random dirty green semtex colour. Mine looks like RLM 63 which doesn't feel very nautical, but I think I'm lazier than you when it comes to re-doing! Andy

Good start, I'm looking forward to seeing what you make of it! The newer Tamiya destroyer kits are nice; but a reality of the scale is that fairly large (in reality) details can't really be captured wholly by plastic a lot of the time (although I must say Flyhawk seem to be the exception to the rule, somehow getting resin like fine detail on IM parts). The necessary thickness of styrene parts leaves thinner details such as bulwarks, masts, gun barrels and davits as rather fat, toylike and out of scale. The decision to be made is whether to add aftermarket, or scratch detail from resin or etch; or to leave them a nice simple OOB representations. The former approach can extend a build even of a little 1/700 destroyer quite significantly, where an OOB simply painted can be a great quick side project. Adding a little bit here and there can sometimes show up more, since it highlights the OOB bits in contrast. The more recent Tamiya E and V/W kits are good but do follow the Tamiya approach of a reasonable about of abstraction for simplicity's sake; and being relatively vanilla inter-war fits, will probably need a bit of work altering them to the specific ship you're interested in anyway. The Tamiya O, as Graham says, is a rebox of the Skywave kit. I must say, I'm rather less enamoured of this kit by comparison; it follows the approach of moulding as a much as possible in single pieces, which makes for easy construction but an odd final result. Making square superstructure in single pieces out of IM styrene means significantly angled walls, noticeably triangular cross section bulwarks allied to the addition of some strange details (bridge blob, range finder for instance) that don't seem to have any obvious basis in reality. It's a cool little kit, which has the advantages of being cheap, containing 2 ships, has some useful additional fit options and can be built up very quickly, but the result OOB is comparatively pretty rough I'd say. See how you get on with the Tamiya Es, I think they're a really good starting point. If you take the view that a bit of PE for railings and ladders are necessary, then as Graham says, the IBG G-I kits are very nice and contain what you need out of the box, albeit with a tiny bit more work required on the plastic. The earlier IBG hunts are also nice, perhaps a little rougher that the G-Is. Andy

Anyone who's got a good idea how Airfix usually do these things; Given this appears to be a straight re-release of the original box with the same decals, do they ever throw in the additional sprues that appeared on subsequent boxings (since they now exists in the tool where presumably they didn't before). In this case, I'm of course referring to the ASV radar aerials and whatnot from the GR VII release. I quite wanted to build one with the ASV aerials but with the 102 sq DY decals and had never decided which boxing would be better to start from.

Stunning work as always Rob. You've really perfected getting the wear and chipping on these beaten up Flowers. The sea has worked out beautifully too. Perfect! Andy

Missed this entirely, but can never get enough of these Ghibli models (and films!). That copper finish is to die for and I love the effect you got on the instrument panel through drybrush or 'reverse washing'. I must steal this technique! Lovely work. Looking forward to seeing it with characters when you're more confident tackling them. I have some bandai Nausicaa kits lined up with the same intention. Great work, thanks for sharing. Andy

Lovely job. I always like the III and the Irish scheme is lovely and very well presented. Everything looks really sharp for 72. How was the kit? Andy

Lovely work Alistair. This one turned out very tidy, and really looks the part in coastal command paint. Worthwhile to do such a nice job on the inside too I think, even if it is all hidden now. Andy

+1. Wouldn't be an Alistair build without being 3 pages in and half finished by the time I notice. I'll sit on the floor at the back as usual 😄. Glad you found some space to squeeze some plastic in around those weights Alistair! I too have been eagerly anticipating this one but the stash is so disgraceful that I'll have to sell a bunch before there's any chance of fitting the box through the front door. Andy

Would be very interested to see all of these if you're game! Andy

This is a lovely and varied little collection. Having a lot of these in the stash, and an interest in this particular convoy, I'll he referring back to this a lot (particularly the scratch work on Scylla, although trumpeter are finally making noises about tooling one albeit in 350) Nice idea for the diorama; it's hard to conjure up situations involving multiple ships at a spacing that doesn't look ridiculous, let alone being anything like realistic. A common theme like this makes is almost a shame not to tie them all together somehow. Andy

Lovely work on this little kit. So much detail, chipping and weathering is really impressive. Love it! Nice to hear what's going on at Beacon. I and I'm sure a lot of others have been keeping an eye out for news about what's in store for the future. IIRC you did a survey about maybe shipping single kits in baggies at one point? All of those sound great, I guess BoB is going to contine be a focus in the foreseeable future? The only one I wonder about is an early hurricane, what with Sweet already having a very nice kit on the market. although of course I understand it fits well into sets with your existing and future aircraft. Andy

Lovely build of this rather pleasing kit. I too have slowly become rather fond of their etch oerlikons! Andy

Lovely sharp clean build, which I always think suits these WEM kits. I'm a sucker for these late inter-war classes with the extended bridge and all the escort gubbins adds interest. Very nice! Andy

Beautiful work Bertie. I've missed a good chunk of this but what better time to stumble back onto the forums. I love the way you've presented her, that is clean but very real. So many lovely details from the mast padding to the grain of the rudder to the immaculate whipping everywhere. Very much looking forward to having a read back to find out more about them. Lovely model! Andy

I know this is rather late to the party, but beautiful work on that wing fold. The scratch work is so sharp and detailed, and I think the highlighting has brought it out beautifully. Andy