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The big one! Part of my 'Trying To Build All The Model Kit Presents My Dad Bought Me' mission build. I bought this kit for my dad at the Yeovilton Model Show a LONG time ago (must have been about 2010 or even earlier). He never got round to starting it and he gifted it back to me just before Christmas to build it. That triggered a kind of guilty conscience for all the models he bought for me over the years which still linger in the loft, neglected and unbuilt. Since he won't be around for too much longer I made it my mission to get them all built as soon as possible so he can at least see them built. There's about ten to build, and as my current build rate is three or four a year, this requires a bit of commitment on my part! This going to pose a challenge to photograph in my current 60x60cm light box! I'll have to improvise! It's surprisingly uncomplicated out of the box, with relatively few sprues for such a monster kit. Well that won't do! I'll have to make it as overly complex as possible... First, add not one but TWO Eduard Big Ed sets... Then mix in the L'Arsenal hangar deck and other 3D-printed accessories... This is a selection of the 140-odd parts in the set! Might as well add a full air wing, or close to it... How about adding all the decals for the entire Air Wing.... ...and might as well add the corrected ship decals because the Trumpeter ones are very strange! That should be alright for starters, but i have a pile of additional 3D-printed hangar accessories, crew figures and various mounted weapons, fittings, LED lighting and other gubbins to add. Should make for quite a massive project! The plan is to mount her on a sea diorama sailing in company with HMS Euryalus, the Ikara Leander I've nearly finished over here... Wish me luck, or berate me for my overreaching ambition, either way, IT'S ON! Ask me about the BOHICA story if you haven't heard it, it's a triumph of disgruntled enlisted ranks putting one over the CO! All the best, Alan

G'day all. This will be an intermittent blog on my first big ship build. I've previously completed only one other, a W Class Destroyer, HMS Wren from the Showcase kit. My usual fare is 1/48 aircraft but since completing a Tamiya P-38 around mid-year I lost some mojo. After a further period of complete modelling inactivity I picked this out of the stash where it had languished for a couple of years. I was, in all honesty, quite a bit intimidated at the prospect of all of the PE (I'm using the Eduard PE set), my least favourite medium to work in. That in addition to all of the little bits and pieces, the sheer size of it, and a definite exit from my comfort zone. But nothing breaks the lack of mojo like a departure from the norm so I put my big boy pants on and opened the box a couple of months ago. As a general, cover-all statement up front I'll say this; I am building my Hood more or less as she appeared on her way to the Denmark Straight. The more or less qualifier is there to cover my interpretive ineptitude trying to understand all the variations in the finer details between the kit and reality. I don't build my aircraft kits to [an aspiration of] perfection and my Hood will be the same. I want this model to look right but it does not necessarily have be exactly right. To that end I have acquired some improvements such as replacement turrets because the kit parts are very noticeably wrong to my eye. I replaced the degaussing cable for the same reason. I likely won't fix the relatively minor things like splinter shields where they should or shouldn't be compared to the plastic. You get the gist. I enjoy the different cadence of ship building. There's a relaxed tempo which seems quite natural. Ship modelling is - for me - unhurried and I have pottered about on my Hood quite content to let the progress come to me rather than push forward as I do with model aircraft. Perhaps it's because with ships one can get painting sooner rather than later, and painting is my favourite part of this hobby. The kit begins with hull assembly, which leads to installing the decks and then, rapidly, to painting the hull. Intermediate tasks included the degaussing cable, opening up and creating an accurately concave profile to the frankly negligently moulded anchor cable channels (there's a word for those but it slips my mind at the moment). I removed a lot of the moulded deck furniture detail in preparation for the exquisite torment that is making miniature PE replications of covers, winches, and other bits and pieces for which I have not yet developed sufficient ship-focused vocabulary. Then, satisfyingly soon on the project and using frequent reference to the Sovereign Hobbies as well as The HMS Hood Association websites (does one need any other references? I doubt it), I painted the hull. I mixed my own version of 507A which I feel is pretty close to the shade on Sovereign's website. I also mixed the grey for the anti-fouling and while the specific shade is, apparently, open to interpretation (it's not red though, I did absorb that piece of information) I made mine a lighter grey with a lean towards green as that's how it appeared to me, again, on Sovereign's site. Many thanks to @Jamie @ Sovereign Hobbies for that resource. I made the boot line a sort of NATO Black with an intention to weather it later in the process. Here's the result (note that the forward superstructure is not glued; an aircraft guy could never live with that open seam. Actually, a ship builder couldn't either). I had previously added a Pontos deck set to the collection of aftermarket for this one and now was the the time to see if I was able to install it. To my surprise as well as relief, it was quite easy. The deck went down on both fore and aft very nicely, and the shelter deck followed in kind. What a difference that makes to the overall look of the hull. I did feel it was a little too light in colour though, so I made up a stain and applied what was essentially a wash to darken it up a tad. Next I started on the deck furniture. I was not looking forward to this particularly but actually found that the cadence I referred to earlier became one of relaxed and steady progress. Whereas I normally plan to paint all or most like-coloured parts at the same time, I found that I really didn't care about that as much as I cared about finishing one part of the deck prior to the next. In other words, for reasons beyond simple efficiency I didn't want unpainted PE bits and pieces lying around waiting to be lost, I'd rather make a couple of winches and then paint them and glue them in place before moving on to what might be an adjacent part, perhaps only millimetres from the former. This way I slowly worked my way forward and eventually completed the foredeck. With the foredeck done, and perhaps more importantly having validated the process, I approached the rear deck in the same way. There was considerably less to do back there and it was completed quite quickly. So, there it is, so far. I've left out quite a lot of narrative in an effort to avoid boring you. I expect most if not all are well enough experienced to know the intricacies of the building processes I have skipped over. I will say that I didn't add any of the PE to the interior areas where they would never be seen again. The deck under the shelter deck (I keep calling it that but perhaps it's the boat deck - that's where the boats are..?) was painted and stained in the briefest of ways as no one will ever shine a penlight in there to see the lack of effort I expended on it. Having completed the fore and aft decks I'm moving on to the shelter/boat deck. I've already begun; last night I spent two hours fiddling with the PE ladders going from the aft deck to superstructure on the starboard side. That story is for another post. Cheers.

I know I should just concentrate on one build but the BPBC 466 is soo delicate and has a lot of parts that can go missing that I have started this just for a Thursday night at the local model club I go to Hull built up and main gun I know that the kit is not totally accurate but this will be an OOB build so I can get some more practice in with the PE and camo pattern beefy