Search the Community

Hello all, it is good to be back in the Maritime section after quite a long while away. Just before our British Covid lockdown began in 2020, Britmodeller had a Group Build running called 'In the Navy'. I decided to build a ship model, and was in a bit of a minority! I chose this one, Combrig's 1/700 scale HMS Gloucester (1910) as my initial subject, and things went quite well. If any of you would like a catch up, here is a link to that thread: I am afraid I rather ground to a halt, as my imagination (or lack thereof) too hold. I found myself looking quite a few stages ahead and with that and then the turmoil of lockdown, I shelved the model for another day. The issue was with the forward mast. The instructions showed this: The mast, rather inconveniently, had a spotter platform slap bang in the middle of it, with very little leeway to secure the first and second uprights of that mast. I was going to go the whole hog and attempt to rig it, and was concerned that CA or Epoxy would not be strong enough to hold it under the rigging tension. I also had issues with how to solder the lot without melting the resin piece that needs to be in situ at the time of soldering at some point. I eventually (yesterday) did that thing which us blokes are not very good at, and asked our Massif for help! I had some excellent suggestions at this link: That has finally given me the impetus to crack on with this model, which is one of three different HMS Gloucester ships I want to do. I must emphasize that the quality of moulding on this ship is second to none, it has some basic etch (and a piece which is missing but illustrated in the instructions!) and a basic instruction guide, with no colour guides at all. Today I have just been getting the knack of working with resin again, so have added three small parts, but took advice from the GB and used doubled-over tape to hold the parts as I cut them off the pour-blocks: When I attached the parts, I used PVA (Deluxe Materials Glu'N'Glaze) to attached them to the ship. The work today was to add the two ventilator housings at the aft end of the black-coloured decking, and the bit between the two hemispherical uprights aft, along with the X-shaped piece of etch. I also cut out and sanded down (with a dust mask for protection) the aft section of the foredeck with the control tower base: That deck insert and the fore deckhouse with the black roof are just dry-fitted at the moment, but over the next few days I will crack on with the masts and get their locations drilled out prior to fitting those two resin parts. Hopefully there will be more to this soon, thanks for looking. Ray