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Hallo Playmates! Bertie N+5 here! 🤪 I've been taking a few days off from my other modelling venture this week (it's just a little sailboat, nothing special 😉). I'd reached one of those 'Chapter endings' where you drift off and make a cup of tea, or in my case start another model. And what could be better, really, than to reproduce the last surviving British (-built) battleship in the whole whide whorld? And, and where better to ramble on about it like a rabid hyena than here on the whorld whide wheb? I hope you have a firm grasp of that big picture. Mikasa wanted to arrive with a bang! She was a pre-dreadnought battleship built for the Imperial Japanese Navy by Vickers of Barrow-in-Furness, who laid her keel in 1899 and handed her over in 1902. She was named after a mountain in Japan, and you can see why she wasn't named after cherry blossom. She is much too heavy at fifteen thousand tons to be anything but a mountain and she would be utterly useless for shining your shoes with. She became the flagship of Vice Admiral Tōgō Heihachirō throughout the Russo-Japanese War of 1904–1905. A little known conflict to the general population of Britain but one which I made the subject of a school project at the age of eleven. (I was a weird kid then and I'm a weirder kid now.) Mikasa fought in the Battle of Port Arthur, the Battle of the Yellow Sea and the absolute whitewash at Tsushima where the small but beautifully (British) trained and well educated IJN, destroyed absolutely the best that the Tsar could put into the field water. Immediately following victory in that war, and while in her home port, one of Mikasa's magazines exploded and sank the ship. Bad news if you were inside the ship but over a century later, I had to smile. She wins the most one sided sea battle of the steam age and then blows herself up, at home! It had taken three years to build her and it took two more to repair the damage, and incidentally fit her with even bigger guns. This up-gunned version is the subject of the kit, to my surprise. I had expected the Tsushima standard but hey, bigger guns is best, yes? Once back in the water, she was used as a coastal defense ship in WWI and also supported the Japanese anti-Soviet incursion during the Russian Civil War. Steady work, not too glorious. Due to the requirements of the Washington Naval Treaty, Mikasa was decommissioned in 1922 and has served as a museum and memorial ship ever since. She was a BEAST! She had more guns than a horse has hairs and enough boats to invade Normandy. I am very excited to have this single solitary plastic model left to build and when you've seen inside the box I think you'll understand.

This build is from the excellent 1/350 HobbyBoss kit which I picked up earlier this year at a scale modelers swap-meet and added aftermarket laser-cut wood deck, turned brass gun barrels, Northstar resin figures and EZ Line rigging. HobbyBoss included extensive photoetch with the kit and I think it is comparable in quality to WEM or Tom’s. I used Tamiya acrylics airbrushed on all surfaces and Vallejo Satin clear coat applied before light applications of black/ brown oil washes on everything but the wood deck. This is my first attempt at a waterline base diorama. I used a carved out styrofoam block and the crinkled aluminum foil method with Mod Podge, airbrushed acrylic blue/ green/ grey/brown paints and clear acrylic gel medium and dry-brushing the wave tops with light grey acrylic. I thought it would be easier to try doing a water base with the ship under anchor in calm waters but filling the 1-2 mm gap between the hull and the cut-out cavity in the styrofoam became a challenge. I tried applying the acrylic gel medium as well as some Vallejo Water Effects acrylic gel foamy snow material in this hull-water transition, not too happy with my results and am now thinking modeling water with the ship underway with wakes breaking off of the hull might actually be easier to do next time. SWMBO & ALT (always listened to…) also thinks I painted my ocean too dark and that I should have aimed for the lighter blue waters seen around the Aegean Sea outside of Galipoli where this ship along with the HMS Lord Nelson were both cruising during the Dardanelles Campaign in 1915. Despite my less-than-perfect first attempt at water, I’m pleased with how the ship itself came out and highly recommend this HobbyBoss pre-Dreadnought kit and will be a little less anxious about doing a waterline base the next time. I welcome any and all constructive criticism and suggestions. Thanks for looking! Cheers, John

This is a first for me - a resin kit. HMS Renown (together with HMS Zetland), will be my first steel ship - I've had a go at tall ship in the (distant) past, but never something this modern. The box: And, just to show how big this thing is, the hull HMS Renown was laid down in 1893, launched in 1895, and commisioned in 1897. In 1914, just before the First World War, she was sold for scrap. This build is to model HMS Renown as she was in 1905 ...

Here is my attempt at a build log of the Hobby Boss Voltaire. Have had lots of probs trying to upload photos but have just finished my new Flickr account so let's have a go (please excuse my lack of photographic ability!)😨 Hooray!😀 Just a test piece of hull assembled, now more pics to hopefully bring me up to date with my build... Hull reinforcements. ... Hull strakes, sed painters masking tape and 4 coats of plastic primer... In the mean time blast bags using pva. . Worked to a degree but lacked the detail I wanted, good for smaller scales but think I'll go back to sculpting them in future. Bits in preparation for painting Oooooh, colour... Hull painted with Tamiya acrylics Oops! Deck painted and dry fitted Ready for post shading, oil washes and highlighting And finally some various oil washes using mixtures of burnt umber, raw Sienna, yellow ochre and white. This is just the first stage of weathering so will keep you posted as I go along. Many thanks for looking!😊

To all pre-dreadnought fans, a German pre-dreadnought battleship is going to become available in 1/350! Trumpeter listed SMS Schleswig-Holstein, the last of the German pre-dreads, in the 1/350 section of their 2018/19 catalogue!

Good afternoon. Does anyone know of any German pre-dreadnought battleships in 1/350? I don't mind if the kit is resin or plastic, I just want to know if there are any. Thank you.