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HMS Jamaica - December 1943


andrewa

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Royal Navy cruisers have long been an interest of mine, great looking ships with busy careers, but almost completely ignored in kit form. So in a challenge to the manufacturers to release a kit just before I finish the scratch build...

...I've started work on the Fiji-Class Cruiser HMS Jamaica. The real ship spent much of her war escorting Arctic Convoys and was at both Battles of the Barents Sea and North Cape so fits nicely with the HMS Sheffield I built a couple of years ago. Here's a couple of quick shots of the current status:

Jamaica-1_zpsfad84b3f.jpg

Jamaica-2_zpsff75bf11.jpg

Still a long way to go, but the basic shapes are coming together quite nicely!

Andrew

Edited by andrewa
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That looks absolutely fantastic already! :thumbsup:

My first ship was HMS Sheffield and I would really like to do a scratchbuild of her. Where did you get plans for Sheffield?

Will be watching this closely for pointers and to learn more. :)

Mike

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Hi Mike,

Sheffield was the oop WEM kit - it comes up on ebay every so-often ( I've got another one in the loft to become Glasgow). My model is on bm somewhere. There is an iron shipwrights kit currently available. Not seen it in person, but usually their stuff needs some work.

MikeR - 1/350 scale, about 480mm overall length.

Andrew

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Bootneck

JSC produce a waterline card model of HMS Sheffield in 1/400th scale which looks very accurate so I have bought that but wanting to build in plastic and to 1/350th scale I have enlarged it up to 1/350th on the work's photocopier and will be using that as a template for my attempt.

The 'kit' does not contain any seperate plans so I will be searching out some hull sections if I can - if not it will be at least a learning experience in scratch building!

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Andrew, looking forward to watching this and learning. Mike, in another thread you posted you fancied something large, if you fancy a challenge, i have a 1/200 th scale card model of HMS Sheffield, if you would like to give it a try.

Mick

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A technique I use quite a lot is to print the plans at the right scale, then use movable spray mount to stick it to the plasticard. once the parts are cut the paper can be peeled off (sometimes after a soak in water). I used the same technique on a card model of Illustrious (which was just over 1/2 finished when the airfix one came out).

I'd try the same trick on the Sheffield card model - you'll need to allow for the increased thickness of the plastic card compared to the paper though.

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That is how I intend to use my scaled photocopy - rather than transfer the measurements on to the plastic I intend to paste (with Pritt Stick) the cut out photocopied parts (trimmed slightly outside the lines I need to do the final cut on) on to the card and work from that.

I did it on a model of a canal narrowboat a few years ago and it worked well - those were plans copied from an old Airfix Annual for a 1/76nd narrowboat.

Just posted to find Andrewa posting at the same time - never thought of spray mount - that would be better than Pritt Stick which took ages to dry - I suppose the plastic did not absorb the 'stickyness' as paper would - and was then a bit of a ...... to remove!!

Edited by czechnavy
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A lot of the parts on the Sheffield card kit need pasting to 2, 1 and 0.5 mm card anyway, though when building card ships many years ago i found it easier to use balsa rather than card as its much easier to cut. Tried cutting 2mm card on a 1/200 Repulse, couldn't move my hand after half an hour.

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