Resin kits - any idiot can do it (aka HMS Scorpion S-class destroyer in 1/350)

[Jamie @ Sovereign Hobbies]

I keep seeing posts suggesting that people are reluctant to build resin kits and/or keep wishing for kits to be available that actually are available - only in resin.

 

As with injection moulded plastic kits, not all manufacturers are equal. Some plastic kits are absolute gems whilst others are abominations that are not worth the time and consumables to build. Likewise, not all resin kits are equal.

 

Some negative common perceptions of resin kits include the following:

 

- They're really expensive.

They are more expensive than a plastic kit, but resin makes it financially viable to even consider some subjects like an S class destroyer. Perhaps more importantly, look at the contents. A basic plastic destroyer in 1/350 might cost around £30 (typical UK prices for 1/350 Tamiya destroyers like Yukikaze and Kagero are nearer to £60). If happy with what's in the box, I'm delighted for you. A sizable number though will then spend the same again on detailing to replace unrepresentative clunky plastic. With a kit like that featured in this thread, it's all included in the box. You don't need anything else to make a very nice model.

 

- But nothing fits, right?

Wrong. Not much else to say on that. As with plastic kits it depends who made the tooling and the casting technique. This thread will not omit any flaws in the kit's parts fit. You can see for yourself how it compares to most plastic kits.

 

- Resin parts all need to be sawn off casting blocks. It's tedious, messy and I can't cut straight and it'll be ruined.

Not an issue here. There are very small bits to remove, but in discrete places and can be done with a scalpel or modelling chisel. Less work that cleaning sprue gates from injection moulded plastic.

 

- The dust from sanding is harmful to breathe in.

Who in their right mind doesn't sand wet anyway? Dry sanding just clogs your abrasives regardless what you're working with and keeps all dust out of the air. It's just the correct way to sand.

 

According to the time stamp on the photo, everything was as-new in its box at 18:18 this evening

 

here's what's inside

 

That's a set of instructions identifying and providing the correct name for all parts, diagramatic assembly instructions with notes, a full colour painting guide, pressure cast resin hull split at the waterline, bagged resin smaller parts and cast white metal small fittings.

 

Here is the preparation needed to join the hull. There are some very small protrusions to clean off with a blade. The bigger one is a locating pin.

 

That was 18:23. I hadn't done anything to change the condition of the kit contents from as-new yet. So, I trimmed those off and glued the hull together with medium CA.

 

The fit is better than many injection moulded plastic hulls I've joined but not perfect. I will now point out the flaws and how much of a non-event it is to fix them.

 

I wouldn't normally bother but to help the flaws and sanding stand out in photos for this thread, I gave it a quick blast with Halfords primer then had some food while it dried

 

Off to the kitchen sink with an Infini Model sanding sponge I smoothed down the hull join. With a good abrasive like the Infini sponge and water, the whole lot took around 10 to 15 minutes.

 

I got a bit careless and took some material off one of the strakes. Before remembering I was going to set this in water like Imperial, I fixed it with plasticard

 

I then filled the waterline seam with putty. I keep getting educated by people who know better that I can't use normal modelling putties on resin because it doesn't stick, but none of the resin things I've ever worked with got that memo.

 

The time stamp on that photo was 19:24 tonight. One hour and one minute including a dinner break to get to a joined, filled hull. And that's with me repairing self-inflicted damage (that will be hidden underwater anyway).

[Courageous]

A good informative start Jamie .

I'll take a pew and tag along .

These destroyer builds are very tempting but I'm resisting well with the stash I've got, need to make a few holes first.

 

Stuart

[Jamie @ Sovereign Hobbies]

2 minutes ago, Courageous said:

A good informative start Jamie .

I'll take a pew and tag along .

These destroyer builds are very tempting but I'm resisting well with the stash I've got, need to make a few holes first.

 

Stuart

I know that feeling well!

[Mr T]

Thanks Jamie, although I am not a ship modeller I will follow this one with interest as I have not really paid much attention to the resin ship kits. (my aircraft stash is large and never seems to get any smaller despite my efforts). 

I think you have made some very good comments about resin kits in general. A fair few people do not seem to be happy with superglues as adhesive and that you have to think about resin kits (and vacforms) in a slightly different way. For some it my be concern about competence and confidence. My view is that if you never try, you will never know if you can build a kit. 

[robgizlu]

Watching with interest and what a good project.  

Could do with more like this on Britmodeller

Rob

[Gorby]

Interesting build. That photo etch sheet looks waaaay more frightening than the resin. 

[Chris Hewitt]

Totally agree Jamie ,some folk are never happy,that's the way the world is,as l would say, we have never had it so good.the choice is superb.I find resin kits easier than plastic less parts for starters.I have HMS Vigilant,bought this one, so I can do the pacific colours late 1945.So notepad in hand and taking notes.

[Silenoz]

Nice how to, will follow with interest. Started my first resin ship too recently.

[Pin]

Can I suggest something?

If I were in your shoes I would not sand the excess of green stuff down, instead I would use cheapest Nail Polish Remover - soak a cotton bud and simply wipe out the excess. 

 

Here I filled the gap between the body and wing with Mr. Dissolved Putty (that I prefer to any 'tubed' stuff) and removed the excess with NPR, that also took away grey primer (I always prime resin parts before doing anything with them) exposing white resin, but none of the surface details are lost to sanding

[Ray S]

Hello Jamie, a great (and rapid) start to this project.

 

I have built one resin ship in the past, Combrig's HMS Hood (1893 version) and found it was one of my most enjoyable builds. I have plenty more in the stash including a White Ensign HMS Abdiel. I will watch your progress with great interest and glean as many tips as I can!

 

All the best,

 

Ray

[Blackfordhibby]

Hello Jamie

This is so different I will just have to watch. Never thought that i'd have any interest in a grey funnel line ship, but there ya go!

 

Peter

[Ex-FAAWAFU]

Good to see a few mythsbeing tackled head on.  Nice idea, Jamie.

 

If you feel like including some stuff about brush painting Colourcoats, don’t feel you have to hold back...

[Terry1954]

As those above say, this is great stuff Jamie.

 

I've only ever tackled resin aircraft, twice actually, one successful and one not! Learned a lot from those two. The success story was a 1/72 SF-260 which despite it's size involved a LOT of work. There is an RFI here on that.

 

But resin ships - beautiful yet potentially scary! I have a couple of small 1/700 resin ships in the stash now, and the excellent Atlantic Models 1/350 Type 41 HMS Leopard. I plan to take the plunge and start that later this year when some other stuff is done. I also intend to acquire more of these Cold War beauties, so this is really helpful for me, as are several other threads on here at the moment dealing with 1/350 resin ships. Watching that Leander build closely @Ex-FAAWAFU !

 

Will follow with much interest

 

Thanks

 

Terry

[Jamie @ Sovereign Hobbies]

Hi everyone. I spent some time on this this morning. I need away from work for a while...

 

Right, resin stuff. I said I wouldn't hide the kit's areas for attention and I won't. I will however cover fixing them, for what it is and in summary, it's less effort than most plastic kits need.

 

These are the parts as they come out of the bags and totally unprepared. They feel a little bit greasy, which is not unusual for resin. I washed them all in warm water with washing up liquid and an old large (modelling, not household 4") paint brush

 

Here I point out typical things to be removed or cleaned off. This is less effort than flash from plastic or tidying up plastic bits from slightly misaligned mould halves. A few scrapes with the edge of a blade is all that is necessary

 

 

Next, a trial assembly. You can see that not all parts are a nice snug fit with the main deck:

 

My last Atlantic Models kit had no such issues, but two parts in this kit need flatting down

 

That's about as bad as I've seen from an Atlantic Models kit, and at the risk of repeating myself, I've routinely had far, far worse to deal with from plastic kits

 

A 180 grit sheet of wet and dry paper laid wet on a flat surface is a good way to do this. The water keeps the grit from clogging and also prevents dust from getting airborne. You will need to be constantly vigilant whilst sanding down - that's not specific to resin - I'm just stating something that will be obvious to anyone used to doing it but only obvious after you've ruined something otherwise!

 

Even more of an egg sucking lesson now (for the benefit of those who haven't had success reshaping stuff before - experienced modellers scroll on) - you need to keep your head moving and find things to align against. View the article from multiple angles. Here I am eye-balling the horizontals to check they actually are horizontal both north-south and east-west. It would take no talent at all to sand the bottom away nice and flat, only to discover a 5 degree slope on the platform afterwards. Constant checking and an awareness of the angle the thing is held it is what the doctor ordered. The grip needs to be as rigid as possible without breaking it. The item cannot be allowed to roll and "drag" as you move your hand.

 

And just like that, we're ready to start dressing up the major parts with PE. I will also paint the hull. I really don't like brush painting, both finding it tedious and never being satisfied with my proficiency in it and will generally try hard to avoid it, resorting to a paint brush only when masking is impractical. To that end, when modelling ships in particular my personal preference is to minimise the number of colour edges to mask. Here, I have an opportunity to paint the main deck and most of the superstructure bulkheads separately, and that avoids a lot of fiddly, intricate masking where deck meets bulkhead. It's seldom possible to avoid the need for brush painting completely on ships but some planning can help avoid as much as possible.

 

 

(sorry brush painters - I just don't like it - it was historically always the bit of modelling I dreaded until getting an airbrush. Now airbrushing is my absolute favourite part of modelling and brush painting is still the bit I dread!)

 

 

 

 

[Jamie @ Sovereign Hobbies]

Now then, colour conundrums. I am having second thoughts about Scorpion as a subject, and am pondering Saumarez instead. Whichever I do, it will be an early (1943) fit with tripod foremast and lattice main. I think they are much more attractive than the later lattice foremast and polemast main. I also don't like the later camouflage scheme much.

 

So, here's the painting guide. I like blues and want to believe it, but I have doubts

 

The later scheme would infact look like this:

 

There never was a variation to B.55. It was just B.55 from May 1943 to the end of the war. The formulation was republished in several official fleet documents until war's end and remained the same throughout.

 

Now, Alan Raven believes the general emergency destroyer scheme wasn't B15, B30 and G45 but rather G10, B30 and G45. I don't agree with all of Alan's schemes but I think he may be correct for at least some ships

 

 

I realise that I lose some people talking about brightness or "Light Reflectance Value" so I prepared this for the thread. It shows the entire theoretical brightness or tonal range from pure black to pure white, bounded by the normal values for black and white paint, with the entire 1943 to 1945 RN colour palette included between. The closer the colours are together, the less contrast will appear between them in black and white images.

 

 

First of all, Peter Hall's scheme isn't completely stupid - I want to make that clear. It seems to be derived from an adaption of official schemes in CB.3098 to a degree and it is not unusual to see these colours together:

 

Also, it is absolutely not certain that all ships wearing broadly similar patterns are actually wearing the same colours!

 

HMS Saumarez here looks very different from HMS Savage:

 

 

And here's HMS Swift carrying tones which look the most like those on HMS Scorpion:

 

 

 

A veritable minefield! I borrowed our CB.3098 line drawing and coloured it in with Peter Hall's panel maps which do seem to fit Scorpion well. I coloured the panels in with 4 different combinations then used an online tool to convert the PDF exports from Adobe Illustrator to greyscale for more objective comparison with the black and white images:

 

 

The last one - B15, G20 and G45 is not very credible - I just wanted to do it because it was theoretically possible. Of all the well-documented S-class ships, I feel most confident in Saumarez and based upon the contrasts present, I think it's probably wearing B15, B30 and G45. I think Scorpion's darkest tone is perhaps too dark to be B15 but not what I'd call near-black, so I personally would say the darkest tone on Scorpion is G10.

 

I used the online tool MKWEB Color Summarizer which whilst a decent tool cannot mitigate the fact that photographs are not reliable. It suggests that the 3 tones on Scorpion's hull are approximately equally spaced in numbers. In absolute terms they're stupid - darkest 6.9% LRV, mid 10.7% LRV and lightest 15% LRV. However, that does suggest rather strongly that the colours cannot be two near adjacent tones with a third miles away, such as G10 at 10% LRV, B15 at 15% LRV (i.e. with 5 percentage points between them) and G45 at 45% with a gap of 30% - which is 6 times the size of the gap between the first two. If pressed, I would say Scorpion is wearing G10, B30 and G45 - 20% between the first two and 25% between the second and third.

 

I shall now go and eat a large slice of cake and ponder which ship to call this

 

[Bugle07]

Hope you enjoy the cake Jamie, as always fascinating stuff on the painting and paint used.

 

Really good to see someone dispelling the myths around resin ships. A bit of care and common sense and they're just as easy/hard as injection moulded kits, but (normally) with the benefit of far crisper parts (Until I make them and then casually destroy all the good work that goes into them...) and almost always all the extras you can ask for already in the kit.

 

 

Geoff

 

 

[Francis Macnaughton]

Thanks again Jamie for your sterling effort to get RN WW2 colours better understood.

 

I am looking at doing a 1/200th scratch build of Saumarez using the card model by WAK as a basis but will aim to fit the lattice fore mast as the IMW photos show her with this after the battle with Scharnhorst which is when I want to portray the model.

 

In a War Emergency class thread  back in April on Ship  Model Forum you felt LRV analysis of the same Saumarez photo supported the use 0f B15, B30 and G45 - does this still hold true after your recent work with others of the type?

[Jamie @ Sovereign Hobbies]

59 minutes ago, Francis Macnaughton said:

Thanks again Jamie for your sterling effort to get RN WW2 colours better understood.

 

I am looking at doing a 1/200th scratch build of Saumarez using the card model by WAK as a basis but will aim to fit the lattice fore mast as the IMW photos show her with this after the battle with Scharnhorst which is when I want to portray the model.

 

In a War Emergency class thread  back in April on Ship  Model Forum you felt LRV analysis of the same Saumarez photo supported the use 0f B15, B30 and G45 - does this still hold true after your recent work with others of the type?

Hi Francis,

 

Of B30 and G45 I am fairly comfortable. Between B15 and G10 I can't make up my mind. Most of the emergency class give an impression which "feels" more like G10. Saumarez looks lighter than usual in some photos but not all. B5 and B15 tend to look a touch lighter than might be expected from tonal numbers on panchromatic film.

 

I think G10 would invite fewer questions, but it would be hard to prove B15 wrong unless someone has a colour photograph.

 

I would probably throw in my lot on G10, B30 and G45 if really pushed.

[Corsairfoxfouruncle]

Thank you very much @Jamie @ Sovereign Hobbies ... Ive been wanting to purchase a resin HUNT Class DE. Ironshipwrights makes H.M.S. Middleton. It is hull #L74. My Uncles ship was Hunt hull #L72

ORP Kujawiak. You made it less frightening to do so. I will be ordering it next chance i can. 

 

Dennis

[Jamie @ Sovereign Hobbies]

11 minutes ago, Corsairfoxfouruncle said:

Thank you very much @Jamie @ Sovereign Hobbies ... Ive been wanting to purchase a resin HUNT Class DE. Ironshipwrights makes H.M.S. Middleton. It is hull #L74. My Uncles ship was Hunt hull #L72

ORP Kujawiak. You made it less frightening to do so. I will be ordering it next chance i can. 

 

Dennis

Hi Dennis,

 

Could I suggest a bit of "internet stalking" around for build threads of the specific kit? ISW has a reputation for being of a bit, err, variable in quality. Some of their kits might be the sort that get resin kits a bad name. That said, I've heard some are quite nice. I really does seem to depend on exactly which ISW kit you get. This inconsistency frightens me a bit if I'm honest.

[Ray S]

7 hours ago, Jamie @ Sovereign Hobbies said:

Hi Dennis,

 

Could I suggest a bit of "internet stalking" around for build threads of the specific kit? ISW has a reputation for being of a bit, err, variable in quality. Some of their kits might be the sort that get resin kits a bad name. That said, I've heard some are quite nice. I really does seem to depend on exactly which ISW kit you get. This inconsistency frightens me a bit if I'm honest.

Hello Jamie, this mention of Iron Shipwrights has reminded me of something. I said in an earlier post I had built 1 resin ship (HMS Hood 1893) - I wuz wrong your Honour! How the dickens could I forget that my first one was the ISW 1/350 HMS Dreadnought! I believe it was originally made by a firm called 'Rhino', but it was a cracking kit, except for a few things. Quite a lot was imperfectly cast (if cast at all), and as for the instructions, well, the less said about them the better. ISW customer service was pretty good in a generic way - I had quite a few bits from the kit missing, I let them know about it and a week later I had a huge bag of bits come through which dealt with the problem in a somewhat 'shotgun' fashion. Loads of bits, some were the things I needed and others had nothing to do with Dreadnought.

 

8 hours ago, Corsairfoxfouruncle said:

Thank you very much @Jamie @ Sovereign Hobbies ... Ive been wanting to purchase a resin HUNT Class DE. Ironshipwrights makes H.M.S. Middleton. It is hull #L74. My Uncles ship was Hunt hull #L72

ORP Kujawiak. You made it less frightening to do so. I will be ordering it next chance i can. 

 

Dennis

Dennis, I concur with Jamie, do check around for the quality. When ISW are good, they are very good, but it is not a given. I hope you are able to do this project and hopefully see it on here!

 

In the meantime Jamie, thanks for this thread, it will inspire quite a few to try resin with luck! I have one or two projects to finish then I will give one of my half-dozen (or more!) resin ships in my stash a go.

 

All the best,

 

Ray

[CedB]

Following along for the 'Jamie lessons', thanks Jamie  

[Jamie @ Sovereign Hobbies]

I haven't seemed to have done much modelling for a while. Last night I added some plating relief to the hull before painting starts. There are various ways to do this. I like using the thickness of primer coats to achieve the effect. It works well in 1/350 scale:

 

 

 

And once the tape is removed and the ridges at the masked edges were knocked down with Infini Model sanding sponge:

 

My waterline filling wasn't great, but it'll be flat black and in "water" anyway so who cares really?

[Courageous]

Nice effect with the masking tape/ primer...noted 

 

Stuart

 

[Gav G]

Great thread, as well as a great way to entice more people to try a resin kit.  I'm firmly  in the  "yes, it is nice but oh &£+@, it's resin" camp!