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1/350 HMS Exeter (1939) - York class cruiser


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Gidday Jamie, I did spot the catapults and crane, plus "B" turret, although I missed Hood's conning tower (I was dazzled by Exeter). Plus in the background the ship on the shelves and it looks like a box for HMS Repulse, both out of focus so I'm not sure of the ship. I like your ship's crane mounted on Exeter, I have to build one for HMS York in 1/600. It should be fun/a challenge/a pain in the butt/a nightmare (choose one of the above).

     She is coming along nicely, quite a graceful ship I think. And the sea is very impressive. Regards, Jeff.

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Today saw some 50/50 mixture of the heavy gel and varnish painted on. It had mostly turned clear but then I added some cotton painted on with more varnish so it's turned white again! Hopefully it's clear again by morning!

 

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Nothing exciting here, but another trial fit of the ship to see how it's looking. The flat matt finish and total absence of any tonal variation on the ship itself doesn't look good at the moment, but will be addressed before it's stuck in to the base:

 

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Gidday Jamie, I like the sea, bow wave, wake etc. My guess is she would be cruising at about 15 knots. SWMBO says 'get rid of the coffee mug!' 😁. I think I've said it before but I think she's a sleek looking cruiser. Regards, Jeff.

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Hi Jamie, I bought the Tamiya paints as per the colour painting guide, the light grey (XF14) for the hull and superstructure etc looked a bit green on the cap and having tried a test patch looks sage green to me, so tried the humbrol equivalent (no 147) which looks very pale to me, almost white...help!  Also the deck colour I bought (Humbrol no 9) from the lid looks a chocolate brown and is gloss, I’ve also bought Tamiya XF55 (deck tan) which looks sort of beige but is matt, my feeling is to go with this colour, I’ve never used Tamiya paint before (did they exist in the 70’s?!) but the hull red seems to be going on nicely, isn’t gloopy like the Humbrol and is also much lower odour.  Any advice would be gratefully received!

cheers,

Ewen

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Gidday Ewen, I don't know much about HMS Exeter's shade of grey, but I agree that Humbrol 147 is almost white. It is one of the colours I've used on HMS York 1941, but she carried a splinter type camo, the other colour being Hu157, a mid range blue. As HMS Exeter was painted a single shade of light grey Hu147 is probably too light. I hope this helps. Regards, Jeff.

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1 hour ago, ArnoldAmbrose said:

Gidday Ewen, I don't know much about HMS Exeter's shade of grey, but I agree that Humbrol 147 is almost white. It is one of the colours I've used on HMS York 1941, but she carried a splinter type camo, the other colour being Hu157, a mid range blue. As HMS Exeter was painted a single shade of light grey Hu147 is probably too light. I hope this helps. Regards, Jeff.

My default setting would be Colourcoats NARN 22. You could try Humbrol 127 which is a touch darker and bluer than 147 and is also available as an acrylic. Be warned however, These Humbrol paints need a lot of stirring to get the consistent light Blue grey which is probably what you are looking for. I break up the sludge with a wooden coffee stirrer and then use a master tools electric stirrer. This seems to work.

Regarding the deck colour, you are right.  Humbrol  No 9 is Gloss and is totally the wrong colour. I have in the past got good results from Humbrol 148 (Radome tan) + 10% 110 (Wood)

 

Hope this helps

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Hi folks,

 

HMS Exeter was typical of the vast majority of Royal Navy ships posted on foreign stations in the latter half of the 1930s. It was painted in Admiralty Pattern 507C which was referred to as "Light Grey", "Foreign Stations Grey" and "Mediterranean Grey" in this time period. It was a distinctly bluish grey, and was made up from white, black and ultramarine pigments in a linseed oil binder.

 

I completely understand, Ewen, that you have already shelled out more than you probably intended on paints but for future reference we inherited Royal Navy shades matched to John Snyder & Randy Short's shade cards in 2014, found a few anomalies then set about a big project digging around in the National Archives, the National Museum of the Royal Navy at Portsmouth and calling in lots of help from other sole-researchers. The culmination of all this has been a revised understanding of Royal Navy paints used during world war 2. Should you fancy building another ship after Exeter and/or once you've used up the paints you have, we have put together some convenient little box sets of common combinations of shades like this:

 

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You will eventually realise that it seems to be company policy in most Asian kit manufacturers to get colour recommendations of British warships as wrong as possible. Have a look at this abomination of a paint scheme for Trumpeter's HMS Rodney kit:

 

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As compared to colour cine film taken during Op PEDESTAL in August 1942

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...or as painted by Stephen Bone who was an official war artist but also worked at the Camouflage Directorate at Leamington Spa in this time frame designing camouflage schemes for the Admiralty using the paints they helped develop.

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Which, knowing what colours were actually used and careful study of tones in the many B&W photographs taken, along with the colour footage and Bone's paintings, we think really looked like this - absolutely nothing like that dog's breakfast on Trumpeter's colour call outs.

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2 hours ago, ArnoldAmbrose said:

Gidday Ewen, I don't know much about HMS Exeter's shade of grey, but I agree that Humbrol 147 is almost white. It is one of the colours I've used on HMS York 1941, but she carried a splinter type camo, the other colour being Hu157, a mid range blue. As HMS Exeter was painted a single shade of light grey Hu147 is probably too light. I hope this helps. Regards, Jeff.

 

There's as likely a chance as not that York was wearing 507A and 507C at that time, or perhaps 1 or 2 custom greys but as likely mixed using the ingredients already available to make Admiralty Pattern 507A and 507C, i.e. linseed oils, dryers, thinners, lead white and zinc white oil pastes, and Pattern 370A Blue-Black Paste and Pattern 371 Blue-Black Paste. Humbrol 157 is what they claim is Azure Blue. There were a lot of RN ships wearing 2-tone camouflage in 1941, e.g. HMS Revenge here filmed on troop ship convoy escort in 1941.

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On 3/10/2019 at 9:52 AM, ArnoldAmbrose said:

Gidday Jamie, I like the sea, bow wave, wake etc. My guess is she would be cruising at about 15 knots. SWMBO says 'get rid of the coffee mug!' 😁. I think I've said it before but I think she's a sleek looking cruiser. Regards, Jeff.

 

Oh you mean the ship...   

 

 

 

:coat:

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Is it known whether Trumpeter intend to release the kit in its 1942 fit  sometime in the future or if the Very fire set will include this option?

 

Mike.

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30 minutes ago, mick b said:

Is it known whether Trumpeter intend to release the kit in its 1942 fit  sometime in the future or if the Very fire set will include this option?

 

Mike.

Hi Mike,

 

I don't know is the honest answer, but I doubt that VeryFire would attempt the conversion. There were a few things which changed as I'm sure you know, and there's more there than can be fixed with just brass. A set of twin 4" mounts from Micromaster on Shapeways would be a good place to start on such a conversion but you'd need to get your references straight and photos dated properly.

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Gidday, - TallBlondJohn - err, Yeah!

 

             - Jamie - Thanks for the info. The only photos I have of HMS York are black and white, and mostly oblique off the bows. I have a few diagrams showing the scheme used, naturally no two are exactly the same, plus I've referred to the models of others, well aware that they could be wrong also. The colour scheme I settled on mainly came from photos of a rather skillful model of the ship. I assumed that if the modeler went to a lot of trouble to get detail correct they would do the same for the colour scheme. The photos I have seem to confirm it is reasonably accurate, enough for me, anyway, although I know it is not 100%. But certainly good enough for my limited level of modeling skill.
      Anyway, enough of me rattling on, this thread is about your model, not mine, and a superb build your Exeter is too. Regards, Jeff.

 

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10 hours ago, Jamie @ Sovereign Hobbies said:

it seems to be company policy in most Asian kit manufacturers to get colour recommendations of British warships as wrong as possible.

This is true for US Navy ships as well. Their colour guides are rubbish.

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8 hours ago, Tracy White said:

This is true for US Navy ships as well. Their colour guides are rubbish.

 

Baffling really. Most of this stuff is freely available in the public domain or, at least, it's easy to determine that the planned painting guide is clearly tosh.

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I had hoped to make some progress on models generally but wasted the last weekend and a day off day-job on Monday drawing pictures for colourset labels

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...which was fun, then my daughter brought home a lovely germy gift from school which has absolutely wiped me out.

 

Therefore the best I have achieved is some pitiful progress on a small model aeroplane. I got this:

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I hacked about this:

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and it now looks like this:

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The little WEM set doesn't provide cabane struts so I have pilfered spare float struts to use between engine and top wing, and need to scratch build some for between the engine and lower wing. I drilled out the nose and dorsal gunner positions so it looks a little less like a solid blob.

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28 minutes ago, Jamie @ Sovereign Hobbies said:

I have been a silly boy and pinged that engine and cabane assembly away. I last heard it travelling in a northerly direction before impacting at least 3 different hard surfaces.

Welcome to the club. This happens to me at least once on every model I make these days. My carpet monster must be so well fed I should probably put it on a diet!

 

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On 2/28/2019 at 4:58 AM, Jamie @ Sovereign Hobbies said:

The kit gun turrets are basically correct in size and general shape, but they are as though the 3D models were sent off for tooling during the designer's annual leave before he'd applied any of the detailing. They're really not very inspiring.

 

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This is an amazing project!  I was wondering about the MKII turrets details. There are definitely couple features missing, like the hatches between the cannons on the front, the small round access doors on the sides of the roof, periscopes, couple rivets.  I can´t really find references showing any other outstanding features of the turrets, as the Shapeways turrets do.  I haven´t been able to find pictures showing the rear part of the HMS Exeter turrets either, have seen other Mk II turrets on other cruisers without access doors, or with only one door.  Do you have a good reference showing the rear part of the Mk II turrets?

 

Marco

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Just now, Marco1965 said:

This is an amazing project!  I was wondering about the MKII turrets details. There are definitely couple features missing, like the hatches between the cannons on the front, the small round access doors on the sides of the roof, periscopes, couple rivets.  I can´t really find references showing any other outstanding features of the turrets, as the Shapeways turrets do.  I haven´t been able to find pictures showing the rear part of the HMS Exeter turrets either, have seen other Mk II turrets on other cruisers without access doors, or with only one door.  Do you have a good reference showing the rear part of the Mk II turrets?

 

Marco

 

Hi Marco,

 

I'm afraid I don't. I have acquired copies of some nice photographs of Exeter, but nothing which clearly shows the back of the turrets. There are three here which show part of the rear of the turrets though:

 

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