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HMS Renown 1935 - 1/700 Tamiya


Vlad

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No, there are no typos in that title :)

 

An alternate title for this post could be "what can I do in a weekend if I really put my mind to it". The answer is take a scalpel and sandpaper to a perfectly good kit to transform it into something else.

 

Nearly all ship kits aim to represent the subject at some pivotal point of their career: a great battle, some high point of the design evolution or the circumstances of a tragic loss. This is completely understandable, but unfortunately means kit makers and modellers alike often gloss over long and interesting peacetime careers that indeed produced some of the most graceful and aesthetically pleasing versions of certain ships. And so it is that I pick my current subject: not rebuilt, cluttered with AA and overwhelmed by camouflage; rather just an imposing, clean lined battlecruiser proudly flying the flag on a foreign station, keeping the Pax Britannica. The very image of a great Naval Empire in one gorgeous silhouette. And with a name and motto to match that image, here's hoping I do her justice.

Antiquae Famae Custos
"Guardians of Ancient Renown"

 

Starting point: Tamiya 1/700 HMS Repulse

 

Work so far:

  • armoured belts removed
  • scratchbuilt torpedo bulge
  • removed shelter and upper deck sections added during Repulse's 1930s refit
  • scraped off catapult and a few other superfluous deck elements
  • scratcbuilt missing shelter deck sections to restore pre-refit condition for Renown

 

Next steps:

  • small bracings on the torpedo bulge
  • drill lower row of portholes
  • fill some now unused locating holes in the main deck
  • scribe some deck planking where it's missing or was damaged in other work
  • carry on up the superstructure!

 

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Edited by Vlad
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1 hour ago, Jamie @ Sovereign Hobbies said:

No image shows for me @Vlad :(

44 minutes ago, Ex-FAAWAFU said:

Me neither, alas

Sorry chaps! I know now what went wrong there, should be fixed now.

Edited by Vlad
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I shall be watching this one with interest.  I had a similar idea of converting the Airfix 1/600 Repulse, then newly released, to WW1 condition.  Project stalled at the first fence: the need to rebuild most of the waterline on 2 hull halves which became very flexible after waterlining.  Not a problem you'll have faced with the more rigid single-part hull of the Tamiya 1/700 kit and you've eased past it.

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31 minutes ago, Seahawk said:

I shall be watching this one with interest.  I had a similar idea of converting the Airfix 1/600 Repulse, then newly released, to WW1 condition.  Project stalled at the first fence: the need to rebuild most of the waterline on 2 hull halves which became very flexible after waterlining.  Not a problem you'll have faced with the more rigid single-part hull of the Tamiya 1/700 kit and you've eased past it.

 

Indeed, I would not want to be waterlining something that came as full hull while trying to remove a torpedo bulge and external armour belts in the process! A slightly easier backdate would have been a 1920s fit. It's the best of both worlds since she already had the bulges and armour (so no hull surgery), but no hangar yet and retained the open bridge hence most of the as-built look. Unless you were specifically after the equal heigh funnels, which I would not blame you for 😋.

 

Tamiya's Repulse hull, despite being waterline only, has a lot of internal bracing too! Once built up to the main deck it feels as solid as a resin block hull. Having said that, I removed the armoured belts from each of the hull halves before doing anything else with them, as that let me lie them flat while using the chisel fitting on my scalpel to scrape away. They're easily thick enough to take this punishment and build up fine afterwards. The waterline plate itself is actually unmodified, and I used it as a guide to get the corect curvature when fitting the Renown style bulges.

 

Tamiya's kit is an excellent starting points for other reasons too - all the holes for various AA tubs Repulse got late in her career are not pre-drilled, and there are no locating helpers for the new deckhouses under the aft 4" mounts (in fact the deck planking is continuous under them!). This means a lot less deck cleanup!

Edited by Vlad
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1 hour ago, Vlad said:

 

.. A slightly easier backdate would have been a 1920s fit. It's the best of both worlds since she already had the bulges and armour (so no hull surgery), but no hangar yet and retained the open bridge hence most of the as-built look. 

Ah, but no stripy camouflage though.

 

Edit: another flaw in my plan is that Repulse did not receive planking on the weather decks until her refit in 1918.  No problem for you though.

Edited by Seahawk
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Gidday Vlad, it sounds like an interesting project. I have to confess my guilt, I'm one of those modelers that tend to concentrate on a warship's wartime exploits, and neglect somewhat the peace-time role these ships played.

7 hours ago, Seahawk said:

I had a similar idea of converting the Airfix 1/600 Repulse, then newly released, to WW1 condition.

Me too, but I don't know what to do with the hull modifications. Your suggestion of a 1920's version may be the way to go. Regards, Jeff.

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Watching with interest.  I'm normally an air/space modeller, but I have Renown on my to-build list as my grandfather was an engineering officer on her in the early thirties.

Regards

Tim

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You know when sometimes you need a quick win? I put the hull aside for now and went and built the bridge.

Fortunately for me, nearly all the work is removal of plastic from the existing kits parts. Unfortunately, this possibly doesnt make very interesting viewing. However, I did decide to go above and beyond for the compass platform. My original plan was to use the kit solid windows, but once I had it all cut up I couldn't resist adding the raised compass platform floor, finding some spare PE and leaving it open properly.

There are a couple of small details to add such as an additional control position Renown had on top of the chart office (between the tripod legs) but that shouldn't take long.

 

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P.S. if anyone can tell me what those "bumps" either side of the front of the compass platform are for, I would appreciate it

 

EDIT: I'm told the small compass platform extensions are cubby-holes that contain chart tables. You learn a new thing every day!

Edited by Vlad
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On ‎09‎/‎09‎/‎2019 at 09:35, Vlad said:

 

Indeed, I would not want to be waterlining something that came as full hull while trying to remove a torpedo bulge and external armour belts in the process!

 

I would endorse that view.  Having waterlined the Airfix Belfast hull halves, then taken about 12 mm out the midships section and carved off the bulges to make GLASGOW, I was left with a very floppy structure until I was able to start adding some internal bracing.

 

I agree with your observation about the clean lines of peace time vessels and there was something about REPULSE and RENOWN that made them both especially elegant.  That said, when I eventually get around to making REPULSE, it will be as she was in December 1941 after having had the privilege of organising a memorial service directly above her resting place when we visited the Far East in 1999.

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2 hours ago, Chewbacca said:

I would endorse that view.  Having waterlined the Airfix Belfast hull halves, then taken about 12 mm out the midships section and carved off the bulges to make GLASGOW, I was left with a very floppy structure until I was able to start adding some internal bracing.

 

I agree with your observation about the clean lines of peace time vessels and there was something about REPULSE and RENOWN that made them both especially elegant.  That said, when I eventually get around to making REPULSE, it will be as she was in December 1941 after having had the privilege of organising a memorial service directly above her resting place when we visited the Far East in 1999.

That is a privilege and with that kind of personal connection it is a build choice that makes a lot of sense.

 

I actually already have a 1941 Repulse in 1/700, and a 1942 Renown... and a 1/350 Repulse backdated to 1923/4 Empire Cruise fit. I have something of a long-running obsession with the class, if money/time/shelf space was no object I could build half a dozen more covering various guises. Realistically I won't do that many, but this definitely isn't my last build of the class either.

 

In particular, I was pleasantly surprised by the ease of removing the armoured belts from the Tamiya kit, making an as-built conversion a very real possibility in my long-term planning (although these kits are very expensive for the scale, I tend to stalk Ebay for deals on them).

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Moving on to the other end of the ship, I had quite a productive weekend essentially finishing the aft end of the shelter deck and stern deckhouse. Generally, I made some small compromises to maximise re-use of the existing kit parts. Again, most of the work is removing unnecessary material, such as shortening the aft deckhouse. Though in this case there was a bit of additional scratchbuilding, such as the splinter shields either side of the removed midships 4" mount (with adapted PE braces), small shelter at the base of the main mast and the armoured conning tower of the torpedo control position. Some modifications to the mast itself, including lengthening the legs to meet the deck where the aft deckhouse was shortened, and of course adding the main boom.

I also dug through my spare photo-etch box to dress up an area Tamiya has left severey lacking in surface detail, and drilled portholes.

 

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4 hours ago, Chewbacca said:

May I ask what are the 3 objects on the fwd side of the mainmast just below where the tripod comes together? 

Gidday, are they pulleys/blocks for rigging to raise the boom? I've seen them on other model ships such as HMS Hood and HMS Iron Duke. Regards, Jeff.

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6 hours ago, Chewbacca said:

As others have said, lovely scratchbuilding there.  May I ask what are the 3 objects on the fwd side of the mainmast just below where the tripod comes together? 

Thanks!

 

As Arnold said, they are the pulley blocks for the boom rigging. Often these come as a single photo-etched piece with the rigging included but I didn't have one like that in my spares box, and it may not have fit Renown's mast height, boom length and the angle I wanted it at anyway. So I just cut up some spare photo-etched pulleys and glued them on. I might rig it later, but usually I don't rig in 1/700. The blocks themselves are clearly visible in pictures, expecially since they're painted black along with the adjacent sections of the tripod and starfish, but the rigging is often very faint.

Edited by Vlad
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Thanks, I did suspect that that may be what they were but perhaps somewhat foolishly I was perhaps expecting them to look more like traditional block and tackle.  I should have done a Google search for images of Renown - they are quite prominent aren't they!

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Mine may be a little too prominent, but there you go 😉

 

I had quite a productive weekend again, nothing like spending a Saturday morning drilling, eh? I completed the hull yesterday, ended up having to fill some portholes at the bow that Tamiya seems to have put in the wrong place. Drilled out the lower row of portholes just above the torpedo bulge and added the small plate details on the bulge itself (again, I'd appreciate if someone helped me understand what these actually are). I noticed while doing this that the torpedo tube hatches, that I had so carefully made sure not to damage when removing the Repulse 6" armoured belt, are in fact removed on Renown in this time period and plated over... so I fixed that too.

I also tried my hand at scribing the deck planking where there was none on the kit and is now visible due to not using Repulse's large hangars and sanding off the catapult. I've never done this before, so I tried to keep it light. Won't know for sure how good it looks until it's painted, but fortunately for me this is the boat storage area so it will be mostly covered up anyway.

Today I finished the scratchbuilding on the central shelter deck and bridge. Main elements are the searchlight towers on the aft funnel, the hangar and the additional control position atop the chart house that I missed in the earlier bridge work. Some of the deckhouses around the funnels are recycled from the kit parts (but not necessarily placed where they would have been) rather than entirely scratch build.

That leaves the major components of the model ready to paint! Since questions about build and paint order crop up very often with regards to ship models, I've included an on-off picture. This shows the full silhouette of the complete conversion work on the ship, and the extent of sub-assembly breakdown I would normally work with and be comfortable painting on a project like this.

 

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Edited by Vlad
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So, the rest of the build is fairly straightofrward. "OOB" for lack of a better word, now that all major reconstruction is complete. I'm not planning on doing a super-detail job here, I feel I've spend the effort I wanted on this project where it really needed to be spent and now want to complete it as cleanly and neatly as I can before my inspiration runs out. However, that doesn't mean no more updates. As I said, not doing anything super special but some may find some of my techniques interesting, particularly brush painters.

I always start painting my ships with the deck, and for a wood deck that means getting out my trusty tub of Humbrol 71 for the base coat. I use coloured pencils to make a wood deck effect. First, a fairly even (but not too even) rub with a yellowish ochre colour to bring out the scribed planking. Then more deliberate localised rubs with dark brown and grey; the aim here is not to draw on individual planks, but just to create the overall effect of an itermittent light/dark pattern. As a last touch, since I don't like masking except as an absolute necessity, I use a mechanical pencil to trace the edges of large deck details such as barbettes, breakwaters, superstructure bulkheads and the edges of the wood planked area. This will act as a guide and physical barrier to paint running when I paint these details.

And finally, I use my trusty 00 detail brush (of which I clearly need to buy a new one) to paint all deck details freehand.

I also took the opportunity to paint the boot stripe. This one will be masked to get a straight edge when I paint the hull sides later. Since Repulse and Renown sat quite low in the water after their various 1920s refits, the Tamiya hull is just tall enough that the boot stripe would be showing. So painting it on is necessary despite this being a waterline model.

 

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