1/350 HMCS Regina (Halifax Class Frigate) 2021

[JohnWS]

A major milestone completed - after 3 months, work is finished repairing, filling, sanding, modifying, sealing & priming the cast resin hull & superstructure.  

 

Here's how she looks, today.

 

 

After being very disappointed with the quality of the casting, I've finally got the hull to look acceptable to my eyes.  I had expected that there would be some rework & scratch building to bring the 2006 era model up to date to include her modernization refit, but I never expected to have to complete major repairs to the casting .  But it's done now, & I'm really happy with the result. 

 

Other than repairing the casting (e.g. removing excess resin, filling blow holes, & replacing broken details), the major rework included modifying the flight deck, & the helicopter hanger.

 

 

 Finally, I laid out the location & drilled the hull port holes, using photos of the actual ship for reference.

 

 

I'm thinking the next step will be to paint the hull & superstructures prior to adding the little details & PE.  It will be nice to see Regina in her dazzle paint scheme.  Stay tuned.

 

Thanks for looking.

 

Stay safe.

 

John

 

 

 

[longshanks]

Congratulations on passing your milestone 🍻

 

Kev

[Andreas.R]

On 1/27/2021 at 8:46 PM, JohnWS said:

Work continues on repairing the resin hull.

 

Here's a photo of the bottom of the hull showing the excessive resin flash, blow holes & damaged bilge keels.  Luckily the moulded deck & superstructures are not in such bad shape.

 

 

Before starting the repair, I washed the hull down thoroughly to try to remove any remaining mould release material in the many holes.  Then I filed & sanded down the excessive resin material.  Unfortunately, the sanding revealed more tiny blow holes.  I decided to have a little fun & try out a few different materials to fill in the holes & smooth out the uneven surfaces to see which one worked the best.  These included grey basic Tamiya putty, white Tamiya putty, gel CA glue, & Tamiya yellow two-part polyester putty.  I hadn't used the two-part polyester putty before, so this was a good project to test it.  As usual, I found I had to re-apply both the grey & white putty to fill the small holes & allow for shrinkage.  The CA glue worked very well filling the holes with little shrinkage.  The dried CA glue is much harder than the putties & took more filing & sanding to remove the excess & smooth out the surface.  The two-part polyester putty turned out to be my favourite.  It was easy to mix (putty & hardener), easy to apply, quick drying, & relatively easy to file & sand.

 

The bilge keels (stabilizers?) moulded on both sides of the hull were also damaged, as received.  I cut them off, sanded down the hull surface to remove high spots, then scratch built new keels from plastic sheet, & glued the new keels in place.

 

Here's a photo of the (multicoloured) finished hull repair, showing the different colours of the various fill materials & the new bilge keels.  You can see where I've applied the yellow polyester putty.

 

 

Moving on, the model's helicopter flight deck needed to be modified to look like the refitted frigates.  Here's a photo showing the original flight deck & the flight deck after the modernization refit.  I needed to remove some of the original flight deck detail & smooth out the deck area with putty.

 

 

Next up, I'll be to building a display stand to hold model upright, repair somemore resin blow holes (this time to the upper deck), & then apply a coat of primer to see how all these repairs look.  😟

 

Thanks again for looking.

 

Stay safe!

 

John

 

 

Hello John,

 

I have only build one resin kit ( Destroyer 1934A) with the same problems.

To fill holes I use CA glue gel and put a little water on the CA. The CA reacts with water and quilts to form a thick, porous layer that can be easily sanded away.

The CA is often harder than the resin, which makes sanding difficult.

 

Regards

 

Andreas

 

[socjo1]

4 hours ago, Andreas.R said:

To fill holes I use CA glue gel and put a little water on the CA. The CA reacts with water and quilts to form a thick, porous layer that can be easily sanded away.

 

Andreas: Very interesting tip, thank you!

 

John: Step by step your Regina looks more and more cute!

I think I fell love with her bow... 😉 

Regards,

Michał

Edited April 8, 2021 by socjo1

[beefy66]

Missed the last update been busy around here hasn't it what a difference some primer makes very neat additions John.  👍

 

Stay Safe

beefy

[JohnWS]

I run into a wee bit of a speed bump. 

 

Before adding a finish coat of paint, I realized I still have some scratch building to do, with a lot of trial fitting that could damage the paint.  So, I'm going to continue with the scratch building, next.

 

First up, I'm rebuilding the main mast.  The kit came with some nice PE for the mast.  I can use some of the PE, but the mast had some significant changes from the model when Regina when through her modernization refit.  That's where I hit the speed bump.  I couldn't find any detailed dimensional drawings for the new mast configuration.  As a result, I've been searching for detailed photos of the four sides of the mast.  I think I've found what I need, & the next step will be preparing dimensional sketches for the build, using measurements & some eyeballing guesswork off the photos.

 

Here's a photo of the upper portion of the mast, showing its complexity. 

 

 

I'm going to have to sort out what parts of the actual mast I'll include in the build & determine their dimensions.

 

Hopefully, I'll have everything sorted out soon, & can get back to actually building something.

 

Thanks for following along.

 

Stay safe!

 

John

 

 

Edited April 8, 2021 by JohnWS

[longshanks]

You now what you are John 

 

In the nicest possible way 😉

 

Kev

[beefy66]

Yep that looks like it is going to be a busy mast to build up.

 

Not making it easy for yourself John.  

 

Stay Safe

beefy

[robgizlu]

1 hour ago, longshanks said:

You now what you are John 

 

In the nicest possible way 😉

 

Kev

 

1 hour ago, beefy66 said:

Yep that looks like it is going to be a busy mast to build up.

 

Not making it easy for yourself John.  

 

Stay Safe

beefy

 

I think my learned brethren have covered all I need to say .....

God luck

Rob

[JohnWS]

2 hours ago, longshanks said:

You now what you are John 

 

In the nicest possible way 😉

 

Kev

 

Kev, you'd think by now I'd know better. 

 

2 hours ago, beefy66 said:

Yep that looks like it is going to be a busy mast to build up.

 

Not making it easy for yourself John.  

 

Stay Safe

beefy

 

Good thing I like to eat beefy, 'cause I might have just bit off more than I can chew.  Time will tell. 

 

31 minutes ago, robgizlu said:

I think my learned brethren have covered all I need to say .....

God luck

Rob

 

Rob, I just went to the wine store & restocked our supply.  I've got a feeling I'll need it before this build is done. 

 

John

[Courageous]

A man of your calibre will whip up that mast with no problem.

 

Stuart

[JohnWS]

12 hours ago, Courageous said:

A man of your calibre will whip up that mast with no problem.

 

Stuart

Thanks for the vote of confidence, Stuart.  I'll try not to let you down. 

 

Here's a short update where I stand today..

 

I've finished researching the frigates' main mast & have accumulated some pretty good up-close photos to use in lieu of dimensional drawings.

 

 

I've also started scratch building the main framework for the mast using a combination of PE supplied in the model kit and parts cut from Evergreen plastic rod & sheet, plus Eduard PE grid decking.  

 

 

Here's a photo of the mast from the rear.  It shows the three platforms made from plastic sheet.  I'll be adding a PE ladder & scratch built radar wave guides through the holes cut in the platforms, before gluing on the back section of the PE mast frame.

 

 

That's the 'easy' part done.   Now on to the detailing ...

 

Thanks for looking.

 

Stay safe!

 

John

 

[longshanks]

1 hour ago, JohnWS said:

 It shows the three platforms made from plastic sheet.  I'll be adding a PE ladder & scratch built radar wave guides through the holes cut in the platforms, before gluing on the back section of the PE mast frame.

 

 Cor ! multimedia knitting .....

 

Kev

[beefy66]

Very neat work as we have come to expect from you John 👍

Stay Safe 

beefy 

[robgizlu]

Tidy!!

Rob

[Brian]

What a labour of love.  Amazing work, John.

[JohnWS]

Hi again, everyone.

 

A short update to let you know this build is still alive & well.

 

I continue to spend my time researching & trying to build Regina's main mast.  By trying, I mean scratch build once, scrap, build another, scrap that, & so on.  As I mentioned in an earlier post, I don't have any detailed drawings to reference so I've been using photos taken from different angles.  This has resulted in a lot of trial & error.  But, happily the build is progressing.

 

Here's a photo showing where I am today;

 

 

When you compare the model build to the actual mast, you can see there's still a ways to go.  As I get closer to finishing the mast, I'm able to use more of the kit's PE.

 

Thanks for looking in.

 

Stay safe!

 

John

[beefy66]

It is bad enough building things like that with PE but your scratch building it.  

 

Amazing stuff there John.  👍

 

Stay Safe

beefy

[socjo1]

Wooow!

Very impressive, definitely it will be real model's eyecatcher.

I hope we will see better mast's photos in the future.. Your precision work deserves it!

 

Edited April 27, 2021 by socjo1

[robgizlu]

At 1/350 - that is astonishing!! 

Rob

[JohnWS]

49 minutes ago, beefy66 said:

It is bad enough building things like that with PE but your scratch building it.  

 

Amazing stuff there John.  👍

 

Stay Safe

beefy

 

45 minutes ago, socjo1 said:

Wooow!

Very impressive, definitely it will be real model's eyecatcher.

I hope we will see better mast's photos in the future.. Your precision work deserves it!

 

 

39 minutes ago, robgizlu said:

At 1/350 - that is astonishing!! 

Rob

 

Thanks guys!

 

Part of the learning experience for me was determining what size if material I could use for the scratch building.  I wanted something that was big enough that my fat fingers could handle, but small enough that would suit the scale.  I tried various sizes of stretched plastic sprue, but I found that I trouble getting the tiny amounts of glue to hold the tiny pieces of sprue together.  I finally ended up using .02" (.5 mm) dia. Evergreen plastic rod with either CA or Testors liquid glue.  The .02" rod is a little big for 1/350 scale, but I decided the size was a good trade off for ease of handling & glueing.   I'm still inexperienced using PE, but this build will hopefully help me learn more about using PE ... while trying not to make too much of a mess.

 

John

[longshanks]

Truly amazing work John

My only advice would be don't sneeze ...............

 

Kev

[JohnWS]

2 hours ago, longshanks said:

Truly amazing work John ...

Thanks Kev!

 

2 hours ago, longshanks said:

My only advice would be don't sneeze ...............

Are you suggesting I should wear a face mask while modelling?   

 

John 😷 

[Dancona]

Blimey John, that mast is amazing...bit lost for words to be honest, your scratch building skills are a wonder !

[Courageous]

Lovely mast work John, keep the quality coming.

 

Stuart