1/350 HMCS Regina (Halifax Class Frigate) 2021

[JohnWS]

Hello again, everyone! 

 

I'm going where I've never been before ... attempting to build a 1/350 scale model ship with some significant scratch building.

 

Once this project is completed the model (hopefully 🙏) will look something like this;

 

 

I'm using the Iron Shipwrights 1/350 HMCS Halifax resin model kit as the basis for this project.  The Iron Shipwrights' frigate model was designed using HMCS Halifax's 2006 configuration, similar to that shown below;

 

 

All 12 of the Royal Canadian Navy frigates in this class underwent a modernization/life extension refits over a period from 2012 to 2016.  The refit included many electronic & weapons upgrades, as shown in the following illustration.

 

 

HMCS Regina completed her refit in 2016.

 

 

HMCS Regina's dazzle paint scheme was applied in 2019, after her refit.  As a result, I'm going to try to modify the resin kit by scratch building the many new visible changes added during her refit, including rebuilding the main mast .  Understandably, at 1/350 scale this is going to be a bit of a challenge.  To add to the challenge, the quality of some of the resin parts isn't the best due to blow holes & a few broken parts.  Also, when I received the kit, it was missing one PE sheet and the hull number decal sheet.  These are supposed to be in the mail (3 weeks, so far).  But if by chance I don't receive them, I'm confident I'll be able to repair the damaged parts & build the missing parts + print the missing decals.  Based on my (slow) build experience, it will be months before I will need the missing parts, so I can wait a little longer.  These issues were very disappointing, considering the relatively high cost of this kit.

 

Where to start?  As I mentioned, this is my first attempt at building a 1/350 scale model.  Over the past 12 years or so, I've focused on 1/48 & 1/72 scale models.  Although most of my past scratch building has been done using sketches, photos, & drawings, I've made many parts just using my eyes to get to the proper scale & size. Usually, I've used a 6' scaled airman or sailor for size comparison.  To attempt 1/350 scratch building (without a 3D printer ... I'm old school  ) I'll need to recalibrate my ol' eyes & fingers.  Also, I've been watching the fantastic 1/350 ship builds on Britmodeller to get some tips & pointers.

 

So, I decided to pick a relatively small part from this build to get my eyes & fingers somewhat calibrated to the 1/350 scale.  I chose the single .50 caliber M2 machine guns to start.  There are four in the kit, but the refitted ships have six.  Rather than just making two more, I've made all six so they would all look similar.  Here's a photo of the final results (I've added a scaled down sailor for size reference).

 

 

I don't think they look too bad, for my first try, but man they're small.   At least they've built up my confidence a bit to carry on with this build, as most of the remaining scratch built parts will be bigger.

 

Next, I'll start repairing the damaged resin parts.

 

Thanks for looking in.  I hope you'll follow along during the build and provide me with feedback & assistance as you see fit.

 

Stay safe!

 

John 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Edited January 16, 2021 by JohnWS

[Jerry L]

John, love the work on the machine guns. Looking forward to following your progress, which by the look of the guns, will be impressive.

[robgizlu]

Nice start John - You can't keep a Scratchbuilder  Excellent modeller down!

I'm really looking forwards to this.  Kudos to The Royal Canadian Navy for having the panache to to present thid scheme.

Rob

[beefy66]

17 hours ago, JohnWS said:

I don't think they look too bad, for my first try, but man they're small. 

Well I would say great never mind not to bad and you are not cheating with aftermarket replacement's like some on here  

 

And welcome to the little world of 350 scale  

 

Stay safe

beefy

[longshanks]

Another journey begins...........

Looking forward to seeing this develop John

 

Kev

[socjo1]

I will look with great interesting too.

This scheme will look terrific on modern warship.

Scratchbuilding - this always looks interesting!

Edited January 17, 2021 by socjo1

[Courageous]

Great start John by going straight into the deep end with scratchbuilt MG's.

 

Stuart

[Terry1954]

Phew! I got in on page 1, must be doing something right. Excellent choice of subject John, and I promise I won't go on about preferring the Cold War scheme!

 

Seriously though, that commemorative scheme really will look superb on a modern warship in this scale. Judging by your last build, we are in for quite a treat.

 

Terry

[JohnWS]

19 minutes ago, Terry1954 said:

... I promise I won't go on about preferring the Cold War scheme! ...

Hey, Terry.  I included that photo of Regina in her 2016 grey scheme (above) just for you.  

 

John

[Terry1954]

Just now, JohnWS said:

Hey, Terry.  I included that photo of Regina in her 2016 grey scheme (above) just for you.  

I did wonder! Appreciate that John!

 

Terry

[German Armour]

Very cool and looking forward to seeing how it turns out!

The ships name is of my province capital.  

[JohnWS]

7 minutes ago, German Armour said:

Very cool and looking forward to seeing how it turns out!

The ships name is of my province capital.  

Nice!  Though, I found it odd that Regina got the Battle of Atlantic paint job & not one of the Atlantic fleet frigates based in Halifax.  Even though Regina's part of the Pacific fleet based in Esquimalt, BC, she still looks pretty good in that scheme. 

 

John

[JohnWS]

Work begins!

 

I've started with the small deck at the stern (aft of the flight deck) to clean up the resin hull & main deck.  These are cast as one piece.  There are a few areas that have excessive resin that needs to be removed & details added, as well as areas such as the flight deck that need to be modified to include changes made during the frigate's modernization refit.

 

I found the resin is relatively easy to file & sand.  Here's a photo of the stern deck before & after;

 

 

And, some good news.  I received the missing PE & decal sheets in the mail today.   They were postmarked Dec. 21, & have been in the US & Canadian snail mail systems for almost a month.

 

Next up, more resin clean-up and modifying the flight deck.

 

Thanks for looking in.

 

Stay safe!

 

John

[robgizlu]

Really nice clean job on that clean up (not easy!)

Great news about the late delivery

Rob

[socjo1]

On 19/01/2021 at 21:44, JohnWS said:

I found the resin is relatively easy to file & sand.  Here's a photo of the stern deck before & after;

 

 

Nice to see such a good job.

May I ask you which tools you use? Thanks in advance!

[JohnWS]

1 hour ago, socjo1 said:

Nice to see such a good job.

May I ask you which tools you use? Thanks in advance!

Thanks for the complement.

 

To clean up excessive resin/plastic on the models, I've just been using anything I can find in my toolbox with a sharp blade or sharp point.

 

 

For cleaning up flat surfaces I find Exacto 'chiseling' blades work the best.  I have two widths, a 3/8" & 1/2", shown on the left in the photo.  Also, I use fingernail emery boards (lower left in the photo) to do rough sanding on the flat surfaces, as well as flat files.  I cut the emery boards down to whatever width I need.  I do final sanding by wrapping the emery boards with fine grade sandpaper.  Pointed scribing tools, shown on the right in the photo, are useful for cleaning up the corners where the model's vertical & horizontal surfaces meet.

 

Hope this answers your question.

 

John

[JohnWS]

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

 

 

[beefy66]

Looks like a lot of work but I am sure it will be worth it John

I always seem to be able to break off some of the moulded details when trying to get the hull smoothed ready for paint.  

 

Stay Safe

beefy

[JohnWS]

2 minutes ago, beefy66 said:

Looks like a lot of work but I am sure it will be worth it John

I always seem to be able to break off some of the moulded details when trying to get the hull smoothed ready for paint.  

 

Stay Safe

beefy

Yes, it's been time consuming work with not a lot to show for it.   It's hard to believe it's almost been a month.

 

Just out of interest beefy, have any of your resin kits had similar surface quality issues as this one?  I was able the work out some of my frustration by doing all that filing & sanding.  Luckily, there's still some resin left.  

 

John 

[robgizlu]

Hi John - I'm with Beefy though you've done a good reecovey job.  Neither of my hulls from Atlantic models or Starling were at all like that.

Rob

[beefy66]

38 minutes ago, JohnWS said:

Just out of interest beefy, have any of your resin kits had similar surface quality issues as this one?

Hi John never had any issues like that with the resin kits I have I think it is because nearly all of the larger castings are two part hulls if you want to waterline. and this gives you a better flow of the resin.

It also depends on how well the caster is mixing the resin and venting to reduce the bubbles and if it is cast using a vac-form to pull out the air.  

When casting the cylinder heads in Aluminium we use vents in the dies to release the gases but resin casting is done in usually silicone moulds and they are only good for so many parts.

 

beefy

[socjo1]

You must be very clever baker - this cake looks so tasty!

 

The dough rises pretty, but... show us your model, please!

😉

Testing various techniques, interesting research, good photos - thank you.

(and baking too..)

Edited January 27, 2021 by socjo1

[JohnWS]

49 minutes ago, robgizlu said:

Hi John - I'm with Beefy though you've done a good reecovey job.  Neither of my hulls from Atlantic models or Starling were at all like that.

Rob

 

17 minutes ago, beefy66 said:

Hi John never had any issues like that with the resin kits I have I think it is because nearly all of the larger castings are two part hulls if you want to waterline. and this gives you a better flow of the resin.

It also depends on how well the caster is mixing the resin and venting to reduce the bubbles and if it is cast using a vac-form to pull out the air.  

When casting the cylinder heads in Aluminium we use vents in the dies to release the gases but resin casting is done in usually silicone moulds and they are only good for so many parts.

 

beefy

Thanks guys!

 

The poor quality of this casting surprised me, to say the least.  The model weighs a tonne cast in one piece.  I've got a feeling that my order was rushed through production before Christmas.  Judging by the casting issues plus the broken & missing parts, it looks like there were no quality checks before they packaged & shipped the model.  Unfortunately, Iron Shipwrights was the only game in town for these RCN ships, at the time.

John

[Terry1954]

Atlantic Models and Starling kits are way ahead of the Iron Shipwright range, That is not a criticism, as Iron Shipwrights have been around for some time and did an extensive range of cold War US Navy kits. They just are not up to the latest offerings standard.

 

That said, I am sure you will make an excellent model out of this one John!

 

Terry

[JohnWS]

11 minutes ago, Terry1954 said:

 ... I am sure you will make an excellent model out of this one John! ...

Thanks Terry.  That's the plan.