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HMS Dreadnought, 1:700, Trumpeter


Liizio

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Greetings!

 

My first WIP here. Don't know if this will be super interesting, but maybe it will motivate me to keep up the build, and also to keep the bench tidy, since I'll have to post pictures of it 😁

 

This will be my second battleship build, following the Nagato I posted in the RFI -section a few days ago. So don't expect anything too professional. I bought this kit on a whim some months ago. Nagato needed more Kure gray, yet again, and I didn't fancy ordering a single jar of paint, so this rather cheap Trumpeter kit followed it to the shopping basket. Figured, since I'll be building battleships from now on, Dreadnought will be a mandatory addition to the collection at some point, anyway. I was originally planning on buying and building a Trumpeter Graf Spee one of these days, but the stash is getting alarmingly big, so I figured  I'd get this one over with first.

 

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Since the kit chose not to include railings of it's own, she'll have to do with IJN railings.

 

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Plastic parts of the kit. Okay quality, some cleaning to do.

 

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Kit also has two sheets of PE, which is nice. No railings though, as mentioned earlier, which is not so nice.

 

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The hull and decks. No major problems.

 

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The hull pieces are glued together...

 

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...Followed by decks.

 

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Getting rid of the big seam between hull pieces. Had some trouble with sanding away the hull details on the Nagato, trying to avoid it with masking tape this time.

 

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This seam between the decks is problematic. Kinda hard to fill in, and lots of detail around it. At least to me, this spot is also a very distinctive detail of the Dreadnought, and should be cleaned up well since my eye is kinda naturally drawn to it.

 

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Filling, sanding, more filling... turned out ok, not perfect. Waterline still needs work.

 

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Another troublesome spot. This will be impossible to detail paint later, since I assembled it now. However, if I painted it before assembly, gluing everything on in a tidy manner would be impossible, for me at least. It will be pretty much invisible anyway, so I went with this approach this time.

 

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First bits of PE on. Had trouble. PE sheet was a LOT thicker than I got used to with Fujimi's Nagato, and I couldn't fold them in a clean manner. Hard to see in the photo, but a lot of unnecessary little kinks all over the place. Not a disaster, but not very happy either.

 

That's everything for today, continued in a couple of days, hopefully.

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11 hours ago, Liizio said:

but the stash is getting alarmingly big

Gidday, stashes are supposed to get alarmingly big. It's an unwritten but fundamental law of the universe. 😀 The ship is looking very good to date. Regards, Jeff.

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Thanks for the comments, chaps!

 

Small update today. Started work on the bridge:

 

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Those PE struts look a bit wonky, hopefully they'll settle once I glue the bridge on. Decided to glue some detail on prior to painting, we'll see if this comes back to haunt me.

 

On with the primer, still needs filling and sanding:

 

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Also started the turrets. Drilled out the muzzle with a injection needle:

 

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Edited by Liizio
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Another quick update. The funnels are ready for primer:

 

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Did some test fitting, and decided to glue the three lower mainmast parts on prior to painting. They fit rather poorly, and getting them glued on neatly after painting seemed pretty difficult:

 

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Some test fitting to see where we are at the moment. This is a thing I quite like about ship models, you really see the model taking it's form quite long in to the build, and it's fun to see how it turns out looking. When you build simple, single engined planes for example, they are pretty much in their final form once you glue all the fuselage parts and wings together, which happens quite early, and it's pretty much about adding layers of paint after that. At least that's what I think. Not that there's anything wrong with plane models, mind you.

 

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Lots of weird fitment issues on this kit. I've removed lots of material from them, but funnels and other structures really don't want to sit flush with the deck. Anyway, I'm pretty happy with this progress, I can start priming some parts soon!

 

BTW, any good ideas for primer to use with airbrush? I'd prefer acrylic, but feel free to suggest others as well. I have something from Vallejo, but really didn't like that one, flaked away when sanding and surface looked horrible after that. I currently use Tamiyas spray primer, which I think is good, but I really can't use it inside, plus it's pretty expensive.

 

-Till next time.

Edited by Liizio
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Nature doesn't seem to encourage my attempts to get the hull primed with Tamiya's spray, we've been getting constant snow for the whole weekend. As demonstrated by my poor Corolla:

 

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Been working on the rear mast whole day, a pretty fiddly process. Plastic parts don't really want to fit together, and getting it all straight is hard. Using general purpose railing is also challenging compared to ones made for the specific kit.

 

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-Till next time

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9 hours ago, Thom216 said:

Handsome little Dread coming right along. Very nice. As to the PE, have you tried annealing the metal first? Supposed to make bending it easier.

Thanks for the tip, sounds like a good idea!

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Greetings!

 

Things looked a bit bad for this weekend, since I made absolutely no progress friday or saturday. Roaming thrift stores took my attention, but it wasn't all bad, since I picked up a Revell 1:48 bf-110 and Spit mk. IX for a couple of euros. Both new in box as well. Stash is starting to expand beyond it's allocated space:

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I woke up kinda early this morning and had no enthusiasm towards modelling what so ever, but still decided to haul myself to the workbench, thinking I need to glue on at least a couple of PE parts so that the build doesn't stall completely. Ended up actually making some progress. Added rest of the PE required before priming:

 

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By the way, the annealing worked wonders! PE became much easier to bend!

 

Also added prop shafts at this point:

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And, finally since the skies were clear of snow, got some primer sprayed on. Not terrible, not great. No Major surprises, but the waterline was not nearly as neat I had thought, and some other issues were found as well.

 

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And a bit of testing to see where we are at now:

 

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Rear mast is also assembled and primed, but it refuses to sit upright without glue, so it didn't make the picture. Upper part of the main mast is still to be assembled, as are two of the main turrets, but once those are done I think I can start doing some painting.

 

-Till next time

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Rather slow weekend considering modelling. Terrible snowstorm yesterday, so no spray painting once again, and a tree fell on to the power lines at some point, and power was out for quite a while. Gotta love living in the sticks!

 

Kits own torpedo net booms seemed like a pain. Tiny parts with no detail and hard to clean molding lines. So decided to make my own ones from stretched sprue. They still have no detail, but at least there was less cleaning to do. Not very uniform and still kind of a hassle.

 

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Also finally got all the main 12 in. turrets assembled. Ready for primer.

 

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Next project arrived, main parts of it anyway. Still waiting for the railings. Rather large box for a light cruiser.

 

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-Till next time

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Another rather minuscule update for this weekend. After some final touching up of the waterline seam and priming related to that, got the deck painted along with some decks for the boats. I'll probably paint the smaller boat decks by hand.

 

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Finally some actual paint on this build. Looking forward to masking all that deck next weekend!

 

Also got the turrets primed and ready for painting:

 

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-Till next time

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Thanks David, waterline seams seem to be surprisingly easy to get wrong, this one wasn't particularly ill-fitting, but still needed many layers of putty and primer to get right.

 

Time for my awe-inspiring weekly update! Great progress! This thing is practically FLYING off the slipway!

 

Aka. got about half of the deck masked this weekend and that's it. Super tedious, but it's progress, I guess. Not great job either, there will probably be some leakage, but had those same problems with the Nagato, and after some corrections and weathering they were pretty much invisible.

 

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-Till next week

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  • 2 weeks later...

Greetings!

 

Couple of days off for Easter, actually managed to get something done. Finally got the deck masked all the way. On with the hull red:

 

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Mask lower hull:

 

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Paint black waterline, mask that:

 

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And finally some dark sea gray on the hull and some other parts:

 

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And off with the masks!

 

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Pretty happy with how this turned out, no major problems with masks or painting. Time to get cracking with rest of the parts!

 

-Till next time

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40 minutes ago, Adm Lord De Univers said:

Looking very neat, how much tape did you use up there?

 

David

 

Way too much, since even removing it took so long it felt like a chore! Luckily I don't think I'll be needing to use any more during this build.

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4 hours ago, bismarck builder said:

great build so far mate on such a small ship

i know what you mean about loosing your modelling mojo I've had my Victory on the go now for a year and its stalled 

anyway keep up the good work and enjoy

Thanks! It's a very periodic thing, at least for me. And also very much depends on what phase the build is on. Ships are still a challenge for me, trying to figure out in what order I should do things in. I have more experience with cars and planes, and those tend to progress faster since I don't have to think so much!

 

Slight progress today. Painted some of the smaller wooden deck parts by hand, and glued the bridge, funnels and that small platform between them on. Dry fitting the rear mast, doesn't want to sit on straight and flush with the deck.

 

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Also glued the hull on an old paint can with some PVA. Helps with the handling.

 

-Till next time

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  • 4 weeks later...

Greetings!

 

Ridiculously slow progress for the last few weeks, bought an old Chevrolet which has been keeping me off the bench. Been slowly working my way through the ships boats:

 

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Decided to glue them on at this point, since I had some trouble during the Nagato -build with railings getting in their way. After I'm done with rest of the boats, I guess I finally have to start with rest of the secondary guns, which seems like a bit of a chore.

 

-Till next time.

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