Ship Diorama Build Blog : HMS Rodney : Pt14

The penultimate post!  Yes we're nearly there with the actual paint and build, we have two pieces to give us the planform of the ship the small pieces are the anchors...

The larger piece is the main mast... which was a bit of a pest.

To get it straight under it's own weight with a single point of glue.

I went with a dot of superglue, which I had led oxidize and cure a touch.

This let it at least sit whilst I then held it with a single finger, whilst it solidified a little more.  And then finally I put a layer of extra fresh superglue with a cocktail stick on the crows nest to just hold it level.

The final touches were then to a little deck furniture.

Next, and this truly scares me, is the final pieces of rigging...

We will get to that in due time.

Ship Diorama Build Blog : HMS Rodney : Pt13

Well, it's been eleven months since I started her, and now it's been nearly eight since I last touched her, but finally, after a tumultuous period I'm back at the model making bench... Working on finishing the Rodney, the first task was to remove the dust which had gathered.  Then to start to fit the out rigger boats.

I took the ship off the weighted base, and the turrets off to dust her.

The waves were the worst thing to dust.

I spotted this section of the deck, behind the middle turret mount needs painting.

The first starboard side boat, the cleats added with poly cement and left to set, then the boat gun with super glue.

Close up of the port-side boats through my new magnifying boom.

And a general look at my work bench.

Highlights are the use of my new magnifying lighting boom... lovely.

Ship Diorama Build Blog : HMS Rodney : Pt9

I've had a very long pair of sessions, between walking the dogs and doing some other stuff, and in those two sessions I've done a little detailing of the first turret, worked on rigging, painted the rear mast and build the other main turrets and half the secondary turrets.

The rigging is Mig's 0.03mm stuff and I've had a wild time with it, lets look at some of the other lines I ran.

Initial attachment was fine.  A dot of superglue on the relaxed line and leave it to set for a good five minutes, then pull straight and stretch (for it is elastic) and drop into another piece of glue... but... Oh my, what a struggle.

I then set the aft flag pole... with it actually, unnoticed sagging and being a pain to set straight again... but initially I had it perfect, so that annoyed me.

With the rigging drying and this pole, I thought I also had a chance to play about with the flags.

So with foil down on masking take I started to try and paint a white ensign.

And I hated how it came out....

I also tried to make tiny letter signal flags, this is an X.... 

I was basing these on white matt acrylic paint, letting them dry and then using fine-liner on them.

To give you an idea of the size of these flags the main ensign compared to the side of a match head.

This came to naught.  So I decided it was time to fix the rigged super structure island.  Not wanting to get the glue leaking through I lined it up and started to see how it fit.

Not well....

It took a lot of holding to get the structure glued flat.

I then decided to build the secondary port-side battery.

I am very bemused by the range of rotation on these turrets, they would have been nearly useless on the actual ship....

I then had a piece nearly get lost... A15, the antennae...

Vanished.... I was manipulating it in a pair of tweezers and it flew off.

After stretching a piece of sprue I made a replacement.

Only to suddenly see the antennae was stuck to the starboard side of the bridge structure!

I was getting rather tired by this point.  I therefore picked a couple of low-hanging fruit items... and built the forward 16" turrets.

And as I'm writing this very post and uploading this image...

I see that the structure is not down right, so I've just pulled everything back out and added a line of extra thin glue and held it down, fingers crossed.

But, lets had a gratuitous shot with the turrets in place.

And then on the base!

Ship Diorama Build Blog : HMS Rodney : Pt6

I've been looking at some reference material and I'm going to try to get close to, but I'm not obsessing over getting the same paint job... So here it is, lost of masking first off and then a solid colour, the numbers I give are all Revell Aqua Colour, and to remind you I'm brush painting.

From the stern, light Grey 73.  And you can see flexible tamiya masking tape to keep the rim of the hull coloured, but protect the deck itself.

I also used some humbrol maskol to keep the line perfect.

I put the dark gret and light blue 49, along with white 05 highlights.

And started to mask the areas for the darker shade, for which I selected Tar Black 08.

Peeling all the masking I'm getting slightly better I think, I've had very little bleed under, despite thinning the paint to keep the brush strokes from showing too much.

The reference I have is mainly long strokes, but at the bow there are these three rounded shapes in white, with inner grey circlets.

I started some of the deck details, marching the alignment of the hull shapes.

And finally, some gratuitous shots mounted on the base.