Midland Shipyard

I bought this model many years ago, along with several others, from the old Skytrex shop near the canal in Loughborough. It never looked quite right to me - the hull was too low and not symmetrical - and my teenaged assembly and paint job wasn't all I would now have wished. Inspired by the excellent SeaVee model by Sean Pritchard, I decided to see if I could improve on my early attempt with the benefit of an extra 35 years' experience and patience. I had gone to University in Manchester so my choice of which T42 B3 to represent was an easy one. I started off trying to modify the hull but eventually just gave up and scratch built a new one out of thin MDF, plasticard and Miliput plus (after my hull warping experience with HMS Derwent) a thick steel rod. Again one thing led to another and I rebuilt and replaced a lot of details on the model. The SeaDart launcher was particularly distorted by the moulding process so I made a replacement from Plasticard and brass rod. I...

As a child I had a little book with paintings and side elevations of various contemporary (1960s-70s) RN ships. A favourite of mine at the time was the Type 81 Tribals class on the dubious grounds that it had two main gun turrets and thus looked more like a 'proper' warship than the T12s with only one. I have had a fondness for theT81 ever since so I was pleased to find a Delphin HMS Ashanti on Ebay at a modest price. The model was in quite good condition but the gun barrels were a bit bent. In straightening them, I broke one off and one thing led to another. I decided to make some changes to represent HMS Zulu. There were a number of problems with the model: the Sea Cat launchers were rather blobby and in the wrong place, no directors and the Limbo was also poorly defined. I decided to scratch build replacements and add some more detail. The most unsatisfactory feature - as often with post-war RN ships - was the lattice mast but short of some custom photo-etch (on my to do l...

As a first go at scratch building I chose the Type III Hunt class destroyer HMS Derwent . I wanted a fairly small subject with simple (not lattice) masts for which I had good plan and elevation views. Norman Friedman's book on British destroyers provided the plans. I scanned these, reduced them to the appropriate scale, copied them multiple times, printed them out and stuck them to pieces of plasticard. I built up the hull using the sandwich method then sanded it to shape. I glued the layers together with plastic cement and the hull subsequently bowed. I have read since that super glue is a better choice, though I have had bowing with that too. With hindsight, I should have built some steel rod into the hull to counter this - even with such a low freeboard, there would just about have been space. I shaped the funnel from some sprue with foil for the fairing around the base and the  rather over-size representation of cage from thin plasticard. The 4" guns an...