Midland Shipyard

Finished at last, though not without a few hurdles on the way. The first and worst was that, after airbrushing the main Light Weatherworks Grey and brush painting the decks, I snapped off one of the rather too fragile GAM-BO1 guns, leaving a crater in the deck as the glue and paint lifted off around it. Tiny wedges of plastic glued to the surface was obviously a mistake. I shaped the replacements by filing the end of some dia 0.75mm brass rod, leaving a small circle to represent the base and a reduced diameter extension below so I could secure it to a hole drilled in the deck. This time I soldered the barrel on (trimmed afterwards) and glued the plastic rectangular piece on after gluing them in place. After that and a bit of repair work, I could complete the painting. The flight deck markings and pennant numbers are decals from Skytrex - applied over Kleer and bedded in with Micro Set and Micro Sol. The waterline was hard work. I was using a lining pen, held at an angle a...

After relatively fast progress (for me) up to part 2 of my posts on HMS Cornwall, I was stalled for a while, expending quite a lot of effort and time without actually getting anything usable. The four Type 22 batch 3 ships changed in detail through their time in service. During these delays, I decided to make mine to depict their earlier appearance, before the torpedo tubes were removed and the conventional ship’s boat replaced by another Pacific 22 RIB. Most importantly it meant I could use the original, rounded, 4.5” Mk.8 turret rather than the later faceted Mod.1 version. The first difficulty was the Type 911 SeaWolf radar-optical directors. I wasn’t able to find any definitive dimensions so relied on scaling of various drawings which, I eventually realised had different and incompatible dimensions. As mentioned in part 2, my first attempt looked far too big so I set that aside and decided to sort out the Harpoon launchers first - four tubes, how hard can that be! T...

I posted a part two of this build that accidentally missed out a lot of steps so this is catching up properly with those missing stages. I'll repost that accidental part 2 later as part 3. I made the aft part of the forward superstructure from layered plasticard and attached the SCOT radomes and supporting structure from the kit. A small radome is visible in photos, at the fore end of this and I shaped that from some 0.75mm brass rod. Despite thinking everything was looking OK with the masts through the magnifier, the close-up picture below shows a different story, with some serious deterioration of the top of the Skytrex mast. I can't believe I missed it before. Two steps forward and one step back: I was going to have to make a replacement. Making the replacement mast was easier than I'd expected. The main part is an old bit of sprue, filed square then tapered and cut to length. To improve strength and give me something to key it to the structure below and i...