Midland Shipyard

Learning how to make custom decals has been on my to-do list for a while now and after this first go at it, I thought I'd write up my experience. I had three waterline ship models that had been stalled for a while for lack of suitable transfers. - A Triang Vanguard that I was upgrading with more realistic gun turrets and paint scheme where the bridge looked too blank without windows. - A refurbished Triang Varicella that was just lacking the Shell Logo for the funnel. - A Delphin Canadian Tribal Class DDH that really needed a transfer for the complicated flight deck markings. I had actually bought a pack of transparent water-slide transfer paper off Amazon a couple of years ago. It cost about £11 for 20 A4 sheets - far more than I expect I will ever need. This had been languishing in a drawer ever since. Lacking either the software or expertise to use a proper graphics program, I actually prepared the design in Microsoft Excel. The Shell logos and the ship's crest for ...

Some while ago I acquired a Delphin model of the Canadian Tribal Class DDH, HMCS Algonquin  with rather battered paintwork and a broken gun barrel. Rather than the fairly complete detailing job I had attempted with my HMS Zulu I decided to restrict myself to a basic strip, clean-up and full-colour repaint. There was very noticeable pitting of the hull surfaces in a few areas as well as some over-deep lines such as on the flight deck and side of the 5" gun turret which I filled with Miliput - you can see some of this showing through the primer in the picture below. After priming, progress on this models stalled for a long time. The main challenge was the relatively complicated flight deck markings, made doubly difficult by using yellow and curved lines. I decided to use this as a learning exercise for making my own decals but it seemed a waste to print off a whole sheet for just one model so I left it until I had a couple of others to do too - I've already posted the res...

By Royal Navy official photographer - This is photograph A 31247 from the collections of the Imperial War Museums., Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=18806845 One of my great regrets (ok, not life and death so maybe 'great' is over dramatising things) is that I didn't buy a bargain Albatross HMS Vanguard the first time I went to the Theale MiniShips show. The Albatross model is certainly the gold standard in 1/1250 but at the time £40 just seemed too much, I didn't realise just what a bargain it was and certainly didn't realise I'd never see another one at anything like that price. I still wanted a Vanguard for my collection and I thought it might be interesting to get a really scruffy Triang and see what could be done. This battered and repainted Series 1 example, advertised as 'in need of some TLC,  certainly fit the bill and nobody could accuse me of vandalising a period toy by stripping and repainting! There is a v...