Evening All,
Thanks to all who left your very constructive comments - they are all greatly appreciated.
Nigel: I have foud building this small section of a battleship trying enough so in future I will stick to building real aeroplanes (ie pushers), instead!
I have been back at the Short S38/Hibernia project this week as I do want to get this one moving again. For a number of reasons it seems to have slowed to a crawl recently, so I have focussed some time and attention and have almost completed the ship part of the project, although there are still details to add before it will be ready to take the model aeroplane.
The first item was to weather the ramp: photographs show that it was not badly weathered at all as the wood had probably been bought and used for the ramp from new. I used a grey wash but dd not apply too many coats - just enough to take the brightness out of the lime strip.
I also gave a couple of coats to the other stripwood that I used to make up the supports. There are three cross supports on the top of the turret but they can hardly be seen when in place. These were made from beech with some very thin strips for the cross pieces around the gun barrels from lime. I also added eyes from thin copper wire under the cross beams of the ramp above the turret: later they had thread passed through them to represent the rope bracing which is clearly visible in photographs.
The turret was glued to the barbette using wood glue and when that had set put the ramp supports over the turret on to the underside of the ramp. I also glued the two outer (thicker) front supports on either side of the guns and the attached the ramp structure to the turret and deck. When this was dry I could add the remaining upright supports and cross members around the gun barrels.
Brackets were made from plastic card and rod and attached to the top of the barbette with CA. I made ropes using cotton thread and copied the pattern from the photographs: when pulling the threads tight on two of the threads the copper wire eyes pulled out of the wood of the ramp. After much bad language and gnashing of teeth I managed to retrieve the situation - just.
On the port (left) side of the turret a large brace was fixed from the top of the bridge to the base of the turret above the barbette. I used 80 thou rod for this - on the ship I think that it was a boom used to hold the anti-torpedo nets, but the photographs are not completely clear so that is only a guess.
I added the tops to the vent shafts for the crew quarters - these are in the open position.
On the sides of the hull there were two sets of steel brackets which the crew used to gain access to the torpedo net booms: I added some of these from 30 thou rod to the hull sides. I have made two gangways from wood: these will be added when I put on the post and rails around the edges of the deck. I have not photographed them yet because they have not been washed and weathered.
Sadly I have been quite unable to find any suitable navy figures to put on the deck and ramp: does anyone know of a possible suitable source of figures which I could adapt and modify? They must be 1/72 or 1/76 scale and not metal if possible. Any guidance would be gratefully received.
Thanks for looking.
Stephen.
