Author Topic: HMS Agincourt, Scratch Built, 1/1500 Scale  (Read 1201 times)

Offline JBLavender

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HMS Agincourt, Scratch Built, 1/1500 Scale
« on: January 31, 2023, 02:30:35 AM »
Greetings. I’m in with another 1/1500 scratch build, this time HMS Agincourt as she appeared at Jutland. The model is made from boxwood, aluminum, and brass and measures just a little over 5" or a bit more than 13cm. The rigging is Nitinol and copper wire.
If you'd like to see more of my ships, I have a website with photos of them at www.josephlavender.com

Agincourt is well-known for carrying more main caliber guns than any other battleship ever built, fourteen. She was originally built in Britain for the Brazilian Navy with the stipulation that the ship's design be "impressive", however after the rubber market collapsed, Brazil could no longer afford the ship and she was sold to the Ottoman Empire. On the eve of WWI, the ship was seized by the Royal Navy from the Ottomans at the builders yard. She was refit to RN standards and many things were changed including her torpedo net booms being removed and the distinctive flying deck over her central turrets removed as well.

Agincourt was modified throughout the war, and I chose to depict her as she appeared passing Windy Corner at the battle of Jutland, 31 May 1916. This proved to be a difficult fit to model as there are few drawings or photos of the ship in mid-1916. I was able to scrape together enough references from my library of books to redraw the plans to my satisfaction. No easy task. Agincourt was eventually scrapped in 1922. An uneventful end to the uneventful career of this very interesting ship.













Offline KiwiZac

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Re: HMS Agincourt, Scratch Built, 1/1500 Scale
« Reply #1 on: January 31, 2023, 07:30:07 AM »
Truly remarkable.

Offline JBLavender

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Re: HMS Agincourt, Scratch Built, 1/1500 Scale
« Reply #2 on: January 31, 2023, 09:13:06 AM »
Thaaanks!!

Offline pepperman42

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Re: HMS Agincourt, Scratch Built, 1/1500 Scale
« Reply #3 on: January 31, 2023, 11:50:20 AM »
Perfect work in every way

Steve

Offline JBLavender

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Re: HMS Agincourt, Scratch Built, 1/1500 Scale
« Reply #4 on: January 31, 2023, 11:17:57 PM »
Hey thanks!

I love a green, moody, wind-whipped sea. So many folks build models with those blue sea bases, and that’s fine, but green just sets the scene and adds some foreboding. It’s rare for me to to depict a ship in battle, since I don’t really like showing a ship in danger.

Offline macsporran

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Re: HMS Agincourt, Scratch Built, 1/1500 Scale
« Reply #5 on: January 31, 2023, 11:34:44 PM »
Hey JB, not only are the models tiny masterpieces but the sea bases are about the best I have ever seen - so much action!
Lovely work.
Sandy

Offline JBLavender

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Re: HMS Agincourt, Scratch Built, 1/1500 Scale
« Reply #6 on: February 01, 2023, 02:05:58 AM »
Hey thanks!

I decided a long time ago that was something I had to master if I was going to do this correctly. The sea bases are almost always boxwood, but in the past I’ve used jelutong. My mentor Philip Reed used jelutong for a lot of his construction, but I find it to be too soft, and the boxwood to be much more crisp. Personal preference I think.

The construction is pretty simple, carving to shape and painting. I don’t use any resins or gels, just paint to build up the translucent look. I sorta stumbled into the process accidentally through trial and error though. One thing I knew I wasn’t going to use was resin. I think it’s trendy and it doesn’t last, and in 20 years we’re going to have all these nice models with cracked resin sea bases. Resin also yellows. No bueno! Many layers of paint, translucent canvas paste, and a gloss canvas finish is all I use. I’ll tint the gloss coat on top ever so slightly, to give some extra depth on top, but that’s it.

Here is an example of the translucent look paint can have: This is RN Duilio in her “bones” camouflage. You can see the swell appears to be deep and rich, even though it’s just paint.


Offline Borsos

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Re: HMS Agincourt, Scratch Built, 1/1500 Scale
« Reply #7 on: February 01, 2023, 05:30:22 AM »
Again, another masterpiece! It’s not only the ship itself, it’s the fantastic presentation that makes these little jewels so extraordinary.
Andreas
"Deux armées aux prises, c'est une grande armée qui se suicide."
Barbusse.
"Ein Berg in Deutschland kann doch einen Berg in Frankreich nicht beleidigen. Oder ein Fluß oder ein Wald oder ein Weizenfeld."
Remarque.

Offline JBLavender

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Re: HMS Agincourt, Scratch Built, 1/1500 Scale
« Reply #8 on: February 01, 2023, 11:36:51 AM »
Hey thanks! I’m sure I’ll post a thread on her eventually. Duilio is a ship that gets so little attention.

Online Rookie

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Re: HMS Agincourt, Scratch Built, 1/1500 Scale
« Reply #9 on: February 02, 2023, 01:18:39 AM »
I just visited your website Joseph.

All amazing builds, but my absolute favourite is the HMS Dreadnought.

Logical question: did you keep buildlogs of these beautiful pieces of jewelry?

Willem

Offline JBLavender

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Re: HMS Agincourt, Scratch Built, 1/1500 Scale
« Reply #10 on: February 02, 2023, 02:48:35 AM »
Hey thanks!

I kept a few photos of each ship in progress, but not a fully documented build. There are two issues. Firstly the parts are far too small to photograph easily, and photography is very time-consuming. Secondly, I did keep folks on Facebook and Reddit updated with how-tos and discussions about how I performed certain tasks, techniques etc. but no one read them. Or at least no one commented and I really had no metric to know if it was worth the hours. In the end, I keep a logbook of important details, and a few WIP photos, but they aren’t curated well enough for posting online sadly. I try to maintain a certain level of quality with WIP photos and it takes a couple hours to set up, photograph, and process. With the documented builds, I didn’t feel it was worth the time in the end.

I’m currently working on IJN Kongō, and I have posted a few WIP photos here in the general modeling section if you’d like to see how a ship goes from a boxwood block to a fully-formed hull.