'Q' ship reissue

Set up a flat surface sanding pad. Draw sanded off the "yellow" areas.

Glued the front/ backs together along a straight edge, a little squadron green and ahoy!

Now I've taken razor saw to plastic!

Carefully cut each piece leaving about 0.05" or so of the yellow parts.

And some fun scraps:

I wasn't going to start this right now, but last night there was nothing on TV. I am going in a different way than GMorrison:

Just two cuts in the middle of the well decks, square and perpendicular.

Here it is laid out with the planned spacing. It looks a lot better! Like a ship should look:

The yellow line is a possible waterline. I may make it more down by the stern.

GMorrison, do you have or can get access to a band saw as that is what I use when cutting a ship hull in half to extend or shorten it? if the hull is 2 side pieces, i'd glue it together then mark the line on it were I want to cut it. done that on 3 revel 1/426 scale arizonas to make them into the nevadas & texas. did that also to cut down a dragon 1/350 scale gearing class destroyer into a sumner class for a guy down in Atlanta, Georgia.

This is a very interesting thread. I really have to resist getting one of these Qships.

I found this in the PE spares. Each shroud is 3 inches long. Unfortunately, I can't tell now what set it comes from. It's for Titanic, but whether 1/400 from Tom's or from GMM, I don't know.

Interesting work!

Tomorrow the saw

in sequence the set up for taking saw to plastic.

Thanks, Felix.

I hadn't seen that first one. I like it, the observation that a taller stack makes it look older.

Further musings- you can see from the photo of the box that the kit includes a "free" stand. What a deal!

It also (the box) is a curious sort of nesting affair, like a donut box. When you open the lid, the outside front of the lower tray has a color side view and text block of the HMS Hyderabad "the only" purpose built Q ship. I'll try to post a photo.

Some motivations stuff for you guys:

www.modelshipgallery.com/.../index.htm

www.modelshipgallery.com/.../qship-mt-main.html

without pe web.ipmsusa3.org/.../q-ship

PE makes quite a difference as usual.

Sorry, I don't what over came me.

Not really, I'll mix and match anything.

Marcus,

you mean no $40 PE investment in a $7 model?

That is breaking the rules.

What do you think a typical deck color might be?

It seems to be a medium value in the photos, not light or dark.

Would red oxide be appropriate? Or boxcar brown? It'll look better if its not the same color as the hull anti fouling, but it does look to be about the same value.

That straight section of bulwark between the two scalloped openings is just a shade over 3.5", which is the amount of extension needed.

So to try to clarify what I said before, I'm cutting one hull just forward of the aft scallop for the bow, and one hull just aft of the forward scallop for the stern. Butting the long ends together. Then reshape and enlarge the scallops to look like the real ship. Sand off the cast on anchors and put on some scrap ones, add new rudder and bilge keels and I'm calling the hull goodenuf. Should get to that this week, after swmbo gets me to put the lights up. My spares box of left over Revell stuff is helping out.

And yes, the shrouds do have foot bars.

The model comes with porthole decals in several sizes!

I agree with you all of the way.  I plan on building this as is out of the box.  Can't see putting anything into a $7 dollar model.

Marcus.

Funny, I HAD thought of that.

Well, I don't expect the model to be too accurate a portrayal of anything, but I am in one of those "stuck" modes so I'm giving something a little different a try.

I have no intention of dumping cold water on anything, but I feel obliged to say something to you gentlemen that I wish somebody had said to me before I started my H.M.S. Bounty.

I based that model on the hull from the Revell kit, from which I removed all of the molded detail. (None of it was accurate.) The model took me over two years to finish. When I was done, I wondered why on earth I'd bothered with the Revell hull. I figured that carving a new, properly-shaped hull out of wood would have taken me a week or so longer - and if I'd done that I would have been able to say (to myself, if nobody else) that I'd built the model from scratch.

That ancient Lindberg kit is awful. As several folks have noted, it amounts to little more than a toy. Based on the research you guys have done, it doesn't seem to be a scale model of anything.The projects you're talking about will take months and months - even if you don't work on any other model during that time.

So why bother with it? Lengthening the hull and deck, removing the sheer, replacing virtually all the "detail" parts, rebuilding the superstructure....To me that sounds remarkably like a scratchbuilding exercise.

My guess is that you could make a wood hull, from laminations of basswood or poplar, in a couple of evenings. Allow a couple more evenings to seal and prime the wood. Then you'd be starting with an accurate hull and decks. The time would probably would be cut in half if you made it a waterline model.

I hope nobody who routinely reads this forum thinks I'm a member of the "scratchbuilding is the only legitimate way to do it" brigade. But there comes a point where modifying a manufactured hull is actually more difficult, and more time-consuming, than cutting a new one out of a few pieces of wood. It sounds to me like this kit is firmly in that category.

I sure wish the kit industry would recognize how many wonderful model subjects the world of merchant shipping has to offer.  A few good plastic merchantmen have appeared in the past few years, but the selection is still pitiful. Things are a little better on the resin front, but not much.

If I were to build a model of a freighter, I'd pick a generic-looking tramp steamer from the twenties or thirties. And I'd name it the S.S. Inchcliffe Castle. And if you know why - well, whurra, whoosh, and even foosh, you're as much of an Olde Phogey as I am.

The other chore is the deck. The model has pronounced sheer fore-aft. The bulwarks curve up as well. The signature of a Hog of course is a dead flat deck.

I'm laying out my cuts.

The big chore in making this into a reasonable facsimile of a Hog Islander is the stern. The Hog Islanders had an overhanging stern counter. Other than that, the general layout is similar to the Carolyn/Atik. The Carolyn/Evelyn were built before the Hog Islanders.

I would be tempted to build this as the Hog Islander S.S. Robin Moor.

Fred

Found my kit- from Tower.  Also started grabbing images online and found a bunch.  The Laker class seems to be very close- very little effort needed to convert, if any.  Since the Lakers and several builds around Allied countries were government large contracts to a design approved by both the US and GB, I suppose several series of ships could have come from same design.  Maybe not used as Q-ships, but I don't care- I want to fashion it as one converted to civilian service after war.

Well that is a marketing blurb and take it for what it is worth. I recall a few years ago the kit was dissected and a Hog Islander came up as the most likely suspect since so many were built and plans were freely available in the 1940s or so.

From oldmodelkits.com ($ 225.00!)

"Very rare hardbox issue from the late 1950s. Classic kit with Ray Gaedke artwork. This is the Lindberg Q Ship, which has an unknown prototype but is suppose to be a WWI style Q-Ship submarine trap. The ship appears to be a WWI British Q Ship by the title, yet looks a little modern and has US numbers of 171, which apparently mean nothing. The Lindberg model actually has the layout of the AK-101 USS ATIK, which was formerly the SS-CAROLYN, built in 1912. The CAROLYN was recommissioned as the USS ATIK and at the start of WWI which was a real US Q-ship. The box is in fantastic 'near mint' condition with like-new color and gloss, four solid corners and very little wear. This kit has never been started. It has been inventoried 100% complete with all parts, decals and instructions."

I'd wanna kill myself if I'd paid anything like that. And of course it's WW2, not WW1 so the description means nothing. I got my kits today, too. They look like stupid toys, nothing much like either a Hog Islander or the Bull ships. Those derricks are there amidship, even though there's basically no space between the deck houses and certainly no hold or hatch.

Exactly. In the absence of evidence to the contrary, enjoy.

How do you build an authentic model of a ship that was picked for having a generic appearance? Take the 80% solution. Build it and wash it with rusty wash and call it a build.

Respectfully, not so clear. She sort of looks like a Hog Islander, and she sort of resembles the Bull ships Evelyn and Carolyn.

She also resembles many small break cargo steamers of the time.

There's an article suggesting that Lindberg lifted the plans from a 1942 Mechanix Illustrated article, in which there's no clear provenance given in that article other than "authentic Q ship" which only the Bull ships were in that general appearance.

But AFAIK no Hog Islanders were Q ships, and both Bulls were.

I'm sticking with plan A