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1/700 Liberty Ship, in Greek livery

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  • Member since
    August 2014
Posted by Ozmac on Tuesday, April 28, 2015 2:42 AM


Some progress to report on the Liberty ship build. The basic ship has been built (went together easily, good fit on all parts, but the instructions weren't that useful, just a single, large, slightly hard-to-follow diagram). It's also mostly painted (super-fiddly job in 1/700 scale), but all I have to show you is two shots from a distance, plus one shot of what lies ahead... 

The thing is, with these 1/700 models, and me with fading eyesight in my 60s, I can barely see where the paintbrush is going sometimes, and I often think I've painted a little detail OK, then when I see how things look through the macro lens on my camera I get quite a shock to see how sloppy the paint job is and how much I have missed first time round.

So here's two shots of the Liberty ship "Hellas Liberty" so far. 

I was surprised how many items I ditched from the kit. I didn't expect a Liberty ship to carry so many guns, and I didn't attach these. And the kit also came with many sets of life rafts as well, and these didn't get attached, either. I've turned the rear gun mounting into a small cabin, based on the reference photos shown earlier. I'm a pretty hopeless scratch-builder of anything, but it looks the part if you don't examine it too closely. I might improve on the portholes, add a door at the back, maybe some life saver rings in red...

Apart from many hours of touch-up painting of lots of little details and blemishes, the next phase is to get the harbour diorama started. I have two 1/700 scale kits for buildings, factories and a harbourside crane, so I'm going to have a lot of fun building and painting them, then creating a suitable harbourside stretch of water for everything to be presented on. As the building kits are by Hasegawa and Pit Road, I expect them to be every bit as nice as this Liberty ship kit has been to work with. 

 

  • Member since
    September 2012
Posted by GMorrison on Monday, April 13, 2015 10:22 AM

Me too. There look to be some mods to the deck house, nothing too serious.

 Modeling is an excuse to buy books.

 

  • Member since
    December 2005
  • From: Seattle, Colorado
Posted by onyxman on Monday, April 13, 2015 8:15 AM

Great project! I look forward to it.

Fred

  • Member since
    August 2014
1/700 Liberty Ship, in Greek livery
Posted by Ozmac on Monday, April 13, 2015 1:57 AM

I've been putting off building this kit of the "SS Bootes" mainly because it looked so dull, grey and boring. Then it occurred to me to build it and paint it to look like a post-war Greek cargo vessel. That really appealed, as a key part of the story of the Liberty ships is not just their amazing WWII war record, but also the way these ships then formed the backbone of several great Greek shipping companies post-war, most famously that of Aristotle Onassis.

Here's the kit, in 1/700 scale, by Pit Road, part of their Skywave series. Lots of tweezers work lies ahead.

Back of the box...

Here's the recently restored Liberty Ship, Hellas Liberty, restored by the Greek Shipping Owners Association. This makes it only one of three Liberty Ships left in good condition. The other two are in the US.

I've been getting some experience at making my own decals, so I feel pretty confident about coming up with some suitable Greek signage for this project, using Indesign and Photoshop to help.

I like the colour scheme of this ship, much better than an authentic but dull WWII ship. Apparently, the restored ship was once the SS Arthur M Huddell. It's now on display in the port of Piraeus, after restoration in 2010.

Wish me luck!

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