1/350 FFG-48 USS Vandegrift, Academy& Pontos

Worked heavily on the hull. Citadel’s chaos black primer followed by some light and dark ghost grey mottling, then oversprayed the boot line with grimy black. Think you can see the shadowing affect in some of the pics.

Now for some dry time and then tomorrow apply my special blend of hull red  :shipcaptain:

Well the paint came out smooth but I feel like I covered up too much of my marbling coat. There’s still some shadowing behind the red and maybe it will show up a little better after the flat coat. If nothing else I’ll weather it some when i get ready to do the rust and algae.

I painted up the sonar according to my dry dock pic

And I ended up doing more To the shaft and prop than I thought i would. Academy had a bulbous piece where the shaft entered the hull that doesn’t exist, the supports were rectangles so i tapered the edges, and i was able to use a Dremel cylindrical stone in my drill press to thin out the prop blades.

Once I had the action up front I just couldn't set the helo on the deck so I have big brother taking off, the doors closing for his berth and the other opening to bring out her other brother.

And here are some other ones to show some details and how she fitted out. 

6 weeks start to finish. I used MCW lacquer paints for everything; light ghost grey on verticals and a lightened mix with 10% white for center panels and oil canning down the sides(washed out in the latest photos though but it is there), and dark ghost grey for the horizontals with a 10% black mix for tonal variation. Primer is Citadel Chaos Black for the hull and MCW grey for the PE and plastic. Only 1 piece of Pontos PE was lost during the build and I was able to fold up a new piece out of scrap. The Desron on each side of the superstructure wasn't provided so I hand painted them. I also tried the Flexy 5k CA for handrails and some of the parts that stick out, like the flag mast, to see how it works. It takes longer to dry, more like thick CA in time. Acts like a medium CA. Is easy to remove and redo. More ships to come as I am way better at this than planes. Definitely going to continue using PE sets where I can. Awesome Group Build. I'll be back for more after I build the bomber my daughter got me for my birthday!