Prince of Wales Tamiya 1/350 OOB - Liberty Port

I finished up Tamiya’s 1/350 Prince of Wales today. Built right out of the box because I wanted to practice matching up deck pieces and eliminating the seams they poorly engineered into these kits :-(

I mixed up Vallejo paints to do the camo and cleared everything with MCW 65% flat. Since they included the Japanese bombers I did those up in camo as well to make up this little vingette. The base in pink foam from Home Depot covered with dryer sheets. They make waves super easy to form. The rest is standard water base techniques with acrylic craft paints, cotton and gel medium.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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CapnMac82

Small detail--the main battery director ought to be pointed where the main battery is pointing.

Royal Navy practice about the secondary battery pointed in a main batery engagement varied per ship.  Typically, they's track to the main director, unless the secondary directors had some other target to monitor.

 

thanks Cap'n!
Tamiya apparently doesn't have this part to scale haha as it wouldn't rotate any further...it hits the top of the bridge structure(not sure what area that is in front of it). I pulled it off and made a new mounting rod for it. The next pics will have it positioned to match the main battery. 

Small detail--the main battery director ought to be pointed where the main battery is pointing.

Royal Navy practice about the secondary battery pointed in a main batery engagement varied per ship.  Typically, they's track to the main director, unless the secondary directors had some other target to monitor.

Tonight i worked on the water. I laid out all the tissue with a bottle of realistic water that i bought some time ago. Filled in all the gaps along the hull. Then started adding some white caps to the waves and some texture in between waves. Once this dries I'll add a little more color, whites and teal greens and some sea green near the hull to add some depth. I tried out my sons wide angle lens for the iphone but need some practice aigning it. Pics seem to be a tad blurry.

This one's a good comparison to the prior one with no tissue and water effects...

Just a quick liberty in port here, heard there was a Japanese Task Force in the area...

A true teaser shot. It’s not set all the way in the base or mounted or anything I just wanted to see what the water looked like versus the camouflage scheme.

I have all the rigging complete. One of the guys in our local club gave me some good instructions to help improve what I was doing with rigging. I had a lot of glue bombs on King George V And trouble just getting the rigging line to stick to the masts. turns out new superglue is really important. And then I was using a needle to apply the superglue so that it wasn't just the exact location that the line connected to the mast. Thrilled there are no glue bombs on this one. I have all the paint on the easy line and I am ready to add insulators and then do some flat tire work.

Finished up a bunch of the little guns and targeting radar's. I've got a flory wash on the superstructure now so that I can get everything to match in tone. Painting and detailing the aircraft is next. I'll do that while I'm working on the water base

Bit of play by play today. Ended up with some family stuff today so this will probably soill over to tomorrow. So far i have each superstructure rigged. Later tonight I should be able to connect the tw.

Here's the stern deck rigged up. One of the guys at the local club give me advice on how to do the rigging. The most important thing he said was fresh superglue. Then I'm applying the glue with a needle so that it's very localized. Surprisingly the needle doesn't stick to the part or the EZ line which is great. Working hard not to bend the plastic masts..

Steaming into Singapore tomorrow! All the painting is done done done. Rigging and final assembly to go.

last will be to put her in the water. I'll probably spend all week putting 1 coat of gloss varnish on the water every day.

modelcrazy

The straps have some over paint but I think they are too small to see with normal viewing distance with the eye. Looks good

 

ugg I hate the macro lense haha! I see that now. Going to try and clean them up some more. All the rafts are fairly prominent, especially these on the stern deck.

 I'm thru 4 out of 5 colors now. Just the green left on the Superstructure to do tonight. Then back to assembly.

I cleaned up the life rafts. I think these look pretty good now. Feel free to drop in your opinion. I'm not ashamed to blow it up and redo it 

working on building up 1 section of deck at a time right now. It's a bit of a different approach for me. Not quite done with the boat deck but thought I'd post my progress so i could step back and see how things look. No close up pics... I didn't like a couple things close up so going to do a little more detail work before I get to final assembly. So here's the mock up. The boats are just set in place, same for the gun decks on either side.

I have some ideas on how to do the rigging. That's the motivation to do 1 deck at a time. I'm hoping to do all the rigging while I can twist and turn the deck so it's easier to make the connections to the deck and the masts. We'll see how that goes later this week.

Thanks Steve, appreciate you stopping by and checking it out!

Not much to report lately. Just alot of standard assembly stuff. I'm working on assembling the bridge decks now. Put a satin coat on the hull over the weekend so I can weather it this week. I've found the washes to be more conTrollable when i let the clear coat dry lol go figure 

Lovely!  Really enjoing your build.

The hull is painted up and ready for a satin clear and then a wash! The only thing i wish is that i could get a better contrast to show the shadows I did for the plating. It's hard to see in these pics so will try for outdoor light tomorrow when it's supposed to be sunny. The positive is that I didn't want it bold. Came out suttle without getting washed out. My dark grey is a little too dark. May try to lighten it but need to see what happens under the clear 1st. My lighter colors changed alot. Enough to make me stop spraying right away and wait till it dried lol

She is looking great!  That decking and hull work looks spot on!  Your base is going to go so well with the ship and really add to its presentation.  Will be following along closely.

TJS

I had a copy of a hull arrangement for KGV so I used it to rough out where the plate welds were at. A few lines will need covered up i think as there are just a few errant ones in these shots. Easy to do though with this technique. Now if i can get our desktop computer fixed I can move on to the hull camo 

You guys may find this interesting...here's my artist's pallet at the end -

Thx guys. Let's get extra butter on that popcorn! Been bouncing around a bit while i wait on different sections to dry. Put a satin coat on the deck last night so today working on the water. Here's a progression of work photos. I'll let this dry till I'm ready too place the hull. Then i can add the tissue and gel medium before doing some final dry brushing and coating with gloss Varnish.

Nice work!

A favorite class of battleships.  Have popocorn in hand.

I think you've got it coming along nicely. The wash should really do the job. I'm guessing light at first then more, if needed.

Keep up the good work.

Jim 

Stay Safe. 

This is looking really cool. I don’t know anything about ships so I don’t say much, but I really enjoy following ship builds. Thanks for posting.  

Thx Cap'nMac, too funny! no extras for this one so we're gonna see what i can do with paint 

working on the deck now. My thought process  being that it'll be easier to mask the deck while i do the hull since it's all one color. This way if any paint lifts the repairs are easier. 

i also spent a bunch of time trying to improve on my last effort. on KGV the deck looked good in white grey primer, then when I did the base color and then the wash the deck gear got coated in too many coats of everything and I ended up masking the deck and priming the gear again. 
this is all painted with a brush. A real surprise technique came by chance. All the color variations you see are the effect of the paint starting to seperate in the mixing. When I did KGV i mixed vallejo model color with Tamiya X-20A. That works real well and fixed my paint lifting issues. I have found it doesn't work well with black or metal colors. Not sure what the link is but obviously some component of the black paint doesn't like it  

And here's a few close ups

TheMongoose

just an early pic to show what a mess it looks like. Wait till I brush a little cement over it to clean up some plastic hairs, file it down smooth, and coat it with some Mr Surfacer...sounds like a lot when you write it out haha

That would have sent me to shopping for PE

Bravo for getting to look that good!

While some heavy gel dries on the base I'm doing some monotonous chain drilling ;-)

just an early pic to show what a mess it looks like. Wait till I brush a little cement over it to clean up some plastic hairs, file it down smooth, and coat it with some Mr Surfacer...sounds like a lot when you write it out haha