HMS Duke of York by Dale Koppi

Just a quick write up as I am now 3 months+ into this model.

I started the model by building the base first, and I see now why it is generally left till later. But on the plus side, having the model firmly attached to the base has been very useful.

First task on the list was to remove the bottom of the bottom of the ship so it will fit on the base. I took some of the larger pieces of sprue and glued them across the width of the hull to give some strength while I slice and dice. I used a combination of Dremel and hacksaw to remove the bottom. Everything was going well till I snapped two of the 5 braces. I did not notice how easily the hull could twist till I tried to fit the three piece deck.

Onwards to the base. I used a piece of MDF first, then applied a lot of wall filler to build up the rolling sea. What is actually annoying is that by doing the sea to scale, you hardly notice it. Unless you want the sea to be choppy but this is a nice sunny morning in the Mediterranean. On top of the filler went a sheet of crumpled up tin foil. This didn’t come out to bad, but thanks to me resting on it all the time, I will probably have to pull it off and reapply it later.

And so back the ship. In went the three pieces of the deck, Thanks to my braces snapping and not paying enough attention to this, a lot of work came in to repair the twist of the hull. But the joys of thick superglue and brute force, this was rectified.

At this point, I came to the conclusion that the raised deck lines, (pretty much panel lines) just looked rubbish and I could do better. So, I sanded the decking flat, removing all the other detail that was also on the deck. Turns out that was also a good move as the detail was completely wrong and you could not tell a hatch from an air vent. I intend to do better so I experimented with ways I could do decking. First was the scoring of lines to try reassemble a planked deck. this was fine till the third score and it did not line up with the other lines. So I came up with a tool using 10 scalpel blades. This seemed to work, but then I could not keep the pressure consistent and the 7th blade did not score. Arg, more disaster. So then, I asked the internet as to how they would do this. It replied with a pre cut wooden deck, from Hobbylink Japan with a long backorder, at a whopping 80 euro. OUCH, I thought this is way to expensive then I noticed an article from someone who built a Bismarck and did it with 1.5 thousand wooden planks. And hey presto, there was the idea for me to individually plank this deck. How hard can this be I thought. So I then went and found some microstrip from a company called Slaters. This came in a thickness of 0.5mm which was fine, so I ordered a whole bunch.

Then, for the next two months, I was laying planks down. Each plank is individually superglued to the deck after it is held in place with a tiny strip of Tamiya masking tape. I tried using different plastic glues, but I soon learnt that the plastic glues melt the planks together, and as such defeating the whole point of putting individual planks down. So back to Superglue. I generally either used thin or normal superglue. Thin is great for when you want to use capillary action to suck the glue under the plank. The only problem is that you cant really see how much glue has gone down, so I tended to not believe I had enough glue and then use more and more. This leads to disaster and another 2 nights repairing the damage. But once I got the hang of it, it worked well in those places which were hard to get the needle to the base of the plank. Superglue doe not have a long life before its properties change. This is a complete nuisance as I went through 6 – 8 bottles of superglue. I pour a drop or two of superglue into an empty pill blister strip. Then I use a needle to apply the glue from the empty pill strip to the plank.

So once the plank laying had got going, I needed to get the base structures in place so that I could work the planks around them. This wasn’t so bad except I again decided to change the default kit. The Hanger bay was my next victim. I wanted one of the two hanger bays to be open for the walrus to go into. This required the door to be cut away, and then the internal walls to be scratch built. This actually went rather well, and I didn’t manage to slice my hand open like someone else.

Anyway, after laying 4 -5 thousand planks. The planking was complete and I could feel smug that I was the only individual insane enough to go this far.

And that is where we are today. Still tons to do.