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The site is back up and I’ve enabled comments with the usual comment filters. I have a few side projects going on and some are nearly finished but I decided to post more unrelated images instead of ripening the posts on oak for a year…

Actually, I updated my blog to take my mind off my cat Mouse, Slayer of Photoetch, who was put to sleep today. She was only 10 year old and suffered from a tumor in her nose that suddenly grew very large starting to push out her right eye; for three months we thought she was fighting an infection as the X-rays were clean and she was finally getting better, but apparently not. We buried her in the garden close to one of her favorite spots. Good bye my friend.

I bought a new airbrush over a year ago, a Harder & Steenbeck Infinity (perhaps I’ll make a post later why this airbrush is really fantastic) and experimented with various paints, thinners, airbrush settings, oil washes and filters. The goal was to mimic the blue-grayish AP507B that Hood was painted with. I tried water-based paints but I think they hate me. I just cannot apply these paints to the smallest parts without suffering from tip-dry, overspray or grainy surfaces. Enamels are so much easier to use and cleaning the airbrush afterwards takes only minutes. The White Ensign Model colourcoats offer a premixed AP507B and spray beautifully although they are slightly less resistant than Humbrol when sprayed on PE and resin (might just be me). However, WEM suffered a few problems with restocking and as I (think to) know that several of their colors (based on the Snyder and Short color charts ) are wrong, so I decided to experiment with mixing. My local hobby shop had an old binder by Humbrol called the Colour System that had a few recipes and using Humbrol 34 (white), 77 (navy blue) and 140 (gull grey) in a 1:1:1 ratio is an excellent match for AP507B. (This doesn’t mean those color charts shouldn’t be in your collection).

Perhaps the result is a bit too dark, but the overall effect is nice, especially compared to the single coat in the previous image. The sides are sprayed with AP507B, and the top and bottom surfaces with a coat with more white and blue respectively. I added some filters and drybrushed in pure white (artist oils) and added some additional (artist oil) highlights in black, umber, and probably a few colors more. I want to emphasize all details without giving the idea of a severely weathered ship; HMS Hood was painted about a week before she sank. I have to experiment with the deck colors a bit more (wood) but I’m about ready to start painting the hull.

The old aft searchlight platform (ASP) was damaged during cleaning up for painting and needed to be replaced. I drew the part in CAD first. It’s both a building manual and a note combined. The old AOTS shows this platform in several views but the measurements do not agree with each other. So, the CAD file is my ‘new’ reference’ and I think I’m going to do this more often. I even drew in what styrene strips go where and assembly is then very fast. ish.

The lines were scribed in styrene using a steel ruler and the depth probe of the calipers. Very easy and very accurate. The two cylindrical parts of the top floor of the ASP do not have doors and as all pictures seem to indicate this area was open I decided to leave it open on the sides as well as on the aft bulkhead. However, cutting out doors and then folding the plastic won’t work, so I first folded the part around (lathed-to-size) rod, boiled the part for a while, and then cut out the door and added the slanted interior. Tricky but it worked.

The front bulkhead fits the top floor excellently. Caliper and CAD work give good results. The previous variant of the ASP had the bulkhead glue onto the deck, now it is glued against the deck. Can’t remember why I made this bad decision for the previous version, but it resulted in the part being tossed.

The old ASP had to be removed with subtle force from the deck part. A few positioning pins were added for easy fixing later.

The rest of the part is now simple a matter of stacking. I started with a core of several layers, added the sides, and puttied everything smooth. At least the forward corners (well aft actually) of the ASP are now round as they should be.

The wings for the two lower searchlights are very delicate. I never met a circle cutter I liked so when I need to carve a circle (or in this an arc) I make a disc on the lathe to be used as a template. The wings were added using a small template for both the right height and angle. I used some tape to get an ‘exact’ measurement and added the bulkhead cut to size and small strip later. Note that I add that strip on a flat surface; otherwise it will never look right.

Existing detail was transferred; some railing, stairs, Carleys and ammo lockers. The structure consists of two parts for easy painting and is still very open.

TO BE UPDATED

The structure and searchlights are now painted. The fog light still needs to be assembled so no pics yet.

Continuing from part I

With the soldering going so well I decided to solder on a bit more and had some parts redesigned and etched.

Some minor detail was added first. The two ladders on the inside of the funnel are placed with a jig so that the gantry will link up to it nicely. The ladder is by Aber, one of the few commercial products I have used (I’ll probably use my own ladders in the future). The steam pipes cluttered around the funnel are made from rod; drilled in, chopped up to give it that knuckle on the end, and fixed with brass wire. That is, I didn’t glue the pipes to the wire yet to avoid handling damage in that area.

Note that there is a bit of damage on the aft funnel that was later patched up; a nice piece of detail to add. The top left image also shows the typical Royal Navy approach to painting the ship; they do not use the foot rails found on axis battleships with a series of pulleys and planks to stand on. It doesn’t seem very safe but it does save you building an awful lot of these foot rails. The pulleys are etched parts, folded once.

Here’s a sketch of the funnel cage.  The crew could access the funnel from below, climb to the top and fix an awning to the cage (but usually did so only when the boilers were out). I made this small drawing in Autocad of the funnel cage with a series of 0.2mm holes for the supports of the cage and for a few pins to hold the cage in place. A ring goes around the funnel cap supporting a series of arches. One large grande arche is on the ship center line. I decided to make a drilling template for the supports and support pins.

The inside of the funnel isn’t as perfect as I’d hoped and deformed a bit with all these layers of plastic going around it. Perhaps all these brass wires in the inside are a bit too taut. I already botched up fitting several well-executed gantries so I came up with a disposable fitting template to check the goodness of fit; should have come up with that earlier!

The soldering of the gantry itself was slightly tricky and I had to tape the parts down at every step. I added the solder like I’d normally add CA; a few spots to fix the part, with a line of solder when it’s more or less in place.

Now the template for the cage. I bought a pin chuck to hold the 0.2mm drills. When I put the pin chuck in the Proxxon chuck (Röhm actually) and dutifully fixed the chuck with the key at all three positions as my tool shop ordered me to do, the pin chuck was not centered correctly; I really had to try, try and try again until it was finally worked. I even bought a new chuck so that I now have a nicely centered chuck/pin chuck combination never to be separated. I made a picture of the spinning drill as proof it finally worked. I started with the drill protruding only a few mms from the chuck but the drill will usually walk away slightly—drilling off center—and the drill will break when the chuck is near the work piece; I lost three drills before I figured this out. So, I finally had the drill sticking about 1 cm or so from the chuck so that it could flex. The result is shown at right after drilling and with the positioning pins. The tubes at the center are supports for the arcs of the cage, made from aluminum so that the brass wire won’t be soldered to them.

I had some room to spare on my last etch so I added a folding template for the ring of the cage; the brass was far too stiff to use this template but it did work to check the shape. I started by rolling the handle of my X-acto knife over a 0.2mm brass wire until the diameter was correct. With some pressure from a pair of pliers I added the parallel center until the shape was more or less right. The wire was transferred to the jig, held in place by tape and the supports were added one by one. I started opposite where the ends of the ring meet and cut the ring to size only when nearly all supports were in place. The positioning pins could then be removed.

The arcs were bent into shape and checked against a high-tech drawing. The grande arche was added first, followed by the other arches. Note that the ends of each arc have a 90-degree bend; this allowed me to temporarily tape the arc to the jig and keep the direction of the arc upwards; otherwise it will just fall over all the time. I fixed the end of a single arch to the grande arch, fix the arch to the ring, and reapply to both ends in succession. By doing this, there is no stress in the solder and when I apply heat to the center they do not change position (much).

Afterwards three etched parts were added on top of the intersections of all the arcs. The difficulty was not so much avoiding the desoldering of all arcs but aligning the etchings themselves. The cage could then be lifted from the jig. One cage was damaged beyond repair at this phase. One cage took between five and six hours to make; this time was mainly spent looking through the Optivisor and handling the parts with tweezers and the soldering iron until the alignment was to my satisfaction (which is never, naturally).

These funnels took more than a fair amount of planning and experimentation but now have a level of detail that I would not have thought possible a few years ago (cage and gantry are not fixed yet in this picture). The soldering allows for much better and clearer work than using super glue and it is much easier to correct.

Not that many photographs are available of the weather deck amidships. This area was briefly out to the open but quickly covered by the shelter deck. Still, most drawings and the Anatomy of the Ship volume shows the location of vents and details to add.

It’s just a minor issue, but note that the bulwark was changed when the boat deck was extended. The position of the accommodation ladder was moved aft when the pompom were placed in the 1929-1931 refit. Note that the ladder is stored on deck in the upper image.  The fairlead apparently also switched position. Naturally, this means that the bollards placed on the deck were moved as well.  If you go to the Willis collection of the website of the HMS Hood association you’ll notice the bollards just aft of the first of the three 5.5″ guns and the fairlead itself. This change is missed by all drawings so the exact position was estimated to be between the first and second 5.5″ gun.

This image shows a few nice details. A 5.5″ ammo dredger hoist is seen at (A). All the 5.5″ ammo hoists weee removed by 1940, however, the 4″ ammo hoists on the shelter deck are all located exactly at the same location but one deck higher. As know the forward and after 5.5″ ammo magazines and shell rooms were converted to 4″ ammo magazines, I’m confident sure new ammo hoists were fitted even though these are not mentioned. At (B) a support stanchion is seen (with a white band) that are clearly indicated on the drawings. A ladder to the shelter deck is indicated at (C). There’s something at (D), but I haven’t been able to identify it. I’m not sure it was still present on HMS Hood in 1941 and decided not to add it.

On this nice side view of HMS Hood two large deck vents are seen at (A) and (B). Note that the vent at (B) is seen to face aft at  (C, from Warship Pictorial #20). A 5.5″ammo dredger hoist is visible at (D). Note that the cradles (E)  for the boats and launches are exactly above the support stanchions.

Pictures after HMS Hood’s various refits below decks are rare. Upon comparing pictures of HMS Hood from 1934 and 1939, it appears that support columns are placed below the 4″ guns at (A). The aft one is particularly vague. The R-class battleships do not have these columns below their 4″ gun mounts so perhaps I’m over-analyzing. Note the left-over detail from the davits at (B) that needs to be reproduced.

In these four small images support columns appear to be present, well enough to decide to add them to the model. If you have your drawings nearby: the in the bottom-left image is not the officers-of-quarters position (a small position at about the same location ), as this position was removed in 1929-1931.

So, this is what the model looks like below the boat deck.  One of the disadvantages of my model is that the hull is still the old White Ensign Model core. Because I “like” the way the hull looks now and the amount of time invested in it, I decided not to scrap that part. Still, the new styrene decks were added rather amateurishly; glued directly on resin and putty (oh no). Note the patchwork of replacement decks. This looks awful but will be very hard to spot once to model is done. One of the greatest risks is that the bond between the deck and hull will give way and the model is ruined beyond my emotional capacity for recovery. In order to avoid that, the superstructure pieces will not be glued to the deck; note the brass pins; the are drilled into the hull 1 cm deep acting as an anchor to the deck parts. Each brass pin has been tapped with a M1 thread (very carefully!) so that the superstructure parts can be screwed down, all cleverly hidden beneath gun mounts and directors.  Some of the brass pins that remain visible on the model have been fitted with a styrene jacket for easy painting. The thinner support columns were drilled in using the drill press. The deck openings for the stairs going to the lower levels are visible.

Details that are know to be present below decks are the afore-mentioned vents, hatches, wash deck lockers, 4″ ammo lifts, bollards, support pillars, davits and the chutes. The hatch was based on images of a King George V class battleship where the chute is in the open near the aft breakwater. The davits were made in series, four of which are to be placed on the quarterdeck. The four davits I liked least were placed below decks. A slight waste of effort, but nice for this very picture and people taking the time to check if all detail is accounted for. Note that the name place with the text ‘HMS HOOD’ is placed behind the hatches in the bulwark her name can now be found on six places on the model. The bottom-right image shows the cordage reels, the 4″ ammo supply hoist (that is, a bit of styrene strip) and rods leading to the mushroom vents (if you have a vent of deck, the piping has to go somewhere).

Now that most of the hull is complete I decided to add some additional detail: a small line scribed between contiguous armor plates. The artwork by Burt in his battleships books shows these lines and even though they are not very visible on most photographs I decided to add them anyway because it looks rather nice. Now, the lines by Burt prove totally imaginary after cross-referencing them with HMS Hood’s shell extension plan from the National Maritime Museum. It’s just a matter of counting the frame numbers, taking the non-constant frame spacing into account, and a bit of scratching to do. Here the hull problems resurfaced again and many lines required repair and rescratching, including some repair work of the armor belt (plastic) delaminating from the resin hull. Sigh, that was very depressing and it still looks bad. Perhaps I should just paint the model and be done with it. The hatches on the side of the hull were added as were the remains of the davits. These hatches were done twice, because I damaged the hinge system beyond repair during the line scratching.