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Ships in Scale - Latest Issue
September/October '26

Sovereign of the Seas 1637 by Brian62 - Manuta - 1:78

Couldn't leave it so finished the port side dead-eyes

By Brian62 · 1 hour ago1 hr
Porsche 917K by DocRob - Fujimi - 1/24 - Plastic

Thank you Gary, the wipers were a bit fiddly, but looked better than the plastic ones. Luckily Fujimi supplied the tinies part of it twice, because one went airborne during assembly.
I took some liberties with the decals, as I didn´t like the cut roundels, the duct tape around the headlight covers, I´m not so fixated on historic accurateness.
The rear fenders, well, I´ve seen pictures somwhere, which showed a slight silver band showing and that was, why I placed the decals like this. They would have fit otherwise, so it´s my fault. the decals in general were not too bad for my liking, but with a bit more effort, they could have been very good. Areas like the front air ducts and the numerous decals you needed to cut after application were a bit annoying, not to mention the huge carrier film around.
For touch ups, I was able to use the blue paint, which I used for my MFH Brabham BT52b build, which is exactly the same color, luckily.
Finally, it came out halfway ok and I have to admit, that I was window(s) shopping around the still available MFH 1/12 917LH from 1969 and that from me, not being a huge Porsche fan .

Cheers Rob

By DocRob · 2 hours ago2 hr
Porsche 917K by DocRob - Fujimi - 1/24 - Plastic

Thank you Mike, it was indeed a mixed bag with the kit. Most fit astonishing well, given that some parts didn´t look too good on the sprues, specially the black ones.
I used Number 5´s 917K Silver, which is a hot color as well. The metallic grain was fine enough, always a deal braker with metallic paints. I also applied black Mr. Surfacer 1500 as primer and let dry thoroughly.
I first applied two light fast drying coats nearly unthinned and let them dry longer than usual (30 minutes), The idea is, a light coat nearly without thinner should seal the plastic, before the later thinner heavy coats can affect the polystyrene.
After about an hour, I added more coats, each with a higher thinner ratio, to improve the flow and leveling.
All looked fine at first, but after a while, I could norice some surface irritations in the silver paint. I sanded the whole body carefully and applied more coats of silver, this time without problems.
Man, how I love the MFH resin bodies and metal parts, where you don´t need to take care about these things.

Cheers Rob

By DocRob · 2 hours ago2 hr
Sovereign of the Seas 1637 by Brian62 - Manuta - 1:78

Not anything done today, had to move 2 tonne of stone from the front drive to the back garden omg feeling my age and i'll be aching tomorrow :)
I hate getting old lol

By Brian62 · 2 hours ago2 hr
Duchess of Kingston Yacht 1772 by Blue Ensign – Vanguard Models – 1:64 scale.

This is an amazing build Maurice. I still deciding if the DoK is next for me then I see your build and want replicate the rear quarters etc. Not sure if I’m at that stage and it will always be in the back of my mind that I wished I’d added them. Hmmmm a dilemma but an awesome build on your part.

By Bomber_County · 3 hours ago3 hr
SMS WESPE 1876 by wefalck - 1/160 scale - Armoured Gunboat of the Imperial German Navy - when first commissioned

More Paintwork
According to the 1874 ordinance on paintwork, the ships were to have a white boot-topping stripe and a somewhat narrower white stripe just below the main rail. This scheme is clearly visible on the old photograph shown in the previous post. At that time also all the scroll-work was to be painted in a sober white, rather than the ochre/gold of later paint-schemes.

It occurred to me that the easiest way to apply the white stripes on such a small model would be to cut narrow strips of white decal sheet and to place them appropriately. However, the latter part resulted in a lot of stress, fumbling and cursing. These long, narrow strips needed a lot of coercing and touching up with white acrylic in places. As I do not work with decals very often these days, I did not have any decal-softener to hand, which might have made this operation somewhat easier. In the end, the strips had to fixed additionally by infiltrating dilute satin varnish underneath them with a brush. In order to blend everything together, the hull then was given a coat of satin varnish. Perhaps the Prince August Air varnish was too viscous still for the air-brush, but when sprayed on it turned out rather matt and made the hull grey! Brushing on another thin layer got me over the shock moment.

Perhaps it would have been easier to air-brush everything in white and then cut a narrow strip of Tamiya masking tape to mask the area of the white stripes and also to mask strategically for painting the hull in red and black …
The scroll-work at the bow and stern then was picked out in white acrylics using a spotter brush and a (reasonably) steady hand.

Wooden decking for the barbette and the forecastle.

I also painted the only two pieces of wood decking on this ship, namely that on the forecastle with the distinct radial plank pattern (to minimise blast damage from the heavy gun) and within the barbette. The planks had been engraved a long time ago already with a hand-graver. The pieces were given a base coat of Prince August 77 (bois-wood) with the air-brush. This was followed by a light wash of 834 (bois transparent), which has a slightly lighter tone, applied with a flat hair-brush. Some planks were given another light wash of Vallejo 71.074 (beige) with a small brush. The planks then were followed with 0.05 mm black pigmented ‘fine-liner’. The excess was immediately wiped off with a clean finger-tip. In this way a narrow to scale seam remains.

Forecastle decking put into place temporarily.

To be continued ....

By wefalck · 3 hours ago3 hr
TWO Eagle Transporters by Jim H - MPC - 1:48

And another!

By Jim H · 3 hours ago3 hr
Duchess of Kingston Yacht 1772 by Blue Ensign – Vanguard Models – 1:64 scale.

Thanks for the tips on making picture frames... it's all noted down for future projects!

Thinking of LED candles... back in the day when I was wondering what kit to aim for, I read up on the ZHL Royal Caroline. (The conclusion was that it can be made into a breathtaking model, but with poor instructions and much modification needed, it requires way more skill than I have.)
I followed some logs on shipsofscale and noted down so many great ideas- one of which was making candles from LEDs. So, this is from maarten on SOS, his Royal Caroline log, page 18: it's a normal LED (which I buy from amazon, £4 for 10), using white heat-shrink tubing for the candle body.

If you're doing 4 LEDs for the cabin, and are handy with a bit of soldering, all you need is a 3v battery pack, some AWG30 cable and the £4 LEDs and you'd have the whole project done in an afternoon.

Just speaking from my experience, whether or not the final effect is to everyone's taste or not, I've found added LEDs a whole pile of FUN.

By Mowzer · 4 hours ago4 hr
HMS Mercury 1779 by All Mod Cons - Scale 1:64

Hi All
Looking at my photos, it looks as if I got a bit ahead of myself in the previous post. I completed the galleries before the stern work....
Previous kit models I'd completed didn't have quarter galleries so I was a little unsure on how to tackle these to start with.
Using the paper template for the bulwarks shows the placement of the formers. Left picture shows the placement, middle is the paper templates for the formers and right shows the thickness of card required if one was building out of paper

Using the information provided I marked the hull for the former positions and cut them out of some stock, I think it was 3mm (ish)

For the window openings I used the template (147p below) but modified slightly to ensure fit, this was made out of 1mm Alder

and installed, if you look closely you'll note battens behind the windows piece and these are there so that i could install a deeper outer frame to set the inner window frames back

Next stage was to fill the gaps to allow for the planking. For this I used Jelutong as it sands easily but is also quite a solid wood. I used the same process that I use if making filler blocks for the bow and this is essentially taking an oversized block of wood the requisite thickness and placing between the formers. A line is then drawn on the block tracing the the shape of the top and bottom formers onto the block whilst in-situ.. You then have the lines to sand to top and bottom and the majority of this can be completed off the model with only fine tuning required once glued into place.

Planking and external window frames were completed next

Windows were then made and glued into place, they're not perfect and the camera seems to make them look even worse than what they are (honest 😊)

This is currently as it stands at time of posting, still some work to do

Thanks for dropping by

Mark

By All Mod Cons · 5 hours ago5 hr
Duchess of Kingston Yacht 1772 by Blue Ensign – Vanguard Models – 1:64 scale.

Thank you Ronald and Glenn
@ Mowzer -The parquet is printed from images online, I simply searched for parquet flooring patterns.
The window frames are some brass etch I had lying around, originally from Scale link many years ago.
The picture frame is made from thin slices of 0.6mm Boxwood mounted around the photo. I used dots of pva to give a raised pattern which is then painted gold.
I’m in two minds about use of leds. The Artesania set I have seem too large for my purpose I want something much smaller, more akin to a candle. I only need four in total, but once I’ve finished the model I know that for me the novelty will quickly wear off..

@ Dale – Thank you Dale, one can imagine that a women of great wealth may well commission a model of her yacht but I think my decoration will be fairly sparse.
Now if you’re looking for a ‘proper’ job..

This is the real thing, the wonderful rendition of the Royal Yacht Caroline, by Doris, a superb artist and modelmaker.
Simply takes my breath away.

Maurice.

By Blue Ensign · 5 hours ago5 hr