Revell Queen Mary II Hull Construction

Here is a view of the bow thrusters and cover installed. Unfortunately you can't see the bow thrusters because they do look great when you look inside. My girlfriend Jayme painted them and is pretty disappointed that you have to look pretty hard to see them. When It came to installing the bow thrusters I did it after I put the hull together. The directions say to do it when you put the hulls together but personally I found it much easier afterwards. I also found putting in covers afterwards a lot easier too. I used Zap it glue to put the cover on so I didn't ruin the paint job on the hull. The glue stains will disappear when I dull coat it. I've had to do a little touching up so you'll have to excuse the tape in the photos. I attached the Azi Pods and cemented them all in and won't attach the propellers until last. I do that so I don't break them in the process of building the model and it's a bit of a superstition for me as well. Revell gives you decals for the red on the bottom of the hull and waterline but I highly recommend painting it yourself. Again you want it as real as possible so try to avoid decals where you can. I attached the stabilizers and still noticed a little light through the opening. I used bondo and filled in behind and around because you don't want to see through the ship and you want to give the impression of it being the real thing. I attached the inner cabins to the inside of the hull. I primed the pieces, painted them white and glued them in place. As you can see in the picture the back of the cabin is painted black. I glued clear styrene plastic to the back and painted them black. By doing this it gives the illusion of windows when you look through the spaces in the hull and you won't be able to see inside the ship. I actually used more clothes pins than what you see in the picture to make sure it was secured all the way along. Next on the list was to get the two stern decks ready for painting and securing. The bottom deck was painted grey and the walls white. You won't see it when you install it in the stern but I like to know I did it. Next was to paint the stern deck and the pool area. In order to do this I removed the grain by sand it down flat. I did this because the actual stern deck of the Queen Mary II doesn't appear to be wood, but painted steel. There are also ledges around the stairwell and pool that are not there in real life. I removed them as well by sanding them down and what a difference it makes just in scale alone. The picture of the stern deck you see is only the beginning. I still have touching up and detail to add. There are also a couple decals and photo-etch parts that have to be applied but I'll get into that later.

Jayme's M/S Batory 1/500 Scale Model

So my boyfriend Scott has entrusted me with the M/S Batory from Mirage Models. Aside from helping him out with the odd project on his models, this will be the first time I've ever had my own model to work on. I started by gluing the hull together and filling in any gaps along the edge with bondo, then sanding it all down. There were two cracks in the hull that needed to be glued together and there was a gash out of the stern. I sanded down the broken piece out of the stern and will have to find another piece to put in its place. I've also primed the hull and it is now ready for painting. There's been a little discrepancy about the colour of the hull. The pictures I've found on the Internet all appear to have a black hull, but the model kit says it was grey. Scott also agrees that the hull is grey and says that its sister ship the Pilsudski had the black hull, which may be the reason it is hard to look up pictures of the original. So I will be going with grey for the colour of the hull. As far as the rest of the construction goes I have only put together the two funnels and gotten the rest of the superstructure ready for priming. I'm also looking forward to putting together the columns that fit in between the hull and the decks with the lifeboats. I've taken a look at the peices for it and they are VERY tiny...should be fun!

Construction of the Revell Queen Mary II

Here is the start of my Revell Queen Mary II. I haven't added anything yet such as the bow thrusters, stabilizers and Azi Pods yet. After I put the two halves together I made sure I sanded and filled any imperfections. After that was done I primed the entire hull with Tamiya Surface Primer. By using the grey primer I could see any imperfections I missed along the way. After priming I sprayed the entire hull in Testors Matt Black. I then taped off the entire hull except for the bottom where I used Tremclad's Red Zinc Oxide Paint. This is the closest colour I could find to anti-fouling paint. I bought both the spray and the regular for touching up. With the entire hull still taped up I taped off the bottom and painted the red strip using Testors Flat Red between the anti-fouling and black on the hull. Once that was done I taped off that section and painted the white stripe on the water line and the white on the superstructure using Testors Flat White. As far as spray painting I find Testors a great paint to use. When it comes to brush painting I like to use Humbrol. I find Humbrol very forgiving and easy to use with no clumping and with minimal brush strokes. I do recommend spraying the large sections of this model. Not only does it save a whole lot of time but the finish is so much nicer. The rest of the pictures to come will be more detailed due to the fact I had already come this far before I discovered this whole blog idea (What a Hoot). There is still some touching up to do to the hull. This is the outcome after I had peeled the tape off. Next was to install the Azi Pods and bow thrusters and finish touching up the hull. I installed the inside cabins on the hull by first priming them and painting them white. I applied clear styrene plastic to the back and gave it about three coats of black. Remember, you don't want to be able to see through the hull and you want the illusion of cabins behind all those windows.

Trumpeter Seawolf Submarine 1/144 Scale

Here is the Trumpeter Seawolf Submarine as promised. Again no construction pictures but I am new to this and all the next ones to come will have the entire build. As far as the kit is concerned its Great. Trumpeter makes a good solid kit. I had the entire thing put together in a day. It does however need filling on both ends of the hull. The bow and stern pieces had a few small gaps but nothing to really worry about. I also strengthened the hull with sprue from the kit and spaced it out every two inches to add more strength. I didn't put any of the antenna's on the sail only because I wanted a sleek version of the sub. As far as researching the colour scheme I've seen quite a few different versions. I did learn however that there is no red on the hull of the Seawolf Submarines as they have in the model photos. There seems to be different shades of Grey and Black (If that's possible). I wanted to add some colour to this so I used Black with Euro Grey from Testors. Although I'm not the biggest fan of Testors I find their spray to be quite good. The Euro Grey on the sub is a lot darker than what is shown in the photos. The most interesting part of the sub is the decals. I probably did one of the stupidest things anybody can do when painting a model. I had the entire thing completed when I went to clear coat it. I accidentally grabbed the grey that was sitting next to it and started spraying the model. Now that I had ruined the paint job and the decals there was only one thing to do. Repaint it and get some more decals. Well, repainting the model wasn't a problem. Finding decals for the Seawolf was. You can make your own decals using decal paper from your local hobby store and a colour printer. This method works great and makes very strong and clear decals. Unfortunately you need a special printer to do white. I wasn't about to go out and buy a new printer so I went to my local hobby store and talked to the owner. Well let me tell ya, this guy saved me a whole lot of trouble. He handed me over some dry transfer decals and I never looked back. Don't get me wrong, I did pay for them before I left. The beautiful thing about dry transfer decals is that there is no decal out line. The difficult thing about dry transfer decals is lining up the numbers which is solved quite easily by using tape. All you do is line up and rub on. The great thing about ruining my original paint job is that I learned quite a bit about all the options you have if you do happen to ruin your decals. These actually turned out better than the decals the kit came with so I was quite pleased with that one. I wasn't impressed with the hatch decals so I left them out. Next on my list was clear coating the model and sealing the decals. That was obtained by three light coats of clear coat. With the bow I wanted the sonar dome to stand out only because it is all one colour on the real Seawolf. I did this by dull coating the entire bow section. I spent a lot of time debating on this colour scheme only because I have seen some great models of this sub. Each one has been a little different including ones with red bottoms and ones with black. I have also seen one that was modified into the SSN 23 Jimmy Carter adding 3 to 4 inches to the sub. The Gentleman who made this did a great job. I would've had a link to that but I haven't been able to find it since. So basically to sum it up I kept true to the colours but lightened it up to add some contrast. I'm now in the process of having a case made up for it and I can't stress enough on how important that is. Not only does it keep dust off but really finishes it up and adds a whole lot of professionalism to it.