References used for this build:
- AJ Press number 14 Nelson and Rodney. Polish language softback book with two large double sided sets of ship plans of both vessels at particular points in fit drawn in 1:400th scale. The book thou in Polish as lots of pictures and a few colour artworks (full page A-4) with English captions. (ISBN 83-7237-021-4)
- Man O’ War 3 Battleships Rodney & Nelson, By Alan Raven & John Roberts, Arm & Armour Press 1973 (ISBN-0-85368-263-1)
- Nelson & Rodney 1927-1949 The Big Battleships, By Neil McCart. Published by Maritime Books (ISBN 1-904459-16-1)
My construction methods are very different from say Les’s but I’ve developed this method that it’s very efficient if building these for a living as I do. I tend to assemble as much of the kit onto the hull unless it will decidedly interfere with the detail painting of the ship. In which case the assemblies are built and detailed separately until near the end. For this project the assemblies were the Main Hull, Main and Secondary gun turrets, and Ship’s Boats (stowed Mid-ships).
As this model of Rodney depicts her shortly after entering service with the Fleet in 1927 I thought I’d display the model with its Main and Secondary armaments swung over to Port as if preparing to shoot on a Naval gunnery range.
Main hull:
Assembly starts with the fitting of the base plate to the bottom of the hull, this received a skim of model filler along it’s length to blend the join between the two parts and the location holes in the hull for the ship‘s boat davits along the side of the ship and handling cranes near the bow of the ship. After rubbing the filler down with wet n dry paper and removing the “scum” from the parts I attached kit parts B-37 the base units for the rear most anti aircraft guns (Kit parts B-42 & B-43). As well as the kits anchors parts A-2 (three of them). I could have used the examples in the WEM set but chose not to. Also attached were the anchor capstans kit parts A-25 & A-26.
Superstructure:
Next I left the hull and concentrated on the large superstructure parts initially assembling them as separate sub-assemblies using only the basic parts. These were carefully skimmed with model filler where required to blend join lines, be careful as there is some surface detail on these parts. In the case of the Bridge assembly I left off initially all additional parts that fit into kit part B-30 (Roof of the Bridge). |In the case of the Funnel I only assembled the following parts A-31 &32 (sides) and A-36 (top) and the platforms A-37 &38 (on sides of Funnel).Has I forgot to replace the funnel caps on the funnels of the KGV review previously I was determined to accomplish this on this build. First of all with the basic funnel assembly I fitted a dental burr into my motor tool and proceeded to carefully remove the molded funnel cap, BE Careful when doing this your self as the burr tends to grab at the model from time to time and before you know it you ripped more out than you want. Once this was completed I removed the funnel cap part from the WEM detailing set and after trimming and gently bending it as per instructions glued it into place on top of the funnel. The location marks for the Siren Platform kit part A-40 and A-1 (pipes on face of Funnel) were filled with filler.
