Down to the waterline
As is my usual practice with warship models I wanted to build the model as a waterline set in a seascape. To do this, besides cutting down the hull I also had to trim the bracing supports. I marked the cut line with masking tape on each length of hull and using a disc saw blade in my motor tool trimmed off the unwanted lower hull sections. The braces were simply “snipped” with cutters to the required depth. I deliberately cut the hull below the waterline mark on the hull because I wanted the vessel to be in a slight swell “steaming” at sea and have sections of lower hull visible. After cleaning up the cut lines the hull parts were assembled including the deck pieces (Fore and rear deck and the step bulkhead between the two decks).
To tidy the hull up further I made a blanking plate of 1mm thick plastic card to blank over the open bottom of the hull. After drying this was trimmed to match the lines of the hull and any gaps filled with model filler, this included any join lines on the hull. After rubbing down the filler with fine wet n dry paper, I stated to add some details to the deck areas starting with the anchors and anchor cables.
Anchors
The first mistake by Trumpeter is the anchors, when Belfast came out of her rebuild she only had two anchors, one either side of the bow. The kit has the correct number of anchors but they forgot to add the blanking plate over the disused anchor hawse pipe on the Starboard side although they have put the deck blanking plate correctly. This was simply made from plastic card and was glued into place.
Whilst I had the motor tool out, I drilled out the top anchor hawse pipe openings on the fore deck, this now looks far better than the kit example. Because the anchors in the kit don’t have the centre stem (that the anchor chain attaches too), I made a new one from square plastic rod. This was attached to the anchor at the required angle before gluing the assembly into place, with the anchor in position and the stem poking up slightly through the cleaned out hawse pipe. Taking the kit supplied anchor chain I measured the required length and glued the chain into place, attaching one end to the top of the anchor stem and the other to the opening of the anchor chain storage locker. I then glued the various ventilation trunks, deck edge bollards, torpedo launchers and deck winches into place.