A Glimpse Into the R&C Dockyards

In today's post you can see some of the details about my working process for creating 1/2000 scale warships from scratch.  For this, the Royal Navy's Orion and Colossus-class battleships are selected. (Don't worry, the Japanese ships promised earlier are complete.)

Tools used: pencils, scalpels, sandpaper (from 320 to 1200 grit), pin vice; PVA and superglue.

Materials used: balsa wood (mainly 1mm, 2mm and 3mm thick), bamboo sticks of various girth, steel wire (0.5 to 1.5mm thick), plastic broom or brush bristles

Prep work: I get a scale print for each class in 1/2000 scale. I cut out a part of the blueprint as a template for further work.

On the image above, an outline for the ship is traced on the balsa, which is then cut out, leaving a lot of extra wood around the outline.

These are the Colossus-clas ships in a rough shape. The rest is removed by sandpaper and a sanding block.

We are continuing with a layered approach, building the ships from the hull up. The height of these hulls should be 3mm, but I only had 4mm thick pieces left, so I had to sand away some of it. The bows, being a lot narrower at the waterline than at deck level, usually require concave sanding, which is applied by using a cylindrical object, such as a mug or paint bottle, as a sanding block.

These are the higher fore parts of the hull, being cut out from 1mm thick balsa. Some parts of these outlines will not be overlapping the extremities of the hull, so careful scalpel work is required.

The two pieces are carefully glued together with PVA and then left to dry under some weights, provided by Jenga bricks this time.

The next layer of superstructure is built; while the hulls are taking time to set, the turrets are made from 2mm thick pieces. Five turrets for each ship means 30 turrets overall. Fortunately they don't have separate barbettes to work on.

I had to use wood filler on the bows of Colossus and Hercules, and a lot more on the Orions as there were some gaps appearing after the PVA had dried. This required another bit of sanding before moving on.

On this image you can see how I'm cutting up the same template for different parts of the hull.

I'm building up Colossus and Hercules first, adding bits of superstructure as we go. This overhanging piece is an interesting one. The funnels are usually made from bamboo pieces - these have a sort of oval shape so two sides had been trimmed down. 

I'm mostly using PVA to glue things together - in this instance, the longer drying time came in handy as the rear superstructure was too far off, and the overhanging piece did not connect at the first fit.

It is sufficient to simulate the gun barrels with a flat piece of bamboo, the same applies for the boats. The centerpiece for the tripod masts is 0.5mm steel wire which is pierced into the hull, and then another piece of bamboo stick and small broom bristles take care of the details.

I drill a small hole into the bottom and friction fit a toothpick (with a drop of superglue added to one end) into it to grab on while painting. Once painting is done, it can be easily removed by twisting it out.

After taking some rest, I continue with the Orions, these are more complex and require more layers.

Here they are with everything complete - this time I reversed the order and put in the masts first, then adding the boats at the bottom of the mast. I don't have six painting stands, so I'll do the Colossus-class first, followed by these.

The bases for the ships are made from 2mm plasticard. I cut out rectangular shapes measured to the ships' size, then round the corners off - this helps when the models are knocked about, and also slight imprecisions in the shape of the rectangles can be hidden this way.

I have separate painting stands for the ships and the bases - we end this post now and hopefully you should be able to see the complete products soon.