Trashy Fleets - When Life Gives You Lemnos...

I started working on the USS Mississippi-class pre-dreadnought battleship that later became the RHN Lemnos a while before the Hood and I managed to complete both at about the same time.

My main concern with US-made warships was, of course, modelling the lattice masts. This is not a problem at smaller scales as I just make a tapered conical rod and paint on the detail. However, in 1/1000 scale this was not feasible.

Delving into the internet somebody on some forum mentioned plastic nets in which they stored fruit in supermarkets as lattice mast material, so I first got some oranges and tried to use the net they were stored in, but it proved too big. Next I bought some garlic in a similar package albeit with smaller gaps in the netting, and it worked just fine!

So I know technically the Lemnos had her main mast switched to a traditional battle mast later, but for experimental purposes (and to make the pun in the title) I had mine retain both.

If you are a semi-experienced modeller like myself you know that there are two types of models in one's life: the ones that are mildly irritating and the ones which try to straight up murder you. This scratchbuild was of the latter sort. Things broke, got lost right before painting and so on.

But I think the final result is quite nice for a Trashy Fleets ship.

My main building components were balsa wood, plasticard, small rubber rings and an O-ring from a super glue tube for the main turret ring, the aforementioned garlic net, and other various plastic and metal rods, bamboo sticks etc. I also extensively used Magic Sculpt for filling gaps and sculpting on extra detail, such as the rangefinder cupolas on the turrets.

The pair of boats are re-purposed metal castings from Warfare Miniatures' 1/1200 ADW range.

This was my first experiment using my Dremel as a lathe, as in putting a piece of paperclip into the tool's vice and using sandpaper to taper the main gun barrels.

I painted the ship in subassemblies, the main turrets and their rings in a pair, the secondary turrets without their rings, and the rest in one piece (using some pre-painting on the hull, bridge and cage masts).

She will join my imaginary Asansmati fleet as a cast-off Jackewlinese pre-dreadnought deemed fit for continued service, and will bother the Zinqaguri Navy ceaselessly if she gets a chance.