Finished this one up earlier this year. The Eduard kit is one of their earlier ones, yet still went together great. Had some issues along the way, mostly due to outside forces, but now she’s all done. Added to the Model Making page, and can be accessed directly HERE.
This is part of a review of a new product line by IPP out of Korea. The original post, as below, that I did on the US Navy colors, and the follow-up review if the IJN colors can be seen HERE on the Modelwarships.com website.
Matt of Kraken Hobbies sent along some samples of the new lacquer based ship paints from IPP of Korea. The range is mostly made up of USN WWII colors at this point, but does also have some WWII IJN colors, as well as modern colors. The lineup as of now is, per Matt’s ability to order:
IJN: Sasebo Grey, Kure Grey, Linoleum Brown
USN: 20B, 5-O, 5-L, 5-H, 5-S, 5-N, 5-P
Modern USN: Deck Matt, Flight Deck Matt, Freeboard Superstructure Matt
JMSDF: Freeboard Superstructure Matt, Deck Matt
Per Matt, they also offer their own brand of thinner and leveling fluid, which I would recommend. More on why later.
The following paints were tested by myself and IJN expert Dan Kaplan. I’ll comment on the three USN colors, Dan will chime in on this thread with his thoughts on the IJN offerings. Testing was done by spraying the paints on white styrene, unprimed, to match as close as possible the Snyder and Short paint chip cards (hereafter S&S) that both Dan and I possess. Continue reading
I’ve added a new photo feature on the USS Benson, a 1/350th scale model of a destroyer that I finished about a year ago. Yes, I’m behind on these updates.
Photos and information added to the USS Benson page HERE.
Recently I finally got some closure on a project from some years ago. I made it out to the museum in Building 92 of the Brooklyn Navy Yard. Part of their collection is a large scale model of the famous battleship USS Maine. A model that I helped build.
Back in 2010 a friend of mine, ship modeler extraordinaire Gary Kingzett, asked me if I’d like to assist him on a build for a museum. My odd work schedules over a 5 or 6 year period allowed me the freedom to travel to his home and workshop in northern New Jersey. Material for the ship’s hull was a large sheet of poured urethane resin, known as butter board. I’ve put some photos in the Continue reading
After a long hiatus, I’ve finished a red Swingline replica. You can find it on eBay here:
http://www.ebay.com/itm/201481414203?ssPageName=STRK:MESELX:IT&_trksid=p3984.m1555.l2649
The actual stapler on auction is pictured above.
Several weeks back I attended the 2015 Jersey Fest show here in New Jersey. As part of the three day weekend, I registered to take a miniature painting class, taught by Maya at Morland Studios. For the class fee of $65 you got two figures, one of which is the Sybil, Steampunk Lady Bust shown here, multiple bottles of paint, some high quality brushes, and, not least of all, hands-on training and critique by an extraordinary figure painter.
I used to paint a lot of gaming miniatures. While in the Navy they were the only things portable enough for me to take with me to the bases and aboard ship. I was never very good at them, though, as soft modeling (organic shapes and surfaces) has never been my forte’, I’m better suited to the realms of hard modeling (mechanical items). I’ve always wanted to learn to paint realistic skin tones, Continue reading
My most recent completion is the Battlestar Valkyrie. A small-ish kit at just under 6 inches long. The intial cleanup of the resin parts took a while to get done, but once completed, the build and painting was fairly straight-forward.
Added to the website HERE.
I finished this one some time ago, and have finally got around to posting it to the Model Building page of the website. You can see it HERE.
I’ve got another build or two that I’ve finished in the past year that have yet to be posted, and another two projects that are nearing completion. Now that I’ve upgraded my computer and got a newer version of Photoshop up and running, I’ll get around to adding them in due time.
There isn’t a lot of surface area to mask on the Nautilus, but some of what there is happens to be quite intricate. For the forward bridge area, the two “gator eyes” looking protrusions, I decided to leave the clear plastic/glass out for better visibility of the small interior that I built. Continue reading
I’ve learned something over the past several days: whatever skill at soldering I once had — gleaned through lessons from my father and repair schools whilst in the Navy — has all been lost. While soldering these simple connections for this model I cursed a lot, burned even more, and even completely cooked an LED from the inside out. I finally got the wiring and lights hooked up and into the model, but it wasn’t a fun process. I either need to practice this skill, or I need to start buying pre-wired lighting kits.
The setup is simple, though, and that probably saved my sanity Continue reading