I am now well into building the remaining Royal Navy ships (which are most of those that I want/need); Hermes, Victorious and Repulse currently under construction.
 |
| The ship-construction end of my table. It gives me more space than the desk and I prefer to stand and build rather than sit. Hermes on the mat, Perth behind (with my earlier converted de Ruyter behind her as a bit of a reference, along with the many pictures that I have saved, since I made the Dutch ship as a conversion of Ajax). Hulls of Victorious and Repulse to the right. |
Nelson (a gift kindly given to me by Simon and an 'extra' since she never served in the Pacific-Indian theatre) along with scratch-builds of Enterprise and Emerald will follow. At the 'same time' I'm building the last of the RAN ships that I need: scratch-built Perth (which can also stand-in as Hobart/Sydney) and Canberra (using a model of Dorsetshire). She’ll revert back to the latter for Operation C—and I'll simply accept the 'Chicago blue' colour. That will leave only 14 USN ships to build, plus the seven kits/eight ships that I do not yet have. The latter number will soon fall to six as I purchased one of Hatsuharu today. While browsing the interweb, I found that all of the others that I am chasing are available from a shop in Brizzie, so am hoping that my 'local' shop in Perth, the marvellous Tactics, will be able to get them soon and I'll have a definitive end point to construction of 1/700 ships.
I have been painting too. Nearly finished Hōshō and will move to Akagi and Kaga soon. Since I decant a bit of each colour, I have been doing bits of painting of others as well, principally some of the details below flight decks on some of the carriers.
 |
| The ship-painting end of my table. All 14 of the Japanese carriers that I have built are arrayed here, along with the sea-plane tenders and some cruisers that I had on the same shelf in the cupboard. In the foreground, the flight decks of Ryūjō, Jun'yō, Taihō and Taijō are sitting beside the hulls as I paint ship's-boats, bow, stern, hangers and other details before gluing the flight decks in place. |
I began by painting Hōshō as it’s a 3D model so a bit simpler as well as being a more simple ship anyway. The model does not have any detail on the flight deck, so I have painted on ramps and will draw on and paint the line markings next as part of applying the final coat/touches.
 |
| Mizuho, centre, between Akagi at left and Chitose (sea-plane tender version at right). I took these photos to show to Simon that I had built the ship as the kit of Mizuho was another of the three that he gave to me earlier in the year. |
 |
| Closer view of Mizuho with first coat applied to the sections of wooden deck. |
These ships are not the only activity underway, so my table is nearly full again. I'll report on progress with other items and eras later, once there is something significant to show.
