1/350 Dunkerque and Strasbourg

[StevenVD]

The blastbags are painted matt black. The masking tore a few rails, so these were put back.



A vice was needed to improve the contact of Strasbourg's conning tower to the deck.





Dunkerque also got its anchor chain after some deck blue was applied.



I managed to break one of the Microscale turrets. While sliding the turret on after a bad fit I sheared the resin center pin off the turret roof, taking a small chunk with it.



It was just where Dunkerque was hit in the war.



It was repaired sooner than I expected, I didn't have to sand down.



The small cracks in the resin could be filled with CA used on the bottom side, only a slight respraying was needed.



The cause is the fitting problem when using a PE turret base enhancement. This increases turret base diameter so the resin clamps on the turret won't fit anymore without adjustment. If you use any PE, take some off the clamps to avoid a bad fit.





With the railing retouched, the turrets are now installed. I managed to swap S and D's turrets, though this only shows some minute differences in PE quality. S. still needs railings then.



The AA-guns were all painted but one was blown off and apparently stepped on before I had it dusted up, so Dunkerque is currently missing one 13.5mm piece. I'll now have to use a lower rate PE-version without brass barrels and resin. Or maybe I still find the barrels.





That meant Dunkerque is missing one port gun mount for the moment.



BBB made for a surprisingly intense davit assembly, so any pre-painting will have to be redone.













I have no idea if these boarding ladder poles will fit into the showcase...

[StevenVD]

I was determined to find the brass barrels of the one gun I had accidentally crushed on the dusty broken floor of my painting room.



This will have to do to reconstruct a quad 13.5mm gun.



After the four barrels are put back in the trunnion, a Bigblueboy gun cradle was clipped to put on the resin base.



Here the gun is compared to the undamaged examples. I also assembled lots of ladders on Strasbourg, because these are missing from the Bigblueboy set. It's assumed you use the kit PE, but this doesn't compare to the Shipyard ladders. It really is an omission for such a costly set.







But they do make attractive paravanes.



I treated the hulls with Pledge to use the AK weathering set on them. This was not done to the superstructure because some areas are hard to reach now.



I primered all boats with the base color. Only the sloops will keep this color, the motor launches will be painted white. Then the bottom will be painted red.



Le me advise you not to assemble the ship's davits until the very last moment. These are prone to handling damage.





I decided to use the beautiful Shipyard boarding ladders on Strasbourg, that also had the beams extended. BBB does not include any, as these are also in the kit PE. I could use these on Dunkerque, but I didn't find the stowage location. The starboard beam on Strasbourg extended too far to the showcase so this was mounted in quasi-stowed position. One more adaptation is done to the ladders to the superstructure, on ref pics these are turned away from the 37mm gun positions on the weather deck. Like this I need an extra platform for them.



Dunkerque has some PE deck houses with gratings.

[MartinJQuinn]

These are coming along nicely. You are a model building machine! lol

[StevenVD]

Thanks, Martin. There's no stopping me, I just bought a batch of two Lexingtons and some Langley PE from Ebay.



For now, the boat carts for Strasbourg ar still being bent.



Some of Dunkerque's carts have to be repainted after falling off the painting stand.





Strasbourg's BBB carts look different, with the weels on top. These were for smooth contact with the boat hulls, but Shipyard only placed wheels below the carts. I guess both are incomplete.





For two days I'm applying Lifecolor Liquid Pigments, dried salt and green muck. Thes are acrylic in nature and can be hard to remove if left on too long.

[pascalemod]

I have had very bad experience weathing with acryllics. What I found key for weathering is reversability and adjustability - and oils, pigments and pencils at least to me seem to be the way forward. Acrullic is a great canvas, perhaps shading is good with them too. But from then on, its only stuff I can remove. I think if you feel like you have struck a wall with them, you can always repaint.

Btw, when (and Im assuming, i could be wrong) you feel that the acryllics have overdone the weathering here - you can take an airbrush in the hull color and smooth it all out by respraying areas. You will add some nice layering to the weathering, and it will look good Im sure! Right now it looks a little sharp on weathering with salt streaks.

[StevenVD]

I still needed to do some areas in that color, so I will be able to blend it a bit. I'm sure it's also because of the dark base color. But it isn't that far from reality, compared to some 1940 pictures.

[StevenVD]

In this update the proposed moderation is applied.



I scratched the missing funnel basket for Strasbourg from some 1/35 vehicle leftover PE, of which I have a lot.



This was applied to the funnel and sprayed black



The motorboats are white and now have to be masked for the hull red part. In my reference book, some have a green bottom.





The Liquid Pigment was completely oversprayed with Gunze H333 in a semi-transparent layer. The black anchors are also positioned.

[StevenVD]

I had to mask the boats for the underwater paint. Hobbyboss would paint all of them red, but in the French warship book the covered motorboats have a green bottom. This pleased me better. I used Tamiya flat green for it.









The whaling boats were then painted Gunze gloss dark red.





The PE deck from Bigblueboy was painted light sand brown.





The Tamiya dark brown wash brings back the texture.



Some matt Vallejo varnish is used. On the Dunkerque boats the scratched wooden deck was added, painted brown too and then weathered a bit with the green Lifecolor shadower.



Bigblueboy offers enough sloop interior so all boats of both ships can be detailed.



This causes some paint damage on the benches, so these were painted black.



The BBB motor boat windows can be closed down with Klear.



Then all could be added to the ships.





I did this first on Dunkerque. Some of the carts had to be moved. the two front sloops can not be placed close to the main turret, they are a bit too high and it would hit them when rotating.









Strasbourg got the same config. I might still have some oars for these.

[StevenVD]

Because of the awful Bigblueboy manual, some of the boats had to be removed and the stands corrected.



The Shipyard stands have the wheels on the underside and are evident to pose. Compared to that, Bigblueboy had also added wheels, but these were placed on the inside and did not fit to the rails by at least a millimeter. I understood that these would have to be on top of the stands, to roll the boats. Therefore I had glued the braces to the deck, fitting to the rails. The result could be seen in the las post, with at least two sloops that wouldn't fit under the main turret. Later on, I understood that the wheels had to be on the same side as the braces. I removed the PE from the wood deck, which is not so hard and caused no damage. Reversing the wheels was mostly a success. Now the sloops fit under the turret. Why didn't BBB include a scheme of this complicated construction?

Now Strasbourg also got the enamel rust traces.







The three-bladed Zuikaku props and the four-bladed kit props are sprayed bronze.



Some detail pictures, the hull might still be toned down a bit.











The MN motto plates are painted blue and then traced with yellow.







Some pre-painted PE would be better, I did correct this one afterward. Next time there will be some rigging.

[StevenVD]

I didn't understand what improvement was to be found on the Shipyard dipole antennas, that were reverted to a 2D structure(purple). Even if they would have to be reduced in size like they did, they could have kept the bend parts to have some volume(green).



Here the kit parts were brought on in stead. Now only the extra railing is missing, I moved the existing part to the side.



As mentioned, Dunkerque got the Zuikaku propellers.



Strasbourg can do with the kit ones, that are probably shaped more efficiently.



And then it was time to rig. This has now taken two tedious days, because it's not just tending elastic wires.



I remembered this book showing the method to scratch cage aerials.



To rig the ships, I would need 16 aerials. This would take me too far so I reduced this to the 8 most visible ones, going from front to back over the smokestack. The shorter ends going down will be replaced by simple threads.



I made the antennas apart from the ship to avoid damage and not lose too many rings on the superstructure. It's a real Sisyphus job, the rings want to fall flat between the threads and prefer to cling to tweezers or glue applicators rather than the AK threads. Only when they are not sitting right, they want to hold on.



One antenna is assembled. Some rings are corrupted, but I know better than to try and meddle.



Here the rings were fixed on stilts, but this only led to the thread sticking to these in stead of the rings.



The second antenna is coming on, but all wires that are torn off need to be attached to the spindle again, to be able to set them.



In the evening the second antenna is fixed... Six to go.



At KMK Scaleworld the fully rigged ships will be visible in the contest.

[Edoardo81]

They're coming good!

[pascalemod]

I still needed to do some areas in that color, so I will be able to blend it a bit. I'm sure it's also because of the dark base color. But it isn't that far from reality, compared to some 1940 pictures.

Word of warning / these light bits can also be rust, not salt streaks. I was pushed to that thought after studying Scharnhorst and Gneisenau weathering commentary and camouflages. One of the books when recreating them stated that what appears as salt streaking and discloration of grey paint - is heavy rust and wear from time at refits. And I have no clue if this is the case regarding our French sisters here, but - just thought Id share that to double check if needed.

Otherwise coming along very nicely!

[StevenVD]

As there are no color pictures of the 1940 period of these ships, it can not be ascertained, but rust was added along the salt streaking.

This will be the final building post of the Dunkerque project. The ships are ready for KMK.



Strasbourg got its fourth cage aerial with a temporary rigging construction.



Between the outriggers, the flag ropes are added.



One of these outriggers had to be reattached and it didn't cure dead straight. I didn't notice and now its too late to correct, with all the tended lines. But it's only visible from behind.



The ringlets remain unpainted until all is fixed.



Some counterweights are used to give Dunkerque her aerials.



The roundels for the flag lines are generic PE.



Having to fix 40 ringlets is causing some irregularities on this scale. I try to separate at least two of the four wires.



Here one bundle got twisted.



I was able to turn it around. I did replace the first aerial, it had too much glue on it.



The most valuable tip I can give anyone building these ships, don't attach the midship boats until all is completely finished. At least 10 times I had to repair them. Now a support had fallen on one boat
and teleported a davits to a parallel dimension. I had dusted around for a while but it did not turn up like the other fallen parts. There was of course the on in twenty option that it would have jumped straight into the toolbox, filled with scratch parts. After sorting this out for a while, the stowaway turned up.



The ships can now be installed on the base. The Loires have a different barycentre in plastic and the nose has to be pulled up by a slackline.



Two Tricolores are painted Tamiya white with Vallejo Clear Blue and Ferrari red.



Even with the ships fixed the sloop manages to escape one last time, so it is supported by a gum support that can be pushed down when the glue has cured.









Then the ships are inspected on shining PE, using Vallejo basalt grey to cover any specks. I misted the propellers with grey too, because they were not pure golden. And then, the final show is up.

























































I want to start the Otaki CVAN-65 Enterprise, but I'm missing an order from L'Ars�nal. Apparently the tools for PE parts for the internal hangar were lost. I hope this can be resolved soon, if not I jump to another topic.

[MartinJQuinn]

Congrats on getting this project across the finish line. Nicely done. For a pair of sisters, their forward superstructures do have a lot of differences.

[StevenVD]

Thanks, Martin. The largest difference is not visible on the outside, but the armor thickness was greater in Strasbourg, that is compared to Dunkerque as a battleship in stead of a battlecruiser. But I still noticed on one of the pictures that a rangefinder seems to be missing in Hobbyboss' conning tower design.

[Dan K]

Wow, a great finish to a great project. Well done.

[marijn van gils]

Congratulations Steven!
Finishing one 1/350 battleship in this little time, and at this level of quality, is no mean feat, but two of them is just insane!

I'm looking forward to seeing them (and you!) Sunday at KMK!

[Mr. Church]

Those are really lovely. Great presentation and display case.

[Mr. Church]

I love the coins and how you have presented them.

[StevenVD]

Thanks, Mr.Church. They now have a central spot in my living room.