HMS Calcutta 1941 (Trumpeter 1/700)

[brocken1sm]

Kindly gifted to me by a family friend last year and so far a pleasant and unproblematic experience to put together. There isn't any specific aftermarket for this kit, and I'd like it to a quicker build to knock out of the way, so I plan to limit modifications to the following:
- PE portholes since the kit portholes don't have eyelids
- Piping along the funnels which is missing from the kit
- AA weapons replaced with spares from Flyhawk
- 102mm barrels replaced with brass parts
- As I want to depict Calcutta with her 3-tone camouflage scheme, I will have to add splinter shields along the superstructure

There is probably more of the kit which can be replaced or improved but that would probably exceed my time/financial investment in the model. I'll see how I go in the end. Thus far I've only gotten to the portholes and gun barrel replacements.

As always, feedback on my work is welcome

[Pieter]

Nice and clean build so far.

[brocken1sm]

Been working on and off on this one, hence the belated update. Mostly just cleaning up parts and some more portholes.

I find this work to be more tedious than difficult. If I misalign one porthole part I can easily remove it and try again, but the fact that there are so many of them makes for a draining experience. Not looking forwards to doing this on a battleship or carrier.
I did however find that positioning a strip of tape as a guide above the portholes helps quite a lot. It's not perfect but it makes it such that you can't really see misalignments unless you were the one building the model.

Also managed to do a bit of railing on the superstructure. Recently I picked up a book by Dai Sasahara which included some interesting tips on working with generic PE rails. For those unaware this guy possesses an objectively superhuman level of attention to detail even for 1/700 modellers. Instead of bending the rail into shape with tweezers, he recommends cutting the rail at the bend point and then placing each part separately at the requisite angle. The idea is that this eliminates the slight curve you get when bending rails - overall quite time consuming (especially trying to figure out where to cut the rail) but the finish is definitely a bit nicer.

The hope is to somehow have this finished by June in time for the Australian Model Expo - probably doable although my grades may suffer...

[pascalemod]

I cant stand the porthole thing and I just dont do them on 1/700 (same for railings on funnels). People who do them in 1/700 are saints in terms of patients surely. The misalignment is guranteed in my case, so probably im just not good enough to do them. Well done for you!

[brocken1sm]

I cant stand the porthole thing and I just dont do them on 1/700 (same for railings on funnels). People who do them in 1/700 are saints in terms of patients surely. The misalignment is guranteed in my case, so probably im just not good enough to do them. Well done for you!

To be honest I find funnel rails to be much harder than portholes. Especially the ones that come from flyhawk/fivestar etc. where there is no solid attachment point with the plastic. Nightmarish stuff

[pascalemod]

I cant stand the porthole thing and I just dont do them on 1/700 (same for railings on funnels). People who do them in 1/700 are saints in terms of patients surely. The misalignment is guranteed in my case, so probably im just not good enough to do them. Well done for you!

To be honest I find funnel rails to be much harder than portholes. Especially the ones that come from flyhawk/fivestar etc. where there is no solid attachment point with the plastic. Nightmarish stuff

Some say funnel railings can be skipped in 1:700 and instead drawn with pencil. I did this few times and liked the result! Could be an alternative.

[brocken1sm]

Funnels done, masts and shields are next then onto painting

[brocken1sm]

Current state of affairs, progress has been stalled due to my airbrush nozzle breaking. Within a week of receiving a replacement the pressure adjusting knob on my air compressor broke, so now i have to use a pair of pliers whenever I want to change my air pressure. Pretty awesome

[Yuth]

An impressive build

[brocken1sm]

Onto painting the deck now: here I used the plank masking method I�ve previously applied on a couple of other models.
In this case it seems I left too much of the light tan colour (which is Tamiya deck tan) showing through, so there is a little more contrast between the plank shades than I want. It should be toned down a bit by washes and also by the tonal crush I will get after painting the camouflage colours on the hull.

With this done I masked the whole deck off. Overall this whole process took about 2-3 days, mainly just masking. Using a wooden deck would reduce this to about one afternoon of work but I personally don�t really like using those (a little thick at 700 scale and there�s a risk of peeling). I will definitely look into buying laser cut masks for my other kits as the final stretch of masking was especially tiring.

[brocken1sm]

A bit of progress over the past couple of weeks.

Some of the black sections are a bit washed out and will be touched up later.

[MartinJQuinn]

Nice work, love the camo!

[marijn van gils]

Indeed, great colours! De wooden decks seem to look very good too.

[Pieter]

Nice paint work. What are your plans for a base?

[pascalemod]

Gorgeous camouflage! wow.

[brocken1sm]

Railings for the superstructure, a bit more tedious given these are stock rails. A lot of trial and error to get the bends correct

Nice paint work. What are your plans for a base?

Thinking of a small sea base w/ figures at the moment

[brocken1sm]

Nearly done now! Not much to updare other than rails and glueing a bit more of the superstructure together. Up next is rigging, flags, and the searchlight platforms i have to repaint for the 3rd time :(

[brocken1sm]

Rigging is done, onto the home stretch now!

[MartinJQuinn]

That is gorgeous! Excellent work!

[Christian Bruer]

Excellent work and finish. I much like the paintwork, she looks great in her camo pattern