1/350 Dunkerque and Strasbourg

[MartinJQuinn]

Really intense photo-etch work - I'm sure it was all a bit nerve wracking! Look like it was worth it though - nicely done! I especially like what you did with the letters - that's a really nice touch.

[StevenVD]

Thanks, Martin. It's not even completely done with PE, you can notice Strasbourg is still missing its yardarms among others. About those letters, when I had finished these, I did find a nameplate in the Shipyard PE set. But it didn't have the option to place the letters one by one.

[Dan K]

I agree, excellent PE work.

[StevenVD]

Thanks, Dan. I now fixed the ship's supports with plastic plugs and Parker screws, because there is no thread in the supports. The ships sink in easily.





This coin is for a future build of MN Richelieu. It has the full title of the cardinal on it.





I want to fix these coins in a plexiglass support. A hole needs to be made in this hard material. It won't work with circle cutter.



I had an old broken hole saw for 51mm, that had to be turned by hand.



This takes half an hour to get through, but makes for a very clean cut.



But 51mm is one too many and the coin falls out. To make two more, a full hour of manual sawing would be needed.



Today I bought this 48mm saw. A little too small but my best option.



How to remove these last millimeters?



Apparently the core from the 51mm drilling fits snugly in the 48mm support hole.



A small indentation is made in it.



The last millimeter is then taken off in the Proxxon drill by turning the bracket around the fixed core.



After some sanding, the coin can be firmly stuck into the bracket.



This method can now be repeated a few times in short order.



I completed the Strasbourg yardarms with the dipole antennas. These are in full 3D opposed to the Shipyard representation for Dunkerque. Thy're also slightly larger. The dipole direction is not so evident from the manual, I supposed every of the four wind directions had one dipole set.

[karih]

Steven, I am in total awe! Your attention to detail and patience with this build is beyond anything I have seen. After my Musashi build, I know exactly what it takes to tackle something like this. And to have TWO at the same time is total bonkers. You can be so proud of what you have accomplished !

[StevenVD]

Thanks for your noce words, Karih. A small addition is done to the showcase, the two medals are placed in it.



I had to replace this broken support.



Four pieces of brass U-profile will hold the support in place.



I drew the position of the boreholes on an old envelope. Placing the supports diagonally allows for both sides of the medals to remain visible while showing the name side to the broadside of the ships.



This was used to pin down into the foamboard.



The bottom plate was drilled from the underside and the profiles are hammered down into it using a wooden cushion block.









The last PE parts are added before the painting stage. Bigblueboy has the guidance rails for both the main turrets, while Shipyard missed the front one.





But Bigblueboy doesn't have the railing around the second turret base. I want to scratch that, so I need a mesh for the floor.

[marijn van gils]

Great work Steven!


Really quite an exceptional display, two 1/350 battleships together like that on a single base!

[StevenVD]

Yes, Marijn, and I heared of a certain France-themed contest in the near future, so I will continue this display.

To add the same catwalk around the second main turret on Strasbourg like I built it on Dunkerque, I needed to scratch some fine metal netting. This was for sale near my home:





On a piece of cardboard I cut out the correct shape..



I used a part of railing that was doubled in my PE set.



The fit on the turret was good, though not easy to locate.



The Loire 135 floatplanes are started too. Painting will have to wait, the floor in front of my painting shed was broken up today. Concrete will be poured in tomorrow.



Vallejo grey blue was used in the interior.



The fuselage needs some pressure to close.



The Bigblueboy PE will be used on the catapult planes. It's complicated bu I have the best reference book for Loire 135.





For the other 2 I've got the Shipyard PE. Let's see if the planes can be made in stowed position with it.

[marijn van gils]

Yes, Marijn, and I heared of a certain France-themed contest in the near future, so I will continue this display.

Wow, you plan to have this finished in less than 3 months from now?
Of course, I can only encourage that!

Those planes look great BTW!

[StevenVD]

No problem, Marijn. You'll notice in this next post that the painting of the ships is already taking off very well. After that, it will only be a few weeks to finish each ship.

To be stowed down the hangar, the Loire 130 had to lose the wingtips and crank up the ailerons and flaps. Also the floaters need to be clipped both sides to fit between the margins of the stubbed wings. The lower and horizontal tail planes have to go too.





To place the wings along the tail, one of two remaining ailerons is bent upward.





Let's keep fingers crossed that this will allow to introduce one of them in the Strasbourg hangar.



Both ships are painted in Atlantic camo using Gunze 333. Often these dark greys are taking a long time to properly mix and in this first layer from the new pot it turns out quite dark.





To remove wood grain patterns I painted the deck stickers with Tamiya NATO brown.



This was toned down again with Vallejo light sand primer. Then I should have cleaned the beaker (which I didn't).



With the decks looking a bit bleaker this was OK and some of the gunnery was assembling on the paint stand. It looked a bit like an upgunned Borodino like that.



These were painted in Gunze 333 too, but that caused a bit of havoc in the beaker and some clogging in the nozzle.



The hulls after modulation with Tamiya NATO black followed by a drop of white.











Next the antifouling was painted using Gunze russet. The 6mm Tamiya tape was widened with some paper masking, but this was attached discontinually with old tape.



That masking was passed on to the three remaining broadsides, but the paper didn't keep the pressure from overspraying on the hull plating edges.



With the Gunze russet running out just on time, Tamiya dark brown was applied to the shadowy parts.





Then Gunze 7 red brown took care of the finishing touch, making the hull shine orangy red. I think the minute overspray on the lower corner of the edges of the hull doesn't look bad, it looks like a continuous rust streak. After the boot topping I'll correct what is necessary.

[StevenVD]

With the painting of the hulls finished, the wooden decks could be fixed. I don't rely on the stickers, these can peel after a while. Some contact glue can prevent this. It's a bit tricky to apply, so I avoid touching the edges. This glue will attack any paint it touches.



The extremities of the deck went on well, apart from a small strip I had to remove to fit the already fixed splash guard on Dunkerque.



The rails for the sloop trolleys are an obstacle for the middle part of the deck in both ships. In particular the Bigblueboy set calls for some meticulous perfectionism. It starts with the lasered marks, that are not at all cut through the sticker. These have to be traced with a sharp knife.



A fragile PE-frame can be found in the set, forming the base for the rail parts.



The rails are split by small spacers, which would be a nice effect above the wooden deck. A clear etch line in the frame can be used to guide them, any deviance from this line would cause a problem with the wood around it.



This far along no problems arose.



But the frame would not pass through the wood part, so I figured it would be placed under the sticker with the rails passing through. I decided not to glue the part to the deck, but stick it under the sticker for ideal fitting.



It would have been a nice solution, if no for the thickness of the sticker. Because of that the rail barely shows up above the deck. Also the sticker has to be adjusted around the part, deforming the fine rail parts and tearing them loose. At least it will be partly covered by the boats. A lot of work goes in this that is unrewarded, but it was still needed to see any of the railing above the thick wood sticker. The plastic rail on the deck would probably not even have passed through. Maybe BBB intended the entire PE part to be placed on top of the deck?



Shipyard didn't provide any PE parts for Dunkerque, the deck detail will suffice for them having a thinner sticker. But the transparent sticker part is not lasered and remains visible after removing the carrier. I cut through it to allow the plastic rails passing through, but this film still needs to be removed after fixing the deck. I still have an etched rail part in my unused Woodhunter deck, but that would be used for placing on top of the wood part without perforation. I'd better leave it at this.



The anchor deck is then painted Deck Blue (Gunze H54).





Then the superstructure deck parts are also painted this color. I continued the modulation used prior, NATO black and light blue being the necessary components. The bad news is that all of that will now have to be masked with even some of the railing present.

[StevenVD]

The stowed planes are difficult to manipulate with their PE bracing.







Dunkerque's superstructure will debut the Gunze H333 painting phase, serving as a master for later transferring the mask to Strasbourg.



The many angular and round shapes called for a complete masking, even if that means repairing some railing.





My main concern was that the meshed or opened up PE particles like deck houses were screening their interior. These would need a manual paint preparation before bending.







The armament was fun to paint.



Let's compare the hull railing as presentend in the two upgrade sets. These are considerable differences.



The stanchion distance in Shipyard outstretches Bigblueboy with more than two millimeters.



It's also a bit higher and seems thicker than Bigblueboy's railing.



How do they achieve these differences? The explanation is that they use a standard module in their stanchion distance, even where this is not possible. If you compare the stretch between the two chocks at the port stern, only three stanchions are present preferring Shipyard's option. But most of the long uninterrupted stretches like the one at the stern follow Bigblueboy's design. The only default in BBB is the shorter height, but this is only a minor difference and hard to compare with these pictures as an overlay.

[marijn van gils]

That's a lot of masking Steven!


For handling those fragile planes, a handle of sorts may help.
For this kind of stuff, I usually drill a small hole in the underside in which I superglue a thin brass wire (0,3 mm maybe in this case?). If the wire is too flexible/bendable, I then glue it into a lenght of brass tube to 'thicken' the handle.
After painting, the brass wire is easily removable, and the hole is invisible since it is on the underside.

[SG1]

That's Capital work Steven. I particularly liked:

To add the same catwalk around the second main turret on Strasbourg like I built it on Dunkerque, I needed to scratch some fine metal netting. This was for sale near my home

..and the planes (Yay!). Eager to see the next update

[StevenVD]

Thanks for the tip, Marijn, eventually it worked with just the turntable and a pair of tweezers. SG1: the planes you will get to see now!



Strasbourg was completely masked over, using as much of the Dunkerque mask as possible.









The 4 Loire 130 planes also got their little tape fragments.



The Gunze grey is painted on in a few layers, but this can remain a bit transparent with clear lighting.



Also the 2 ships' boot topping mask was required. I worked in 4 steps each with the same ends of tape.









I guarded the height to be 3mm. Dunkerque seems to need some extra grey hull camo after this.















Some pieces of Tamiya tape were used to paint the undersides of the planes black. Some overspray could be scrubbed off the glossy Gunze grey.





Strasbourg got its superstructure painted.



When unpacked, it looked as intended:





The Hobbyboss plane decals are fine but not perfect. The tricolore blue was way too dark, if seen in black and white it should be lighter than the red. Another strange case is that the decal for the rudder has the correct shape, but the plane does not. I had to sand it to a rounded shape.





Better to paint the blue myself, this is a mix of light and transparent blue.



The wrong blue is simply cut off the decal and then that can be applied as normal. The roundels were tipped with the blue after applying, it's not hard to leave a round spot.



I had expected these insignia with the decals, but they were nowhere to be seen.





I had to make these from some helicopter decals, where I drew the battleship silhouette with a fineliner and then added Microscale Decalfilm. The tree planes that will be well visible, now got the insignia. The fourth one will fit into the Strasbourg hangar, I checked the fit. I did notice that you have to turn the propeller to its lowest profile to get this to fit, so I changed that.

[SG1]

SG1: the planes you will get to see now!

Superlative so far

[StevenVD]

Thanks, SG1. Check out today how the planes were finished. First some more masking to discern both ships' funnels. One strip meant Dunkerque, two was Strasbourg, at least so long as they made up the Force de Raid.



Strasbourg got the most complicated masking. It was impossible to avoid some overspray.



In the Jordan book is described how the telemeters were painted white to prevent thermal distortion in the mediterranean region. That seems correct for most telemeters on the superstructure, but the color plan in the book shows the rear turret rangefinders also white. This seems contested by the air photography of both ships at Meirs El-K�bir showing the large rangefinders on the top masts clearly white but not the ones on the turrets. I therefore leave those unwhitened.



Any overspray will be dealt with later on.



Tamiya's dark brown wash is applied after a gloss sealing.



Some hate the Trumpeter panellines but they do bring out the wash.



Dunkerque's superstructure was fixed permanently, leaving no seams on deck.



Before Strasbourg could get the same treatment, those planes needed to be finished with a matt coat.



The cockpit is unmasked.



The Bigblueboy hangar gets the same wash.



I had to move the propellor of the other stowed Loire too, I wanted the one with the battleship decal to be the one outside the hangar, but it still had the prop pointing up and this is messing with the hangar ceiling. I think later on I'll even add antenna wire.



Now the hangar was fixed to the superstructure in a dry-fit, to get the rails aligned with the deck. The plane still stuck almost inside the hangar, but that's no problem to get the superstructure fixed to the deck. It does have a seam at the bridge, that will have to be clamped.



All is prepared for blasting the bags. I guess this will also be a series production.



Somewhere in the project an anchor chain was inclueded, this will suffice for Strasbourg.



BBB also had some chain locking devices, even with some spares I'll use on Dunkerque.



On that one I still wanted to add the scratched chocks I made for Strasbourg. Later on I can add the chain I had as a leftover from the ABSD1 project, first I'll add some deck blue. Now some railing photos from Dunkerque, showing how easy this works with the 4-bar railing form Bigblueboy. You only have to analyze the direction of the parts by the holes for the chocks. Before the B-turret the railing is staggered over the planking for a few centimeters, I found corroboration for this on a period picture. Further on you see the boat cranes still without rigging, the secondary gun turrets and the plane catapult.

[FFG-7]

have a look at this.
The Dunkerque class - Battlecruiser to Super Cruiser to Battleship https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v6ChOiu6iLo

[StevenVD]

Thanks for the link, but this was my background entertainment during the railing job yesterday. And yes, I was amused by the subject. These German raiders seeing the Dunkerques steaming over the horizon with the Marseillaise blaring over the loudspeakers.

[FFG-7]

you are welcome.