Off the ways and awaiting trials....further progress on 1/200th Dauntless

       I had a little time so I pushed ahead with one of the models of the D Class light cruisers. It is almost ready for armament and has shaped up into an elegant little vessel. I just need to add some details to eat up all that open space, life rafts, searchlights etc.

 

last we saw her she looked like this....

 

1/200 being too small for my clumsy hands to be making open railings I opted to use a strip of 

paper in it's place, but the hardest part was figuring out the blast guard for the superposed guns

 

railings on the rest of the model were a piece of cake by comparison

 

I successfully misinterpreted the one drawing that I had at the time

 and made the searchlight platform rather larger than is was supposed to be

 

platform supports start out with dressmakers straight-pins pushed into the foam center of the model

 

once the platform had been superglued into place

 I added the outside supports using florists wire

 

funnels are simply rolls of typing paper trimmed and glued into place

 

the gray color is far too brown, 

I will have to dig up the Royal Navy color specs for this one 

 

oddly a darker gray looks lighter under different light

 

 

a little digging turned this up which seems to go pretty well  with....

 

.....this photo, although the scheme is different I assume the colors are the same

 

and here are color chips that are supposed to be official samples

 

       There is still a fair amount of work to be done on this one before I take the other vessel into hand and get it along the road to completion.