FINISHED: 1:350 HMS dreadnought in harbor

This is my first post, and it’s been a while since I did anything on any forum. So if something is not explained, shown, or is plain weird. Please tell/ask. :slight_smile: I did not take pictures in this build with the intention of posting it on a forum so, some steps are not photographed.

I Wanted to make a ship. Never done that, so seemed like a fun thing to do. I decided to buy the 1:350 Trumpeter HMS dreadnought 1907 kit. I do not have a unboxing picture, but there are some on this forum already. Was not sure to add this to the ship section of the forum or diorama, because it starts out with just ship, and halfway I thought it was neat to make a diorama out of it.

Well here goes. first steps where quite easy. Just followed the manual.

first steps

Added Photo Etch where necessarype

The kit was somewhat limited. For example I did not like the bridge. It used a massive plastic piece with solid windows. So I etched a better piece and addid it.

Add some paint.

Added chains.

The kit was somehwat limited again. So I made some chain stoppers.

Tried to make night life buoy holders. But failed miserably:
So I made it in inscape to etch it. Was a good opportunity to remake the rear compass stand. The kit provides a solid block of plastic.

After assembly and paint it looks way better. As you can see I added railings and awning poles as well.

Tried to do the rigging with sewing thread.

But wasn’t too happy about it. So I tried some 0,08mm fishing line, and painted it a dark grey.

Way better.

Around this time I was thinking about making a diorama. Not just a sea scape. But ship in harbor kind of thing. Not really sure what do, to I tried making a locomotive in 1:350 scale.

lets slap some styrene, and paper together.

Add paint and wheels:

Wasn’t sure about the wheels. But could not think of a way to make them better. Aah well.

And every train needs wagons.

And some flatbeds:

Thats it for initial post. Going to sort some photos for second post for diorama.

Oh wow, I’m in awe of ship models- the PE, rigging, etc that’s incredible. Way too much work for little old me. And amazing job on the locomotive and cars- just lovely work!!!

Thank you Gamera! Only worked with 1:35 thus far, I must say that this scale is quite challenging.

After a train I thought why not make a gantry steamcrane. Base was made with stryene H-beam, and top I used a transparant sheet where I printed the windows on. The walls are painted foil.
crane

I could not find a cheap enough solution for the crane beams anywhere, so I etched those. I used the electric 1942 cranes form australian cockatoo island to calculate the size, and the 19th century Santander Crane Monument as reference.

etched beam
Not the best etch. The photoresist was a bit sloppy so required a lot of cleanup but turned out alright.

And after some paint and assembly I had two cranes ready to go.

crane done

Around this time I made the base for the diorama. I decided to make a non-existing harbor. That gives a lot more freedom than trying to recreate a existing one. (Everything has to be true to the timeperiod off course.) I Sadly did not take any pictures from the start so here it is after making the general size, harbor wall, and the resin pour.

test resin size

The reason there is a gap between ship and resin is I made a oversized gipsum mold of the ship, and used that for the resin pour. That way I can work on the diorama without accidentally knocking the smoke stack of the ship.

With the prices of 3D resin printers being so low at the moment I bought a anycubic photon.
First print I tried was a generic warehouse.
warehouse

That turned out ok. It’s usable. Even the individual planks are visible. I tried putting it really to the test and printing a water tower bottom.
water tower bottom
That was really impressive. My FDM printer can go bigger, but isn’t very suitable for modelling. This resin printer can only print smaller prints, but can really do small details.
And after paint the tower looked like this:
water tower
Next up a wooden house.
house

It got the paint treatment. And added some ‘hardware store’ signs and window still plants.

painted house

In the meantime I added the ground texture and decking to the diorama. Stareted with the railroad and placed the house.

added house

Tried to make some trees with seafoom and flock. Turned out better then expected in this scale.
trees

And after adding them:
trees added

Next post I’ll continue with adding harbor stuff. Wagons, barrels, boxes, etc.

I really like it,great project

HMS Dreadnought is on my list to build too.

You’ve done excellent work so far, love and admire all the detail and eager to see the completed project. I’m impressed with the train and its cars but suprised you didn’t 3D print them.

Did I read correctly, you can create your own photo etch?! That would be awesome!

PS: Welcome to the forum (I just joined too) and thanks for posting.

Thanks Tojo72!
JoeSMG: I didn’t have a resin printer when I made the train. I bought it recently. I must admit it’s very handy to have, and opens up a lot of possibilities. (Am thinking of making a star trek diorama next.)
I do indeed etch myself. With some PCB etching supplies it’s quite doable. (And welcome to you too!)

After the trees made traffic signs and a semaphore.
semaphore
It should be accurate for around 1920 England.

The printer is great, but there are limits of what it can do. So I used a 3d Lenticular halloween decoration. It was way out of season so a couple of these cards where dirtcheap. The fine ribs of a lenticular lens are quite in scale for a 1:350 corrugated roof for the large warehous. Used cigarette roling paper for ridge flashing.
roof

Printed 3 other buildings and after assembly and paint I had a general layout. The buildings are from thingyverse: https://www.thingiverse.com/thing:2768189 I modified them to my needs. The large warehouse is: https://www.thingiverse.com/thing:4328482
layout

Meanwhile started making a base. I would liked to either use better wood, or wood panel molding, but the country is in covid lockdown and all hardware stores are closed. So used some spruce I had laying around and routed and stained it with a mahony stain. Not entirely what I wanted, but close enough.
base

And of course my clear varnish was too old to be used. So used 6 layers of watered down acrylic medium gel to varnish it.

The printer opens a lot of possibilities. So printed some horses, wheel and a cart. All printed separately and assembled after printing. Cart 1:

cart 1

And a wagon. The wagon was just made of some styrene.

cart2

Needs some goods:
cart2 goods

Was never satisfied with the train wheels, but didn’t have any other means. Now I did. So printed some wheels for it too. Quite nerve racking to rip the painstakingly hand made old wheels off, but turned out better than expected.
train

Even the counterweights are visible. Way better! [:D] (and yeah, added a bell as well.)
Post is getting quite long, so will continue in another post.

All I can say is awesome work there!

Mike

Your Diarama is coming along beautifully, you’re just nailing it with your printed embelishments! Your paint work on that tiny scale is amazing as are the details your printer is able to render. What model 3d printer are you using? I may have to upgrade :slight_smile:

Hey ! Kwitcher Bitchin!

Oh that’s right yer not Bitchin, youse is tellin usn’s how you got frum here to there. Well youse is bein AWESOME. Gonna follow ya to da finish!

I’m trying to post a update. But I keep getting a 403 error.
(For anyone interrested: Fixed by copying all text, pasting it as plaint text CTRL+SHIFT+V, and saving. After saving I edited my post by adding the images.)

thnx all for compliments. [:D]

JoeSMG: I have a anycubic photon. A very inexpensive China printer. But the quality is way better than I expected.

One of the harder parts. The aerials. This was way to fine to etch myself so I used a Photoetch from whiteensignmodels for the spreaders.
pe

It was ‘only’ a question of threading 0,06mm wire trough the holes. Only 32 spreaders of 8 holes each meant approximately a rethink-your-live-decisions amount of threading.

aerials

The effect is quite nice. But not gonna do that again very soon.

aerials

After this I made a bit of a mistake. I thought there was a smaller aerial from the bridge to the main aerial. So I made one.

Wrapping copper wire around a needle, cutting them and soldering gave me 1mm rings.

rings

And after glueing threads in them and painting I got the smaller aerial installed.

aerial small

The mistake is that apparantly these where installed in 1910, and in that same refit the booms I’ve added next to the bridge where removed. So they were never both installed together. [bnghead] yeah, I’m not ripping them off so… there goes the historical accuracy.

The flags were a bit of an experiment. I wanted to make my own ones. First I tried painting aluminium. (Aluminum for all the ex-colonists.[:P] ) And print on that paint layer.

metal flag1

And after cutting and bending:

flag 2

But I didn’t like the texture. It was a bit too polished/smooth. And drying time was a tad long.

I quit smoking last year, but because I handrolled my cigarettes, I hade some packages of rolling paper left.

I taped a rolling paper to a sheet of printer paper and printed on that.

rolling paper print

Way better. Rolling paper is thin enough for the paint to bleed through to the other side. And after a few coats of very thinly applied matt varnish you can’t see the difference between the printed side and the back. I really like the effect.

flag installed

I was not really content with the provided whalers. The sides were quite thick. around 1mm, and on that scale it would be 35 cm, more than a foot, thick. So I ripped them off and replaced them with printed versions. It was a tad fiddly cutting and glueing the thwarts evenly in place.

Camera didn’t focus correctly. But below the whaler from the kit on the bottom, the upper one is the printed one. Not perfect, but better than the original.

whalers

Painted the waves from the picket boat.

picket boat

And around this time I glued the boat in place. Using a syringe I placed a small bead of gloss medium in the gap between the boat and resin.

glueing

glueing 2
It is getting quite far now. Must say, I cant wait to finish this.

WOW! Incredibly beautiful work. Simply magnificent. Can’t wait for the finished diorama.

Awesome craftsmanship Anton.

Oh gawd those spreaders make my head hurt to look at them!!!

Amazing work you’re doing here!!! [ht]

Ye Gads!

Youse is makin me get crosseyed with dem dere Spreader tingies. But it’s looking good I tink. Now how do I uncross dis left eye? I keep seein two of dem dere chips and boats ! I can only look with amazement upon this work. This is audacious and beautifully detailed. And I thought I was overdoing it with Super-Detailing a 1/250 Andrea Doria Paper model. I can’t touch this! Last ship Dio 40 years ago!

I’ll be following this thread. I built my Trumpeter Dreadnought with nets deployed, tetherd to an anchor bouy further out in the harbor. Very nice kit- loved it.

Very very very impressive. Thanks for sharing.

Inspiring build! I received this same 1907 Dreadnaught kit as a Xmas gift with the goal of just building a nice pedestal mounted version. I would be happy to have an outcome 1/10 as nice as what you’re doing with yours. You are a very talented modeler! Please keep posting!

WOW!!! That is one super impressive build. You have amazing modeling abilities.

Anton your attention to detail is mind blowing, I couldn’t have done those spreaders even if my eyes would have let me, never mind soldering 1mm wire loops!!! I’m impressed by your rate of progress too given the level of detail your putting into this project. Thank you for the printer information, I’ve not looked into the Anycubic Photon but I will now. And thank you for updating us with your posts, very inspirational.

Edited to mention how much I like the idea of using rolling paper to print flags! I will definitely try that :slight_smile: