About a week ago I built up a german WWII cruiser SMS Blucher, I painted it but I dont know how to display it nicely.
It’s harder to deal with the display stand after building the ship. One common choice is to get a a small piece of wood such as a plaque or perhaps a small drawer front that has a nice routed edge detail and can be stained and varnished. Poke around through and art & crafts or woodworking store to see what you can find. You can then mount the thing on two or four brass finials or pedestals that you can get at a hardware store, typically in the lighting section. Another common motif is that in place of the brass pedestals, you lay down a series small square cross-sectioned sticks, (looking something like railroad ties) crosswise under the ship, I suppose to suggest the look of keel blocking while a ship is being drydocked. I tend to more often than not prefer the look of the brass pedestals, but in your case since the ship is already built, the keel blocking might be easier.
Speaking of German WWII ships, here’s what I have done for my 1/700 Dragon Bismarck
Here are the components of the stand. The 3"x5" plaque cost me 55 cents unfinished from my local arts & crafts store. After a little stain and several coats of varnish that I sprayed through the large tip of my Paasche H, and it looks pretty good. The brass pedestals were a dollar or two from the lighting section of my local hardware store, and I made little plastic washers that I glued into one end of the brass pedestals to insure that they stayed centered when assembled.
Here you can see how the stand actually fastens to the hull. I added some styrene cross braces just to give a little more thickness to the hull. Probably a bit of overkill, since Dragon’s Bismarck is pretty solid. I then used CA glue to glue down interior nuts, and add further crosswise hull strungth.
For an example of the keel blocked kind of stand, see Rusty White’s fine build of a fine ship
Let us know what you come up with.
Andy
P.S. Rotten luck for the Gunners in Champions League final. So close yet so far.
that’s my german cruiser (SMS Blucher)
that is the kms blucher of the hipper class heavy cruiser sunk in norway april 9 1940. sms blucher was an armoured cruiser of ww1 sunk january 24 1915.
Were there any other Bluchers and did they sink, too? Bad luck name, I’d say …
Oh … there was Frau Blucher in Young Frankenstein (cue horse neighing)
Only one more unlucky name is Titanic…
Or maybe SMS Seydlitz. I can’t think of another ship in WWI that took more serious damage in two engagements, yet didn’t quite sink.