Kits Remembered 1/250: British Empire 1880 Iron Warship
Posted: October 20th, 2017, 4:47 am
Disclaimer:
This is a build I did prior to my build of the HMS Iron Duke (my first posting on this forum). I had originally posted it on the old forum I belonged to (that is closing), but it was such an unusual short-run kit I thought I would share it here. The build lasted a little over two weeks, so I had to condense the original post to a single page. I've tried to edit it for clarity, but if something appears odd in the text it is for that reason. I hope you enjoy the build.
Kits Remembered 1/250: British Empire 1880 Early Iron Warship
I found this kit on Ebay and the pics were not all that good. I tried doing some online research on the kit and found very little about it. But the price was good and the subject matter, early pre-Dreadnought battleship, really appealed to me. So I took a chance and bought it. Now I have to figure out if it is really a glorified toy or a decent model (or both?).
The Kit
This is supposed to be a 1/250 scale "British Empire 1880 Early Iron Warship" by Kits Remembered. It is kit # KRM30002. It is a model of a transitional warship known as a "torpedo-ram" which was an iron-clad battleship powered by steam and / or sails. And, as the name implies, the ships did fire early steam-powered torpedoes out of single tubes in the ship's bow and stern.
Pic of the box (the label looks like it was printed from a home computer and printer):
The model has a surprising number of pieces for such a "simple" model:
Examining the parts you can see there is very little in the way of any detail. Most parts are fairly rudimentary. But the funny thing is that for a kit of this type (short-run, unknown manufacturer) the parts were, for the most part, pretty clean and well molded. The kit is motorized. By far the worst part of the kit is the instruction sheet. And sheet it is as it is a single sheet of paper printer front and back. Image quality is VERY poor so you have to do a lot of double-checking of parts and part locations while building. Paint call-outs are very generic too and not very useful for the period this ship would have served in the Royal Navy.
The Build
I did some research and found that I wanted to paint this ship in the Victorian period colors of the Royal Navy. That would be a red lower hull and black upper. Deck structures are in white while masts and smoke stack are in an umber color.
Pic of the hull with the motor installed:
My two arch enemies, acrylic paints and white paint, are now in play. I've had a big fight on my hands in using those two. Acrylic paint is something I always struggle with, while white (like yellow) paint is a big pain in the backside to apply. I now question the wisdom in my choice to paint the model as it should be painted (Victorian Royal Navy colors), rather than in the generic red hull and gray topside as suggested by the instructions. And speaking of wisdom, or my lack of, I should have done a lot on painting BEFORE gluing parts into place. For some reason I thought I had more room than I actually do to move the brush around. Doh!
The hull is complete and the motor runs nicely.
The rigging has been added (good thing there is Google for help). I've also been doing some detail painting using paintings and pics from the period whenever possible. I do know I really HATE painting with white.
I've found the subject matter to be really interesting and, after doing some online research, I became much more involved with it. So it went from a bathtub toy to a deluxe bathtub toy. It is painted in British Royal Navy colors appropriate for the Victorian era. I added a lot more rigging to the model than was originally shown on the (pretty bad) assembly instructions. I also drilled out the lifeboats and lifeboat davits to allow for the boat-lines.
I did have a few problems as, while most of the plastic parts were clean and free of flash, many of the parts (lifeboats, davits, deck guns) were misaligned when molded. Lots of filing and fitting needed to be done. The odd ocher color for the masts and smokestack was practically solid in the Humbrol paint can. Although the paint was new, it was almost a solid chunk of paint that needed a lot of thinner to make semi-usable. Also, the color doesn't look as I thought it would (based on paintings and illustrations for ships of the time), but it was what was recommended on various modeling sites. The last thing that happened is that I sprayed some satin clear-coat on the upper-deck of the model and I don't think I did it any favors by doing so. It especially had a negative effect on the thread I used for rigging. I had waxed the thread before using it and it looked great prior to clear-coating it. After doing so it seems like every fuzz that could attach itself to the thread did so.
But, aside from these little mishaps, I think it came out okay and was a lot of fun to build. I hope you enjoy the results.
This is a build I did prior to my build of the HMS Iron Duke (my first posting on this forum). I had originally posted it on the old forum I belonged to (that is closing), but it was such an unusual short-run kit I thought I would share it here. The build lasted a little over two weeks, so I had to condense the original post to a single page. I've tried to edit it for clarity, but if something appears odd in the text it is for that reason. I hope you enjoy the build.
Kits Remembered 1/250: British Empire 1880 Early Iron Warship
I found this kit on Ebay and the pics were not all that good. I tried doing some online research on the kit and found very little about it. But the price was good and the subject matter, early pre-Dreadnought battleship, really appealed to me. So I took a chance and bought it. Now I have to figure out if it is really a glorified toy or a decent model (or both?).
The Kit
This is supposed to be a 1/250 scale "British Empire 1880 Early Iron Warship" by Kits Remembered. It is kit # KRM30002. It is a model of a transitional warship known as a "torpedo-ram" which was an iron-clad battleship powered by steam and / or sails. And, as the name implies, the ships did fire early steam-powered torpedoes out of single tubes in the ship's bow and stern.
Pic of the box (the label looks like it was printed from a home computer and printer):
The model has a surprising number of pieces for such a "simple" model:
Examining the parts you can see there is very little in the way of any detail. Most parts are fairly rudimentary. But the funny thing is that for a kit of this type (short-run, unknown manufacturer) the parts were, for the most part, pretty clean and well molded. The kit is motorized. By far the worst part of the kit is the instruction sheet. And sheet it is as it is a single sheet of paper printer front and back. Image quality is VERY poor so you have to do a lot of double-checking of parts and part locations while building. Paint call-outs are very generic too and not very useful for the period this ship would have served in the Royal Navy.
The Build
I did some research and found that I wanted to paint this ship in the Victorian period colors of the Royal Navy. That would be a red lower hull and black upper. Deck structures are in white while masts and smoke stack are in an umber color.
Pic of the hull with the motor installed:
My two arch enemies, acrylic paints and white paint, are now in play. I've had a big fight on my hands in using those two. Acrylic paint is something I always struggle with, while white (like yellow) paint is a big pain in the backside to apply. I now question the wisdom in my choice to paint the model as it should be painted (Victorian Royal Navy colors), rather than in the generic red hull and gray topside as suggested by the instructions. And speaking of wisdom, or my lack of, I should have done a lot on painting BEFORE gluing parts into place. For some reason I thought I had more room than I actually do to move the brush around. Doh!
The hull is complete and the motor runs nicely.
The rigging has been added (good thing there is Google for help). I've also been doing some detail painting using paintings and pics from the period whenever possible. I do know I really HATE painting with white.
I've found the subject matter to be really interesting and, after doing some online research, I became much more involved with it. So it went from a bathtub toy to a deluxe bathtub toy. It is painted in British Royal Navy colors appropriate for the Victorian era. I added a lot more rigging to the model than was originally shown on the (pretty bad) assembly instructions. I also drilled out the lifeboats and lifeboat davits to allow for the boat-lines.
I did have a few problems as, while most of the plastic parts were clean and free of flash, many of the parts (lifeboats, davits, deck guns) were misaligned when molded. Lots of filing and fitting needed to be done. The odd ocher color for the masts and smokestack was practically solid in the Humbrol paint can. Although the paint was new, it was almost a solid chunk of paint that needed a lot of thinner to make semi-usable. Also, the color doesn't look as I thought it would (based on paintings and illustrations for ships of the time), but it was what was recommended on various modeling sites. The last thing that happened is that I sprayed some satin clear-coat on the upper-deck of the model and I don't think I did it any favors by doing so. It especially had a negative effect on the thread I used for rigging. I had waxed the thread before using it and it looked great prior to clear-coating it. After doing so it seems like every fuzz that could attach itself to the thread did so.
But, aside from these little mishaps, I think it came out okay and was a lot of fun to build. I hope you enjoy the results.