HMS Manxman and Cambletown A Chance meeting 1/600

[John Symmons]

Hi guys thought you might be interested in some fiction diorama.

A few years back I brought the Tamiya USS Missouri and the Gold Medal PE set but quickly decided that at the time it was way beyond my very rusty capabilities, and that I needed a few practice builds. I wanted to build the Missouri in a waterline setting so had to find and practice how to do this and how to work with PE. The result was the pictures posted below, a fictitious pairing of HMS Manxman and Cambletown somewhere in the south western approaches.

Both kits are very old Airfix offerings of about 1970’s and I managed to acquire them from surplus stash of the IPMS Cape Town through Kenny a friend and IPMS member. I decided to pair them with the WEM PE set of the Royal Navy Escorts to get some PE experience. In hind site maybe not the best of or easiest of choices.

HMS Cambletown had already been started with the idea of doing her as she appeared for the St Nazaire raid, but that feel by the wayside and she languished in her box for a few years, so she was resurrected for my practice build. I had only built and painted her as far as the hull and main deck so it was easy the lop off the bottom hull but leaving most of the bow to give her a pitching stance in a choppy sea-way. She was then set in a practice sea-scape made using ready mixed Acrylic Tile Cement; the type used for dry walls; with the hull liberally coated with Vaseline to allow the hull to be released for further building; my first effort at a sea-scape; and it worked, the hull came away cleanly with the tile cement three-quarters set. So-far-so-good. I then decided to pair her with another ship to give the final effort some excitement, the only model I had that was vaguely suitably was the Manxman, also the PE set covered both ships. So the Manxman was also build up to the hull and decks painted and the lower hull again removed but this time leaving her on a more even keel and set in a new sea-scape. The old Cambletown sea-scape void was cut out and peeled off the original hard board base and glued and moulded to the new Manxman base using the tile cement, The Manxman was modelled onto the base only this time I wrapped the hull in polythene to allow removal of the hull for further construction, and again it worked.

Several things I discovered about using tile cement is it is much much cheaper than any of the acrylic pastes, it is completely odourless, non-toxic, water soluble, easily moulded, and never sets really hard retaining a slight rubbery texture, and readily mixes with any water based paint; makes for easy tinting and is easily painted, and finally sticks to anything except Vaseline and to some extent polythene. One down side is don’t let your brushes near it unless it’s set, you’ll never get the cement out of them.

One good thing about have the hulls open underneath is that you can drill holes for the any rigging and easily tension and secure it from inside the hull, this made the adding of the funnel stays for the Cambletown fairly easy. All rigging of both ships was done using very thin (0.1 mm) copper wire as it was all I had available at the time. Similarly when building the superstructures these were net add to the hulls until most if not all the PE was added to them and all modifications done like drilling out the portholes and opening the bridge windows on the Cambletown.

All gun barrels were replaced with brass tube as I felt the plastic ones were too thin to dill out and generally could be improved using fine hypodermic needles cut to length, I feel it was an improvement over the plastic barrels, and much cheaper than after-market items if they are even available. Very fine anchor chain was added to the Manxman and the holes the chain ran through drilled out, the Cambletown was left as-is as the chain was too thick. I quickly discovered that sometimes the PE is not worth the effort and also looks very two dimensional, case in point being the PE funnel grills or tops, in this scale it’s just better to just open up and thin down the funnel tops, depth charge derricks these were thickened with PVA and painted, looks much better with some thickness. When making the side boat rack the port one whet together with-out toooo much trouble but the starboard one the pieces decided to grow wings or self destruct in various ways, so I had to sort of hash something together from other PE parts to make something like the port side, sort of worked fortunately the model is very crowded at that point, and is not really that visible. The loading derricks on the Manxman are the kit ones just opened out and thinned down a bit. The colours used to paint both ships I think were the usual Humbrol sea-grey but to be honest I’m not sure, for the rest of the ships I could not find any decent references so I took some artistic licence especially with the Cambletown. The main deck railings being the last pieces to assemble.

The Cambletown was finished first and finally fixed to the base with more tile cement, and any touch-ups done to the seas around her before adding the Manxman and finally adding the last touch-up and mounting onto a wooden base with a previously made glass case to cover it.

All-in-all I was more than happy with the outcome in fact I was quite chuffed. The model was photographed and shown at an IPMS Cape Town meeting and given to a model shop owner for display. Then my computer crashed and I lost all the photographs. I only had these few that had been backed-up so that’s all I can show you may-be I’ll see the shop owner and borrow the model back and take some new photographs but until the this is all I have.

http://i1275.photobucket.com/albums/y451/idiotone/HMS%20Manxman%20and%20Cambletown/HMS%20Cambletown%20amp%20Manxman%201%20getting%20wetter%20%201200%20pixels_zps4f6ecpby.jpg

Manxman in polythene

http://i1275.photobucket.com/albums/y451/idiotone/HMS%20Manxman%20and%20Cambletown/HMS%20Cambletown%20amp%20Manxman%201%20%201200%20Pixels_zpst4x03xax.jpg

Adding to the sea-scape

http://i1275.photobucket.com/albums/y451/idiotone/HMS%20Manxman%20and%20Cambletown/HMS%20Cambletown%20Alone%20%201200%20pixels_zpsgtsygwtw.jpg

Cambletown alone.

http://i1275.photobucket.com/albums/y451/idiotone/HMS%20Manxman%20and%20Cambletown/HMS%20Cambletown%20amp%20Manxman%2014%20%201200%20pixels_zpsg1of3bre.jpg

Finished model head on ( Sorry about the out of focus, best I could do at the time.)

http://i1275.photobucket.com/albums/y451/idiotone/HMS%20Manxman%20and%20Cambletown/HMS%20Cambletown%20amp%20Manxman%2015%20%201200%20pixels_zpshcq7xgoa.jpg

Finalally a three quarter view.

I did another practice build of the Trumpeter USN  Francisco CA-38  1942 and I've finally finnished the Missouri 15 years after I brought it. Unfortunately I can't post them here as they are non-Airfix.

Hope the photo come out if not any advice would be welcome.

Hope you enjoyed my ramblings. Remember we do this for fun, not that I would really recommend the above as fun but I suppose I did enjoy most of it especially when it was finished. John the Pom

[DavidJC]

Boat modelling isn't my thing at all but I can appreciate the work that's gone into them and the overall diorama here - nice one.

[ironsides]

Excellent, plenty of motion going on there good sea work 😀

[John Symmons]

Thanks

Remember we do this for fun   John the Pom