Made some more progress on these. Last things are the inkwash for the hulls (which are a slightly lightened Paynes Gray.), and some rigging, especially the Alexandra.

Dreadnought

Collingwood

Thunderer

Orion

Alexandra

Some progress…

So I assembled these while watching Jaws…   very maritime, stuck them to tongue depressors and undercoated black. Woke up this morning feeling terrible with a head-cold, so I decided to stay home and warm, and in the meantime, add the deck colour.

So the plan is..  White superstructure, undercoat ‘antique white’ – blackwash, and highlight with ‘arctic white’. The decks are a GW colour ‘evander darksun’ or some such nonsense, and I will brown ink wash these, then highlight with a very pale cream colour to bring up the decking. The black hulls will get a wet-brush with paynes grey, then a blackwash and finally neutral grey/paynes grey mix ‘highlights’.

After that – some rigging. Looking at the diagrams and photographs, these ships still carried a lot of rope! Plus that then gives me somewhere to hang signal flags.

Having started the paint job, the scale differences are becoming quite noticeable. So in order of size in feet.. (from Conways again) – Orion: 245, Thunderer: 285, Dreadnought: 320, Alexandra: 325, Collingwood: 325.

The models however are this size (mm) Orion: 80, Thunderer: 103, Dreadnought: 102, Alexandra: 108, Collingwood: 96.

Using a very rough 300mm per foot, that gives a scale of:
Orion 80:245 –  1/919
Thunderer 103:285  – 1/830
Dreadnought 102:320 – 1/941
Alexandra 108:325 – 1/902
Collingwood 96:325 – 1/1015

I am just going to ignore it..   close enough for Government work…

So – in between moving stuff, I decided to have a bit of fun. I had a bag of Houstons ships – roughly 1/1000 pre-dreadnoughts, available from ‘Great Endeavours’ and I put these together.

Now people say that the moulds are old, and yes, there was a bit of scraping, filing and filling to do, but these ships have serious character. So here’s my Brits – assembled and waiting for undercoat..   HMS Dreadnought, Collingwood, Orion, Thunderer, and Alexandra.

And of course they are sitting on top of my Conway’s “All the World’s Fighting Ships 1860-1905”. I got mine for about Aussie $45.. but I have seen them sell for as much as $120. If you see one at a price you can afford, and you have any interest in pre-dreadnoughts, buy it! You wont regret it. Line drawings and photographs plus essential statistics and summary for every warship in this period.