by David Griffith
1/350 USS North Carolina BB-55 (Trumpeter)
My rendition of the Trumpeter 1/350 North Carolina, which has been taunting and frustrating me for the last 9 months, while I've been battling with it. It's totally cured me of wanting to do any other big thing in that scale!! If her ladyship goes and buys me the 1/350 Hood, then it'll be the divorce courts, next stop!!
As lots of people have commented, it is a model with more than its fair share of problems. For example, I've noticed the blandness of the hull surface, the awful joins between the parts of the deck, and the positioning of those joints, many fit problems, main gun barrels misshapen, and clunky detail such as over thick platforms and toylike Oerlikons. The Bofors guns are actually not too bad, compared to those in the new Sullivans. Some people have commented that the kit is over-engineered with regard to, for example, sides of superstructure and gun turrets. I disagree, because the breakdown of those parts overcomes the limitations of injection moulding, permitting detail on all sides, although the placement of seams could have been better thought out. The radars, cranes and catapults yell out to be replaced by photo-etch.
I used the White Ensign photo-etch set because it contained floater net baskets. The lack of details for the Oerlikons or Bofors guns in this set did not bother me as I had already decided to replace them all with L'Arsenal parts, both of which are beautiful representations. I also used L'Arsena whaleboats, Mk 51 directors and figures. Main gun barrels are replaced by Steve Nuttall's brass ones.
I added a few extra details, such as gooseneck ventilators along the superstructure sides and some davits, both from brass wire, antenna trunks from hypodermic needles, compass binnacles, peloruses (or should it be pelori?) and cut off the boat booms from the ship's quarters and replaced with plastic strip.
Hull plating is vaguely suggested by masking and applying a thick coat of primer.
Paint is mainly Model Master Acryl weathered with washes of sepia oil paints and drybrushed with various shades of grey oil paint. You can see which side of the fence I stand with regard to the colour of the ship!!!
Rigging is my usual method of using braided nylon cord from carrier bag handles, teased out to individual fibres and glued with stationer's gum under slight tension.
The signal flags spell out D-A-M, which were the initials of my wife's brother, who died tragically at the age of forty a few years ago. I think he'd be pleased to have his name on something big, fast, powerful, impressive.......oh, yes, and American!
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