1/700 HMS Magnificent 1899 (Combrig)
|
by Jim Baumann |
1/700 HMS Magnificent 1899 (Combrig)
HMS Magnificent was the third unit of the nine Majestic-class pre-dreadnought battleshipsShe was heavily armed with 4 x 12 in guns , 12 x 6 in guns, 16 x 12-pdr, 12 x 3pdr 5 x TT Upon commissioning she joined the Channel Fleet as second Flagship in late 1895. HMS Magnificent took part in the Grand Fleet review at Spithead in 1897. She became second flagship of the Channel Squadron in 1902, and part of the newly formed Atlantic Fleet. In 1905 18 members of the new lost their lives as a result of an accidental explosion in a 6-inch case-mate gun. Paid off into reserve in 1906 she served as a gunnery training school ship.
As one of the oldest active ships of the Royal navy at the outbreak of WW1 she was serving as a guard ship for the naval base on the river Humber. Later, together with her younger sister-ship HMS Hannibal she was assigned guardship duty at Scapa Flow. With her main armament removed she was then converted to be a troopship and served in the Dardanelles campaign of 1915 , evacuating troops from Mudros back to the UK. Returning in 1916 she was refitted in Belfast to serve as an ammunition ship until 1921, when her active career ended and she was sold for scrapping,being broken up the following year.
My model depicts her as in 1899 in full ' Victorian ' livery
Building the Model.....The complete blow-by-blow, illustrated with photos account of problems encountered, how I solved them and the minutia of how the model was built can be found here.
Much scouring of many of my books , old plans and the internet for detailed on-deck photos as well as paint scheme was done before the build so as to establish as far as possible the correct state of fit and paint for the desired period depicted. An internet search for info on the whole Majestic yielded a 1/700 kit of HMS Mars from a new-to-me manufacturer SS Models of China. This was bought out of curiosity, unseen from e-bay; following inspection upon arrival it appears to be a lightly modified and undersized resin cast copy of the Combrig kit.
The only truly useful thing was a small PE sheet which contained well executed flying bridge decks and pilothouse walls. These were however the wrong shape for my build , but I cannibalised and re-modelled them into the correct sizes and window numbers for Maginficent
My model is based on an older Combrig Resin kit which has been maturing in my kit stash for some years. Dimensionally the casting was very good ,however there were errors or perhaps plan misinterpretation - either simplified or plain wrong! Upon initial examination the Combrig kit looked ready to go suggesting a quick and easy build.... Alas not so... hence a brief summary of the main works done; The entire, partially solid cast, boat-deck ; as well as the fwd and aft 'castle' decks ,were ground away completely out to the hull edges, this the allowed creation of the correct hollow deck underneath the boats to enable opening up of the corner 6 in case-mates and the small gun (12 pounder) battery case-mates midships ( in the white area ).
Templates in paper were made for making the new 'wooden' decking pieces fwd and aft as well as the spar-deck midships. The case-mate 'roof ' decks were made of brass sheet with the 'squiggly' walkways made of paper. The hull sides had the 'boarding stairs' made of small slivers of square section brass strip attached with matt varnish after painting. The entire central lattice structure supporting the ships boats, all the davits, fighting tops ,aft flying decks and chart house and many. other small details were all scratch-built.
Complete stern-walk was scratch-built. All the cowl vents were hollowed out and the shafts drilled. The cowl vent mouth 'cross' supports were made of white stretched sprue. The masts are stainless steel tubes with tapered stainless steel top masts made in my home-made Dremel 'mast-taper-grinding jig'. All rigging including the yard-arm foot-ropes is made of stretched sprue using my usual methods described here.
The ship is mounted with long screws onto a stainless steel baseplate for stability and longevity, and the water was made suing artists watercolour over cockstail sticks , the method being described in detail here.
Despite the shortcomings of the starting point, the completed model gives me much pleasure and looks much as I believe it would have done in 1899
