1/700 RM Caio Duilio (Regia Marina)
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by Nick Dogger |
1/700 RM Caio Duilio (Regia Marina)
This is Regia Marina's RM Caio Duilio battleship in 1/700 scale, which I made using their extra photo etch set, plus various details that I added for additional accuracy and interest. Items such as the ship's boats and the anti aircraft guns particularly merited further work.To simulate the covers for the hull's smaller portholes, as carried on the real ship, I plugged the portholes on the kit with rods which I then cut off to leave a slight protrusion.
The rear superstructure tower particularly required some scratch building, for greater accuracy; and I also slightly reshaped the stern water line armour belt.
The rigging is from caenis thread, the funnel cap cages from stretched sprue, and the porthole eyebrows from fine wire. The canvas dodgers were made using wood glue, in the usual way. I opened up the funnels, and also some of the doors and hatches, to provide more realism and depth. I used Gold Medal's fine scale railings, and their naval figure set.
The paint scheme is the pre-camouflage light grey version, with the fore deck red and white stripes, suitably weathered and streaked with various washes.
In some of the photos, Cao Duilio appears with my model of Waveline's 1/700 RM Conti di Cavour, which I made some time ago but have since further detailed and improved. It seemed appropriate to have a couple of photos of these two ships together, and separately, as they were contemporaries and rebuilt for the Italian navy at about the same time.
To my eye, these were rather handsome ships.Many thanks to Jim Baumann for taking some of the photos.
