1/350 DKM Scharnhorst 1943 (Dragon)

About 4 years ago I built Dragon's impressive 1943 DKM Scharnhorst for myself, using the Artwox wood deck, WEM photoetch set and Modelmaster brass gun barrels.  The present build was a commission, and substituted Lionroar's very extensive (perhaps too much so) upgrade set, which includes multiple brass and steel photoetch frets, brass barrels for the 11- and 5.9-in. guns (which can elevate, but without the blast bags that are included in Dragon's kit), and two resin Arado AR-196 floatplanes.  The painting scheme was identical with my earlier build, portraying the ship in December 1943, though using different paint sources (Tamiya Flat Black and German grey, MasterModel Hellgray, Light Grey, and Dark Ghost Grey, WEM Colourcoats Blaugrau for the gun deck and several bridge platforms, and Liquitex Cadmium Red Hue spray paint for the lower hull.  Rigging was made from stretched black sprue.

The Lionroar set offers a great many fine details for the modeler, but I found that many of these parts are too fine --their manipulation and attachment to the ship can be very difficult because of their small size, and many are extremely fragile -- flimsy, even, so that in many instances I had to use the kit's plastic parts or Dragon's own thicker but more sturdy brass parts (when available).  The best Lionroar parts are the railings, which are steel rather than brass.  The single and quad 20 mm guns are especially fragile, though helped by being attached to plastic mounts, but the barrels are 2-dimensional.  I used some spare HMS Dreadnought 12-pdr. barrels for the 37 mm AA guns -- oversize in diameter, but less so than Dragon's plastic ones and far better than the copper wire recommended by Lionroar (which did not provide barrels for these guns).  Lionroar provides good resin AR-196's (and detail parts for an open hangar, if both planes are to be used) but no decals for them; fortunately, I had extra ones from an unbuilt Revell Tirpitz kit.  As with other extensive photoetch sets I have seen from both Lionroar and Pontos, there are many, most often small, extra numbered parts whose location on the model is never identified in the instructions.  In addition, there is a steel fret of what looks like wide boarding platforms for which assembly instructions are provided but with no indication of where to put them (presumably, they could be used for a diorama of the ship in port).  Also, Lionroar's multipage assembly instructions don't always precisely indicate where some parts should go, whether or not there are plastic equivalents.

Gallery updated 3/3/2016

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