by Guillermo Martinez
1/400 DKM Gneisenau (Heller)
The model is the old Heller 1/400. As all Heller kits, it is a very poor model which is merely the basic structures and little more ( I would call these Heller series as only semikits), but gives an excellent frame to be customized and modified in depth.
I consider this ship my first serious construction, first in the sense that it has not been built OOB, but with heavy modifications to make her appear as she appeared just before the outbreak of WWII. the construction dates back from 1994, and I had to make scratch-built pieces for the thousands to fit my intentions.
All added elements were made with streched sprue and styrene yogourt containers, as PE simply didnīt exist for me at the time, and Evergreen was far beyond my reach.
It was the first time I used my own colours : The hull red is a mixture of 80% red Humbrol 174 and 20% green Humbrol 117, which is a standard hull red, the same my ship was painted with when we were in dry dock. The decks are dark grey Humbrol 27, and the structures are of course light grey Humbrol 64.
It was hand painted, thinning the paint to 30-40% with Humbrol thinner.
The model has some obvious mistakes -- some of which can be considered openly as basic blunders that I would never repeat now. But one learns from his own mistakes. The only thing I can say is that I lacked in 1994-95 the library and the information that I have got now.
