by Wes Beatty
1/600 HMS Iron Duke (Airfix)
I used the WEM PE set. Great set and kudos to WEM for even coming out with it. The only whinge I have is the lack of railing - cutting corners and being careful not to waste anything I still had to finish up with some railing from a GMM set.
I replaced the kit supplied deck with Evergreen scribed styrene.
I didn't want to reinvent the wheel but I did want to back-date the ship to circa. 1916. That required removing some of the more bizarre 1920ish and toylike features. The portholes (scuttles) appear to be large grommets stuck on the freeboard and the guns are reminiscent of bellbottom pants. The bridge was lowered and the searchlight platform on the aft funnel was scratchbuilt. The most tedious aspect of construction was reworking the boats to have plank bottoms and benches. Even then, I didn't get the correct exterior shape.
I wrestled with whether the cage antennas should be attempted at all - I knew they were there but in most photos they are quite invisible. In the end I cobbled them together using some old 1/400 ship railing and painting them in a light grey so as to make them less visible.
