by David Griffith
1/700 HMAS Sydney (NNT)
This is my model of the cruiser HMAS Sydney, made from the NNT 1/700 resin kit. It won a gold medal at Telford in 2008, and is one of the models that forms the basis of my book, to be published in spring or summer 2009.
The kit is crisply moulded and a very straightforward build, but benefits from a number of improvements.
The major piece of rebuilding is the bridge, which was a solid resin casting, with shallow depressions representing the open gallery on the middle level, and the top being very inaccurate, not being fully open. The best way to improve it was to scratchbuild the whole thing, with an inner structure encased in a shell of 5thou plasticard. If you look closely on one of the photos, you will notice that it is possible to see all the way through the bridge at gallery level.
I made a number of detailed improvements to the superstructure, following the plans in the Profile Morskie book. These include structures behind the bridge, including semaphore platform, 4” AA gun deck where the solid solid bulwarks were replaced with railings and canvas dodgers replicated with PVA glue. The searchlight platform and 0.5” AA platform on the sfter deckhouse were scratchbuilt to better shapes. Boats were improved in shape and some were replaced with Combrig ones from the spares box. The anchor chains were replaced by fine wire taken from the core of hi-fi speaker cable. Four strands were braided into a “square sinnet”, a process that took some time but looks much better than either photo-etch or real chain from the jeweller’s or the model railway shop.
The 4” AA guns were replaced with resin after market parts from Niko, which are absolutely exquisite.
A lot of photo-etch was used, from a variety of sources, as there is no dedicated fret for this kit or class of cruiser. In particular, the catapult came from White Ensign, not entirely correct for this ship, but better than that supplied in the kit, and the crane came from the Gold Medal fret for WW2 British Warships, a gold mine ofe useful bits.
Painting is mainly with Colourcoats enamels, with filters, pinwashes and drybrushing done in artist’s oils.
Rigging is a mixture of “Caenis” flytying thread and nylon cord from carrier bag handles, teased out to individual fibres.
Finally, the base was made using acrylic paste, which was then painted and coated with acrylic gel medium.
I very much like the clean and uncluttered lines of this little cruiser, and am very pleased with the way the final result has turned out.
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