by Paul Neuhaus
1/700 HMS Opportune (Tamiya)
I purchased this model-kit from Dorking Models during my last England holiday . The shop was recommended to my by Jim Baumann, whom I had met a couple of days before. (Thanks again for giving me a hive of very useful informations and hints on ship modelling). Dorking Models is nice comfortable and traditional small model shop in the heart of Dorking, a nice little town in southern England with a very pleasant owner. He has model kits of all sorts stacked to the ceiling; - Dorking models now also has a web-site with good prices.
The Tamiya kit contains two ships and parts to build two slightly different types of this destroyer. To improve the look of the model I also got the PE-sets from White Ensign Models which are specially made for this kit. The quality of the PE set is very good and made of steel, which makes handling a bit easier compared to the normal brass PE which is much softer than the steel items.
I can recommend the kit, which is of good quality. The only thing missing are the port holes on the hull and superstructure;these were marked with pencil and drilled out out with a small modelling tool. The anchor holes at the front also had to be re-modelled.
This time I painted the major parts of the model (hull and the larger pieces of the superstructure with an airbrush and not with a brush. I am very satisfied with the result although the effort was much higher (masking etc. and permanent cleaning of the spraygun) I used thinned down acrylic paints from Gunze, which are very good (if you can get the wretched jars open!!).
For creating the water surface I this time used “lake foil” which I obtained from a model train shop. This is very nice for presenting a ship in calmer water and I think I’ll used it more often in the future for small scale models.
The rigging is made from stretched sprue and I created the flag according to Martin Kohring’s recommendation (thanks Martin) (stick the decals on to alu-foil and the then bend the flag into shape)
I didn’t weather this model too much and used thinned down matt varnish and powder colours which were painted on very thinly. The ropes are made from very thin copper wire from an old radio transformer. I wrapped it around a thick needle and pained the small coils with hemp-colour from Humbrol (N° 168)
