Hr.Ms. De Ruyter by amateur - Scaldis/JSC - 1:250 - CARD

[ccoyle]

28 minutes ago, kirk said:

i am about to start my first card model

👮‍♂️Tweeeeeet! I'm calling a foul on this one. You can't just say you're starting a card model and not tell us what it is!  😉

[kirk]

ACK!! ok busted.  at least i caught your attention! i hadn't named a kit because i hadn't quite decided on which one to tackle, but took the plunge last night - it's the 1/400 JSC kit
Destroyer Sheffield And Atlantic Conveyor Cardboard Waterline Model.  i will start a build log for it and expand there.

[amateur]

Today I did some small parts (actually: nothing left but small parts)

 

first I did an air-inlet. The kit show a very high one, the original drawings a low one, and both appear in pictures of the real ship. I think the low one looks more convincing (as it does not block the guns)

 

the stairs are a bit weird: the kit shows them as flat on the deck. I choose to do some surgery: shortening the "stairs" and making a small grey strip from spare stock to cover the white area. Not very convincing stairs, but better than a grey square flat on the deck.

 

next the small stuff on the deck: bollards and a capstan. The capstan is not designed very well: the white area on the deck is too large, or the capstan too small. Again the spare grey comes to the rescue: a made a base for the capstan, to cover the ugly white. The remainder is standard, and fits reasonably well.

 

finally, I started the searchlights: four of them, all equal.

 

and that was when I decided to stop: sun down, getting darker, and again the need for surgery: or a redo: the front of the lights is too large, or the housing too small. Next job will be cutting new grey strips to thicken the lights somewhat, to get rid of the ugly overhang...

 

Jan

[popeye the sailor]

super nice progress Jan  

[amateur]

This afternoon I finished the searchlights. I experimented with larger strips, but eventually, I decided not the thicken the cilinders: i left them as they are.

 

  

 

and the next fiddly bits. No idea what they might represent. Gun -mounts?? They are gping to be placed in the angled platforms on the conning tower. Might be gunmounts, but at scale 1:250 they are strangely high....

ideas welcome

 

 

Jan

[amateur]

The funny thing is... there are no pics of these small gun-platforms.

 

the drawings suggest double anti-aircraft guns, but the descriptions of the armament do not mention them. No way that the small cardboard pieces come togethet to something like this

 

(G16, an old WWI torpedoboat)

 

It is tempting to scratchbuild., at least simplified: pedestal, side, two watercooled .50 brownings.

 

Jan

[amateur]

Today my amiration for the 1:350 PE builders increased by another huge amount.

I deceded to build some 'gunlike' things, in order to replace the kit-provided parts.

 

In the end, I have some partial results (paint still to be done), but it took me far more time than expected.

 

In the previous post I showed how it could have looked like. So here is what I made of it.

sides and pedestals

 

added together with some barrel-like things. Actually the forward part was round (watertank), and the back end square, but that proved beyond my capabilities. 

Making correct sized barrels, too, by the way. They are made of tightly rolled 80 grams paper, but a strip of 4 mm wide proved to much, a strip of 3 mm didn't roll as I wanted....

 

placed on the conning tower, I noticed two things: the struture is a tad small (it should have reached just above the railing. Second: it does need some kind of chair.

 

The chair I made. The size remains at it is. No-one willever know, as long as you guys don't tell

 

the whole thing is so small that my cellphone camera doesn't focus properly. Will be fun painting. All wheels and other small stuff remains unmodelled.

 

Jan

 

[cog]

3 hours ago, amateur said:

Today my amiration for the 1:350 PE builders increased

So did mine when I started using it. You didn't do to bad on your AA guns ... seat looks quite comfy

[amateur]

Two months already .... time to get some glueoutof the bottle.

 

Today I did the anchor"chain" and som small stuf on the front deck. I have to say: Scaldis has kept it rather basic, and still got me confused...

these are the parts 

and this is the instruction (actually, this is how scaldis does quite a lot of its instructions: top-view, side-view, and the taxt says: puts parts 296-272 together and place on deck. Yeah....

so what to do: was part271 too small, or 270 too large, orwas it intentional? Nobody knows, and no way to check.

I decided that it was intended so. The final result is not bad.

 

placed on deck, it looks a bit flat, and not very inspiring. I don't have ideas how to spice thisup, so it is left as provided by Scaldis:

Next part (thebreakwater) was again misprinted. JSC prints the parts two-sided. The problem is: they dont printa grey square onthebackside, wirh some margin for error, the justprint the part in reverse. Problem is: they have both sides off by almost a milimeter, which is rather annoying.

 

And here the present state: breakwater stil drying, one cabledrum (unnumbered in the instructions, but printed) done (And no, the picture is in focus, the part ended up a bit fuzzy: the card used by JSC is rather fibrous: the print tends to crack up, and painting tends to loosen fibres along the edges. Not suitable for very crisp edges.... (I thoughtit was my poos handling, but I have come across otherbuildlogs of this one, and they struggled with thesame issues). Another problem: the card isnot very stiff, and althouogh I backed it up using 160 grams paper, the deck remains wavy, especially visible when you glue parts on it that should stand at 90 degrees to the waterline (eg capstans  )

 

 

Jan

 

 

[amateur]

And now complete with the breakwater (even that didn't fit properly ....)

 

 

 

 

 

[amateur]

Here you can see how muchJSC simplified the capstans.

Also: the cabledrums were smaller than the model suggests.

 

and in the last pic you can also see again that the guns were rather small for a ship that was supposed to be the strongest of the fleet.....

 

jan

 

 

 

[Dan Vadas]

The "chain" placed on deck, it looks a bit flat, and not very inspiring. I don't have ideas how to spice this up, so it is left as provided by Scaldis:

 

Jan, buy some small brass chain of the appropriate size, blacken (or paint) it, and glue it over the printed area :

 

1 hour ago, amateur said:

Here you can see how muchJSC simplified the capstans.

I suppose it depends on what you want from a model Jan. A Halinski kit would have had about 50 tiny parts for one capstan, all of them fitting perfectly . If you would rather make the simpler version ...... well, that's up to the builder. In my opinion Halinski is well worth the slightly higher price.

 

Danny

[amateur]

Hi Danny,

I would rather like the in-between: 50 tiny parts is beyond my cutting capabilities, but they could have done more than four, or at least made the graphics more life-like, in stead of flat grey....

But again: nowhere else to go for Dutch ships.

 

Jan

[amateur]

Today I spent the better part of the(rainy) afternoon on the 5 twin bofors anti-aircraft guns. I would have liked some of the parts ro be laser-cutted.....

 

again, small parts, little guidance from the insteuctions.

 

part 192 (the central 'housing' was to folded from a piece of card. I tried something different: I disected it into four separate parts, and glued those together, trying to get slightly crisper corners. The pieces became slightly smaller as a result. (I beveled the larger parts, to minimize the amount of white card visible.)

the mount is fairly straightforward, but as the card does delaminate at sharp bends, it turned out a bit difficult to get it all squred up. I should have used the same strategy as for the boxy part. All five finished

 

Next, I did the guns, using .5 mm evergreen, and .2 sofr copper wire. Believe me, the macro does look better than the original, the barrels won't line up properly....

aAnd last: a small 'testfit' on their final position. There should be a couple of small seat added, and some painting to do on the sides of the little floor.

 

If it is rainy again tomorrow, I'll try to finish the other three...

 

Jan

 

 

[amateur]

Almost a year ahead. It was not rainy today, but Idid the bofors.

The pics are a bit lousy, but the result is more or less as it should be.

The Scaldis/JSC card has the tendency to delaminate when sharply folded: the small seats therefore were a bit of a problem

 

 

and I made a small start on the ships boats.

 

 

I decided to do those 'as printed', and not by replicating part 220 and adding the boats interior.

 

See you next year

 

Jan

[cog]

Every one his own pace ... looking good

[popeye the sailor]

nice progress Jan  

[amateur]

The ships boats were something of a battle.

There is no real instruction, so it is totally unclear whether the topside should go inside the hull, or on top of it. Either way: it wouldn't fit nicely.

The topside of the large boat was around 2 mm short, and put together, it does not sit properly on its stands.... 

Here is the result of a couple of hours. Bit frustrating 

 

 

 

small remark: part of the boats were also in the lasercut-set. However, there the same (and some other) issues arose.

the lasercut (although sold to me together with the model itself) does not fit to the DeRuyter in grey. It is specifically designed on the other version: the one in 'dazzle'-paint. 

In the macro-pics you can see one of the issues with the scaldis-models: when handled, the toplayer comes loose, resulting edges to loose their crispness.

you can see it on the edges of the boats: they become a bit 'fuzzy'

 

Jan

 

 

 

 

Edited December 29, 2020 by amateur

[Moab]

Looking very, very good...Moab

[popeye the sailor]

from what I've seen Jan........what you folks do with these models is way over my head and daunting enough.   your update looks very good  

[lmagna]

Hi Jan

 

I'm enjoying following your build. Like Denis says I am also always amazed at what you people can do with paper.  It is beyond me.

 

I thought I would comment on your statement about the main guns being small for a flagship.  The De Ruyter was flagship strictly because she was newer and therefor more modern than the only other Dutch cruiser present in the East Indies the Java. They were both light cruisers with only six inch, (150mm) guns. At the time of her sinking at the battle of the Java Sea she was only six years old and one of the newest ships present other than the HMAS Perth who was about the same age and was also a light cruiser but had a better 6", (152mm) gun.

[amateur]

And seven months already since the last update. 

I am spreading over too many projects (and work  )

 

Today I worked on the cranes: 

 

 

encountered a small problem: the card used in the laser-detail set becomes a bit soft when used with waterbased glue....

 

Most boats in their cradles now:

 

 

and a very late reply to Lou: that is not completely true: De Ruyter was not only flagship bei g the newest ship present, but she was (by far) the heaviest armed ship the Dutch navy had available at that period. 

 

And yes, I have done quite a number of side projects over the last months, so I am still busy cardbuilding (but not all ship)

 

(Wedel, papershipwright, work in progress)

 

Steam-loco (Alfred Pirling)

 

Rode zee (veritas)

 

patrol-boat (Scaldis)

 

 

Unimog-truck (download at Fentens card models)

 

 

and a singing bird (johan Scherft, paid download)

 

 

Been rather productive over the last months

 

Jan

 

 

[lmagna]

3 hours ago, amateur said:

Lou: that is not completely true: De Ruyter was not only flagship bei g the newest ship present, but she was (by far) the heaviest armed ship the Dutch navy had available at that period. 

The DeRuyter was considered the flagship of ABDA strictly because because she was the ship the commander, Dutch Rear-Admiral Karel Doorman, flew his flag from. While it is true that she was the newest cruiser in the Dutch Navy she was built in 1933 and commissioned in 1936 and much of her equipment really dated back to the WWI designed Java, the only other Dutch cruiser in the "fleet".

 

Other cruisers present in early 1942 were:

American

USS Houston 8" Heavy cruiser commissioned 1930

USS Marbelhead 6" Light cruiser Commissioned 1924

USS Boise 6" Light Cruiser Commissioned 1938

British

HMS Exeter 8" Heavy cruiser commissioned 1931

Dutch

HNLMS De Ruyter 6" Light Cruiser commissioned 1936

HNLMS Java 6" Light cruiser commissioned 1925 (But was started in 1916 to WWI design)

HNLMS Tromp 6" Destroyer Leader commissioned 1938 (Although lightly armored, thus her classification as a Destroyer Leader instead of Light cruiser the Tromp was widely considered the most powerful ship in the Dutch navy in WWII)

Australian

HMAS Perth 6" Light Cruiser commissioned in 1936

HMAS Hobart 6" Light Cruiser commissioned in 1936

Both the Perth and Hobart were modified Leander class British cruisers with what was considered a superior machinery layout and a 152mm main gun instead of 150mm used in most other light cruisers.

 

There  are far many more considerations to take into consideration when comparing these ships than is contained in this list but it is clear that the De Ruyter while certainly a contemporary of the other ships available in the opening stages of WWII in the Pacific, was certainly not the newest. That distinction would have to be given to the USS Boise or the Tromp. That is if you do not consider the 14" battleship HMS Prince Of Wales commissioned in 1941.

While the argument could be made that the De Ruyter was more heavily armed than the Tromp, having 7 130mm guns instead of six on the Tromp, the Java had 10 of the same caliber guns, although like many ships of her design had a much poorer gun arrangement and could not use all of them at the same time if engaging a single target. The USS Marblehead had somewhat the same problem even though it is considered that she had a superior 6" gun than on the Java.

 

So saying that the De Ruyter was "By far" the heaviest armed ship in the Dutch Navy may be exceeding the reality slightly as well. The one thing that is certain to me though, was that these were the ships and men who were available at the time and almost to the ship gave all they had in those opening months of the war. Whether their sacrifice was wasted or effective is for people far more knowledgeable than I even pretend to be. But what would have happened in the Pacific if they had not done what little they could in those opening months? 

 

Your building of the De Ruyter honors some of that effort and I only wish more would do the same and that these ships of ABDA were more represented in the modeling community.  

[amateur]

I guess you read the stories Piet wrote in his log on the Java. Those guys did what thay could. It’s a pity that the government here in the Netherlands seriously thought that DeRuyter /Tromp were capable of what they were sent out to do: scare away the Japanese. For that purpose they were too little and to lightly armed. Bravery compensated part of that, but not all.

 

Jan

[cog]

Mentioning Piet, he let me know he and Gwen are doing fine, he has unfortunately little time at present to tend to his modelling needs, but wanted to be remembered to all.

[amateur]

Thanks for that message.

I was already wondering how he was doing.

 

Jan

[Bill Morrison]

I have one recommendation for you.  There is a website dedicated to paper modeling, www.papermodelers.com.  It has individual sections for modeling in every genre, including one specifically for ships and watercraft.  Members have really helped me on occasion!  And, the work there can be incredible!

 

Bill

[amateur]

Yes, thanks, I know that one. Not a poster, but a very regular visitor. 
I am posting my cardboard also on a German forum. 
 

Jan

[lmagna]

On 12/30/2020 at 2:08 AM, amateur said:

seriously thought that DeRuyter /Tromp were capable of what they were sent out to do: scare away the Japanese.

No one in early 1942 had that ability.

[amateur]

No-one had the ability, but as you read the political discussions on the naval program that were held here in the 20-ties, you come  across rather naive views  with respect to the number of ships needed, and the armament they should have in order to scare away anyone.

 

In the twenties, the Dutch navy showed that a core fleet of at least six cruisers was needed to be  able to do their duties both in the North see and the Indies, politcs decided that three would also do. There were even parties that voted in favour of dismantling the navy (like in: we have seen the horrors of the great war, let us stop fighting and dismantle navy and army). The planned battleship was discarded, the program of threenew. Ruisers was alterded into: overhaul of java and sumatra, building of De Ruyter. 

Navy showed that being able to at least give some damage to other ships, long range, 18 inch guns were the thing to buy, politics decided that the smaller guns would equally do (and those were quitea lot cheaper). 

 

My point not being that the Dutch/alliedforces could have been defeated, or that the sailors were nohero's. Far from that. My point being that those responsible made decisions that were questionable, not only in hindsight, but even at the time they were made, resulting in a navy (and army) that was seriously underequipped.

 

Jan