HMS Iron Duke by king derelict - Flyhawk- 1/700 - PLASTIC

[king derelict]

The potential for another brush with insanity. Another wonderful Flyhawk kit with lots of tiny details and extensive photo etch.

The kit comes with photo etch, metal gun barrels and some brass rod for the masts and some resin bollards. 

The box is nicely packed with a lot of material and an illustrated card with a summary of the ship’s career.

I added the wooden deck but I think I will see if I can pull off a decent painted version first. It removes the long term worry about the wooden decks lifting at a later stage.

The photo etch is comprehensive and intricate. I’m not sure how much I will use. Some of the plastic pieces are well detailed and delicate and also have a better sense of three dimensions. Similarly the metal gun barrels. The metal barrels for the 13.5 inch and the 6 inch will definitely be used. I’m not so sure about the 3 inch and 3 pounder ones.

There looks like there will be plenty of areas to work on. The plastic is the usual Flyhawk crisply molded dark grey plastic. This should be a lot of fun.

Thanks for looking in.

Alan

 

[Old Collingwood]

Another excellent build to follow mate.

 

OC.

[king derelict]

40 minutes ago, Old Collingwood said:

Another excellent build to follow mate.

 

OC.

Thank you OC. I think this will be quite a long build so I hope you enjoy it. The plastic details are lovely. The judgement will be with using the PE, the plastic is already quite good. At least this kit has the option to drop back to the plastic if the PE gets too difficult. With Derfflinger there was no alternative to the PE. So this kit has the PE instructions separately so you have to read two sets of instructions in parallel. I think I’m going to build up as much PE as I can before assembling the major elements.

alan

[AJohnson]

Wow, that is a lot of detail Alan, definitely following along on this one! 😁

[Canute]

This kit looks loaded with detail, Alan. I, too, will be following.

[Nirvana]

Alan, that looks like a nice kit down the memory lane of the 20th century.

[king derelict]

18 hours ago, AJohnson said:

Wow, that is a lot of detail Alan, definitely following along on this one! 😁

I’m glad you are here Andrew and I hope this will be an enjoyable read. I’m officially in over my head now.

alan

[king derelict]

10 hours ago, Canute said:

This kit looks loaded with detail, Alan. I, too, will be following.

Welcome Ken. Some of that detail looks a bit intricate. I’m busy reading and comparing the instructions for the plastic and the upgrade. If it’s “ measure twice and cut once” this definitely “ read the instructions ten times and glue once”

alan

[king derelict]

17 minutes ago, Nirvana said:

Alan, that looks like a nice kit down the memory lane of the 20th century.

Thank you Per, it’s a great looking kit, I hope I can live up to it.

alan

[king derelict]

The first hesitant steps into the build. The hull halves have been fitted to the waterline base. It took a bit of fiddling to get the two halves lined up properly on the base but by gluing the bows together and then inserting the base and gluing it up a short length at a time it went together fine and everything fitted together without gaps.

I’ve spent a fair amount of time working out the most effective build sequence. While I have been pondering I decided to tackle the metal gun barrels. I always get a bit nervous about this step. I find it hard to get the barrels correctly aligned after adding the metal ones. The plastic ones look quite good until you look at the brass ones so I took a deep breath and started snipping off the plastic ones. The 13.5 inch guns went quite well. A plastic barrel is shown for comparison 

So I contemplated the barbette guns. Again the metal does look better so I did some irretrievable snipping 

I used a dressmakers pin to mark the spot to drill and stop the drill skipping and after a few pin pricks I got them done. There are six flavors of barbette guns hence the numbered spots on the double sided tape. The brass barrel and the plastic ones are shown by the knife blade.

I decided that was the limit of my skill for this and decided to leave the 3 pounders well alone. They are tiny.

The plastic parts are numbers 4 and 5 on the sprue and the brass barrels are in the plastic bag. The triangle at top left is the tip of a #11 blade.

 first photo etch has been added. The doors for the barbettes are provided in two versions. I’m not sure quite what the difference is between them but the first one was duly added

Both sides are now complete and I added the first barbette 

 

It does look nice enough to justify the extra work.

Slowly forward is going to be the nature of this build.

Thanks for looking in, the likes and all the kind comments.

Alan

 

 

 

[Old Collingwood]

Nice tidy  start  there Alan,   those barrels  and  the  PE  so add  to the  detail.

 

OC.

[king derelict]

Slow progress but plenty going on. I completed all the barbette doors and added the barbettes. In hindsight I should have installed the barbettes first and then added the photo etch doors over the top. Doing it the other way around meant it was difficult to line up the gun barrel and the locating features of the barbettes. However, given that the doors completely mask the barbettes the gun barrels can just be poked through the hole in the door and glued in place without bothering with the barbettes. So far I haven’t found a downside to this thought. You have to use the brass barrels with the doors, the plastic ones are too thick. With the guns sorted out I glued the roof in place and this bit is ready for some primer.

one reason things are moving slowly is the need to keep assessing how far to go before priming and painting. I started building some of the superstructure subassemblies.

Photo etch needs to be added, some like railings, ladders are a good thing but other bits really don’t add much detail and feel like PE for PE sake. I’m brooding over whether to replace the plastic support for the platforms with the PE. These are parts 38 on the fret. The plastic supports are over scale but are probably neater than I can achieve and I don’t see anyone turning up with calipers to get difficult about it. I’ll decide in the morning.

Thanks for looking in, the likes and comments 

Alan

 

[king derelict]

On 3/3/2025 at 3:01 PM, Old Collingwood said:

Nice tidy  start  there Alan,   those barrels  and  the  PE  so add  to the  detail.

 

OC.

Thank you OC. This is a great kit and the brass kicks it up a notch. I’m hoping I can make a decent job of it.

alan

 

 

[ddp]

those are not barbettes for the 6in guns but casements. the barbettes are the bases for the 13.5in turrets to sit on. they are similar to what was on the American standard battleships with the New Mexico class being the last to have them in the hull but no guns installed.

[king derelict]

35 minutes ago, ddp said:

those are not barbettes for the 6in guns but casements. the barbettes are the bases for the 13.5in turrets to sit on. they are similar to what was on the American standard battleships with the New Mexico class being the last to have them in the hull but no guns installed.

Thanks for the correction. I had the feeling that barbette was wrong but casement didn’t occur to me. 
alan

[ddp]

no problem.

[realworkingsailor]

10 hours ago, ddp said:

those are not barbettes for the 6in guns but casements. the barbettes are the bases for the 13.5in turrets to sit on. they are similar to what was on the American standard battleships with the New Mexico class being the last to have them in the hull but no guns installed.

Close, but the word is “Casemate”.
 

Casement refers to the operating (opening) part of a window in your house.

 

Casemate is the armoured enclosure through which the guns can fire.

 

Andy

[king derelict]

1 hour ago, realworkingsailor said:

Close, but the word is “Casemate”.
 

Casement refers to the operating (opening) part of a window in your house.

 

Casemate is the armoured enclosure through which the guns can fire.

 

Andy

Thanks Andy, I knew I had heard of casements somewhere 😀

Now that I recall I seem to think fortifications had casemate walls and later casemates housing guns.

alan

[king derelict]

I found a little courage this morning and cut the plastic supports off two of the platforms and added the tiny photo etch parts. It took all day to build them up with a few diversions to find the little triangles after they flicked off the tweezers. Oh and a three hour power cut.

At the end of the day they came out okay but I’m not sure it justifies the work.

There is one more to do but I’m thinking of passing on it and moving forward with some primer.

 Thanks for looking in, the likes and comments.

alan