After a week's delay - due to preparing to stage my 'Battle of Fulford Gate' game, I've been able to complete the last batch (for now) of Cruel Seas vessels.
This time we have a group of 2 x German S-Boats plus 3 x Vosper MTBs and a couple of sinking vessel markers. The painting process was pretty much the same as previous postings, although the two German vessels ended up being a little darker than those I did in the last batch. I'll likely go back and dry brush them lighter at some point if it ever crosses my mind again!
| As can be seen the paint job is a little darker than the previous two I've done. Not sure how much of an issue this might be. |
I decided to make a couple of sinking vessel markers by cutting an MTB in half, using a razor saw and ensuring the cut ran diagonally so that I could utilise both sides as a sinking vessel. Truth be told, when making the models I managed to ping one of the torpedo tubes across the room as I cut it from the sprue - never to be found again!
I briefly considered scratch building a new tube but that was beyond my skills and I didn't want a vessel with just one torpedo tube as part of the flotilla.
Hence the sinking versions!
As noted the trickiest part of doing the sinking vessels was picking the cut line, I allowed this to go through part of the cabin superstructure to make it appear that there are two 'equal' sinking models'.
The other thing to consider on the sinking vessels was that the under-side of the water-line boats is hollow, thus I had to find a way to full out their hulls. Looking at images of MTB hulls they appeared to be pretty flat, I opted not to model the propellers so it was a matter of supergluing strips of wooden coffee stirrers to the hull and when the glue is dry carving off the excess and then sanding down before painting black.