Cruiser Giovanni delle Bande Nere 1/250
 

Hi everyone,

I'm starting here the construction of my Bande Nere, a cruiser of the Di Giussano class and sister of the Colleoni. The cruisers of this class were more superdestroyers than cruisers, and their light protection showed all its limits during the battle of Punta Stilo. Her sister, the Colleoni, was sunk, Bande Nere escaped after one hit against the Sydney. Originally, I wanted to simply modify the Halinski's Colleoni, but the errors of this model were so many that I redesigned the whole model, starting from the sections, taken from the volume of Anatomy of the ship dedicated to the Colleoni. My Idea is to realize the ship with its wonderful splinter camouflage colours, used by the ship just before her sinking by two torpedoes.

Once I finished the skeleton of the ship, I put some paper stripes of 200gr, in order to sustain the final cover and to give me some space for eventual errors. The whole skeleton of the ship has been redesigned using the plans from Anatomy of the ship and using the Halinski's model has a reference, but the construction is totally different. The original sections were one piece, that you had to insert, alternately, one from the top and one from the bottom. In this way the whole spine bone of the ship was weak. In my model all the sectons are split in two and joined at the waterline. This has allowed me to finish first the "submerged parts", putting some books on the top in order to avoid the "Banana" sindrome, and then I completed the top part.

Finished the internal structure,

I started to cover the hull. I reproduced the bulb of the bow with some pieces of round cardboard put in a cross way.

Whilst I redesigned the original pieces (there were differences of three millimeters from one side to the other if you mirrored them), there were some errors, I would have spent less time if I had projected these parts from scratch... Next time I will have to learn how to use blender or 3d max...
Next time.

Great looking build! I am a bit confused though - is this your own design or a rework of an existing model?
Thanks!
Chris

Quite interesting.
It will be fun to follow your project.
Mike

As I said,

I started reworking the old Colleoni, but the errors were so many that I rebuild everything. It's not my own project, because the base remain the Halinski...

In this picture I show what I'm doing, you can see the original parts (the ones with the numbers) and the new pieces that came from Franco Gay's book, adapted and modified.

In the first picture, the original parts of the hull, then my new section.

Once I finished to cover the hull,

I sprayed Saratoga filler, then I put some Molak filler, sanded and sprayed the filler again.

It was the same technique I used for my Graf Spee when I was in Australia. Back then it worked perfectly, but I used tamiya filler and "I can't remember" spray filler, this time instead, the Molak filler reacted with the spray, retractign and cracking the surface. I sanded the hull and sprayed the filler again, then I sprayed a green colour.

Here some more pictures.
I hope my explanations are clear, I struggle a bit with English.

Once the submerged part of the hull was finished,

I placed the new decks. It took two days to design the white and red identification stripes and the rail way for the mines, but the final results are great.

Hi,

Your explanations are all clear even for me a non-native speaker. The ship is a beauty - it is one of my favourites.

The hull looks great - all lines are smooth!!

Will be watching with great interest and wish you much success and stamina to complete your model.