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Old 01-01-2017, 05:40 AM
Robert Woolley's Avatar
Robert Woolley Robert Woolley is offline
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JSC 1/400 HMS Roberts

Hi all. For Christmas I got the JSC HMS Roberts in 1/400 scale. And a nice little kit it has been so far. It is printed very nicely and the fit of parts has been good. There is a lot of clever engineering in the way it goes together.
Below is the Roberts shortly before scrapping.

The Roberts was a monitor that saw extensive action in World War Two. It was laid down in April 1940 and completed in October 1941. The turret was from the WW1 monitor HMS Marshal Soult, which you can see below.

The Roberts was involved in action in North Africa, Sicily, Italy and Normandy, offering shore bombardment from its 15" guns. It could fire at targets 20 miles inland.
The turret is mounted very high because the Roberts and other monitors had very shallow draughts. There was not enough depth in the hull to mount all of the mechanisms of a turret that are usually buried in the hull.
The Roberts survived the war, and was finally scrapped in 1965.
Below is the sister ship to the Roberts, HMS Abercrombie.

One of the guns is on display outside the Imperial War Museum. The other is from the HMS Ramillies

I like JSC kits because you can start straight away, without having to laminate frames. However, I never get a neat job following the order of construction in the instructions. I try to make the hull as a shell and place it over the framework. In this case, the sides of the hull were made from six pieces each side. There were two for the front, a top piece and a bottom piece, and the same for the back. There is also a piece to represent armour that goes on the bottom piece both front and back.
I glued the front pieces together first. They took the shape of the hull as they were glued together. The same for the back pieces. So when I offered them to the deck, they already had the correct curvature.
The framework has a long box running down the centre. It was nice and square when I glued it together, but twisted when I glued it to the base, I cut along the top to relieve the pressure and it assumed its correct shape. I made some tabs around the front and back of the base. The hull sides had tabs on the bottom that I think were meant to be folded and glued under the base. I didn't think I would be able to do a good job doing it that way, hence the change.
There is a little extra length in the back piece that is cut to fit when the parts are glued to the deck. On the right side I had to cut off about 1mm. On the left side I didn't need to cut any off.When glued together, the shell and framework make a solid little hull for a paper model.
The join between front and back pieces is covered by a chute that conveniently ran down both sides of the real ship. I haven't put them on yet.
On the port side, the camouflage runs diagonally across the joint on the top pieces. To allow for adjustment, the part is joined diagonally along the line between the two colours, so a little could be trimmed without messing up the pattern.
The sea base comes with the kit. It is on the back of the parts placement diagram.
Anyhow, so far so good

Robert
Attached Thumbnails
JSC 1/400 HMS Roberts-img_5156.jpg   JSC 1/400 HMS Roberts-img_5155.jpg   JSC 1/400 HMS Roberts-img_5157.jpg   JSC 1/400 HMS Roberts-img_5163.jpg   JSC 1/400 HMS Roberts-img_5164.jpg  


Last edited by Robert Woolley; 01-01-2017 at 06:11 AM.
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Old 01-01-2017, 10:23 AM
wireandpaper's Avatar
wireandpaper wireandpaper is offline
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Dear Robert:
Happy New Year and thank you for sharing.
Costal and riverine forces, sometimes neglected, are part of my interest (I try to build them in 1/400 as this example).
Looking forward for the completed model.
Happy modeling.
Pablo
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Old 01-01-2017, 12:06 PM
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Kevin WS Kevin WS is offline
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Robert - nice progress and an interesting subject. I will follow with interest!

Also interested in your build method. To build the hull sides - what glue do you use?
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Old 01-01-2017, 12:59 PM
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Don Boose Don Boose is offline
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Hi Robert - Congratulations on scoring this fine kit as a Christmas gift and for getting right to work on it.

I see your usual outstanding craftsmanship reflected in the build.

Many thanks for all the background info, the many excellent images, and your narrative.

What is the interesting-looking book with the advertisement for Warships of the World on the back cover?

Don
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Old 01-02-2017, 05:12 AM
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Robert Woolley Robert Woolley is offline
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Thanks to everyone for stopping by and having a look.
Pablo, until I started this model, I didn't know much about monitors other than superficial details. I always enjoy being lead to learn new things through the models I make.
Kevin, I use PVA glue for almost all of my paper modeling.
Don, the book IS Warships of the World!! It is a heavy little book that I use to flatten parts after I laminate them. It was doing service holding down various decks that needed laminating. It also has a nice picture of the Roberts in it, though not the one below of the Roberts at Malta.

I made the turret today. The Roberts had 15" guns. As I mentioned in my previous post, they were off a WW1 monitor. The British 15" naval gun was one of the best ever made. They were renowned for their accuracy over long distances, and were still as good as anything in WW2, even if they didn't have the weight of shot of the larger 16" guns of the British Nelson class battleships and the later American battleships, or the Japanese 18"shells of the Yamato and Musahi. They were good enough to be used in the HMS Vanguard, the last battleship to be built, and considered the best by many. The Vanguard used guns left over from WW1 as well.
I came across the monitor pictured below during my research, the HMS General Wolfe. It had an 18" gun, fixed to starboard. The gun was intended for the battlecruiser HMS Furious, which had been converted into an aircraft carrier.
During the closing stages of the war, it fired a shell almost 33 miles, the furthest the Royal Navy has ever done in action. The target was a railway bridge far in-land. The shell was on target too. There were seven monitors lined up for this acton, it must have been an impressive sight.

The turret went together very well and was a pleasure to build. I was worried about rolling the barrels as the blue line had to line up, but there was no trouble. These barrels are the easiest I have done in 1/400. That is not to say they didn't take some time and a lot of concentration to do though. I whittled down toothpicks to go inside the barrel so I don't bend it later.
I like that there is only one turret to do. There are five on the JSC 1/400 HMS Dreadnought that I work on from time to time; the turrets were very fiddly and not at all fun to do. After the first one, I put it aside for a while, and have only come back recently to do the other four.
The only changes I made on the Roberts turret and barbette was to change the location of the tabs on some of the parts. As designed there is no base to the barbette. The sides have tabs on the bottom that fold under and glue to the deck. I made a base which I inserted inside the bottom of the barbette to make sure I got the complex shape correct.
I also made tabs for the sides of the turret to take the top pieces.
The turret can rotate. It is held in place by friction on a tube that goes into a hole in the barbette.


Robert
Attached Thumbnails
JSC 1/400 HMS Roberts-img_5202.jpg   JSC 1/400 HMS Roberts-img_5203.jpg   JSC 1/400 HMS Roberts-img_5196.jpg   JSC 1/400 HMS Roberts-img_5197.jpg   JSC 1/400 HMS Roberts-img_5198.jpg  

JSC 1/400 HMS Roberts-img_5199.jpg   JSC 1/400 HMS Roberts-img_5200.jpg   JSC 1/400 HMS Roberts-img_5201.jpg  

Last edited by Robert Woolley; 01-02-2017 at 05:23 AM.
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Old 01-02-2017, 05:43 AM
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Kevin WS Kevin WS is offline
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Excellent so far!

Thanks for all the photos. HMS Abercrombie looks great in the camo pattern - which is surprisingly very effective when shown in context on the ship!
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Old 01-02-2017, 07:50 AM
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Don Boose Don Boose is offline
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Thanks for the info on Christopher Chant's Warships of the World. Anthony Preston also published a book with the same name that describes the origin and development of each class of warship up to 1980. The Chant book looks very good.

Thanks also (and especially) for the excellent clear images of the turret/guns and barbette and the description of how they go together.

This is a most enjoyable and informative thread.

Don
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Old 01-03-2017, 06:48 AM
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Robert Woolley Robert Woolley is offline
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I did a bit of work on the conning tower today. It looked straight forward, but turned out to be rather fiddly. Once again everything fit great, it was just that there was a fair bit of scoring and aligning to do. I used some of the provided scrap colour to line the inside of the wall at the top of the conning tower as I was not successful in getting a matching colour mixed from the paints I have. I will need to find some paint soon as I will need it for the mast poles.
It is starting to look like a small Nelson class battleship. Compare the conning tower on the Nelson below to the Roberts conning tower.


However the Roberts is far from a battleship. She was made with the bare minimum required to support the operation of the guns. It had two small steam turbine engines fired by two boilers, and could only do 12 knots in ideal conditions. It was not armoured very well either, only 5" along the armour belt. Heavier armour would have slowed it down even further.
Don, the book you mention sounds interesting. At the moment my ship library is rather small. I had the opportunity to acquire some very nice books recently, which I passed up to my regret. A gentleman whom I was friends with passed away. He had an extensive library with some very expensive and rare books about naval history, amongst other things. He was also a ship modeller. I helped his widow sort out his things and she said I could take what I wanted. I accepted a couple of books, but suggested she sell the rest, as I knew she wanted to sell his stuff if possible. There were some rare and desirable books in his collection. My dad had sold some books to a used book dealer, who had come around to his house, and he had made some good money out of the deal.
Anyhow I later asked her how she went selling his books. She said the dealer came and offered $100 for the lot, which she accepted. Several of the books would have been worth that on their own, let alone the whole collection. I was upset that she had been ripped off so badly, but she seemed happy with what she got so I said nothing.
On the bright side, his model club friends helped sell his collection of un-built kits, and they did right by her and raised several thousand dollars through the sale.

Robert
Attached Thumbnails
JSC 1/400 HMS Roberts-img_5204.jpg   JSC 1/400 HMS Roberts-img_5207.jpg   JSC 1/400 HMS Roberts-img_5208.jpg   JSC 1/400 HMS Roberts-img_5209.jpg  
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Old 01-03-2017, 05:02 PM
Utnapishtim Utnapishtim is offline
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The origin of the mountings used in the Marshals, and then Roberts etc. is another little titbit you may like - they were the spares built for Repulse and Renown in the time they were intended as the 6th and 7th "R" class battleships. The other pair, used in Erebus and Terror, were the ones built for Furious as a precaution in case of failure of the 18" (known for reasons of deception as the 15" B - the ones fitted in Lord Clive, & General Wolfe) From memory, the modified mountings for Vanguard were the ones removed from Glorious & Courageous when they were converted to carriers, but the guns tended to move from ship to ship, when they needed relining. Again from memory, the working life of a wire wound gun was a couple of seconds - enough to fire about 200 rounds.
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Old 01-04-2017, 06:33 PM
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Michael Mash Michael Mash is offline
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Hello Robert:
The work is sharp and the camouflage looks good.
Those are nice photos. The first one in particular has terrific clarity.
Mike
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