Revell HMCS Snowberry Flower Class Corvette
This is the second part of the Revell HMCS Snowberry Flower Class Corvette 1/144 Scale RVG 05132
It’s a New Year and a perfect time to start a new model. As excited as I am to dive into this model I do think that I’m going to be building the Snowberry a lot slower than I have with previous projects, and that’s just because there are so many parts that need to be cleaned, painted, and detailed.
All of these details take time to properly complete, and that can get tedious at times, but it’s worth it in the end as we’ll have a spectacular ship to look at when it’s all done.
First, I need to glue the 2 halves of the hull together. Instead of gluing the entire section of the hull, I’m only going to glue the front of the bow with Mr. Cement. Then I’ll clamp the bow together and allow it to fully cure.
Now that the bow was glued I used Mr. Hobby SP, to first glue the inside of the hull. I glued this on in small sections about 3-4 inches at a time. After I had placed the glue down I pressed the hull together. This would further melt the plastic and create little “weld” lines which I’ll show in just a moment.
I also added some cement to sections on the outside of the hull to areas that might not have had enough.
Thankfully, there are many areas on the outside of the hull where you can clamp the halves together ensuring a tight bond. I should also mention that Mr. Hobby SP is designed to be a fast-acting cement, and this means that it’s more aggressive than other cement on the market. So it did a very good job fusing together the Revell styrene.
Here are the little “weld” lines I was talking about. These are bits of melted styrene that popped up when I pushed the halves together after gluing. What’s great about these weld marks is you just need to sand them smooth and you don’t need to add any filler.
The bulkhead was then added to the middle of the hull, and this part added a lot of reinforcement to this section. You might notice that there is a slight gap at the bottom and this is because I kept the top section with the doors level with the top where the deck would need to be added. Even with this slight gap the hull is very sturdy.
I built the display stand the Revell included with the kit. Though I’m not going to be using to display this ship when it’s completed it’s nice to have to keep the ship on while I’m working on it. There is quite a bit of flash around the edges this will need to be cleaned so that we don’t scratch the hull once it’s been painted.
This plate was added to the back of the ship, it has 2 openings where they would drop depth charges from. I’m looking into finding figures that I might be able to add to the model, so I might leave these doors open and make a bit of a scene out of it. But I’m going to have to do quite a filling and sanding to smooth out those gaps and uneven hull plates. Sadly this was the best that I could get it on, it’s just not that good of a fit.
These sockets are left around the insides of the hull. They aren’t mentioned in the instructions, but I imagine at one point Revell had these designed with bracers to strengthen the hull. It’s very strong once the upper decking is added, but you could add styrene rods into these areas if you desired.
I had a bit of trouble fitting the upper front deck. I found that this small rectangle on the side was giving me some resistance. I simply cut them off on either side, and the deck was able to fit in a lot easier.
I noticed that some of the port holes were uneven due to some thin flash. I used a round Excel Hobby file to quickly remove the flash.
The main upper deck was very easy to install and all it needed was a bit of glue around the edge to fuse it to the hull. Once the upper deck was dried I set in the lower deck which sort of popped into place.
The galley on the lower deck comes in 4 parts. There is quite a bit of flash on the edges of these parts, and my Vallejo Sanding Pads made cleaning the edges really quick and painless.
The 3 sections of the galley fit very snug with the curve of the lower deck. I was quite impressed with how well these sections fit together.
Lastly, I added the roof to the galley. This part in particular you’ll want to clean up really well as it mates up with the side walls. So far things are looking really good, but I decided that I’d pause any further construction for the moment.
Next, I’ll need to do quite a bit of clean up work. That panel aft of the ship in particular needs to be sorted out. But also this is a good place to stop for a bit to prime and paint the deck. I don’t know if there are any masking sets out there for this ship, so I’m going to have to do it myself, and that will take a bit of time to accomplish.
So far this has been a very fun project, and I’ve really enjoyed all of the construction on it. Hopefully the painting and masking won’t take me too long and I can get back to some more building.
To be continued…
Jared Demes is a modeler from southern Alberta. He has been building models since he was 4 years old when his Dad first introduced him to the hobby. He has written for several magazines including, Fine Scale Modeler, Scale Aircraft Modeling, Phoenix Scale Models, and others. He has an interest in all modeling subjects, with a focus on WWII Japanese aircraft and Science Fiction.
Jared has won several IPMS awards for his modeling, and currently operates his YouTube channel rebelsatcloudnine, where he showcases model builds and product demonstrations.
French