1/300 Patrol Boat Project: Part 3

The Northern Chalupistan patrol boat Yuzz on its shakedown cruise:


Sorry about the black & white shots, but the background was horrible looking and I couldn't fix it.

Here is a front view shot:


Rear view:



Here's what she looked like before I painted her:


To smooth over the foamcore, I wrapped the ships hull and superstructure with construction paper. The searchlight about the bridge is from the tapered end of a tooth pick. The windows were cut from granny screen. They were probably way too thick. The door and the engine hatches was made out of sheet styrene. The railings were done using a jig that I built:


Its four nails. Two nails are used to set the width of the railing and the other two pull the wire taught. I used a very fine iron wire (I can't remember the gauge). The width-setting nails are about a millimeter in diameter, which seemed about right. The railing posts were made of the same wire. They were folded over and then glued with super glue. Once dried they are cut to length. You can't see it in the photo, but there are marks along the jig that indicate where to put each post.

I used parts from Scotia's neutral equipment range for the 20mm main gun and the zodiac boat, and the two machineguns were from C-in-C. The life-saver rings are copper wire that I wrapped around a nail and then cut. I sealed the gap with some Squadron Green Stuff putty.

I made one modification before I painted the ship. I didn't like the two different radar dishes, so I cut off the lower one and stuck on the plastic head of a pin. It represents an electro-optical sensor. Think of them as very high-tech telescope system. It has a range finder as well as infrared imaging.

I painted it a gray. The windows are payne's gray. You can't tell, but the zodiac is painted green.

My next project will be a river monitor. I plan to base it off of ex-Soviet river monitors.