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Oakville's Flower.

Flower class corvette. (Short Forecastle) The build.
Always wanted to convert the Revell 1/144 Snowberry Corvette since it came out but had never built up the courage to start. I have made the 1/72 kit using “Flightpath,s” detail sets many years ago. (Still have it. HMS Bluebell) Found the L,Arsenal bridge set online so sent for that. In the meantime, glued the hull together and looking at photos and decided to take out some of the flare on the bows. Did this with a bit of plasti-card and milliput. Still not got the courage to cut the hull up so did some more research. Found an article by someone called “Captain Brown”. Lots of information on a 1/72 build. After reading through it decided to build the minesweeping gear before cutting into the hull as there were still options open to me without cutting. I used the winch gear left over from the Revell North Sea Trawler I'm converting to an Admiralty Class Trawler as the starting point The mine sweeping floats and lifting winches made next. Have decided to go along the lines of a Canadian Flower as the engine room casing is shorter so will alter the appearance from my HMS Poopy even further. Built the depth charge racks by thinning down the sides as I think I have made the Oropesa floats slightly too large. Opened a hole between the depth charge rack discharge holes for the mine clearing hawsers. Will make the guide rollers for the mine clearing hawsers next. DOH!!!! (Should have made the engine room casing first as now I have found that the minesweeping gear is too big so I,v consigned the minesweeping gear & floats the spares box. Now must do some hole filling I made in the stern.)
Had decided to build HMCS Weyburn but now had to find another ship to build so more research and then I found HMCS Oakville. Found several workable photos plus a BOOK “Oakville's Flower” which I downloaded from Kindle.

Will let you know how I get on shortly.

Added tread strips to the rear gun platform & then cut down the height and added to the rear engine room casing. Added and masked the clear parts of the engine room skylights. Decided to do a full hull display so fitted inner hull strengthening for mounting plinth and test fitted for final mounting. Made the Asdic pod and test fitted. (I have not seen this fitted to anyone's models before). L,Arsenal bridge arrived. Not quite what I thought. What there is, is very nice but seems to be one deck level short from main deck up, so you need to build this before completing the upper parts as supplied so you need good drawings or in my case photos as I tend to build by eye. (I use a crew figure as my yardstick matching him to the part I'm making). Forecastle shortened and new handrail capping added. Deck extended under short forecastle and detailed before fixing in place for main superstructure. Main superstructure build. Now to start adding the details. Hollowed out the L,Arsenal bridge parts and opened the bridge windows.

The fun continues.

Malcolm that looks like it's coming on a treat - I just received my parcel from L'Arsenal and I have to say their stuff is astonishingly well detailed (the jeeps are going in my D Day landing craft)

Keep us posted on progress

The fun continues or not. Sent to Sovereign Ensign for four tins of enamel paint. The P&P charge was £8.50! however I got an email from them asking if I wanted to go ahead with the purchase as the 2 quotes they had from couriers was £25 from Amazon or £13 from Parcel Force. Order cancelled. Found some Lifecolour Acrylic paint from the Airbrush Company. Not had much success with acrylic paints so this was going to be a new test for me. Wow it worked great straight from the jar. The boat hull and upper works were primed with Halfords white then hand painted in a very pale grey enamel paint before masking up and Halfords primer red applied to the lower hull. Decks painted ready for masking for the spraying of the pastel blue & green.
Before the above saga, I had added the splinter cover around the upper bridge using Milliput and made the stand/display base. Let the fun continue.

Lookin' good!

For what it's worth I find Lifecolour paints excellent and very reliable. You can airbrush or brush-paint too. The U Boat and the KFK were both primarily Lifecolour. It's a bit hard to get sometimes but worth it.

The fun continues. Made up the K178 and the name Oakville on my computer to the right sizes and printed out on clear decal sheet and applied to the ship. The reason Iv'd decided on making a model of Oakville was the story about the sinking of U-94. What's not mentioned in the article was that Oakville rammed U-94 before the boarding of the U-boat. What's also not mentioned in the above news article is that Sub-lieutenant Lawrance on landing on U-94 fell off into the sea and the only article of clothing he had on (underpants) came off so on reboarding the U-Boat he was naked apart from a gun belt and his gun. (He,d been off duty at the time so on a hot sticky Carribean night had gone to his bunk in only his underpants.)

Still liked the idea of the minesweeping gear so retrieved the one I had made. After a little studying I got the razor saw out and cut it down to size and reworked it. Went through the spares box and found some smaller drop tanks and I'm remaking the Oropesa floats again and reopened the opening in the stern for the towing wires.

The fun with this model is now complete. (Well, it was when I started writing this but found a few other details to add). Making model boats is quite cost effective but once built need to be protected against the dreaded dust and accidental damage so one must find a way to keep them save. One way I use is to use the box it came in (if its long enough, width is then added) but this means the model is hidden from view or you must buy a cover/display case. My solution for Heien. My answer to this is to buy a display cover and instead of buying another aircraft or two, the money that saved is used to get the display case and then dive into my loft insulation for the next aircraft build. This way my stash goes down a small amount and my better half (the wife) does not mind so much. Oakville in its display case. Hope you like it. See you at the Northern Model show.