Modifying FMG's Italian Battleship

[dangermouse650]

Messed up the mold with that then, good job,  will be fixing mine when they arrive……

[Lunarwolf]

are you using oob pieces to?

[jim010]

The battleship I modified was FMG’s.

[jim010]

Unless you mean other pieces?  I used Table Tactics’ half track, and Avalon Hill’s infantry.  All other pieces I used were FMG’s.  I didn’t use FMG’s trucks, armoured cars or infantry.

[Lunarwolf]

how come you dont use their infantry? too small?

[Tall Paul]

Jim010,

Good Job!  And on such a small size as well.  Well done.

“Tall Paul”

[jim010]

@Tall:

Jim010,

Good Job!  And on such a small size as well.  Well done.

“Tall Paul”

Thanks.  Wasn’t hard to do, though.  I still have a couple Italian BBs I will do, so later on I’ll post a how to.

CHeers

[jim010]

OK, here we go:

First, here’s a shot of teh FMG BB again before modification.

Use an exacto knife to trim off the B turret barrels so that you have a level plane from the top of A turret to the top of B turret.

[jim010]

Here the BB is showing how it is to be trimmed.

[jim010]

You’ll need sheet styrene.  Cut out some pieces and glue them on top ofeach other in a stack equal to the height of the FMG BB turret.

Then trim the piece into the square shape of the turret.

[jim010]

Glue the new turret on top of the BB’s B turret.

[jim010]

Next, you’ll need to make the barrels.  I used styrene strips .022 x .033 .

Cut 3 equal length strips the same length as the BB’s barrels.

Glue them in place using cyanoacrylate glue.

[jim010]

All 3 barrels in place:

[jim010]

And then paint whatever colour you wish.  I primed the ship first, and then used an acryllic avocado green for the ship, as I did all the Italian pieces I have.

[KOOLHOVEN]

Nice job! Wished some one made a generic triple turrent for smaller(cruiser) ships.Some of my metal models have bad mounts due to old molds.

[knp7765]

Looks like you did a terrific job.  The final painted version looks almost like it was made that way.  Seems like an awful lot of work though.  Of course, not everyone is a piece junkie like me and bought 5 sets.  I would have to modify 30 battleships if I wanted to do this.  A couple of questions:

1 - What if you just want to keep your ship(s) in the original molded color?

2 - Why did you choose that light green color for your Italians?  FMG is coming out with a Canadian set after USA, UK and ANZAC and I think they will be about the same color.  What will you do then?  Or do you not plan on adding the Canadians?

Just curious.

[jim010]

If I wanted to keep it the original brown, I would use a colour matched acrylic just on the BBs.  No need to repaint all the pieces the same brown.

I chose the green I did as it was a close match to the green Avalon Hill used for their British in the AA Revised.  I thought the colour stood out nicely against the other nations.  And it was similar to the green Avalon Hill used for their Rise and Decline of the Third Reich.

I don’t plan on buying the Canadian or Anzac sets, but if I do, then there’s always more colours to choose from.  :-)

[Tigerman77]

How about taking a good turret off another battleship? HBG has a lot ships and to keep the color cut a turret off one battleship to use for the messed up turret. 1 battleship to make 2 good ones!  Just an idea!!

[jim010]

You could.

But then you’d have a ‘scrap’ BB.  The seam where it was glued would show as well unless it was painted over.

[Viracocha]

Jim, I like what you’ve done here.  I’ll be trying this with my own as well…