Airfix 1/72 Severn Class Lifeboat

[Bigfoot57]

Ok I’ve now finished attaching the super structure to the main deck. Let’s just say that it’s fits and that’s it. I would say it’s composed of 80% model and 20% filler. I don’t know if your fit was as bad as that but mine was absolutely awful the two pieces at the rear or the stern which stick outwards wider than each other to start with and they were too wide for the top bits to actually fit properly so what I did was I put some thin card down the insides to cover that gap and across the top and then glued the two top pieces that should’ve been glued to the original pieces on top of these cards and then painted it all. It may not look accurate but at least it’s now a complete unit with no gaps if that makes any sense
Another thing I’ve noticed is the colour scheme compared to the box art whereas the instructions some of the parts are completely admitted from the colour scheme altogether and you have to make a best guess as what colours it should be anyway the instructions instruct you to paint all the railings white whereas if you look at the box art a lot of of them are black so is it just a local thing with whatever life boat it was and whatever they deemed fit or was available at the time
At present I’ve gone with white railings but I’m going to be modelling the Pen Lee lifeboat as we don’t have a seven class lifeboat stationed in Weston-super-Mare. We’ve only got the little inshore type of boat although we do have the hovercraft for the mudflats so it will be the colours of that one eventually

[Bigfoot57]

Latest update, just a couple of photos to show that I progressed a bit with the front railings and several other items on the foredeck
My advice to anyone planning on building this is don’t follow the instruction sequence see section 10 and section 14
When you finished section 10 immediately jump to section 14 and install parts 51 & 52 Using the cabin side as a template of where to place these items as it is a lot lot simpler just to glue them into place without the cabin sides being in the way once you’ve done this and you can go back to section 11 and carry on through to section 14 without having to try and fit those little tiny pieces into the gaps in the cabin wall as they would already been installed and all you gotta do is just paint them whereas if you try and fit them afterwards when you’ve already painted it, the glue reacts with the paint and it gets a right mess believe me

[Bigfoot57]

Well with this section of railings installations and general paint touchup this section is now complete and what we got left to do is the flying bridge
Even though this kit has been a real pain to build and required numerous modifications and filler and scratch building. I have thoroughly enjoyed doing it. It’s building into a reasonably good model as well. It’s just a shame that the original initial fits were so bad to give you an example of the rear railings on the port side that’s the left-hand side if you’re looking at the boat from the rear or stern didn’t join up with the stern railings completely so I had to scratch build using brass rod a 45 to 70° angle on two pieces so that they could join together but that’s what modelling is about to my way of thinking
Anyway enough of this waffle here are the photographs for the railing installations and the small rubber. I think it’s a genie powered life raft on the top of the cabin.
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