discussion Airfix 1/72 Severn Class Lifeboat

[Bigfoot57]

filedata/fetch?filedataid=255817 So whilst waiting for the missing kit to the U 96 to arrive I built the Airfix 1/72 scale Shannon class lifeboat which was a very good kit letdown by it’s useless decals which seemed to disintegrate as soon as they hit the water if they were Cartograph they must’ve had a bad day when they made these they were so bad that there aren’t any on the port side as regards to serial numbers because they just disintegrated into nothing so I’ve only got the starboard side and the red and yellow and white demarcation lines are made from .5 mm brass rod painted and stuck to the side of the boat
Anyway this led onto the new construction which is the Airfix 1/72 scale Severn class lifeboat
so the first thing I did was to wash the whole set of parts in soapy water as they have mould release agent on most of it and the paint would never have taken in the first place however it took five coats to get the depth of colour that I needed for the orange and blue so I don’t know if washing it made any difference at all
Next off was to start constructing the main hull which was an absolutely awful fit necessitating a fair amount of filler to be added and sanded smooth before you could proceed with the painting and like I said it’s took five coats
with this done well then started proceed to construct the rear of the boat. I don’t know what they’re called. I’d call them diving platforms Airfix didn’t bothered to tell you what they were either and that brings me to another complaint. The instructions are absolutely awful. As regards to what colour things should be painted. You have to search through the instructions further than where you are actually to get the colour of the part that you’re actually putting on at the time if that makes any sense
Next we come to the parts and the diving platform struts are too short either by design or short shot Either way, I think I’m gonna cut those off and replace them with .5 mm brass rod at least they will be the correct length

 

[Bigfoot57]

 

[flyjoe180]

Looking good. Being a more recent release you shouldn't have any problems with the decals on this one. Was the Shannon one of those older kits with yellow in the Airfix logo?

 

[Airborne01]

Looking forward to seeing this in the bath!
Steve

 

[Bigfoot57]

Going back to the filler side of this kit here is a picture showing the amount of filler that had to go into the rear of the deck to get it to actually fit or make it look like it fitted
The finish result after the filler have been sanded smooth and all repainted and I extended the diving platform attachment rods by about 5 mm using brass .5 mm rod as the struts were too short to reach the platforms. We are now ready to start doing the super structure.

 

[Bigfoot57]

Well I have to say something.
This is a bloody awful kit. nothing fits and it’s devoid of detail inside so first off the two side panels that formed the inner sections have added to the decking and the roofing part supposed to fit over the top it’s too short, so I have manufactured additional length by adding a chopped up coffee stirrer and if this is anything to go by, I bet it won’t be the only problem with parts not fitting correctly
The instructions are next to useless for colour callouts and I based my colour scheme on another modellers photos which I found online

 

[Jim R]

Yes, it is a rotten kit as you have found. When I built mine a few years ago I had all the problems you've come across.
However you're doing a fine job of it. Patience and skill will get you there. A few choice expletives will help

 

[flyjoe180]

Despite the challenges you are experiencing it's coming along nicely

 

[Bigfoot57]

Okay, just a quick pictured. Show the repaired top section now that the connections have been extended using an old coffee. stirrer to fabricate the extended pieces required so that it will actually join up and look like a framework and not a disaster

 

[Geoffers]

Your doing a sterling job with this awful kit

My son tried building this with my help many years ago and we ended up binning it as it was so bad

Geoff.

 

[Bigfoot57]

Time for some more painting this time the main cabin sides and the so-called instrument panel which was completely blank and was told just paint it black. Well I’ve added loads of little dials and bits of paint here and there to make it look a bit more interesting whether it is anything like the real cabin, I doubt that very much, but at least It’s something other than a blank canvas Whether you’ll see any of that or not when cabin walls etc are glued together, who knows at least there is some detail that might be glimpsed
I noticed that some of the blue paint is flaked off from the bottom that’s probably due to the masking tape that was applied to paint the red squares underneath the vents so that will need touching up again as you can see there’s still some tape around one of them, I’ve still gotta give it another coating as the orange is still showing through hopefully next time we’ll have a cabin assembled. All the bits have been painted. It’s just a question now of letting the paint dry before assembly.

 

[Bigfoot57]

So now we come to the main cabin assembly and as predicted by other people and as what I’ve seen on the net it was a right pig to put together the cabin sides and top are welded with superglue over glued with Tamiya extra thin and once that had all dried It was sanded smooth and painted over then we come to fit in the front Of the cabin and oh dear, as you can see from the amount of filler that I’ve had to put around it it was a pathetic fit. I can see why people have thrown his kit in the bin now but it will not defeat me once I start a project I follow it through
To do this kit, you have to be able to adapt and change things and bodge things because it does not fit as the instructions tell you it does in actual fact the instructions are probably in the wrong sequence as well because you’ve have to sometimes undo what you’ve already done to get the other part in for the next section
But once the cabin has dried thoroughly and I’ve sanded smooth and repainted the front, we’ll see if it fits on the boat. I’m not gonna try it yet because still waiting for the glue to set fully on the front along with the filler and I don’t want all the seams splitting open again trying to force it to fit onto The deck before it’s ready
That disgusting looking container underneath is actually a brush cleaner with washing up liquid in it and it’s just the colour of from the last colour of paint that I used which looking at that was an orange although it looks horribly brown I should’ve removed it I forgot about it sorry about that

 

[Bigfoot57]

For my next project as you can see I’ve got a theme with boats at the moment in 1/72 scale. How about something? Totally different at 1/35 scale hovercraft used by the US in Vietnam.

 

[Bigfoot57]

Well the main deck housing is now installed and let’s say it’s fits where it touches and leave it at that Christ knows what I’m gonna do with the gaps at the end. I might just put some card in there to fill it. I can’t put more filler in there it just melt everything.

 

[Jim R]

All the fun of this pig of a kit. Having built it I feel your frustration. Good on you for sticking with it. It's looking like a Severn. Deep breath and carry on.

 

[Bigfoot57]

filedata/fetch?id=1271304&d= 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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[Bigfoot57]

Starting the construction of the flying bridge first off is the control console according to the instructions you just paint it black well if you look at some of the photographs of the boats they are not black they are orange with black and grey and silver dials and a few LED display panels so I painted mine to sort of replicate. The next step was fitting the framework that the side panels will fit on that actually fitted quite well so I was pleased with that however once I’ve fitted the front panel there was a massive gap underneath so more filler as you can see from the photograph of one before and one after that shows the side panels fitted and the horn in place and the re-attachment of the port railings at the front as they fell off due to handling next up will be the Transparencies which will need masking as I do not have a steady enough hand to paint the frames without getting it all over the glass Work so that’s the next job will be to mask those up and then paint them. These are a variety of colours they can be silver they can be grey. They can be black or they can be orange. The one I’m doing which is the Penlee lifeboat has orange frames I also added some details on the rubber dinghy such as the black patches which are an effect pouches for where the two wooden oars are stored in
Also acknowledgement from the creators of the Severn lifeboat virtual tour from which the 3 screenshots were taken from

 

[Bigfoot57]

Final assembly, adding the aerials spot lamps and some more railings to the flying bridge and that’s it finished all we Gotta do now is leave it to dry for a day and then put the decals on hopefully without snapping everything off Touch up the paint specially on the aerials as seems to have bled through and any other places that need it
So construction wise it’s finished to say it was a challenge is an understatement. I would put this model as 15% filler 85% plastic. There were terrible fit problems right to the end railings short shot which had to be supplemented with .5 mm brass rod in numerous places loads of filler as I mentioned and enough paint to make one a Pablo Picasso‘s pallet paints look thin so here are the photos. It’s the best I can do onto the next project.