I've been a little slow in working on my projects, due to various reasons, but now I can report some progress on one project.
Back in January, I had posted that I was working on the World War 2 Italian Fleet in 1/6000 scale. The Figurehead pack come with 77 ships, including all the major Italian warships and 40+ destroyers.
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| A Littorio class battleship with an escort |
I did a basic paint job on the ships in February, but it took a while to do some detailing and get the recognition stripes done. Part of the detailing involved putting camouflage on the ships, but with the ships being so small, it is pretty hard to see. I looked at several ways to do air recognition stripes (those are the red and white "barber pole" stripes normally on the bow of the ship). It was especially challenging to think about doing the destroyers, most of which were only a millimeter wide. After failing to consistently paint stripes, I finally settled on using a marker to do the stripes. I think they turned out pretty well, even if it felt a little like cheating.
Here are some photos of the completed ships. My camera did have some trouble focusing on small ships with my lighting conditions, but hopefully it gives you a good idea of the final look. The mat in the photos has 2 inch squares, so you can get an idea of the ship size.
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| Littorio class battleships |
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| Conte di Cavour and Andrea Doria class battleships |
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| Italian heavy cruisers |
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| A representative group of Italian light cruisers |
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| A few destroyers |
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| The whole fleet |
While the photos aren't that great, I think the ships turned out pretty well. I'm planning on mounting the ships on some clear plastic stands. That will give players something to grab when moving the ships and a place for me to put ship names.
I'm hoping to get the ships out for some action this summer.
