Revell HMCS Snowberry Flower Class Corvette Build in 1/72 Scale Part I

This is an older build of the Revell Flower Class Corvette. The kit was initially released by Matchbox in 1979 and has been re-released repeatedly since, often with upgrades or bonus parts. The kit was built for a friend who wanted to use it for wargaming, and paid me in beer for building it! Now how could I refuse that? He asked for an out of the box build, but several of the parts were quite crude, so much so that I couldn’t let them go and felt obliged to make some improvements.

The first step was to mount the hull to a base. This is not only for the final display, but to steady the hull during construction. Using four mounting points instead of two on the centerline ensures a solid structure and prevents the hull from flopping about.

The hull comes in four sections with a few lateral supports. Fit was not great but easy to fill and sand. I painted the underside of the hull scale black and then bolted it to the base. The bolts were locked in place with 5-minute epoxy, if a bolt ever worked loose during construction it would be impossible to fix. The hull was masked with tape and Saran wrap.

A layer of off-white was next. This was applied thinly in vertical bands to allow some streaking to show through. I want the ship to look a little weathered, but not a “rust bucket”.

The Western Approaches scheme used areas of light sea blue and light sea green. The camouflage was said to be very effective in overcast and low-light conditions.

The painted hull. Models with large flat areas look like toys if there is not some variation in intensity or tone to the colors so it’s good to vary the shades a little.

Here the decks have been added. The dark gray areas of the deck were airbrushed using slightly different shades to break up the monochrome effect. If you’re building one of these be sure to check a good set of plans, the kit has large areas of molded-in wood deck detail where the decks should be steel. The only wood decking should be on the fo’c’sle and the small areas of the quarterdeck.

Part II here: https://inchhighguy.wordpress.com/2021/12/31/revell-hmcs-snowberry-flower-class-corvette-build-in-1-72-scale-part-ii/