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

The gun armament on warship models is always a focus of attention, so I spent some time improving the Snowberry’s guns. The 4” gun was crude and was completely rebuilt, along with its pedestal. The ready-service projectiles were secured in clips positioned around the edge of the platform, the projectiles were constructed by turning plastic rod in a Dremel and sanding the ends to a point. The kit part resting on the platform is Matchbox’s attempt at molding these rounds.

The 2-pound QF gun didn’t look much like the drawing in the Anatomy of the Ship book. I reduced the book’s drawings to 1/72 scale and cut the components for the new parts directly on the paper to save measuring. These replacements are just a series of geometric shapes and really don’t take that much time to build up.

Here is the 2-pound gun in its mount compared to the kit parts. The replacement has received wheels from the spares box and sights form spare PE frets.

There are two twin Lewis gun mounts on the aft superstructure. The soft plastic in the kit is plagued with sink marks and mold lines, each part must be cleaned up if it is to be used at all. Hard to tell what the kit parts are meant to be, the scratch guns are more in scale.

Here are all the gun replacements together. Snowberry had two 20mm Oerlikons mounted in her bridge wings. I could not identify the kit’s Oerlikons on the sprues they were so out of scale.

Things are moving along! Here the armament and lifelines are in place. I have also caught and corrected the height error on the depth charge racks, these were popped off and the supports cut down.

With most of the components in place I gave the hull an acrylic wash to dirty things up. These escorts saw hard service in the Atlantic with little yard time and so were often seen ratty and rusted. There are also plenty of pictures in relatively clean paint, which I preferred for this model.

Part VI here: https://inchhighguy.wordpress.com/2022/01/28/revell-hmcs-snowberry-flower-class-corvette-build-in-1-72-scale-part-vi/