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After building Japanese, German, and American battleships, I chose to move on to a British warship. Tamiya offers the Prince of Wales and King George V. I chose the Prince of Wales, and here it is. Having built 3 battleships already, I knew what to expect in regards to construction-- the fun on this bad boy was goint to be in the painting. Most of the detail is concentrated in the center of the kit, and seems to be a bit busy at times. The Prince of Wales has an unusual 4 cannon configuration on the main turrets, which I found appealing. I also liked the way the float-plane nestles between the bridge and exhaust stack. As with my other ship kits, a photo-etched detail set helped flesh out the model.
Though mostly railings, the detail set for the Prince of Wales really helped with the twin crane arms straddling the middeck. With these two cranes fully assembled and painted, the center of the ship commands the lion's share of attention. That's why I took so many pictures of that area. Other brass pieces helped to detail some of the range-finders, exhaust stacks, yardarms, and railings. I used model railroad chains to replace the molded-on kit details. They look sooo much better. The float-plane recieved special attention, as it needed to have a two tone camo, as well as detailed cockpit windows. The wings, too, needed to be properly aligned, and the observers turret at the front drilled out. Several bullseye decals were provided for markings.
I primed the entire kit with grey, but did not attach the superstructure to the deck. I painted below the waterline (black stripe) hull red. While that dried, I took a very long time to draw out a masking pattern for the paint I was going to airbrush on for the camoflage. Once finished, I airbrushed a medium grey onto the superstructure sub-assemblies and above the waterline. I then masked off large sections of this grey and painted light grey onto the uncovered areas. After this second color had dried, I masked off portions of these areas as well, leaving the previous mask in place, and airbrushed a light green, repeated the masking process, and applied a darker green. When this paint had dried, I removed all the masking. Since the blue was darkest, and tended to be present in narrow streams on the hull, I painted that color last-- masking off areas around the blue for about an inch and a half outward from the blue, and carefully airbrushing with fairly low pressure. Details and trim were painted with other colors, including black, white, and blue.
Additional details included drilled out gun barrells, model railroad chains for the anchors, and rigging which is actually close to accurate, unlike my Yamato kit. If I were to do it again (and I might just replace the bits anyway, someday), I'd use very thin guage brass wire for the bridge antennae. I might even have drilled out the windows on the bridge, and filled them with krystal kleer. Overally, I'm very pleased with this kit, as it is both highly detailed and colorful. I have it sitting in a display case, on top of a faux marble base, next to the other battleships in my collection, and I must confess to it being my favorite.
