¹⁄350

USS Shelton

Basilios was asked to depict the USS Shelton destroyer as it was sen in 1952 during the Korean War. This construction of this model was intended to be a gift to a former crew member who served aboard during the war. "We wanted to represent a scene of work during the preparation of the ship for a mission.

Basilios felt there are some very nice kits of Gearing-Class of ships being sold from Dragon but this was not exactly what was needed. There was a resin kit from ISW which was exactly the version needed, but the kit was a little bit poor in detail compared with Dragon’s kit. The choice was made to make a combination of these two models to create the detailing needed for this project.

The most demanding part of the model to build, was the tripod mast. As you can see from the photos, it was decided that the new mast be built from brass rods. The basic larger parts were soldered and the smallest parts were glued using epoxy glue. Some parts from the superstructure were borrowed from the resin kit as was the 5 inch AA guns and gun director. Plastic strips and sheets were used to create some other finer details. Finally, some North Star figures, L’Arsenal’s vehicles and Black Dog’s buildings were used to bring life to the piece. The whole scene was painted using Vallejo Model Colors and Washes.

Model Shipwrights woulf like to thank Basilios Giehos for providing photos of his 1/350 scale USS Shelton diorama.