I've started building the USS England 1/350 scale model from Trumpeter. My father-in-law served on a Buckely Class DE and I thought I'd model his ship for him. This is my first ship build in about 30 years.

Right out of the box, I've run into a problem: the lower hull is slightly longer (~2 mill) than the upper hull. With some effort, I can bend the lower hull to mate but as you can imagine this creates other fit problems.

What is the best way to deal with this problem?

I could see sanding or shaving the last inch of the groove that mates the lower hull to the upper hull off to create a clean fit for the rest of the hull and then shape the lower hull's stern to match the upper hull's stern. This seems easier than forcing (never a good idea in modeling) the stern and bow to meet and then deal with the fit issues on the sides. Is there a better approach?

Thanks.

Bob

I had the same issue with my Cannon Class DE from pitroad, which is basically a trumpeter England.

The only solution I found was gluing, masking, putty and sanding - took two passes to get it nice and even.

Cheers/Jan

You don't even have to do the last inch; I just cut away the part from the corner aft and that was enough. A little work with a coarse sanding stick and you're all done. If you want to save yourself a little extra work you might cut the line, test fit, and score the upper surface of the lower hull with a knife using the upper hull as a guide. That way, you won't be hitting the upper hull with the coarse sanding stick as well. You don't need to get it perfect, just close enough to be good when you putty & sand the rest of the hull with your normal tools.