Yippie, the last plastic parts are glued and painted for the Schleswig-Holstein, these were the eleven lifeboats, barks and cutters. Some parts were improved with Eduard etched parts and real wooden furniture was used from the Schleswig-Holstein wooden deck set.



And the final look of everything together with the two big cranes ready installed at the main ship







I am quite satisfied with the look of the ship. Now there is just the rigging left which should resemble no big problems. I also thinking about adding crew figures at the ship. Should have some 3d-printed sailors from NORTHSTARMODELS in the stash...

Thomas,

Very nice work on completing those boats.

Mark

Thank you Mark. These were actually quite easy compared to the ones I did for my ISUZU last time. Those were model kits for their own.

Thomas,
You are really smashing this built! The ship's boats and the midships section look fantastic! Would love to see her with a crew on board.



Gaz

Ok Gaz your wish is my command - I will look for these crew figures I do have in stash. But I will need some help with the uniform colors of the sailors and officers here - don´t have any clue how they did look.

Cheers Thomas

I was able to finish the ship´s rigging due this weekend. It was a difficile but not an impossible mission. I used fine EZ-Line and superfine Uschi von der Rosten rigging wire to get some differences between stronger and weaker cables the ship had. The last action was only to hoist the flag and bring on some decals (Ship´s angled bow crest, the ships nameplate at the stern lower deck) out of the Peddinghaus decal set. The Kriegsmarine flag was strengthend with leadwire from a fine wine bottle as usual. I really like the final outcome of the ship. I think all the efforts pay off in the end.











Now there are only the crewmembers left to do before I fix and paint the seabase to the wooden plate

Looks great!

Apparently the senior bosuns mixed the blue and white during both wars. If you are able to look at gun crews and and other small groupings you will often see one man in the mixed uniform.

...I didn't know that distinction when I did my first Kriegsmarine build.

Thomas, your build is looking fantastic1 I continue to be in awe not only of your skills but your building pace compared with my own typically glacial rate of progress!

DITTO!

Superb work, Thomas!

EZ-line is IMHO the best rigging material available and this really is impressive application of it

Gaz thank you very much for your help. I also found some video footage from the incident at Youtube. There are sailors in plain blue, blue jacket and white trousers and some guys with plain white uniforms. I have painted all of them, will give a nice mix n the end

Tim thank you for the flowers. My building pace can be high if I have fun with the build but can also veery slow when I stumble over problems which I don´t want or dont know how to solve. There are actually a few kits sitting and waiting for continueing

When I look at your skills with your 1:200 destroyer I think I still can comfortably hide behind your shadow

"Herr Kapitän melde die Besatzung vollzählig angetreten!" I did it: I used a complete Kriegsmarine Crew set from NORTHSTARMODEL to crew the Schleswig-Holstein. I managed to separate around 50 members from the sprue unharmed. Due to painting and desertion around 5 people were missing but the rest of the crew now manned the stations.

I placed them this way that most of them are at the portside of the ship to watch the impacts of the main and secondary guns. The 2 cm flak midships later also fired tracers toward Westerplatte. It was a tiresome work but I am happy as it turned out in the end. I think it will give life to the ship now:





The midship´s 2 cm Flak gun crew


The two 8.8 cm Flak guns at the portside also fired against Westerplatte targets eventually


The starbord side of the bridge


Hope you like it

That looks great! The sailors are very well painted!

Thomas,

You are right they do give life to the ship, well done!

Mark

Wow, Thomas! Your figures look great! I love how they bring the ship to life!

Stunning work Thomas!!

Beautiful work, Thomas! I've always liked figures on a model ship, and you have done yours expertly, but...


How the hell are they gonna spend that money...?

Thomas,
How did you make the canvas dodgers on the railings?

Gaz

Thomas! I like it!

Hi Thomas,

The figures are so good, they really add depth and a sense of scale.

Great job on the whols eproject.

Cheers

Si

Gaz the canvas dodger were made this way: first install the edged and prepainted railings. After this apply KRISTAL KLEAR over the outsides of the railings. It will fill out the openings like a window and getting clear if dry. Then I used a light grey color and painted just the outside of the canvas dodgers. If you look from inside later you can still see the darker grey railings and the lighter grey canvas. Really easy

Gentlemen, here in Germany we say everything good will come to an end one day and so it is with my build here. I finished the seabase for my Schleswig-Holstein; it was really easy as I just needed to depict a harbour-like water without any waves. The pictures you can see from the real thing shows a very shallow and calm sea like a mirror. This way I just painted the sea with Valleyo 70.898 Dark sea blue which fits perfectly. I then brushpainted HUMBROL gloss varnish over and over (at least 5 times) the seabase to get a shiny gloss surface.

After this I just had to fix the seabase with the selfmade diorama base and the project is finished. It was a great joy to build this ship with all the necessary improvements and changes to let her look more authentic and all your positive comments and feedback was very helpful to keep my Modelling Mojo high. Thank you very much therefore to you again; I hope you like what you see in the end - here are final pictures of the Schleswig-Holstein:









All whats remaining now for me is to say "Auf Wiedersehen"


P.S.: Now comes the difficult part for me again - what to build next?!...

Bravo, Thomas!

What a great job! I've been very impressed during the whole process, and she's a great looking ship.

Thank you for the tip on the dodgers! I'm sure to use it.

Gaz