French Battleship Hoche (1886), 1:400

Hi, Andreas. No, the Beowulf is a kit. I built it about 3-4 years ago, before I had the patience for things like rigging. I think that you can also get a PE kit for it now.

Günter, the Dresden is still in progress. I was building it along with the Hoche at the same time but have switched full time to Hoche for a while. There used to be an illustrated build thread on Cardmodels but all the attachments have disappeared. When I get back to it maybe I'll post some pictures here.

Carl

Oliver, I've thought about it a little but I currently have no plans to turn this into an actual kit. I think that by the time beta builders were done with it there would be nobody left to actually buy it!

I've been applying details to the model. The railings take a surprisingly long time to do after painting and trimming and bending... and then gluing without damaging them. They are pretty fragile.

Another day's progress... more railings, more details, finished the funnel...

More detailing, masts, secondary armament:

Boat cranes, boats and yards crossed. Some detailing yet to be done and then rigging.

Thanks for the encouragement, Edi and Friedrich. You guys are up late tonight! Since this is my first design and scratch build there are a lot of little issues that I am not satisfied with. I could take some super macro shots to show this... maybe I will later.

By the way, everybody on my father's side of the family from his parents onwards were either from Germany or the children of people from Germany. My grandmother came from Griefswald in 1911 to San Francisco. I think that people on my grandfather's side came from around Munchen. I should spell my name Karl I guess. 8)

Carl

Thank you also, Andreas and Zaphod. Your feedback definitely helps to encourage me to struggle forward. I would want to do a redesign of this model if I were going to try to make it into a kit. However, as I design my second model, the Massena, I am trying to do it correctly from the start so that it will be easier to convert it to an actual kit. We'll see how that goes!

I added some more boats and worked on the anchor platforms, anchors (not shown yet) and the front anchor crane. Here are some close up shots.

Carl

These are pretty much the final pictures. Thank you folks for bearing with me. I doubt that I will post my next attempt here because I feel something of an intruder but I enormously appreciate the feedback from the people who have posted here. This is a good place and thanks for the hosting!

Carl

Here are just a few more pictures... two Large size images and one with a matchbook for scale. This was fun! Maurice O'Brian, Greg Shoda and Renaud also deserve top billing for the success of this build for their support.

Carl

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Sorry, shucks, I pressed the wrong button.