Modifying FMG's Italian Battleship

jim010

Good detail on FMG’s pieces. Glad I bought them.

I am painting them avocado green to give these pieces a more distinctive colour than the Russian pieces. That being the case, I thought I could fix something that was nagging me …

For example, the B turret on FMG’s Italian battleship sits at the same level as the A turret. This is incorrect.

You can see in the attached pictures the B turret behind A. B should be raised above A.

jim010

A closer look at the forward turrets. Again, the B turret should be raised above the A turret.

jim010

What I did to fix this was I shaved the raised barrels of the B turret off. I then used sheet styrene and cut out a square shape in the same size as the turrets on FMG’s ship.

I glued this on top of the B turret. I then cut out 3 barrels and glued then on top of the A turret…

I didn’t take pictures of this,which is too bad, but here is the final result after priming and painting.

jim010

Here is the unmodieifed ship, and teh modified one beside each other for comparison.

Cheers

dangermouse650

Messed up the mold with that then, good job, will be fixing mine when they arrive……

Lunarwolf

are you using oob pieces to?

jim010

The battleship I modified was FMG’s.

jim010

Unless you mean other pieces? I used Table Tactics’ half track, and Avalon Hill’s infantry. All other pieces I used were FMG’s. I didn’t use FMG’s trucks, armoured cars or infantry.

Lunarwolf

how come you dont use their infantry? too small?

Tall Paul

Jim010,

Good Job! And on such a small size as well. Well done.

“Tall Paul”

jim010

@Tall:

Jim010,

Good Job! And on such a small size as well. Well done.

“Tall Paul”

Thanks. Wasn’t hard to do, though. I still have a couple Italian BBs I will do, so later on I’ll post a how to.

CHeers

jim010

OK, here we go:

First, here’s a shot of teh FMG BB again before modification.

Use an exacto knife to trim off the B turret barrels so that you have a level plane from the top of A turret to the top of B turret.

jim010

Here the BB is showing how it is to be trimmed.

jim010

You’ll need sheet styrene. Cut out some pieces and glue them on top ofeach other in a stack equal to the height of the FMG BB turret.

Then trim the piece into the square shape of the turret.

jim010

Glue the new turret on top of the BB’s B turret.

jim010

Next, you’ll need to make the barrels. I used styrene strips .022 x .033 .

Cut 3 equal length strips the same length as the BB’s barrels.

Glue them in place using cyanoacrylate glue.

jim010

All 3 barrels in place:

jim010

And then paint whatever colour you wish. I primed the ship first, and then used an acryllic avocado green for the ship, as I did all the Italian pieces I have.

DSCN2159[1].JPG

KOOLHOVEN

Nice job! Wished some one made a generic triple turrent for smaller(cruiser) ships.Some of my metal models have bad mounts due to old molds.

knp7765

Looks like you did a terrific job. The final painted version looks almost like it was made that way. Seems like an awful lot of work though. Of course, not everyone is a piece junkie like me and bought 5 sets. I would have to modify 30 battleships if I wanted to do this. A couple of questions:

1 - What if you just want to keep your ship(s) in the original molded color?

2 - Why did you choose that light green color for your Italians? FMG is coming out with a Canadian set after USA, UK and ANZAC and I think they will be about the same color. What will you do then? Or do you not plan on adding the Canadians?

Just curious.

Modifying FMG's Italian Battleship

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