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Why this ship?

The Knox class frigates were frequent visitors of my home city of Rio de Janeiro, and on a few occasions I had the privilege of coming on board. I have fond memories of these ships designed for the tough job of escorting transatlantic convoys against swarms of soviet submarines, in case the Cold War turned hot.

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What was added

• My initial intention was to build this using an aftermarket set from Flagship models, but realised halfway through the build that this was not worth the effort, particularly with respect to railings (see below). I ended up reverting to many of the kit's original parts, supplemented by generic railing (Big Blue Boy 1/700 USN Modern Railing Vol.I). Arguably, I should have just used the kit and the railing. 

• I added detail to the mast to match photos of Knox class ships in the 1980s, using spare bits of photoetch. The large aerials on top of the hangar, flagstaff and jackstaff were made from tungsten wire.

• Rigging was done with human hair.

• This model required a lot of custom printed decals to look right. To avoid having to paint by hand fine white lines on dark grey I created a decal for the helipad marks (see below). I also printed some tiny decals to represent the DesRon12 emblem and E badge on the sides of the bridge. Other home printed decals were needed to correct the sizes of those provided with the kit: the ship's name on the stern (which was oversized as provided) and the red circles around the ASROC launcher and CIWS (which were way undersized).

• I added an ocean diorama base where I tried to represent the very choppy seas experienced during Exercise Teamwork '88, off the Norwegian coast. Given the sea state I did not think was right to keep the helo on the pad, so I decided to represent it overflying the ship, propped up by a piece of capillary glass.

• I added a representation of the bridge railing covers, which appear in most of this ship's pictures, using cut strips of baking paper glued with Micro Krystal Klear.

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Lessons learned and problems circumvented

Problems with the kit

This is a relatively good and affordable kit, which gives you an accurately proportioned Knox class ship, but is not without its problems. It is a bit light on detail, the painting instructions are practically non-existent, and the decals are a bit hit and miss.    

• The only real big issue with the quality of the plastic were the two big mold sink holes in the forward part of the hull, which became most evident after my first go at painting (Alclad black, followed by SMS haze grey). This required some filling (Vallejo putty), followed by sanding and re-painting. I took the opportunity to cut a notch at the tip of the prow (near where the jackstaff attaches), which is not reproduced in the kit.

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The image above shows the sink hole in the bow.

The images on the right show the aftermath of fixing this

problem. After all sanding was done, light grey is the

original plastic, black is  Alclad base coat, and white is

Vallejo putty. The notch needed at the tip of the prow is

best seen on the starboard view (top right).

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• Mold sink holes also needed to be filled in some small parts, including the launch and helicopter:

 

 

 

 

 

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Sink holes on the deck and canopy of the launch (fixed with putty) and on the side of the SH2-F helicopter (not yet fixed). Scale bar in is cm.

• The other problem circumvented was painting the helipad. After establishing that my manual skills were not sufficient to accurately paint fine white lines on a dark grey surface, and that same manual skills also made impossible to cut accurate masks (particularly for the circle near the centre, and dashed lines), I opted for creating a decal. I started by placing the helipad (part 47) in a flatbed scanner, and getting a high resolution image, which was used as the basis to create the pattern in Adobe Photoshop. This decal was then printed on a laser printer at the maximal resolution, on Expert's Choice clear decal film. It was applied to the part after pre-painting it with AK Interactive white grey (RC003). 

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Kit part 47 (helipad, on the left) and decals. Just in case I printed a few, at slightly different sizes.

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Problems with the photo etch set 

The main lesson I learned in this build is that getting a photo etch "upgrade" is not always a good idea. Yes, the kit is a but basic, but the photoetch parts did not help, by being consistently larger than they should be, so I ended up not using most of them. The next few images give an idea of what I mean. 

• The image on the left below shows a comparison between the railings and helipad nets that come in the Flagship Models set (left), and those in the Big Blue Boy "generic" set (right), which was what I used. The first are about 30% larger than they should be (in other words, appropriate for a 1/550 model). The image on the right shows the result of my attempt to use the "upgrade" for the rail in the mack platform. That was the step I started suspecting something was a bit off...this was subsequently ripped and rebuilt.

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• The next image shows a comparison between the helicopter propeller that comes in the kit (painted grey) and the photoetch one. The latter is obviously too thick.

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• Although I did use the photoetch set for the masts and radars, this was only done because I was too far into the build to rescue and re-use the kit's originals. I don't think the main mast looks bad, but it is still larger than it should be. In other words, if you want to build this kit my advice is to stick to the original parts and make the best of them.

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Comparisons between real Knox class ships (top, courtesy of Navsource.org) and my model (bottom) suggest that the photoetch mast is somewhat taller than it should be. Top left: the iconic photo of the USS Lockwood (FF-1064) testing the Harpoon missile. Top right: USS Elmer Montgomery during Exercise Teamwork '88. 

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