Building ISW's 1/3530 Increased Endurance Corvette as HMCS Fergus
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Introduction
This is my build of the HMCS Fergus using the Increased Endurance 1/350
Iron Shipwright kit. As with most of ISW kits a lot of clean up was needed
to deal with the poor castings. I will say that ISW's customer service
is great and will replace defective parts promptly.
I decided to replace many of the parts that weren't up to par. The
4" gun and gun platform were all rebuilt with .10 sheet styrene as the
resin cast kit part was warped very badly.
Various strip styrene was used to replicate lockers, and photoetch
hatches from WEM detailed the deck.
The hedgehog thrower from the kit was used for another project so I
scratch built another from styrene and spare photo etch pieces.
I detailed the bridge deck with plastic strip to replace some of the
poorly cast lockers and added extra bracing for support found in my references.
The 20mm Oerlikons were from L'Arsenal and they are real gems.
The main mast was made from brass and soldered to give it strength
when it came time to rig it. It was detailed with a scratch Crows Nest
and ladders from a GMM sheet.
The 27' whaler was detailed by adding thwarts and oars made of brass
wire pinched at one end with pliers to make it look like a paddle. All
of the vents were poorly cast so I used what I could after cleaning them
up and the rest of them came from spare L'Arsernal extras.
The 2pdr bandstand was cleaned up and new lockers were added from strip
styrene to replace the ones that were broken.The kit 2pdr was used as
it was one of the better cast items and I made the shield from .05 brass
sheet bent to shape.
The depth charge throwers were junk so I made four from various sized
styrene rod as well as extra depth charges to help make the deck look
busy.
The Carley Floats were are white metal made by Classic Warships. I
scratchbuilt the float racks with strip styrene and photoetch parts from
my spares box. I used WEM paints for the main colours (I highly recommend
them) and a mix of Humbrol/Model Master for detail painting.
The final step was the rigging and I made it from stretched black sprue.
The maple leaf on the funnel and the ships numbers came from a Bob
Pearson decal sheet. I like how the Fergus turned out, even though
I lost my patience and interest a few times over the last year. She looks
good sitting beside my 1/350 Buctouche Modified Corvette and now I am
looking at building a short foc's'le with another ISW kit.
I would like to thank Bob Pearson for making a great set of decals
and my good friend 'Chainsaw Larry' for the digital photos.
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