Assembling UNSC Ships

Having very recently built a grand total of one UNSC battleship (so recently
it is still sitting in undercoat on the bench) after having it sitting in a
box since shortly after they were released so I can offer some advice that
while not expert is recent.

Drill a hole in the major hull sections and put a pin through them. The tricky
bit is that the holes should line up. What I did was drill one of the ‘wing’
sections first then drill through this to the other wig section and then
reverse it and into the hull and so on. The pin was a length of brass rod,
rather over length, epoxied into the two wing sections which were assembled
first then when had set it was trimmed to fit the hull and then the drive
support section. The drives themselves were attached with thick superglue
Gel, Zap-A-Gap I think. The epoxy was Araldite, two
nasty, sticky tubes I pinched off my father but still the best epoxy I know
off.

It worked but there was a little bit of fiddling getting everything to line up
properly. Even so I would build any large ships in the same way though I might
be tempted to use superglue gel a bit more as at the same time as building the
UNSC BB I was building a BFG BB and largely using superglue gel after using
epoxy for the critical joint between the two main hull sections. All the same
the longer setting time of the epoxy was invaluable for wiggling things into
line.

I would rather have liked to replace the torpedo tubes with those from a
warship kit but I did not have a suitable one around at the time. Since then I
have purchased a Tamiya kit of the German Z class DD that has some perfect
looking torpedo tubes. The Tamiya
1/700th IJN accessory packs would have been ideal but
I have not seen them in years. I think Skywave do some though, imported by
White Ensign Models.

I am still tempted to drill some fine holes in the ship and add miscellaneous
antenna. I wonder if anyone does UN decals? The letters could be done with
rub-down lettering, if you can still get it, but the
flag would be tricky. The bits of etched brass that
come with Dragons lovely little 1/144th scale armour
kits might make nice radar systems but these might look better on the blockier
NSL ships – and now

As to the colour scheme you are on your own. I have mine undercoated in white
because I have seen pictures of the ships in UN white with blue trim and it
looks good. It might also be a reaction against my brothers ‘everything
black’ undercoat policy.