Research and Model Planning

Of the two 1/144 flower models by revell, I decided to use the Snowberry as I believe it more closely resembles the ship I am trying to create. With the Eduard PE set, I will be abe to populate a lot of the ship with detail. However this image shows some portions of the ship which are not produced by any model kits. To the rear of the ship there appears to be two sponsons which hang over the deck, which extend from the deck above the engine. This was common on the 'modified' variants of the flower class which were produced in the mid-war period, but this ship was in launched in 1940. It is likely that the ship started off as the initial corvette design and all these modifications were made between 1940 and 41. These sponsons are known (and appear) to station a 20mm Oerlikon cannon. Great, add another 4 20mm cannons to the shopping list... but at least the model will have more interesting features. After browsing these for a little while I am convinced that the L'arsenal pack of 6 PE, brass and resin formed guns will suit the job well.
(Image courtesy of IWM). 

This closeup shows the rough position of the rear sponsons, also the flagpole at the stern. 

This is the second photo I have of the ship, I think slightly colourised by a piece of software so ignore colours. From left to right: an additional vertical cross frame needs to be made, and note the position of the sponsons. The sponson is much further forward than the other side. Is this the ship at a different date after/ before a refurb? Or is the ship asymmetrical?  

 

After hours of searching for closeup details of a ship with rear sponsons, I finally found evidence of not only an asymmetrical deck, but also one which is arranged exactly as I suspected the Marguerite to have been. I have also found other examples of asymmetric flower class ships, but on ships with less and different modifications. As the annotation mentions, this ship is armed with a total of 6 20mm oerlikon guns, which I will likely replicate with in the model. There doesn't appear to be any visible 'stepping' under the additional guns, which indicates the flooring around them may be flat, unlike with the bridge guns. Visible in this image is the railings over the oerlikon guns, which was installed to stop the guns elevating to dangerous angles. These are visible in one of my reference images, but only seem to appear over the rear guns. This is something which can be formed simply from thin wire, so is can be decided much later and will probably be a finish touch on the model.
(Courtesy of Antony Preston and Alan Raven). 

At this stage I have recieved all of the parts I am currently planning to use to build the model. The BIG ED kit is composed of three seperate PE sprues. Each set covers parts across the length of the ship, so I needed to make some sense of it all. I decided to mark the revell instructions with all parts which are to be replaced, removed or upgraded, and label which kit the new parts come from. Its a bit messy but now I can follow the kit in order (roughly) and not glue anything down that shouldn't be there. This is also a chance to further understand the kit composition, the images on the EDUARD website of the kits are incomplete and there is no preview available of the railings set, so it is difficult to gauge what this will look like. All that is left to do now is plot the sponsons over the engine, but that might start once I can take dimensions from the model in an early stage of construction. 

Following up from the last post I found an old sales leaflet from the release of the Eduard set that shows all three sets built on an unfinished model. I will be using most of these parts.