South Goodwin Lightship refurbishment - the build

The model after having sat on shelves unprotected for the best part of 25 years. I was decluttering and was very close to binning it. But decided to give a renovation a try. 

I started by removing the homemade replacement railings. 

And thought about what else to do.  

Originally, I meant to retain the lighthouse tower where it was. But it was glued in the wrong position, and got damaged, so off it came. 

And needed more repairs. 

That sad ladder had to go, too. That deck, BTW, was surely not brown on the real ship. That steel deck could have been grey or green, I reckon. But I had painted it brown as per Revell´s instructions back in 1998 or thereabouts, and did not feel up to a repaint of the areas below the boat deck without inflicting unacceptable damage. So this wrong shade remained. 

Luckily I found some leftover PE to use as a railing for it. 

I also replaced those ladders with generic PE by Saemann. 

I wanted a lively seascape, so made it in two layers. The upper one consisted of four sections which I could shape more easily than one larger piece. They were glued with white glue, and the gaps and blemishes filled with standard acrylic caulking. 

This is the base before filling and painting. 

After filling and sanding, before painting with white wall paint to get the surface texture right. 

Two shades of green were used in airbrushing the base. 

I played around more than a bit with wave and wake effects, using white and clear acrylic medium plus white paint. 

In the end, most deck fittings were removed, cleaned up and repainted. With the skylight windows, I drilled them open, and made neat surrounds from generic PE handwheels. 

Retaining only the outer ring of the handwheel. 

I soon had a lot of subassemblies lying around. 

The masts wewre rebuilt from brass tubing and wire, with some generic PE used for fittings. 

These antenna spreaders were made from generic PE railings. 

The boats needed some removal of ejector pin marks and - after that - a partial repaint. 

Plus some detailing. 

And some homemade further details. 

Checking the fit. 

Preiser TT scale construction workers came closest to my crewing needs. 

I filled the ejector pin marks on their backs and repainted them. 

The railings were rebuilt from Seamann PE stanchions with bars made from .2 mm brass wire, and styrene stock for the wooden handrails on the bridge. 

Here, some of those handrails have been installed, some not yet. 

I added some more weathering to the hull, and also to the upper part of the lower hull, using artist´s oils. 

In rigging the .06 mm metal antenna wiring, I needed to tilt the model quite uncomfortably. 

I used Shelf Oddity´s rigging wire, which worked well, but is iffy to handle at this small diameter. 

Having added all the items including the rigging, the model received a final flat coat of oblivion prior to de-masking, filling the skylight windows with white glue and placing the model on its base.