I started this build last year and have updated and moved it lock stock and barrel to the right room on the forum.
HMS Ready was an M class destroyer built in 1916 as part of a large class of destroyers whose building programme lasted from 1913 right through to the end of 1916 incorporating some improvements along the way that were to fruit fully in the later R and V&W classes.
So, we start with an EBAY bid in March 2014 of an anonymous plastic ship hull. I had wanted to build something to sail while I built my HMS Rupert, which I knew would take a few years to complete, and the Glynn Guest article on HMS Mandate inspired me to have a go at a WW1 destroyer. This hull turned up for sale by chance at the same time and I won it for a very good price.
Sadly, it had not been packed that well, and so upon arrival, it sported a large crack down one side. I was initially dissapointed, but the price and the fact that it was too long to scale reasonably for a WW1 destroyer meant that I decided to keep it.
So, having scaled the length of an average M class, I marked the amount of hull I hade to remove. This incorporated the damaged section and meant that I did not have to make any major repairs, just rejoin the hull along two straight edges.
I used strips of 2mm styrene as doublers to reinforce the join with lots of plastic weld all held in place with clamps.
With the hull now at the right length, I started work on the bow. The hull would need to be deepened to incorporate a foredeck and higher quarter deck and so the bow needed to be finer at the point where the existing hull met the new extension. I had found an image in a Janes warships of the world 1919 purporting to show Ready with a Ram bow! I was hooked and wanted to build this ship, so the design had to incorporate a ram bow as well.
The image above shows how round the bow is at deck level.
The bow is raked quite sharpley compared with the ship pictured in the book, especially with the ram, so I marked the hull and removed the rounded end.
I removed a platic reinforcing plate from the hull, made a new piece from plastic and proceeded to pull the halves of the bow together and glue them. I used plenty of tape to keep them together as clamps would not grip the hull at such an angle. Therefore, I had lots of tape gum to wipe off when the bow halves had dried.
With the bows glued together, I added the peice that would form the ram bow once I had filled and sanded either side to fair it into the exisiting hull. It incorporated the height of the new work to be added and also the peice of round bow that I removed. This was slit in half and stuck ither side of the new bow peice.
Next up came the new sections of hull and a dilemma if I recall correctly