RNLI Shannon Class Lifeboat
Shannon class is the latest class of lifeboats currently being deployed to the RNLI fleet in UK and here in Ireland. With the hull designed by the Northern Irish naval architect Peter Eyre, the class is named after the river Shannon.
I bought this kit on IPMS Ireland Nationals 2024 (lovely show with some spectacular models on display), which adds an emotional attachment to the enjoyment of building it.
I have deep respect for RNLI, and after seeing them in action (trainings in Dun Laoghaire harbour) I wanted to build one of their boats for quite some time now.
Model quality
It’s a ‘starter kit’, meaning it is simple, and comes with a paint and two paintbrushes.
To me, it was exactly what I needed - a simple kit with the subject that is very interesting to me, that I could build in few days and get an easy win and a break from massive wooden ship building projects that take literal years to complete.
Released just in 2024, this kit is very nicely engineered, and despite being simple to build has good level of details.
The fit was excellent, and required very little putty. Really only few ejection marks, and a couple of small gaps to fill.
Build notes
I struggled a bit with the provided orange paint - airbrushing was tricky, the paint kept beading on the surface. Maybe I simply thinned it wrong, but definitely it was a challenge.
Of course the orange paint by its nature is terrible to work with, as any yellow/white paint is. It required at least three layers to get good coverage, but eventually I was satisfied with the look. Thankfully it is just one big part that is orange, quite straightforward paint job.
The plastic itself was super smooth, and when priming with ‘One Shot’ by MIG I had a similar issue - beading on the first layer, and that’s after I washed the parts in cold water with dish soap. Weird, never had this problem before.
Anyway, two coats of primer helped, and the subsequent paint layers went down just fine.
At first, I thought I’d use my Tamiya paint for every other colour since they are much easier to use with the airbrush, and I have plenty of experience with them. Used Blue, Medium Sea Grey and Black. All went down a charm.
However, after some considerations I re-painted Tamiya Blue with provided blue paint since it was significantly different from the colour perspective.
Nothing special regarding assembling together the hull and the superstructure, filled the small gaps with putty and sanded, then re-sprayed the Sea Grey, turned out acceptable.
I had some weird paint issues again with painting the rubber bumpers, tried Tamiya Rubber Black, and it simply refused to stick. Ended up sanding it off and painting with Tamiya Flat Black.
I was quite skeptical regarding adding the long thin decals that follow the sides of the hull, but they applied perfectly with the help of Micro Sol decal solution. The decal quality is absolutely superb, no tearing, no silvering, just perfect.
Detail painting commenced without major issues, although I had to do a few retouches. Somehow the retouched grey paint turned out glossy, have no idea why except that the pain is quite old.
Not a big issue, just needed to spray some satin varnish on top to unify the surface, and I planned to do it anyway over the decals.
The model is built out of the box, except for small detail - I replaced the plastic railings with 0.3 mm copper wire, and the antennae got upgraded to the brass wire.
I saw an excellent build of this kit in the IPMS Ireland 2024 show, with the exact same modification, and loved the look of it.
Here you can see the plastic railings fitted just to show how it would look out of the box
Replacing the railings was surprisingly easy, only required a good drill bit, and luckily I have a nice set of PCB drill bits just in case. I used a 0.5 mm to simplify the process, and couldn’t believe it just how easy it went.
Really, pin wash took more effort and time than this modification.
I think it greatly adds to the look of the model, and much better reflects the reality.
Conclusion
Overall I like the result quite a lot. Definitely not my best model, but still very presentable. The lovely bold orange colour makes it quite prominent on any display shelf.
And what is perhaps more important is that I built it in mere 17 days, didn’t burn out while doing it, and got a very nice boat that I wanted for a while neatly presented under a custom laser-cut display case.
Gallery
