By Kirk Williams

This is the GSN Honor Harrington. She is a missile-pod super dreadnought, meaning that in addition to being able to fire from her broadside, she can eject up to six missile pods, each carrying ten missiles out her stern end. Super dreadnoughts are the largest in the Honor Harrington universe. This class of ship first appeared in author David Weber’s Honor Harrington series, in the book In Enemy Hands. Anyone who has read the series will be able to recognize her, and those who have not read the series need to go out and do so.

I started building this ship following the announcement of the contest, basically because it finally gave me a good excuse to do so. I built her using David Meriman’s screeding technique, which I first saw featured in Fine Scale Modeler, and later received very helpful hints on from Mr. Meriman himself. He may be opinionated, but I at least recognize my betters…

Basically, the center portion of the ship (the part with all the weapons hatches) was built using a linear screed, and the tapered sections as well as the bow and stern sections were formed on a radial screed. The center section was built as ¼ of the total length of one side, cast in RTV, and then copied in resin 8 times to make up the center section. The tapered part was one piece molded and copied four times to form the tapered section. Both the bow and stern were built up as halves and then copied to form the whole.

I used Bondo Ultimate to form the masters, and all the detail is from Plastruct strip and rods. The only part kitbashed was the sensor emitters on the tapered section, which came from the grill of an old Ford truck model. The Impeller ring was formed on the radial screed, and the alpha nodes were made from the smallest LED’s I could find, and the beta nodes (the smaller more numerous ones) were made from the roller ball tip of about thirty cheap BIC pens.

Looking at the model, the oval shaped projections are the missile hatches, and the big round ones are grasers. The smaller round ones are counter missile tubes, and the square ones are point defense laser clusters. The fin shaped things sticking out from the side of the model are the gravitics arrays.

I used the text of the books as my main source of research, while cover art provided some inspiration. The overall plan came from some Diagrams published in the book, Ashes of Victory. Scale on this ship is approximately 1/4500, and the model is right at a meter (about three feet) long. The scale on this ship was hard to do, because to get any reasonable surface detail on a model of a ship 4500 meters (2.8 miles) long requires a big model. That's why I now have a ship three feet long sitting on my workbench. Basic description in the books was of a smooth white cylinder, tapering to hammerheads on either end, with oval-shaped weapons hatches. I couldn't leave the model devoid of all surface detail, so I engraved panel lines and added some build up of strip stock to relieve the monotony. The stand was an after-thought.

Image: Top, from the "conn" forward

Image: Impeller ring

Image: Scale comparison

Image: Main battery

Image: Larger full-length side view

Image: Where the pods come out

Image: Larger full-length top view