Building a Matchbox/Revell of Germany HMCS Snowberry 

This page will be a build record, in notes and photos, of my construction of a 1/72 scale ship model of HMCS Snowberry, a World War II Flower Class Corvette. The kit is a combination of an original Matchbox kit from 1979 (a gift from my father; date unknown) and a "Platinum Edition" (added photo-etch parts, turned brass parts, self-adhesive wood decks) reissue of this Matchbox kit by Revell of Germany in 2012 (probably bought around 2018).

I had to re-learn some lessons about model building while assembling this kit. As I start to write this in April, 2026, I don't even know if I will successfully finish this model. This record will be a sort of stream-of-consciousness account.

In the 40-plus years that I have had these kits, I have collected six books/booklets about Flower class corvettes, an after-market photo-etch parts set, other boat/ship kits with useful parts (20mm cannons, for example), multiple tins of Humbrol paint dedicated to painting this build, and after-market decals for the model.

Several years ago, I built a 73" tall, 58" wide and 16" deep aspen wood cabinet, with glass shelving and aluminum-framed plexiglass doors, and internal lighting, in anticipation of displaying the finished model, for when the time finally came to start. (If all goes well, there is room for a 1/72 scale German U-boot and a 1/72 scale US Navy Gato class submarine, too.)

For four decades, I delayed beginning the model, until after I had retired from full-time employment, in June of 2025, because I knew that for me, this project couldn't be done on just weekends and evenings. I would lose interest long before the model achieved critical momentum for completion. I believed I would need many hours of steady, daily model building time to be successful. Retirement made that possible, but even at that, it was March of 2026 before I began the kit.

On re-learning model building wisdom: It was very fortunate that I owned two of these kits, because within days of starting the hull, I was reminded of the wisdom of studying ALL of my research, thoroughly and carefully, before applying X-acto knife and glue to the kit. In my eagerness to begin, I had rather blindly followed the kit instructions and assembled the hull, including the bilge keels (long horizontal stabilizing "fins" below the waterline), before I studied my reference drawings concerning the correct length of these keels. As designed, the kit was strangely inaccurate at the bilge keels: they were MUCH too long. Initially, I attempted to shorten the leading and trailing ends of the keel parts, but I couldn't salvage this hull. Reluctantly, I started over with the second corvette kit's hull and bilge keels.

I measured the scale drawings of the hull and installed shortened kit bilge keels to better match the proportions illustrated in the reference drawings. What a waste of time and materials, but I know it is my nature to never be satisfied with a kit, once I have spotted a correctible error. While I was doing this better due diligence with my references, I also spotted that the quantity, location, and style of the scuttles (portholes) on the kit hull were also pretty inaccurate. I plugged all of the scuttles with solid styrene plastic rod and sanded off the oversize scuttle eyebrows, ready to locate the Revell photo-etch scuttles on the hull, according to the photos of the actual ship. You can see the wrong bilge keel (lower hull), and the revised bilge keel and plugged portholes (upper hull), in the photo, below:

On references: A key strategy when building models of historic subjects is to, wherever possible, select ONE individual example of that subject and make all of the decisions on modifying and detailing the kit based on that unique example. Historically, there were many instances of subjects (such as ships) that display a lot of variety in construction details and outfitting, particularly as experience is gained by the ship manufacturers and the navy involved. Also, ships were often modified over the lifetime of their existence (HMCS Snowberry, for example). With multiple references, I can get confused about what exactly to build on a model, if I don't narrow my construction to ONE subject at ONE point in time. One option of this kit was supposed to be HMCS Snowberry, and so I used a series of photographs, taken on a particular day in May, 1943, after completion of a refit of HMCS Snowberry, to make these corrections to the kit.

However, there will be many other attempted improvements and corrections as I build the model, and these efforts will be guided somewhat more generically by my photo and drawing references, particularly of weapons and machinery that were fairly common on most Flower Class corvettes. You work with what you have available.

On research of existing full-size subjects: Twenty-one years ago, in 2005, I was able to travel to Halifax, Nova Scotia, Canada to see HMCS Sackville, a Flower class corvette preserved as a museum commemorating Canada's involvement in the Battle of the Atlantic in World War II. The 280-plus photos I took on and around the Sackville proved indispensible in building and improving the build of Snowberry. Below are a couple of photos I took on the Sackville that I used to make corrections to the anchor winch:  

Below is a progress image of the anchor winch I built from the useable Matchbox kit parts, Evergreen white styrene plastic, and brass wire. (I know that the gear teeth are grossly coarse, but again, you work with what you've got...)

On the Building Sequence on a kit build: Generally, I follow the sequence of construction as illustrated in the kit instructions, but I usually do not do this blindly (except see "bilge keels", above). Wherever I see an advantage, I often carefully change the build sequence. One simple example of this is when I often delay installing machine gun barrels or radio masts and antenna on an airplane model, until the very LAST step, because these parts are so fragile when handling the model to apply paint or decals.

Occasionally, I will work on some major subset of model parts from the kit, out of sequence of schedule according to the construction instructions. I do this if I am puzzling out some method to build or improve the subset assembly, or because something about the subset captures my attention and I can't resist diverting from the recommended sequence.

In this build of the Snowberry, the tedium of having to build the entire hull and bilge keels a second time drove me to seek the pleasure of superdetailing the anchor winch, long before I needed to install it on the deck. It was very satisfying to make up for the boring loss of time and energy on the hull by engaging in the interesting effort of adding details seen in the Sackville photos to the overly simplistic and inaccurate Matchbox winch parts. 

After a long period of time carefully assembling the decks on to the hull, with a LOT of trim-and-test-fit, trim-and-test-fit, I was ready for a break to detail something easy.

Based on my references, HMCS Snowberry appears to have had non-slip strips (probably made of wood) added to the 4" gun deck, around the gun. I added 32 pieces of Evergreen strip styrene in parallel pairs as seen in my reference photos. I also added 16 Plastruct styrene hexagonal cross section bits to represent bolt heads at the gun base as seen in the photo below:  

On the limitations of molding styrene plastic kit parts: Styrene plastic model kits are usually molded in two-part steel molds, with approximately half of each model part coming from each half of the mold. For the runners of molded kit parts to be able to be ejected smoothly from the molds, an aspect of mold design called "draft" has to be employed, and this can have an impact on the shape of the kit parts.

Draft is where a taper has to be added to the mold cavity, so the part can be ejected easily from the mold. Imagine if the desired part is a perfect hollow cylinder on the real subject, and the mold has to produce this hollow cylinder in one piece, like a tube. It is not practical to make the mold cavity a uniform diameter, because the hollow cylinder can not be drawn out of a uniform cylindrical cavity; too much friction. Instead, the mold maker makes the cylinder part have a tapered shape, instead of being a uniform cylinder. That way the molded part can easily be extracted from the mold cavity.

This issue can be seen illustrated in the Matchbox kit part for the radar lantern for the corvette, on the right in the photo below. Note how the grey plastic part is tapered, wider at the top and narrower at the bottom. Note how the lanterns illustrated in the photos and drawing below have uniform, parallel sides:

The grey part from the Matchbox kit in the photo above had to be molded in a tapered shape, so it could easily be ejected from the two-part mold. However, the radar lantern on HMCS Snowberry was a perfect octagon in plan, with eight parallel sides, on top of a perfect octagonal sheet metal base.

I made a brief attempt to see if I could file enough of the kit part away to better approximate an untapered octagon, but it wasn't practical. Since the proportions of the kit part were off in other ways (whole piece too large, lantern portion too short, base too short) I opted to scratch-build a new lantern from Evergreen sheet plastic. I used my references and scale drawings to create new drawings in AutoCAD to print on paper. I used double-sided tape to fix copies of the drawings for the eight sides of the octagonal lantern to ten-thousandths thick sheet styrene, cut out the window frames with an Olfa knife, and glued them together.

On adding detail: One of the most satisfying adventures in model building can be adding detail to improve the kit parts. The Matchbox/Revell of Germany Flower Class Corvette model provides a rich canvas for adding details. The anchor winch and the non-slip strips at the gun platform illustrated above are two areas I tried to improve. Below are several other areas I have worked on to add more detail.

The Snowberry kit included the bulkheads and glazing for the enclosed wheel house, but that was all. Although it will be very hard to see any added detail inside this wheel house, due to the surrounding superstructure, I wanted to have a little fun adding some detail, anyway; I'll know it's in there, even if no one else ever sees it.

First, I added a deck of 20-thou Evergreen sheet stryene, to align with the level of the passageways around the wheel house, and to make a base for the ship's wheel, compass and engine telegraph. I also added a settee (seat/bunk) and chart table, all based on the cabin plan in the book Anatomy Of The Ship, Flower Class Corvette HMCS Agassiz. I fashioned the wheel post, compass and engine telegraph from Evergreen rod, strip and tube, based on the same reference. The rudimentary ship's wheel was from an Airfix Motor Patrol Boat kit. I added ledges around the wheel house to support clear sheet styrene as windows. It's all very plain and sparse, but I know very little of this work will be seen inside the finished model.

On scratch-building replacement parts for a kit: Like the radar lantern seen above, sometimes it is a better option to completely replace kit parts/assemblies with scratch-built assemblies. In the photos below, the Matchbox kit parts for the Hedghog anti-submarine are in grey plastic on the right, and the scratch-built Hedgehogs and launcher are in white Evergreen styrene plastic on the left.

I based all of this scratch-building on drawings from the Agassiz book, and photos of the Hedgehog launcher in other books. I used aluminum tubing and brass tubing and wire to make the Hedgehog projectiles. 

One key to making multiples of an object is to fashion the first one very carefully, and then use that first one as a guide, attempting to make all of the rest of the required objects match the first one. There were over 270 individual pieces needed to make the entire Hedgehog launcher, with a few more pieces to come, later. 

Build Sequence comments above notwithstanding, I often jump around a fair amount, when building a model. While studying photos of HMCS Snowberry and drawings of HMS Agasszi, I noticed the Matchbox kit part for the engine room skylights looked really off: it was way too tall and had eight skylights (as at HMCS Sackville) instead of ten skylights per the Snowberry references. Challenge accepted.

Since I had two kits, I was able to saw off one pair of skylights and glue them to the four pair, to make five pair total. Per the drawings, I cut the side walls down almost completely, eliminating the very excessive draft on the kit part. Finally, I began to add detail to the ten skylights: plastic tube at each skylight to reduce the diameter, plus aluminum tube to provide the rim of the skylight proud of the skylight hatch cover, and then multiple bits of Evergreen styrene plastic and brass wire to form the hinges, lift handles and latches at each skylight. See the photo below for the before and after:

The next hop to a new subject involved the lifeboats. The kit includes two 16' dinghies, and I had photos from multiple references and scale drawings from the Agasszi book to show me some details to add, made from white Evergreen styrene plastic, including hull frames and planking in the bottom, the aft thwart (seat), and a third pair of rowlock bases toward the stern. I scratchbuilt the 12 oars and 2 rudders, and I will make some additional stuff to stow in the dinghies, like boxes, stores, ropes and bailing pails, later.

I was able to use the kit parts for the ammunition lifts (base and davit), but they lacked detail, so I drilled out lightening holes in two of the bases, and scratchbuilt a suggestion of block and tackle made from Evergreen strip and rod plastic. I try to strike a balance between not adding this kind of detail at all, and not going overboard with too much time and effort.

More than thirty years ago, I bought a David J. Parkins photo-etch set to go with the Snowberry; I don't remember how or where. The photo-etch set was created to replace or improve the Matchbox kit parts. Each time I took the Snowberry out of its box, I studied the photo-etch brass sheets and pondered how I was going to be able to use them.

Once I started this build, I really took a careful look at the Parkins photo-etch; and once I had a couple of major sub-assemblies of the Snowberry constructed, I began using this photo-etch. It has been an interesting challenge. Below are images of some of the photo-etch in use.

In the photo above, on the upper right in grey plastic are the Matchbox parts for the smoke buoy and storage rack. At the bottom of the image are sheet brass photo-etch parts from the Parkins set that were meant to be added to the Matchbox parts. And in the middle are the scratchbuilt smoke buoys and storage racks I built out of Evergreen white styrene tube, rod and strip.

When I tried to roll the Parkins sheet brass smoke buoys into a uniform tube, I couldn't get them perfectly round. But I then had the idea to use the brass buoy parts to make a guide for a steel drill bit to drill out holes through Evergreen styrene tubing, to replicate the smoke buoys as seen in the image below taken on HMCS Sackville.

The second use I made of the Parkins photo-etch set was to build the depth charge racks, to replace the over-sized styrene parts of the Matchbox kit. In the image below, one of the Matchbox kit parts for the depth charge rack is at the bottom of the picture, in grey styrene, and the brass photo etch depth charge racks from the Parkins set are seen above. It was very challenging to successfully remove, bend and super-glue the brass parts together as seen. I added some Evergreen strips of white styrene plastic to the sides of the depth charge rack, to replicate the flanges of the welded steel angles used on corvettes like Snowberry. 

The white metal cylinder with the brass photo-etch cap at the far left is one of the depth charges included in the Parkins set.

The next detail parts I worked on were the cable reels. In the image below, the part on the left is built from the Matchbox kit parts, and the two cable reels on the right were scratchbuilt using photo-etch from the Parkins photo-etch set and Evergreen white styrene strip, rod and tube plastic.

While working on the brass PE depth charge racks and the white metal depth charges from the Parkins PE set, I noticed the Matchbox depth charge launchers were particularly anemic, so I started work on replacements. I photocopied the scale drawings of the launchers from the Agasszi book (reduced to 1/72 scale) and made new launchers. I also made one new, to-scale depth charge from Evergreen tube, with the Parkins PE brass caps on the ends.

In the photo below, the undersize Matchbox launcher in grey is at the lower right, the new launchers and depth charge are in white styrene, with a Parkins white metal depth charge for comparison. Overseeing all is Scotty, a crewman from the Matchbox kit. Scotty needs some Tamiya white putty to fix the sinkhole at his midsection.

Most Flower Class Corvettes were armed with one 4" gun at the bow. The Matchbox kit contains a few very primative plastic parts to depict this gun. The Parkins photo etch set has PE parts to replace/detail the Matchbox gun parts, but not for the sharp-edged gun shield found on HMCS Snowberry. Fortunately, the Platinum Edition of the Revell Of Germany kit does contain PE for the sharp-edged gun shield, so that is what I used.

The Revell Of Germany version also included a turned brass barrel for the gun, as seen here, and I did use the Parkins PE details for the gun mount. In the images above and below, you can see where I added Evergreen white styrene (to provide the limits of the putty I used) at the canvas gun shroud that sealed the shield and the gun barrel from sea and rain. The eight thin white styrene sectors connecting the front ring and the rear oval shroud limits were a guide and a restraint for when I applied the putty to simulate the shroud. 

In the picture below at the upper left of the image are two of the scratch-built depth charge launchers loaded with depth charges. To the upper right are depth charges with the launcher carrier trays attached. At the far upper left is the jig I built to consistently align the stored depth charge parts on their holders and restraints, to be glued to the deck during final assembly. 

At the lower left of the image are the modified depth charge reloading davits from the Matchbox kit, with an approximation of the block and tackle for lifting and loading the depth charges. All of the extra detailing is based on the Agassiz book and photos I took of HMCS Sackville. 

The kit ladder to the crow's nest on the mast was both too thick and molded off-set; too much trimming/shaving/sanding to be worth using. Instead, I used the kit part as a guide to scratch-build a replacement. I used Evergreen styrene strips that were one-half the cross section dimensions of the kit ladder. The result was very frail and a little wobbly but much more to scale.

Building guardrails: On this kit, I had several interesting options for building guardrails: the Matchbox kit had molded styrene posts for the verticals  and brown plastic thread to cut to fit for the horizontals. The Revell of Germany Platinum Edition had the same parts as the Matchbox kit, plus stainless steel photo-etch for the guardrails. Lastly, I had the Parkins accessory set with brass photo-etch guardrails.

The issue with the Matchbox kit guardrails was that I had doubts about the brown plastic thread working satisfactorily at the horizontals. The two different photo-etch sets were made from approximately .010" thick metal and so were really, well, FLAT, instead of round in cross section like on real Corvettes. Additionally, I knew I needed to add guardrails that were not included in either photo-etch set. 

So, in the end, I decided to scratch-build the guardrails from Plastruct and Evergreen styrene round and half-round shapes. This took a really long time, but I think the end result was worth it. I decided to try this approach on the smallest guardrail installation, at the radar lantern platform. See the image below:

 

The posts are .040" diameter Plastruct rod, with Evergreen .040" diameter half-round strips on the post tops. Then I added half-round strips on the underside of the tops, making a round top rail. Lastly, I added half round strips to the fronts of the posts for the middle rail.

The same technique was done on the 4" gun platform guardrails, as seen in the image below:

The Parkins set brass screen around the perimeter of the gun platform as seen above presumably represents a safety net on the real Corvettes, to prevent any loose 4" gun rounds from tumbling to the deck.

The image below shows the guardrails for the funnel platform (on the right) and the mast platform (on the left): neither photo-etch set included the mast platform guardrails.

The guardrails were made by first installing Evergreen 0.030" diameter rod for the guardrail posts, into holes drilled into the decks. Then I installed (at the tops of the posts) the top of the upper guardrail horizontal made from Evergreen 0.030" diameter half-rod material, curved side up. Next, Evergreen 0.030" half-rod was installed to the undersides of the upper half-rods, curved side down, making a full 0.30" diameter cross-section. Last, 0.030" diameter half rod was installed to the fronts of the posts, curved side outward, at the lower guardrail horizontals. (I opted to not apply a half-rod to the backs of the lower horizontal rails.) All joints at the intersections of vertical and horizontal parts were mitre-cut at 45 degrees.