Bismarck by Channell - Trumpeter - 1/200 - PLASTIC

[cog]

Okay wimp  I started at 1/350 with stanchions ... not to bad, but the drill bits break easily, that's the only drawback

[Canute]

What size drills, Carl? The really fine carbide ones are brittle.

[cog]

0.3mm, Ken

[channell]

I've been using some bits meant to clean the nozzles of 3d printers for my tiny hole needs... they seem to hold up a little better than normal micro bits and cut great on the soft Trumpeter plastic. 

 

I've been a man possessed this week; have been working every evening on Bissy.  I rimmed the wood deck with .010x.030 styrene strip and brought the entire perimeter of the hull in alignment through a mix of trimming the wood deck edges and sanding/shaving the hull sides. After that, I masked off the deck and got yet another coat of primer on.  

 

Looking forward to installing the hull photo-etch and hopefully getting at least the final upper hull grey sprayed on by the end of this weekend. 

 

 

 

Edited September 27, 2018 by channell

[popeye the sailor]

I'd be happy with your results.......I've never done one before.  I bought the Revell Arizona kit and wanted to do one on it,  but no one makes one for it.  

    I guess I'll have to live with a painted one.  they look very nice though     well done.

[channell]

1 hour ago, popeye the sailor said:

I'd be happy with your results.......I've never done one before.  I bought the Revell Arizona kit and wanted to do one on it,  but no one makes one for it.  

    I guess I'll have to live with a painted one.  they look very nice though     well done.

 

Thanks!

 

Honestly, the best decks I've seen have been painted ones (except for in larger scales where you can use actual individual wood "planks" without loosing your mind!) . The standard wooden decks (Pontos, KA, Artwox) tend to have straight grain running the entire length of the deck and are very yellow in color + being very grainy looking up close... other than being a bit of woody eye-candy they don't do much for scale accuracy. 

 

Unfortunately the Trumpeter Bissy molded-on deck is garbage as it comes out of the box... just straight lines with no "boxed in" hull fittings and blank plastic over the anchor chain runways when it should also be planked. Otherwise, I might have been better off masking and painting individual planks considering how much work it was to make the damn Scaledecks maindeck fit!  

[Kevin]

3 minutes ago, channell said:

 

Thanks!

 

Honestly, the best decks I've seen have been painted ones (except for in larger scales where you can use actual individual wood "planks" without loosing your mind!) . The standard wooden decks (Pontos, KA, Artwox) tend to have straight grain running the entire length of the deck and are very yellow in color + being very grainy looking up close... other than being a bit of woody eye-candy they don't do much for scale accuracy. 

 

Unfortunately the Trumpeter Bissy molded-on deck is garbage as it comes out of the box... just straight lines with no "boxed in" hull fittings and blank plastic over the anchor chain runways when it should also be planked. Otherwise, I might have been better off masking and painting individual planks considering how much work it was to make the damn Scaledecks maindeck fit!  

lol but you will be happy with it knowing you got it right

[popeye the sailor]

I bookmarked a video of a guy doing that!!!.........sadly,  I dumped it,  thinking that I'd never get up the 'brass' to do it.  I've also seen the individual planked deck method too..........I did it with a Revell U.S.S. United States kit {there is a log}........and yes......drove me bonkers doing it      you still got very nice results,  even though you had to make a few modifications.  I like the scale deck coloration........adds more to the deck than just one color wood.   I did some reading about the Trumpeter Arizona,  and found out that it too has a few inaccuracies.   for the money,  I shied away from it,  not wanting to make that many modifications.   I'm finding this true about the Revell kit.......but in it's defense,  the kit has always been like this........they made no improvements all these years     no doubt the 'bizz' suffers from the same affliction 

[cog]

You should, however, admit you did a damn good job on it. Your hull looks impec, and you deck ... well from here I would say it's wood

 

Fortunately, here at MSW we know we are our own worst critics ... I am in the stage of painting an 1/350 .5"x .75" destroyer's bridge deck, and it doesn't look good - size probably is a factor - on another one I used off cuts from a battleship's wooden deck, Pontos or Fly Hawk, and that looked a lot nicer, despite the, what you call "straight grain" from front to back. You should wait 'till you've got some deck furniture for rent on the decks. It will make a lot of difference

[Kevin]

41 minutes ago, cog said:

You should, however, admit you did a damn good job on it. Your hull looks impec, and you deck ... well from here I would say it's wood

 

Fortunately, here at MSW we know we are our own worst critics ... I am in the stage of painting an 1/350 .5"x .75" destroyer's bridge deck, and it doesn't look good - size probably is a factor - on another one I used off cuts from a battleship's wooden deck, Pontos or Fly Hawk, and that looked a lot nicer, despite the, what you call "straight grain" from front to back. You should wait 'till you've got some deck furniture for rent on the decks. It will make a lot of difference

we spend months doing something that has to be just right, and then cover it all up LOL, we are our own worst enemies

[Tigerdvr]

Great work, what are using to patch the hull?

Thanks, Harley

[channell]

8 hours ago, cog said:

You should, however, admit you did a damn good job on it. Your hull looks impec, and you deck ... well from here I would say it's wood

 

Fortunately, here at MSW we know we are our own worst critics ... I am in the stage of painting an 1/350 .5"x .75" destroyer's bridge deck, and it doesn't look good - size probably is a factor - on another one I used off cuts from a battleship's wooden deck, Pontos or Fly Hawk, and that looked a lot nicer, despite the, what you call "straight grain" from front to back. You should wait 'till you've got some deck furniture for rent on the decks. It will make a lot of difference

 

Thanks, like most of us I only see the flaws... especially the ones that aren't visible in the pictures. 

 

 I'm having trouble getting myself to a happy place on the anchor hawse "bumps" on the sides of the hull for example; I've reworked them several times, making them larger and smaller and tweaking the shape but those stupid little details are a tough one for me to get "right" when trying to work from pics of the original ship. 

[channell]

8 hours ago, Kevin said:

we spend months doing something that has to be just right, and then cover it all up LOL, we are our own worst enemies

 Isn't that the truth! It's easy to burn all one's enthusiasm for a project by getting hung up on stuff that won't be noticed anyway. 

Edited September 28, 2018 by channell

[channell]

4 hours ago, tigerdvr said:

Great work, what are using to patch the hull?

Thanks, Harley

 

Squadron putty and sandable filler primer... lots of it. 

 

Yes, I am insane. 

Edited September 28, 2018 by channell

[cog]

6 hours ago, channell said:

Yes, I am insane. 

Isn't that a requirement ...

[lmagna]

1 hour ago, cog said:

Isn't that a requirement

Not a requirement, but certainly can help, and probably a possible result of our endeavors! 

[mtaylor]

27 minutes ago, lmagna said:

Not a requirement, but certainly can help, and probably a possible result of our endeavors! 

I thought it was the reason for our endeavors.  

[Old Collingwood]

2 hours ago, cog said:

Isn't that a requirement ...

That we all have on here.

 

OC.

[Tigerdvr]

We all need help, I don't think there is a cure😨😣, but we keep on forging ahead anyway😏

[CDW]

Just do what the old Jimmy Buffet song says to keep from going insane...just laugh and move on. It works.

[channell]

Glad to know I've got company in the nuthouse!  

 

So after finishing the edges of the deck and cleaning up the mess I dived right into photoetch and sealed it away behind a layer of Tamiya primer. Starboard is done; only the port side stern left to do. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I picked white to make any remaining detail issues pop out so I can address them before the final color goes on. I think the porthole frames came out a little too thick but such is life; hoping I can paint the insides black after final pain to help the look. Still so much work to do!  

Edited September 30, 2018 by channell

[Richmond]

Fantastic attention to detail.

Edited October 1, 2018 by Richmond

[channell]

Thanks Richmond! 

 

 

 

Hit a milestone; the hull is done, PE is complete and Bissy is finally getting her final colors...

 

 

 

 

 

 

I first planned to paint the upper hull in Model Masters "grau" but it didn't look right so I went with Tamiya "sky grey" instead. On the real ship the hull was painted a somewhat darker shade of grey than the superstructure and this color goes nicely with my upper hull paint choice (Model Masters Litchtgrau); I am purposely aiming for lighter hues than real-life for scale effect and am admittedly more interested in a model that looks good than fretting over exact color matches so hopefully the infamous Teutonic rivet counters that haunt the darker reaches of the model interwebs don't go all gestapo on me.  

 

 It's a big hull to paint with a little airbrush but (along with the white primer) it's a good way to get an ever so slightly streaked look that adds some depth to the hull. It took a couple hours to get done.

 

Next comes the red anti-fouling paint and last the dark grey boot top; I'm giving at least a full day of dry time between each so I don't have to worry about pulling up any paint with the masking tape (always a lurking problem on Trumpeter big boat plastics). 

 

Until next time...

 

 

[CDW]

All that prep work you performed pays huge dividends in a great finish.

The hull looks magnificent.

[Kevin]

im sure i bought Lifecolor for my build but just could not get on with it, all your work has paid off well done

Edited October 4, 2018 by Kevin

[channell]

3 hours ago, Kevin said:

im sure i bought Lifecolor for my build but just could not get on with it, all your work has paid off well done

 

8 hours ago, CDW said:

All that prep work you performed pays huge dividends in a great finish.

The hull looks magnificent.

 

 

Something funky about the plastic Trumpeter uses for these 1/200 kits... they just don't like to take paint straight out of the box.  I try to rough up the plastic a little with 4-600 grit sandpaper and/or fine steel wool, then hit it with rattlecan Tamiya primer (airbrush primer for smaller bits)... after that I have no problems getting airbrushed acrylics to behave well. Of course I can't help cutting up and rebuilding the damn things so A LOT of surface prep is generally par for the course on my builds. 

Edited October 4, 2018 by channell

[Richmond]

CHANNELL

 

Maybe I missed it in the log; are they PE steps on the side of your hull or and if so how did you get them so well aligned. I have seen many modelers struggling with this.

 

RICHMOND

[channell]

9 hours ago, Richmond said:

CHANNELL

 

Maybe I missed it in the log; are they PE steps on the side of your hull or and if so how did you get them so well aligned. I have seen many modelers struggling with this.

 

RICHMOND

Yep, they are PE... truth is mine aren't perfect either but I guess they turned out OK.  

 

The Pontos PE set comes with little PE drill guide plates meant to be taped on the hull for easy drilling of the step holes; on this kit I inletted the plates straight onto the hull. While it makes for perfectly straight holes in the end, I don't think I'll do it again as it was a lot more work and I ended up having to drill the holes out again anyway because they filled up with primer. Otherwise, it was just carefully "gluing legs on an ant" and trying to keep 'em straight as I went. 

 

 

BTW, got my red-brown lower hull painted last night (the superstructure is the messed up pieces of the original Bissy)...

 

 

Edited October 5, 2018 by channell

[cog]

Looks rather nice for a messed up ship ...

[popeye the sailor]

for an 'old' structure...still looks really good    nice paint job.