Landlubber Mike

I definitely would be - this ship is on my bucket list!

Those wheels are going to look 100x better when you're done. Nice job Craig.

Thanks guys, really appreciate it!

Thanks guys, really appreciate the kind words.

Primed, painted, and now adding in the remaining details before weathering and rigging. I've been very pleased with the details on the PE and resin parts for this kit. Niko did a really great job with this kit. Thanks for looking in!

Wow, what a cool subject! I'm in for this one Glen! So creative!

Wow, this is an epic build Jason! Really amazing work. 👏

Amazing work Chris. You've gotten really good at these card models.

Great seam work Kevin - very nice base for the paint job. 👍

That's looking really good Andy. Nice progress.

Great job as always Craig! Love the paint scheme. Makes me want to do another yellow wing.

Thanks Popeye! I'm hoping it all comes together ok

I've made some good progress on the Albatross. Added the bow and stern posts, and finished building the masts. I use cut down insect pins - which I think are stainless steel - for things like the posts that need a little more structural integrity and won't bend like brass or other materials when I invariably end up bumping into them. After taping the wooden decks - which was a project in itself - I ended up trying to replicate the plating runs on the hull by taping off alternating rows, and then spraying a heavy coat of Mr. Surfacer 1200. We'll see how it goes - it's tricky in that you don't want to go overboard with too thick of paint as it will look out of scale. I also managed to finish the cranes by adding aftermarket hooks from Rainbow and put together the catapult: Next up I will clean up the hull plating lines and prime the full hull, deck structures, railings and other deck items using Mr. Surfacer 1500 black. That will give a good base to paint the ship, which is pretty simple with a light grey hull, and darker gray above the deck. Thanks for looking in!

Wow, that came out fantastic Andrew! Great job!

I've used Tamiya's Camel Yellow which I decanted from the spray bottle, which is a pain and can be messy. Good to know about Mr. Color.

Sorry for any confusion - that's what I meant I would do. Good luck!

I ran into similar cowl dilemmas on my early-WWII planes. I'd probably paint the interior of the cowl first, then assemble over the engine, then paint the cowl exterior as a separate paint job from the rest of the plane rather than pre-paint the exterior of the cowl halves and try to then assemble it over the engine. I found - at least on my kits - that the fit of the cowl pieces can be tricky and less than ideal, so there was clean up required after getting the cowl together.

Hope everyone had a nice Memorial Day weekend, at least for those in the US and other places around the world where this important day of remembrance is observed. Thank you to all our veterans! I managed to find some time this weekend to move the Albatross along. I have to say that I'm very impressed with the kit. The resin parts are very nice, and the PE is very well done for great details. Everything fits together very nicely, and seems to be accurate relative to the real thing from the sources I have. I decided that I'm going to install the deck items after painting the deck, as I think in the long run it will be easier, particularly with some of the hard to reach areas on the build. So, I primed the deck with a thin coat of Mr Surfacer 1500, then sprayed the decks with Tamiya Deck Tan. I also started to work on the main mast. My kit didn't include the rod for the main or rear masts, so I used 0.8mm rod for the main mast and installed the PE for the crows nest and other details. There is an upper section of the mast that needs to be included as well - I have some 1/700 aftermarket mast sections that I'm hoping will work. I also worked on assembling the catapult components. The kit allows you to built the catapult extended or retracted. I built out the extended version which I think will match up with the extended version of the NeOmega catapult I'm planning on building for the 1/48 Walrus. Here's a picture of the guns, cranes, and catapult parts that will be painted and then separately added to the model after it gets painted. Next steps are to finish building the main and rear masts, and rather than use the 2D PE parts for the bow and stern posts, I will scratch build them for a three-dimensional look. At that point, I can start painting the hull - light grey for the hull sides, and a darker gray for the sections above the decks. Thanks for looking in!

Great start Chris! Looking forward to seeing what you do with these kits.

Wow, that's a beauty! Really nice job. You work so fast and with such great results!

Wow Craig, that came out really nice. Nice job my friend, mucho respecto!

Really came out great John! Should be the advertisement shots for the model!

I made a lot more progress on the Albatross the past few nights. Managed to get the bridge completed, and added a bunch of other items to the rear half of the ship. I changed my mind and am going to paint the deck before adding all the various deck items. Part of the issue is that if I put on some of the platforms, I really won't be able to paint the deck underneath. Plus, a lot of the deck items are resin with their bottoms attached to the plug, so I can paint them off the model, cut them off, and then glue them onto the deck - at least that's the idea. Next I worked on the Walruses. I probably only need one, but built the second up as a spare. I thought building a biplane in 1/72 was tricky - at 1/700, it's a completely different story! Good practice for future builds I suppose as I have a few 1/700 aircraft carriers in the stash. Thanks for looking in!

Awesome Kevin, looking forward to this one!

Great start! What do you think of these Airfix 1/72 kits? They look pretty good. For some of the bigger subjects, I think 1/72 is a much more manageable scale than 1/48 or 1/32.