Landlubber Mike

Thanks Kevin!  I've got the interior painted up.  I'm going to weather the cockpit area a bit and then assemble it.  You can't really see anything inside given the very small windows, but still worth a little extra work.  

i built the Caldercraft Badger years ago and put furled sails on.  Looking forward to seeing yours come along, especially with the full sails.

Wheels look 100x better.  Nice job!

This week I've been able to put in a lot of work on the JRS-1.  Though, from the pictures it probably doesn't look like it!  You can probably slap this kit together fairly quickly, but there are a lot of fit and other issues that I'm spending the time addressing along the way.

The external Eduard photo etch has some nice details, including the main wheel well.  You can see the kit part instead gives you a present of a hard to access ejection pin.  I ended up using the CMK part instead of the kit part because it had a clean bottom edge and seemed to fit better.  The CMK part gives you a little more detail than the kit part, but you have to remove it to add the Eduard photo etch:

The kit has five bulkheads, and each of them is a bit too small.  I spent a lot of time adding material so that the fuselage halves and the front half top parts can sit properly supported on the bulkheads.  Might be overkill, but better than chancing a cave-in of the fuselage during my clumsy handling:

Here is where things stand now - I've inserted the rear four bulkheads and floors into the starboard fuselage half, and the interior is ready to prime and paint.  Since I had to test fit the bulkheads and cockpit dozens of times, I taped the parts in this way so that I could quickly test fit and make adjustments.  I'm using a mixture of the CMK and kit parts.  The CMK parts certainly have more detail, but one of the rear bulkheads was warped and one of the sliding fuselage doors had the window drilled off center.  The kit doors were a little too thick I thought, so I thinned them down.  

Looks like all the pre-work helped, as the fuselage closes up fairly nicely:

Thanks for looking in!

Wow Glen!!  What a fantastic SIB and display!  I love the spirit that the diorama imparts on your SIB, really cool!

Good luck with the center locator.  Sometimes buying from China on eBay is the easiest and most cost effective way to pick these tools up.  Or you can try Gundam shops here but they are often sold out of Dspiae stuff I've noticed.

Thanks for sharing the link, and no worries about doing so!  Pretty interesting, would love to see them make a comeback!  I love their shapes and designs. 

Hey Alan @king derelict, this is the one I have with the center locating tool.  I have a few of the Dspiae products, and they are very impressive.  Heavy, well-made, aluminum - not what one usually expects from Chinese tools.  

Made some progress on the JRS-1 over the last couple of days.  First, put together the floor board for the cockpit.  Not too much there, and probably won't able to see any of it given the scale and the size of the canopy windows:

Next, had to do a little surgery to the starboard side fuselage half to change the windows line-up:  (1) fill the two forward-most large windows, (2) add a new small window just in front of the two large windows that were filled, and (3) open up a new large window in the panel between the two rear-most large windows.  Sounds fairly simple, but was a couple of hours of work.  Opening the windows, particularly the rear large window, was a little nerve-wracking.  The rear-most window really had to be placed perfectly or it would stick out like a sore thumb if it interrupted the flow of the windows.  I started with a 1mm drill, and slowly opened up the windows in 0.5mm increments, checking the measurements in between each drilling to make sure I wasn't drifting.  I was pretty happy with how things turned out in the end.  If you are building this kit, the small windows are slightly larger than 3.5mm, and the large hole slightly larger than 5.5mm.  The kit porthole windows are pushed into the openings from the interior, where the window has a slight chamfer (one side of the windows is larger, the other slightly smaller, to ensure a tight fit).

Filling the two holes at the front wasn't too bad.  I really like the Dspiae circle cutter.  It's a perfect tool to cut plastic filler circles for cases like this.  Much easier than trying to fill the holes with putty.  The time consuming part was sanding the circles flush with the fuselage, as on the outside, there is some fine detail you don't want to accidentally remove.

Thanks for looking in!

Wow, that's really cool!  Shame to cover up all those intricate details.

One of the best works of modeling i have ever seen!  You should be really proud of your work on this, it's absolutely incredible!  

Man that fit looks perfect.  Love the mechanic, so much character!

Wow, this is looking really great Andy!  Fantastic job!

Fantastic work so far - looking forward to watching this one come along.

3 hours ago, Javlin said:

You got some burners going don't you Mike?

More like I do a lot of work on a kit, then get burned out or stuck or distracted by another kit.  Keeps me continually building I guess, rather than taking a long break and stepping away from the hobby.

3 hours ago, Javlin said:

Looking good Mike waiting for the end results.

Thanks Kevin.  At this point, I figure that maybe if I wait long enough, it will qualify for an upcoming LSM GB 🤫

Thanks guys.  Still have a bit to go on these, especially adding all the various details that would go into the ship being repaired.  So far looking ok though. 

Thanks OC!  It looks fairly simple, but was a bit complicated to assemble - mostly as I had a hard time understanding the instructions which were mostly in words.  Looking back afterwards, the instructions seemed clear but going through it I had to keep looking at pictures of the real thing and of those built by other folks.

Base coat on the Asashio:

Base coat on the Akashi:

On 1/7/2024 at 6:59 AM, madtatt said:

WOW.
What delicate work.
That looks fantastic. 👍

Thanks Jolle, really appreciate it!

This kit is a short run kit from the early Sword kit from 20+ years ago.  Some work to do on parts clean up, addressing fit issues, etc.  I did start some building this week building the cockpit bulkhead with pilot seats.  I went with the CMK bulkhead, which had a little more detail than the kit, and built up the pilot seats from the Eduard standalone PE set which I thought looked better than the kit seats.

On 2/4/2024 at 5:31 AM, Danstream said:

Very cool plane, I love airplanes from this era. Following along.

 

One of the very few built in modern time (well, it is already 30 years ago):

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dornier_Seastar

 

Cheers,

Dan

Thanks Dan, great to have you along for the ride.  I've got a bunch of pre-WW2 planes in the stash as I love the yellow wings scheme.

Base coat of paint on the catapult along with a start to the weathering and highlighting.

Thanks Mike!  Not too much progress yet but am liking the kit.

This is what I use on all Mr. Color and Tamiya paints/primers:

2 hours ago, JohnB40 said:

Hi Mike, Great research,you are becoming quite an expert on the Japanese Imperial Navy. I'm looking forward to following your build log on this ship.,

Regards, John

Thanks John, appreciate you following along.  Should be a fun build!

3 hours ago, Canute said:

She's definitely a novel vessel, Mike. I'm in.

Thanks for following Ken.  The Japanese did have a number of converted vessels that are a bit quirky.  Personally, I find their auxiliary ships more interesting than their warships.