Landlubber Mike

Same here - amazing work Chris!!! I can't believe this is card!

That's a good price. I've been waiting for an auction at a decent price point that included both the PE and the wooden deck, but hadn't been successful. People were asking a ton for the wooden deck! I was surprised that the model is fairly small in both scales. The 1:250 Pontos version is only 30cm long. Seeing it in your stash, I might have purchased the Pontos kit yesterday (was last kit in an online retailer's inventory)...shhh... 🤫 🤐

Or just drop those discussions on this build log? Give people something to talk about since I don’t update it too often? 🤔

Coming along really nicely!

Wow, how did I miss the finish line on this one?? Greg, amazing work as always. You really set the bar high over here. @RGL, I saw you have the Soya kit - I just found out that Pontos makes the Soya in 1/250 (I think their first complete ship kit). Looks like an incredible kit, but a bit pricey. The Hasegawa one looks good too for sure. https://www.britmodeller.com/forums/index.php?/topic/235083302-soya-1250-pontos-models/

Learned something new! Thanks guys! I do bonsai as another hobby and I've heard of annealed copper wire to wire trees, but didn't think about annealing brass PE. Good to know!

That's looking great Popeye, nice job! Not sure what to tell you on the railings. For my 1/700, I was a bit paralyzed by what to do, but ultimately decided to prime and paint them off model (while attached to the fret). I ended up spraying the frets with Mr. Metal Primer from the can, then a thinned coat of Vallejo black primer, followed by thinned Vallejo Model Air gray paint. Worked pretty well. My guess is at this stage that you will end up having to hand paint the railings. Mr. Hobby makes their metal primer in one of those little glass jars with the brush on the handle - like the Tamiya cement containers. Maybe that can work, or some other brush on primer, followed by a thinned paint layer?

I've them in the past to carve rabbets into the keel and stem for planking and for a couple of other purposes. They worked really nicely.

That's coming along really nicely. Certainly not a simple build, nice job! This has always been one of my favorite kit subjects.

@lmagna Lou, don't worry at all man. I'd rather talk about this kind of stuff on my log (more like listen) than discuss the evening I had last night giving myself a crash course on how to build PE ladders with the steps that can fold out 🤬

That's looking great! Your technique worked really well. Gives me a little more confidence to try something similar on my builds, though it looks like the plate lines are already built into my Shimakaze hull so it will have to wait for a future build.

No worries at all guys, no apologies necessary! Frankly, I find all this fascinating and it makes me more into my builds when I'm learning history, mechanics, etc. alongside the build. For me, it's less the final destination and more the journey that makes modeling fun for me. I could probably put models together in half the time if I just opened the box and went straight to work. Instead, I like all the learning about the subject that goes along with it. So, again, no need to apologize! Feel free to discuss these types of topics any time they come up! Since I don't have the knowledge that you guys do, I'm more than happy to extend the build log real estate for these kinds of discussions

Wow, nice work Greg! Those louvres must have been fun.

Looking fantastic! I know having all that wood decking will complicate the painting process, but that will look amazing in the end - already does!

Haven't seen that page yet Ken, thanks for passing it along! Some cool pictures on that page. The Shimakaze didn't have many opportunities to use its formidable arsenal, and doesn't have much of a military career. With its speed and armament, it could have been really nasty in a fight. Interestingly, when researching this ship, it's one of the most powerful ships in one of those online warship games.

Good to know Greg, thank you. On my 1/700, I used thinned Vallejo black primer on the hull and had no issues. I painted over it with a mixture of Vallejo Model Air grey paints and everything adhered nicely. I've found Vallejo works pretty well, it's just that it can be touchy if you want to tape. Even then, I really only had issues with the black and grey primers lifting on my model planes for some reason. For this 1/350, I was thinking of priming with Mr Surfacer from the rattle can. It goes on a very light gray and coverage is excellent, but I also have their black primer in a rattle can. I think I have some Tamiya white primer in the rattle can too, as well as the Hull Red in a rattle can (forget if it's Tamiya or Mr. Hobby). What I might do is black base it with Mr. Surfacer, and then spray grays on top. Tamiya makes a Maizuru Arsenal paint so I'm going to use that as the gray base. Have you used Mr. Hobby Mr. Metal Primer? For the 1/700 railings and other small PE parts like the guns, I sprayed the fret with this, then sprayed thinned Vallejo black primer followed by thinned Vallejo Model Air grey. Worked perfectly. It also comes in the little glass jar with brush in the cap, but I haven't had an opportunity to try that yet. Looks like Tamiya has similar products out there.

Thanks Lou - really appreciate all that info. Sorry to give your fingers a workout. I'll have to take a look at the kit and the instructions to see to what extent things can be modified. Hopefully AM had sprues that contained parts for both kits, and just swapped out the decals for different versions. *Edit* - forgot to mention that I like the idea of doing an orange car. Have a few Alfa Romeos in the stash so I'd like to do a different color for this one.

Yeah, I'm not touching it. Little chance of improving on it, big chance on ruining the deck details.

Exquisite work Mark, very impressive!

Almost two years later with my 1/700 "test kit" in the books, I've been working on the Shimakaze. I have to say, Hasegawa has done a really nice job with this kit. So far only needed a little filler on one of the back stern pieces, but otherwise, everything is fitting together nice and snug. The fit is really incredible. I decided that I'm going to build this a bit differently than the instructions would have you. I don't know if they envision that one would paint the ship, so they leave a lot of the details off the ship until the very end. Instead, since I'm going to paint it, I'm going to add as much to the hull as possible and then paint all in one go rather than paint the detail pieces and add them separately. We shall see how all that works. Obviously I won't be able to do that with with things like the bridge and some other sections which will have to be built off model and painted separately. I'll have to be very careful not to knock off some of the very small details that I'm starting to add. I'm still working out what to do with the funnels. They had white stripes on them, which Hasegawa provides as decals. Problem is, I'm going to be replacing the rings that circle the funnels with some of the Infini PE - so not sure how the decals fit in with that. I might just try painting the funnels with the stripes first, then adding the PE rings, and coloring the sections of the rings that should be white or black. Will be a little tricky. There are a couple of sections of the deck (near the bow and that big section near the stern) that are molded in brown plastic for the linoleum deck sections. Hasegawa made linoleum deck stickers for this kit that also show the brass cross pieces, so I'm going to try them out. I'll have to figure out whether it makes sense to add the details, paint the deck, and then add the stickers -- or, paint the deck items separately, and add them after I add the stickers to the deck. I'm thinking the latter just in case I glue the deck items slightly out of whack and can't get the stickers to fit. The Infini set is very nice and very comprehensive. I've got a few small bits on the hull, including some of the doors which required scraping off the kit doors and replacing them with doors from the PE set. Who's to say that the PE in 1/350 kits is all that much bigger than the PE in 1/700 kits? These valves were a little bit of a pain to install, and I thought I had lost a set to the dreading tweezer "ping" but somehow managed to find it: Here's an interesting comparison of the Shimakaze against my Hatsuzakura. I was a bit surprised at the length of the Shimakaze, which I would have thought would have been around twice the length of the Hatsuzakura, given that they were both destroyers and the Shimakaze is at twice the scale of the Hatsuzakura. Clearly not the case as you can see in the picture. Come to find out the Hatsuzakura was 328ft/100m long, while the Shimakaze was 425 ft/129.5m in length. Significantly longer! Turns out that the Japanese lengthened the Yugumo-class by an additional 35 feet or so to accommodate an additional quintuple torpedo launcher (the Shimakaze had three quintuple mounts). This kit is a full hull kit, but I think I'm still going to try to put it in a waterline diorama. It's so long and sleek that I think it would really show off those torpedo-like lines nicely in a water setting. Thanks for looking in!

So does this 1:1 model come with a 1:1 model of Chris Coyle? I heard he can give Brad Pitt a run for his money. Hope your modeling skills are up to the task!

Lou, with those decals, does that mean one can essentially use the red car kit and build it as one of the orange ones? There is an AM kit of the number 4 orange car out there, though I note that the spoiler is raised. I don't know if the red car kit allows you to raise the spoiler on the model, though maybe the spoilers only were raised when the car hit a certain speed?

Ouch, looking at these closeups I realized that the back railings must have gotten pushed in. Couldn't see it with the naked eye, but the pics certainly showed the issue. A little toothpick action and she's back to normal 👍

Wow those are amazing! That detail is insane! Those will set you back a bit of coin for sure.

Wow, are those all resin parts in the upgrade set? Looks fantastic!