Landlubber Mike

Fantastic diorama - feel like you’re right in the middle of the scene. Well done!

That's coming along really nicely. Your planking is pristine - well done!

Here's where I am today. I've been trying to figure out the best order to build and paint these. This particular destroyer has parts of its deck in linoleum, which makes painting a lot trickier. I've painted the linoleum sections, and then spent a few hours cutting up Tamiya paint mask tape into tiny pieces on the order of a couple of millimeters to mask it for when I paint the steel sections. Probably a good two hours of work to mask about two square inches of deck 😳 The trickiest thing at this scale is the PE - this stuff is so thin in sections I swear you can breathe on it and it will bend. I need to straighten out the main tower, but after bumping it accidentally a few times, I don't want to keep fixing it because over time the pieces will just snap. So, it's a little bent at the moment. All in all though it's been fun and I've gotten a lot of experience with working with PE, gluing it, using my airbrush, etc. that when I go to 1/350, I should be in good shape.

I've been working on this off and on for a few months now. Here are some build pictures: Bridge Funnel - in second picture, can see how much improved parts look with PE given that the plastic tends to be way over scale (especially at 1/700) Rear gun platform - those little triangles were added underneath as supports!

As my first plastic ship model, I decided to start small and go with the Pit Road IJN destroyer Hatsuzakura ("year's first cherry blossom") with FiveStar PE upgrade set. For a little about the Hatsuzakura, it was a Tachibana class destroyer that was completed in May 1945 and served for the remainder of WWII. This ship is pretty famous for being the ship that met the American destroyer in Tokyo Bay to discuss the entry of the Third Fleet for the surrender ceremony. After the war, she repatriated overseas Japanese citizens back to Japan. Later, in 1947, she was given to the Soviet Union who used her as a target ship and she was scrapped in 1958. I had bought a couple of nice 1/350 kits, but decided to start with a relatively inexpensive 1/700 kit to gain some experience (as I hadn't built any plastic kits since I was a kid). I ended up picking up the Hatsuzakura given that destroyers are a bit simpler, and this particular kit had a fairly extensive upgrade kit from FiveStar. I probably would have been better off with a 1/350 kit since the PE on this is microscopic - literally hair thin in many parts. I'm hoping that all the time I have been spending with the 1/700 PE will make the 1/350 stuff a breeze. I have a few other 1/700 kits in the stash though - mostly auxiliary ships like seaplane tenders and repair ships - as I tend to like less common things, and 1/700 is generally the only scale you can find these kinds of ships.

Love the Peggy and Springy - I'll have to try that sometime

This one went together quickly - very nice job! Looking forward to the final product.

Thanks for the kind words OC. I was able to learn a lot from the build logs from you and others on here, so thank you! I still have a ways to go to get better. My problem is that I'm mostly a lap modeler, which gets hard when you are dealing with such small models. One thing I need to learn to do is to be a lot more careful when handling or otherwise near my models - I can't tell you how many times I've broken off, bent, or otherwise had to rework a part. I probably busted the rigging on my Badger build no less than two dozen times with errant elbows, etc.

Awesome, thank you for the suggestion! Actually just looked him up - I read his The Rising Sun. Very good book that provided a lot of insight into how various aspects of Japanese society and government contributed to their imperial war posture. Thanks for the very kind words. I'll get some logs up. If you think planes at 1/72 scale are tiny, you should try ships at 1/700 scale. The PE is practically hair thin! I think I've posted this before, but here is a picture of a funnel - kit funnel on right, PE-modified one on left. I swear I'm going to go blind finishing this one. Maybe I'll add a build log for it. Thanks for the scoop on Roden - I've been watching your Dr.1 log, very nice work! Have you tried ICM kits? I've heard good things and they seem to have lots of interesting subjects. If you like WWI kits, I've been picking up Wingnut kits where I can, as they are out of business unfortunately. Love the subjects they offered, and by all accounts I've read, the fit and details on the kits are impeccable. I'd rather spend more money on a kit than buy a cheaper one and have to wrestle with fit issues.

Thanks Joe! I'll have to look for that one. I got on a WWII kick recently. I read Ian Toll's two books on the Pacific theater in WWII (I think a third is expected in the near future), and have watched a few documentaries on Netflix. I think the general perception is that America has always had a mighty military, but we were being in terms of technology and tactics in the early parts of the war. Amazing thing was how quickly we advanced during the way to achieve technological parity with the Japanese, and even superiority in some areas.

Thank you for the kind words. You're right about things being so tiny. While there are fewer details, you have to be very careful with glue as any imperfections show up in a bad way. It's funny, the Starfighter cockpit resin set came with two right panels. Freaked me out, and I spent a ton of time trying to figure out what to do. Ultimately chopped it up and reassembled it so that it looked like the left panel. After gluing the cockpit in the body, everything pretty much disappeared anyway so all that time I spent was for naught. Not sure if the cockpit resin set is worth it. The kits though come with no seats, and you just glue the included pilot via a pin into the sidewall. Aside from the seat and stick, you really can't see any of the other elements of the resin package. If you are showing it without a pilot, you'll probably want the resin to at least add the seat. I should have mentioned that the kits fit together fairly nicely. I believe they both are reboxings of older Monogram kits. The one annoyance I had was that the pins on the supports between the wings weren't angled, but were generally straight with the piece. Since the supports fit on an angled basis, you would think that they would have molded the pins on the ends to be angled as well. It didn't necessarily affect the construction, but the joinery doesn't look as clean as it could have been had the parts been molded the correct way. Thanks for the earlier tips on the yellow - pre-painting with a white/flat yellow coat, and then adding the final yellow color. I'll be trying that this go around. That would be a really cool looking model at that scale. One thing that I wasn't sure about was how to do the paint scheme in the front. The decals gave some of the black for the owl feet, but not the nose (all they gave were the white "eyes" that had a touch of black next to them. I wasn't sure what to do to make the painted colors match the decals. What I ended up doing was adding the white "eye" decals, then painting over them with white paint so that they matched the white "feet" at the bottom. There are probably better ways of doing it, but that's what I ended up doing. Post a build log when you start it! Thank you! Optivisor is a big must! There are lots of colorful subjects during this era. Less so when you get to WWII.

Thank you! And yes, lots of tweezer work and wearing the Optivisor for sure. I’ll be interested to see how the 1/48 scale goes. I don’t know that I’ll be going back to 1/72 any time soon, but Eduard, Roden, etc. have lots of cool subjects in 1/72, so who knows. In the meantime, I’ve picked up a bunch of 1/48 WWII kits, as well as added a few of the 1/32 Zoukei Mura kits to the stash. I’ve found some really good deals on eBay where you can get a kit and lots of its aftermarket for good prices.

Since I'm a glutton for punishment, I think I'm going to build two more yellow wings next - the Accurate Miniatures F3F-1 and F3F-2. I have the Eduard PE and Yellow Wings decals. These are 1/48 scale, so hopefully should be a little easier to handle. This time I have the correct Tamiya paint 👍

Yeah sorry guys - my iPhone changed default picture setting to HEIC. I'll upload new ones in a bit.

P-6E So this one was a snake bit build if there ever was one. The plastic did not want to take the Tamiya PS camel yellow at all. I don't know how many coats I ended up using, but I lost a touch of the wing details from all the layers. Then I noticed a funny thing - it does not like acrylic paint either. When i tried to touch up the wings from some errant paint from the bi-wing supports, it dissolved the paint and made what looked like a smudge. Ultimately, I got passed that, but that required adding even more layers of the paint. Eventually I got it assembled and painted. Added the Future gloss coat, and was ready to use washes and add a little weathering. I had used the Vallejo wash on the F4B-4 with no problem. I could leave it on for a good 5-10 minutes, then come back and wipe it off. Well for whatever reason, on this model, the wash dried almost immediately on the yellow wings! Looked absolutely terrible. I almost resigned myself to having to go with a very dirty plane, but remembered how the Tamiya PS paint reacted with acrylic and brushed it on. It pretty much stripped all the weathering off, hooray! Wasn't perfect, but worlds better than where I was earlier. By this time, I had rigged the F4B-4, so I knew what I was getting myself into here. The rigging went on pretty smoothly, and last night, I completed it. Only had to apply the final matt coat which I was going to do today. Well, brilliant me, I had the model sitting on a piece of cardboard. When I lifted the cardboard to put the model away, it slid off the cardboard and onto the kitchen island where I was working. Mind you it only fell about a foot, but the upper wing popped off, two pieces of rigging completely detached and were lost, and the rear landing gear broke off. My brain saw all this happening in super slow motion, and I didn't know if I should scream, cry, put my fist through a wall, or what (I just stayed quiet thankfully because everyone was sleeping). I found the missing rigging pieces, but the landing gear was a good 30 minute search. Finally found it about 10' away in a corner of the kitchen. I couldn't go to bed as I was all amped up, so I just glued it all back together. Only took about an hour - thankfully, most of the rigging was still attached on at least one end, so i just had to glue the other side. What a pain though! Well, here is the final product. All things considered, it's not too bad. I'm not as happy with the white areas, as the Vallejo white I was using didn't go on very smooth (typical of white paint from what I remember decades ago from painting miniatures). A learning experience for sure, and a cool marking scheme with the Snow Owl.

F4B-4 This one didn't come out too bad. I primed with Mr Color, then used mostly Vallejo paints for the rest. For the yellow wing, I used Tamiya camel yellow in a rattle can which aside from a Mr. Color paint, seemed to be the most spot on color for these planes. Dummy me, I accidentally bought the PS line for polycarbonates (generally used in remote control models). Had no idea that there was/would be such a difference. I had to spray a number of coats to get an even coating, but then it worked out fine. Completely different story for the P-6E as described below 🤯 I used Pledge floor polish for the gloss coats, Vallejo washes for the weathering and shading (light and dark grey for the body, yellow and brown washes for the yellow wing), and then Mr. Color Matt rattle can for the final coat. The biggest issue I had was that the engine cowl from the kit was super warped. I tried heating it to get it in decent shape but to no avail. I ended up creating my own using strip styrene that I glued around the engine. It's not exact in that the engine cowls were slightly conical in shape and the edges curved inward, but it's the best I could do and doesn't look too bad at this scale - which, by the way is a bit small for my liking. Also, I'm not sure I loved the aftermarket rigging. You had to bend the tabs, and the lengths seemed to be just slightly off. Also, I had a big issue with the two pairs of rigging that intersect between the wings. If you run the rigging at the attached points as directed (directions were minimal, I had to look at pictures online), the pairs of rigging not only intersect in the X pattern, but they actually run in between each other as well. The PE set gave you pairs of rigging that were attached together at the top and bottom. So, ultimately I just cut through one end of one of the pairs so I could weave it in between the other set. Given that this is PE (stainless steel perhaps), all this bending and cutting resulted in lines that were less straight than I would have hoped for. Was very frustrating!

Well I've finally completed my first plastic models since I was a kid. I bought the Accurate Miniatures double box as a reintroduction to the hobby. I figured the kit was fairly inexpensive from eBay (Accurate Miniatures is no longer in business - though they did rebox certain models including these two from Monogram I believe) and had aftermarket upgrade sets, so I figured why not take the plunge. Along with the kit, I used the Starfighter resin cockpit, decals, and PE rigging set upgrades: Well, starting with WWI-II interwar biplanes (and their assorted rigging) at 1/72 probably wasn't the easiest way to get back into plastic modeling, but I learned a ton. These biplanes are fairly small at this scale! Next two posts will show the completed models. I was a bit hesitant to start a build log on here as I was worried the two would turn into a disaster, but I probably should have to at the very least provide you all with some comedic relief My apologies in advance for the poor pictures, I don't have a good lighting set up and am using my iPhone.

Nice work John - glad to see you're back

The wheels look fantastic - well worth it, nice job! What gauge wire did you use?

That looks like a really fun kit. I'm signed up for this one! Are you going to make it look beaten up?

That looks really good - can I ask what wood you used?

Beautiful build once again Craig! You do really great work.

Congrats on your second child! I had three kids during my Badger build, and it ended up taking me 5 years to complete so I know what you mean Nice job on the Philadelphia!

Beautiful engine work. Can I ask - why are you modifying the back half of the car? Are you building a different version?

Just came across this - very nice start!