ccoyle

Next we'll add the rangefinder platform. At least, I think it's a rangefinder -- looks like one, and it's not a searchlight, so that's what we'll assume it is. The platform (parts 41) does not present any new challenges... ... unless you want to replace the printed railing (41c) with thread railing. I use quilting thread for making thread railings; it has a nice diameter and is far more fuzz-free than ordinary sewing thread. This particular railing will be more than the usual degree of difficulty, because the railing is actually part of a conic section. Use the printed railing as a template and cover it with wax paper. Stiffen the thread somewhat by running it through your fingers with a bit of PVA glue. While the thread still has some tack, you can stick it down onto the wax paper covered template. The wax paper will prevent the stick from being permanent. Start by laying down the curved railings and then glue on some short pieces of straight thread for the stanchions. Let this dry thoroughly before removing the railing from the wax paper. Paint the railing gray - spray gray primer works great. This PVA-glued railing will not be as stiff as the CA-stiffened railings we'll make later, so it can be formed into the necessary conic section shape before gluing it to the platform. I think it's a good idea to be consistent on how you mount your railings; I mount mine with the stanchions inboard. It's a minor detail, but one that might drive you to distraction if you later discover you have some stanchions inboard, but others outboard. The finished platform looks like this: Now to the rangefinder itself. The post (42a and 42b) is no problem, but the rangefinder itself (42c-g) is an exercise in patience. The bottom of the rangefinder (42c) is a devilish part, no matter how you slice it. Start by removing the glue tab. Again, on these little parts, it's better to form the cone, add a little CA to the seam, and pinch the cone closed. You can use the printed part 42g, in which case I would suggest cutting it into parts and gluing only the external portions. Or, you can replace 42g with a piece of wire, as I did. The wire needs to run through 42c, and because 42c is so narrow, if you punch the holes before rolling the part, the risk of tearing increases dramatically. If you punch the holes after rolling the part, you risk crushing 42c. It's six of one, a half-dozen of the other -- pick your method and work very carefully. I recommend adding parts 42d-f in that order. Here's the finished platform and rangefinder. There should be a gap where the railing edges don't meet at the aft end of the platform. Likely there needs to be a ladder added from the deck to the platform at that point. The ladder can be made in a manner similar to the thread railings I'll show you a bit later.

Next we'll add the searchlight (parts 45a-g). First, I'll show you how to replace the paper lens (45e) with an optional clear lens (key word: optional). Start by rolling 45 into a tube. Next, dab one end of the open tube into some white PVA, so that a film of glue covers the entire opening. Set that aside to dry. In the meantime, cut out the back of the lamp housing (45b). We'll use the resulting hole in the parts sheet as a guide for cutting out a small circle of reflective material for the inside of the housing. I used the foil-lined seal from a vitamin pill bottle - the foil is backed by paper, making it easy to glue the reflective liner to the back (interior) side of 45b. Make sure the liner is cut slightly smaller than 45b, because 45b will sit on the tube, but the liner must fit inside the tube. Here's the lamp housing with the optional clear lens, the foil-lined seal, and 45b with the foil liner cut to fit. I didn't add louvers. If you want those, you're on your own. And here's the finished lamp housing. I know -- exciting shot, isn't it? The searchlight mount (45a, c, f, and g) is a straightforward assembly, although once again it has some pretty small parts. Just work patiently and make sure you hold the parts over your work place. Up to this point I have dropped a couple of the smallest parts on the floor, and during the ensuing searches I found dirt particles on the floor that were larger than the parts. Attach the lamp housing to the mount (the sides of the brackets, 45c, should reach slightly past the small box, 45e, and up onto the sides of the lamp housing), and then glue the mount to the top of the bridge. Let there be light!

At the stern is a small hand winch. The two sides (46a) get doubled. After these parts are dry, cut out, and colored, glue the gear (46d) to the inside of one side panel, then use a small pin to make holes for the crank. There's a template on the parts sheet for forming the crank (46e), which should be made from very fine wire - which I happened to not have on hand anywhere, so I used some less-than-ideal larger gauge wire. Assemble the drum (46b and 46c); when that's done, attach the drum to one side of the winch. Don't attach the second side until after the crank is inserted. Thread the crank through one side, then the other, then glue the second side to the drum to complete the winch. Glue the completed winch to the locator marks aft of the gun mount. The side with the extra gear goes to starboard.

Next we have a series of small ventilators. One in each pair of ventilators is actually a venturi vent. Air passing through the tapered bore of the venturi created low pressure, which in turn drew air from inside the ship. Thus air flowed into a normal cowl ventilator, through the interior, and back out a venturi - a clever means of cooling in the days before air conditioning. The venturis (37) are easier to build, so start with those. Each venturi is simply a conic section seated on top of a short tube. The forward venturi goes on the starboard side, while the aft venturi mounts on the port side. The cowl ventilators (38) introduce one of the banes of card modeling: petals (shudder!). Petals are one way of tackling curved tubes or rounded cones (the other is consecutive slices, as was done with the large ventilator between the stacks). The problem with petals is that they are, in my esteemed opinion, one of the most difficult card structures to form and glue properly. Fortunately, the number and size of petals in this instance is small; any flaws in their construction will have a minimal visual impact. Start by rolling the tube (38a) for each ventilator. Then, gently bend over each petal. You'll see that the petal tips will want to come together at a point. Brush some white PVA onto the petals, being sure to get some into the seams. Gently form the petals together with your fingers while the glue sets. The cowl is made by gluing 38b into an oval to match the opening of 38a. Glue the cowl to the tube, then work the seams, either with your fingers or a blunt tool, to get them sealed as well as possible. I find it best with small cowls like these to paint the entire finished cowl. Mount the cowls to the opposite side of their venturi partners. Now, pat yourself on the back for having finished your first card petals!

Now we'll head to the stern, starting with the grating (part 47) that covers the steering gear. You'll need to paint the visible portion of the deck beneath this part before gluing it down. Apply the edging (47b) to the grating (47a). Note that the aft edge of 47a gets no edging - that's where the tiller would pass through to the rudder. A few bits of locator strips are helpful in getting this part positioned correctly. I have no idea what parts 43 are - some kind of vents, or perhaps companionways. Anyways, these are also fairly easily constructed. Just remember to round the back (43a) part before gluing it to 43b. Attach the finished assemblies to the aft deck. Between the aft stack and the large funnel are locator marks for a pair of hose reels, parts 53. It's a good idea when gluing the hose drum (53a) between the end plates (53b) to glue it so that the seam is on the bottom and out of sight. Other than that, the only tricky part about the reels is being very careful with the delicate legs. Be sure when you glue the two end panels to the drum that they are aligned properly, so that the reels will sit level on the superstructure.

At this point, most of the major structures are completed. It's down now to finishing off miscellaneous small bits scattered around the ship. I have some personal, general guidelines I follow (not necessarily to the letter) when I add these parts: 1) Work from the center superstructure towards either end, and 2) add shorter structures first, since tall structures are easily knocked off when working around them on the model. This means the parts numbering sequence is out the window. Of course, it has been for a while now, hasn't it? We'll start at the forecastle. Parts 54 are chocks. These are easily built, though tedious to cut out, as are many of the parts to follow. Color the back side of the chocks before cutting them out. The horns are glued on the lines running down the middle of the base plates. There are parts for eight chocks, but only six are needed, four on the forecastle and two at the stern. There's also a two-tiered capstan on the forecastle, part 50. Don't bother edge coloring the tiny bits for this assembly - just paint the entire part black once it's finished. Part 50c gets cut into three strips. Each strip gets glued into a ring. The parts are then glued into a stack - two parts 50c onto 50a, capped by 50b and topped with another 50c plus 50d. Looks like this: After painting the capstan, glue it down to its spot on the forecastle deck. Finally, there's a breakwater (49a) to add. It glues down to the angled line that crosses the forecastle deck in front of the gun mount. 49b are the braces that go aft of the breakwater. The larger braces are inboard and get progressively smaller as you work outboard. To prevent these tiny parts from getting lost, cut the braces from their doubled parts sheet only as needed. The finished breakwater looks like so: We'll add the anchor hoist later due to its delicate nature. Return to Part VII: Building V108 - Armament

The real La Recouvrance is a beautiful ship. Good luck with your project!

Building the guns is straightforward, albeit another exercise in handling tiny parts. Start with the mount base plates (57a). The stand (57b) is another conic section. Glue the finished cones to the base plates. Set these aside for now. The carriage consists of three parts, the carriage slide (57d), a wheel (57e) (Traverse? Elevation? Your guess is as good as mine.), and a mounting bracket (57c). Fold up the carriage slides carefully, then attach the barrels, wheels, and brackets. Glue the guns to the mounts... ...and the mounts to the aft deck and forecastle. Now you're done with the armament! Go to Part VIII: Building V108 - Miscellaneous Bits

A pair of deck guns will complete V108's armament. From what I can find on-line, these were likely 8.8 cm guns. Whatever their caliber, one thing you can be certain of is that the kit guns are highly simplified; it is simply impossible, in this scale, to replicate all the parts of even a simple gun mount in paper. There's lots of possibilities here for the super-detailers among us, but for the purposes of this tutorial, we'll build the guns as-designed. The gun parts are numbers 57a-57g. Part 57g, the barrel, can actually be used in its paper form, but it should really be replaced with wire or styrene rod. I prefer styrene rod simply because it cuts cleaner than wire and doesn't require grinding to get a flat face at each end. The rod is sprayed gray prior to cutting, and 57g is used as a template for the length. 57f is a wrapper that will produce the stepped-down taper of the barrel. Use the 20# bond version of this part. Start by tacking the wide side of 57f to the end of a barrel. When that's dry, coat the remainder of 57f lightly with glue and wrap it around the barrel. Finished barrels look like this:

I'm not familiar with the proverbial "s***-house rat," but I gather that's a compliment. Actually, I have the eyes of the proverbial cheap headband magnifier, without which this work would be impossible for me.

On to the tubes! The torpedo tubes (52a) need to be rolled into tubes. They also need to be colored on the reverse side. On narrow tubes, it helps to roll the tube around a series of forming tools of increasingly smaller diameters. It also helps on this particular part to remove about half the joiner tab. Sometimes, in spite of one's efforts not to squish the tube, it gets a little squished anyways. My scribing tool works well in such instances for rounding the deformed tube end. A tiny former (52b) gets inserted into the breech end of the tube. Cut inside the line to ensure the former will fit. Next comes the conical breech door (52c). The joiner tab on this part is actually more trouble than it's worth, so remove it. Form the door until the edges will meet, then seal the seam with a bead of CA. Add the door to the breech end of the tube. A series of four reinforcing bands (52h) are then added. Don't try to make these into rings first - there's a much easier way. Remove the joiner tabs from the rings. Tack one end of the band to the launcher tube at the tube's seam. When that's dry, brush a small amount of glue to the remaining band, then roll the band onto the tube. Add part 52j between the second and third rings. The finished tube looks like this: Gluing the finished tube to the pedestal is easier if the tube is pinned. Drill a small hole in the pedestal and tube; glue a short piece of wire into the tube. While that dries, you can work on the track support brackets (52k). Carefully remove the tiny panels from within the brackets, then color the insides and reverse sides of the brackets. Next, cut out the brackets and color the edges. You'll need to decide which direction you want your tubes aimed prior to gluing down the support brackets; the forward tube cannot point directly forward because the forecastle support column is in the way. I mounted the aft launcher fore-and-aft, and the forward launcher is aimed slightly to starboard. The finished launchers look so: V108 now has some teeth!

The first armament to be installed will be the torpedo launchers, two seemingly complex and fiddly structures consisting of 16 parts each. The parts for these are conveniently located together on the parts sheet. Believe it or not, I have built models where this wasn't the case - go figure. There are two launchers on the model, one forward of the bridge, and the other aft of the superstructure. The launchers are identical, and on assemblies like this I prefer to build them simultaneously instead of first one, then the other. This is another construction sequence where it makes more sense to me to assemble the parts out of sequence. We'll start with the pedestal. Cut, color, roll, and glue the pedestals (52g), then add the caps (52f). Glue these down to the deck. Next, add the triangular support brackets (52i); these are tiny right triangles, and the long leg of the triangle goes on the deck. The finished pedestals look like this: Next comes the ring-shaped structure that I'm presuming is a kind of track that the tube support brackets (52k) travel around when the tube is aimed. This consists of two parts, the ring (52e) and the circular track (52d)(the upper parts in the picture below). The inside of 52e needs to be colored, because it will be visible on the finished launcher. The ring, when closed, will be rather flimsy, and mating the track to it will be difficult. To fix this, we're going to use the spare deck printed on 20# bond. Remove two small squares containing the launcher locations from the spare deck, then laminate these to a couple of sheets of card. When dry, cut out the circular mount location, being careful to cut inside the line. Presto! Now you have a circular former to help you get the ring (52e) nice and round before adding the track (52d) (the temporary former is in the lower left of the previous photo). Work the ring carefully around the former and be sure it is seated at the bottom of the ring - we don't want to accidentally glue these two parts together. Next, cut out and add the track (52d); remember to remove the inner circle first, color the inner edge while the part is still on the sheet, then cut the outer circle. After the ring and track are glued together, the temporary former can be removed. The finished ring/track is in the lower right of the previous photo. Here's the forward ring glued down to the deck. Return to Part VI: The Superstructure

One of the most difficult parts of a card model ship to build convincingly, if you can believe it, is ventilators. Designers use different techniques for constructing them, and they are all equally a pain. I still consider myself a novice at building ventilators. Parts 44a-44c make up the boiler room ventilator. This particular ventilator is made by gluing up a series of rings and then putting them together to make the curved tube. Part 44c should have been one of the parts laminated onto 1 mm card stock, but I somehow overlooked it. No problem - I simply backed the part with two layers of plain card, and as I said much earlier, this type of built-up part is actually easier to cut out. Parts 44a and 44b need to be cut out, colored, rolled into rings, and glued closed using the small glue tabs. I cannot stress enough how important it is to cut these parts as precisely as possible - the fit between adjacent rings totally depends on how accurately the parts are cut, and even very small errors will result in unsightly gaps in the seams. Same goes for gluing the rings shut - make sure the overlapping end of each ring hits the edge of the glue tab dead-on, or you'll wind up with rings of different diameters. 44a wraps around the base, 44c. An easy way to do this, once you have the 44a ring closed, is to lightly coat the inside of the ring with glue, set it flat on your cutting mat, and then press the base former down into the ring while holding the ring down with your fingers. The flat mat will ensure that the ring and base match up flush. Step one of getting the ring segments mated is to make sure they are as truly round as possible; lopsided rings are much harder to mate properly. To join the rings, apply a thin bead of PVA to the edge of one ring, then seat the second ring on the first. The seams and centerline marks of both rings should line up. The rings also have printed rivets on one edge. I'm not sure whether these should go up or down, but whichever you choose, make it the same for each segment. After the two segments are joined, you can use your fingers to gently mold the seam as tightly sealed as you can , being careful not to smoosh the tube in the process (easily done if you get carried away!). The inside of the ventilator needs to be colored. I chose to paint the inside gray. Don't wait until the entire ventilator is finished, or you'll have trouble getting your brush down inside the curved tube. I built the ventilator up into two halves and painted the insides of the halves before joining them together. The finished ventilator is mounted to the numbered circle between the stacks. Use the centerline marks and seams to line it up properly. It should be pointed out here that flash photography is particularly unflattering for card models. For example, in the first photo of the finished ventilator, you can plainly see some glue buildup along one of the seams. In reality, that interior part of the ventilator is deeply shadowed in normal light. Same is true for many of the little errors such as differences in color shades, slight gaps in seams, or small glue smudges - all of these are things that tend to get highlighted in close-up flash photos and most are inconspicuous when viewed under ambient light at normal viewing distances. So don't sweat the small stuff! On to Part VII: Building V108 - Armament

Based on your results with the Averof, this should turn out to be an excellent model. Cheers!

No we'll add some aft superstructure parts. As a rule of thumb, we'll work from forward aft, and we'll avoid adding tall, spindly structures, such as the galley stack (61), until later. First we'll add the two galley skylights aft of the radio room, parts 35. These consist of two frames and two skylights. Score, cut, color, and fold the frames; CA is a good choice for tacking the frame edges where they close together. Add the skylights and glue the finished assemblies down on the locator-numbered squares. The skylights slope down towards their outboard edges. Next we come to the two stacks, the forward stack (27) and the aft stack (28). The two stacks are almost identical, so I'll describe the construction of the forward stack, and the construction of the aft stack is basically a repeat. Cut out the parts for the forward stack, parts 27a-27d. There's a misnumbered part in the sequence -- the long, white strip should be 27e. Color the edge of 27a, being careful not to color the portion alongside the white stripe. Next, roll the stack. Remember to lightly moisten the back of the part. Part 27b is a joiner strip; use the 20# bond version of this part. Apply glue to one-half of 27b and glue that half inside one or the other side of 27a. Apply glue to the other half of 27b and close the stack cylinder. Use tweezers to reach inside the cylinder and pinch the seam tightly shut. The two edges of the seam really need to butt tightly together, or fit problems with 27d may result. Somewhere in your stash of leftover parts you should have parts 27c and 28c. These are formers for inside the stack cylinders. The diagrams say nothing about where inside the cylinder these should go, so I guessed at it. You can't seat them too low, or the stacks won't fit over the hull profile formers, and you don't want them too high up, otherwise your stack will look like it has a flat cap. I seated my formers about 1/4" down the stack cylinders. Once you get 27c seated, you'll need to paint the inside of the stack black. Part 27d is a flange that goes around the lower stack. Cut, color, and roll the flange. This is another conical part, and rolling it with a conical object against a soft surface works well. On this particular tiny ring, using the glue tab is helpful, and the overlap at the tab won't be terribly conspicuous. When the ring is glued closed, carefully work the ring over the lower stack until it is lined up on the dashed locator line, then apply a small amount of glue to the underside of the flange where it meets the stack. Make sure to line the seam of the flange on the seam of the stack, because both the flange and stack have centerline marks to help line up the stacks on the superstructure. When the flange is done, the forward stack gets a doubled stripe (27e). The stacks have locator marks for optional rungs. Again, I used some from a photo-etch fret. There are also locator marks for optional guy wires, which I will not be adding (partly because there are no locator marks for the wires on the deck). The finished stacks fit snugly over the hull profile former. Apply a small amount of glue to the edges of the profile former, then slide the stacks into place, using the centerline marks to get the front and rear edges lined up properly. The ladder rungs should be just off to the starboard side of center.

The title of this thread has been edited. Please read the first post here on title etiquette. With regards to the subject, fictitious kit subject histories, I think this is something of little concern to the manufacturers. Bottom line: as long as the kit sells, what motivation do they have to make sure it's historically accurate? Sad, but true.

Now we'll finish up the bridge. If you look at the port side of the radio room closely, you'll see some locator marks running from deck to roof. These are for grab rails, which are not included in the kit, although there is a microscopically tiny template printed between parts 25a and 28a. The idea is, you have to make your own grab rails from wire, thread, or whatever. The easiest way to make these (notice I said 'make', not 'install') is to use PE aftermarket rails. I used some from a detail set for another model (I'm hoping the fret included plenty of spares!). If this is your first model, you might want to skip little bits like this. On my first card model, my objectives were simple - just to see if I could cut and glue stuff properly. Gluing these tiny parts to the model is an exercise in applying tiny amounts of CA glue and the judicious usage of 'special words'. Working in privacy might be in order. With this irksome task completed, it is time to mount the bridge to the superstructure. First, we must add three support columns. The easiest way to do something like these is to drill out the locator marks located in the superstructure roof and insert lengths of wire that are longer than actually needed for the finished columns. Once the bridge is glued on, use tweezers to pull the wires up and glue them into the sockets we previously drilled in the bottom of the bridge deck. Paint the columns after all the glue has dried. Next come the bridge wing support girders, parts 24c. It takes a steady and practiced hand to cut these from the parts sheets. Here's some things to remember: 1) color the reverse side first; 2) remove the inside cutouts first; 3) do as much edge coloring as you can while the girders are still attached to the sheet. This next step isn't completely necessary, but I wanted to give the girders some additional structural integrity, so I chose to hide some wire behind the main columns, like so: I also coated the entire reverse side with CA glue to give it some added stiffness. Once everything was dry and touched up, I trimmed the wire, leaving ~ 1 mm stubs at the bottom of each column. I then dry-fitted the columns to the main deck and bridge wings, taking note of where the wire stubs met the deck. I then drilled those spots out, creating sockets for the wire stubs to fit into, like locator pins. This eliminates some of the sliding around that might otherwise happen while trying to glue the supports onto the model. The last bit to add is the ladder, part 34. As I said in a previous post, this is supposed to go on the starboard side, but mine wound up on the port side. Oh, well, lesson learned. The ladder consists of two rails and a set of treads. The rails are two sided, so score and cut out the rectangle containing the rails and their reverse sides, apply glue, and fold. While that dries, you can cut out the treads, which are all together in a continuous strip. Cut out the strip and slice off the individual treads; there are eight on the strip, but the rails only have locators for five. The rails and treads are assembled much like the ladder sets that come in wooden ship kits. When the ladder is completed, color all the exposed edges and mount it to the aft side of the bridge wing - starboard side, if you did it correctly. The ladder should actually have a handrail on the outboard side, but none is shown on the drawings and no template is provided. Go ahead and add one if you are feeling ambitious! At this point, the completed bridge looks like this:

Now for some fun! It is time to add bridge wing railings. If you didn't go for the optional canvas railings, then your railings are already done and you can skip this step. If you chose the optional railings, then read on! For starters, I happened to have some leftover thread railings from a previous project. Kinda like cheating, I know, but this is why we modelers save leftover bits, isn't it? These thread railings were made on a jig consisting of a template glued to a piece of stiff corrugated cardboard. The template was from a Paper Shipwright kit, and David at Paper Shipwright has a free railings template available at his web site. I will need to make many more railings for this model later on, and I will give a detailed description of their construction at that point, but if you can't stand the wait, just download David's template and follow the instructions that come with it. Another option is to purchase laser-cut or photo-etched after-market railings. Before moving on, I will point out that my scratch-built railings don't match the printed railings exactly. For one thing, the kit railings decrease in height between the front railing and the side railing; this I did not attempt to replicate. I also did not try match the correct number and locations of the stanchions. The emphasis here is on improving the overall look of the model, even if it is not 100% true to the original. Making the railings completely accurate would have added considerably to the complexity of the task. The chance your model will be observed and critiqued by an expert on the design and construction of torpedo boats of the Imperial German Navy is extremely remote! Step one in making the canvas railings, once you have the basic thread railings in hand, is to fill the spaces between the rails with diluted white PVA glue. As I said in a previous post, I wasn't sure diluted PVA would dry hard enough for window glazing, but it's fine for making canvas railings. Once the glue dries thoroughly, the "canvas" can be painted a suitable color. The paint need only be applied to the front side of the railings; the tint will show through to the back side. I didn't attempt to bend the railings where needed. It is far easier to cut the railings into properly sized panels and install them one at a time. Openings need to be cut out for the navigation lights, and the port railing needs to end short of the radio room, leaving a space in the back for a ladder. (NOTE: The ladder is actually supposed to go on the starboard side; I missed this in the diagrams. Looks my captain made an executive decision to move the ladder to port!) Once cut, installed, and touched up, the railings look something like this: To me, the scratch canvas railings are a significant improvement in the looks of the model and well worth the extra effort needed to make them. But again, it is no sin to omit them if this is your first (or even second) card model and you feel they might be too far out of your comfort zone. The printed railings will suffice nicely.

Time to add the bridge wing details. These include the navigation light, parts 25d and 25e, and several gratings, parts 29 and 30. The navigation light housings present a minor decision - there are two ways to fold them, and either way you have to color the reverse side. So, I will use these to introduce yet another new technique. So far, all the fold scoring we have done is for parts that fold down, but what do you do if you have a part that needs to fold up? After all, there are no fold lines printed on the reverse of the part. It seems like the direction of the fold shouldn't matter, but it does - scored lines definitely want to fold one way more so than the other. When you fold up from a scored line, a tiny pucker is created along the folded seam; 99% of the time this pucker might not make a difference, but for really tiny parts, that pucker might result in not being able to place another part correctly. So, here's how to score the reverse of a part, using a navigation light housing (25dL) as an example. Make a small cut right at the end of and exactly in line with each of the printed fold lines, like so: Flip the part over - now the cuts act as two points to define a line. Connect the points with your scoring tool (I used the cutting technique on these because of their size) and you're ready to proceed. Now, if you use this technique, 25dL actually becomes 25dR and vice versa -- doesn't really matter which one is which as long as you get the orientation of the housing correct on the bridge wing, along with the proper color of light. Finishing the navigation lights requires folding up and gluing the two sides of the housing, coloring the reverse side, and adding the light lens (25e). Use the 20# bond version of the lenses, if you have them, or delaminate the card versions for easier forming. Here's a finished light: Next we need a few gratings, parts 29 and 30. These are pretty straightforward - score, cut, color, fold, done. Part 30 goes abaft the wheel, while parts 29 and the navigation lights go on the bridge wings - there are locator marks for all of these. Make sure the port light is red and the starboard is green. If you're doing the modified railings, make sure you don't glue these parts right on the edges of the bridge wings - you need a little room to install the railings.

I thought about using PVA glue, but I wasn't sure if it would dry hard enough. I applied the top coat from the inside mainly because a) the applicator brush was too large to keep everything entirely within the frames, and b ) I didn't want to see what would happen if I tried to wipe off any excess on the printed side of the part. As with any medium, there's usually more than one way to do these various tasks with card, so thanks for sharing alternative methods. With regards to very small parts, especially these detail parts that are many times smaller than a fingertip, it pays to handle them as much as possible with tools, such as tweezers, instead of fingers. I even use my knife tip for picking up small parts from my cutting mat - a light stab to pick up the part doesn't leave a visible mark on the printed surface. Cheers!

Next up is the engine room telegraph, consisting of the base (31a), mounting bracket (31b), telegraph (31c), and telegraph handle (31d). The base, 31a, presents a new challenge, since it is a tiny cone, not a tiny cylinder. Rolling a cone is much easier if you have something conical to form it with. The tip of my scribing tool is perfect for this job. In all other respects, rolling a cone is the same as rolling a cylinder. The mounting bracket has fold lines; on such a small part, the usual scoring and folding process doesn't work very well. I recommend using your knife tip to cut through the top layer of paper fibers only, then complete the bends. The two parts 31c go back-to-back to make the telegraph; when this is done, glue the telegraph into its bracket. The handle, 31d, also has fold lines, but don't bother with them. Glue one side of the handle to one side of the telegraph, then bend the handle over to the other side of the telegraph and attach it. Dab a little glue to the inside of the handle and then crimp it closed with tweezers. Personally, I think the handle should be wood, so I painted it brown. Glue the finished telegraph to its base and glue the base to the proper spot on the bridge. Last up is the ship's wheel. Cut, roll, and glue the stand (32a) in the same manner as for the compass stand. The wheel housing (32b) is a tiny box; give its fold lines the knife-tip treatment, then fold up and glue the sides. Attach the housing to the stand. The wheel spokes (32c) and ring (32d) require some careful cutting. Remember to cut away from the wheel hub. Cut the inside of 32d first, then cut the ring from the parts sheet; glue the ring to the spokes, then glue the completed wheel to the housing. Don't worry about edge coloring parts 32 b-d before gluing - the finished wheel and housing can be painted brown once everything is glued together. Glue the finished wheel assembly to the bridge deck. Now we can add the bridge roof (26a and 26b) and radio room (26c). The radio room has printed windows, but there are no parts for detailing the radio room interior, so we're going to let the windows be. There's a spot on the radio room wall to add a hatch (part 55 - hinges to the left). Use contact cement to glue the roof (26a) and roof interior (26b) together. Score, cut, and fold the radio room (26c) and attach it to the roof one wall at a time. There will be a gap in the aft wall where it meets the foremast. The roof/radio room assembly can then be mated to the bridge assembly. Afterwards, you can add the two pices of entryway fascia port and starboard (these were originally part of 25c if you did the modified construction; they'll still be attached if you've used the unmodified 25c). Not-quite-finished bridge should so far look like this: Now, sit back and admire your work for a bit. Next we'll add the bridge wing details.

At this point, if you set the bridge assembly atop the conning tower, you'll notice that the radio room floor partially covers the locator for the foremast (the red spot). We'll need to fix this before going further. Either carefully cut or drill out the foremast step on the conning tower roof, along with the corresponding bit of the radio room floor (the aft end of the bridge deck). We'll also take a few moments to apply the edging to the bridge deck wings. This edging is the bottom part of the portions of part 25c we removed earlier (if you're not modifying 25c, you'll just be attaching the entire part 25c to the bridge deck; however, take note that the red portions of 25c - where the navigation lights will be placed - should be removed before gluing 25c to the bridge deck). Remove this bottom edge of the part 25c wings and glue these, one section at a time, to the bridge wings. We're going to do some things out of sequence again. Following the parts numbers sequence would require us to add the radio room and bridge roof at this point, followed by the stacks, but that would make it difficult to get at the bridge interior, so we're going to add the interior details first. These will be some very tiny assemblies, but fear not! Tiny card assemblies require some care, some special techniques, and some tools, but they're not especially harder than larger assemblies. The interior parts are parts 31-33. We'll start at the bridge wall and work aft (makes sense, doesn't it?), so the first assembly will be the compass, parts 33a (stand) and 33b (compass rose - albeit sans printed rose!). Part 33a needs to be rolled into a very small diameter tube. This presents a number of difficulties. First, very narrow tubes are almost impossible to roll from regular card stock, so in this case it will be easier to roll the part printed on 20# bond (remember waaaay back when I suggested you print the parts on both card and regular paper?). The second difficulty is the joiner tab; it will create an overlapping seam and isn't really necessary. You can remove the tab and close the tube by running a narrow bead of CA along the seam and squeezing the tube closed. OK, so here's another stupid warts story. In this next picture, I'm rolling the 20# bond version of 33a around some styrene rod. What you can't see is that I moistened part 33a with my tongue - but the part stuck to my tongue and got too wet. It subsequently got all smooshed during the rolling process. I destroyed the part! What do I do!? Fortunately, this little disaster presents the perfect opportunity to introduce a second way of dealing with part 33a! You see, card stock is made of multiple layers of paper fibers, and it is possible to separate the layers. I used the tip of my #11 blade and gently teased apart the paper layers at one corner of the card stock version of part 33a. Once I have enough of the exposed layers to grab onto, I can then gently peel the two layers apart, and voila! I now have the equivalent of a 20# bond part. Now, it so happens that this particular tube I'm rolling has the same inside diameter as the styrene rod I'm rolling it with. So, for this tube, I'm going to actually wrap and glue the printed part to the styrene rod, then trim the rod to match the length of the tube. This makes a much sturdier base for the compass. Finishing the compass is a simple matter of cutting out and edge coloring the compass rose, gluing it to the stand, and gluing the finished compass to its spot on the bridge floor.

OK, now it's on to the bridge! This will be an interesting part of the build, because it has numerous tiny parts and also presents a number of options for improving the model. We start with parts 25a (top of bridge deck) and 25b (bottom of bridge deck). Glue these together with some contact cement. Notice that on the bottom of the bridge deck, there are three very small white spots; these are locator marks for the bridge deck supports to be added later. To make these marks more functional, we need to drill them out a bit. I use a small finger drill I made by gluing a #73 wire-sized drill bit into a short section of bamboo skewer. Drill carefully so as not to drill all the way through the card - we want just a shallow socket (drilling 25b before gluing the two parts together would avoid this difficulty). Next we'll add the bridge wall, part 25c. The back of this part needs to be colored, so before removing it from the sheet, I gave the reverse side a coat of gray primer (you can see the scored fold lines through the paint). At this point, you need to decide if you want to use the basic part as-is, or make some modifications. These are completely optional, so don't feel any pressure to add them - it's supposed to be fun after all. The first option I will show you is glazing the bridge windows. First you'll need to very carefully remove the printed windows. Remember to cut away from the corners! Also, note that there is some subtle, printed shading on the windows - there's the obvious, light-gray portion of the frame, but there's also a far less obvious, dark gray portion of the frame that is almost identical in color to the 'glass' portion of the window. Take care to remove only the glass areas, or the frames will be unnecessarily thin and delicate (they'll be delicate enough already!). The insides of the frames need to be colored. The space is too cramped for a marker, so I colored these with acrylic paint - the bottle says "Japanese Navy Gray", but I've modified the color at least once in the past, so I don't know what shade it is now. The next option to decide on is whether to use the printed bridge railings or not. If you study the part carefully, you'll see that the railings are actually meant to portray railings covered by storm canvas. You can either go with the printed railing, or you can choose to replace them with either bare railings or more realistic storm canvas railings. I'll be adding scratch-built storm canvas railings; that being the case, the next step is to remove the railings portion of 25c (but don't discard them - we'll need part of them later). Skip this step if you use the printed railings. I'm also removing the side entrance fascias at this point, since it will be easier to add them later as separate pieces. The bridge wall needs to be formed before glazing the windows, else we'll damage the glazing. Here I'm rolling the bridge wall over the handle of my hobby knife. Now, what to use for glazing? There are numerous materials that can be used for glazing. In the past, I have used microscope slide slip covers (great material, but stiff and therefore ill-suited for curved surfaces), clear report covers (flexible, but don't glue well), window envelope panels (crinkle easily), and clear acetate overhead projector sheets (flexible, but don't like to hold a curve). Microscale makes a glue called Crystal Clear that dries clear and can be used for glazing small windows like these, but I don't have any. I'm a big advocate of the card modeling philosophy of "use whatever you can find around the house", and in this case what I found was my teenage daughter's top coat nail polish. This I worked into each window until a film filled the entire window space. The top coat dries fairly quickly. It doesn't dry perfectly clear, but it does dry clear enough to suggest real windows are there, and that's the effect we want. Here's the finished windows: Notice there's top coat residue around the windows - this is why the clear coat is applied only from the inside of the bridge wall. Once it dries, the area around the windows can be touched-up with paint. The finished bridge wall is glued to the bridge deck with contact cement, although I had to tack the outermost corners with a spot of CA to get them to stick tightly. Next: adding interior bridge details.

Building the skylights will introduce a couple of new techniques. There are three skylights on the model, built using parts sets 39 and 40. Parts 39 are two larger skylights located abaft the superstructure... ...and parts 40 are the skylight abaft the forward stack. The only thing difficult about building the basic skylights is that the parts are now getting somewhat tiny and awkward to work with (tweezers, people, tweezers). Parts 39a and 40a each have three fold lines to score, and the folds at the edges are almost 90 degrees, so the finished edge there will need some touch-up coloring (visible in the photos of the completed skylights). Score the lines, cut out the parts, and make the folds. When making the edge folds, it helps to grip the edge of the part with fine-tipped tweezers rather than pudgy fingers. Parts 39b and 40b are designed to fit inside folded parts 39a and 40a; medium-cure CA is useful in this situation to get the tiny parts to grip quickly and hold securely. Parts 39a and 40a have the skylight hatches printed on them, but you may choose to add optional doubled hatches (parts 39c and 40c). These have tiny hinges, and the challenge here is how to cut the parts out without losing the hinges (if the challenge proves too difficult, just cut the hinges off - it won't make much difference). When cutting out tiny parts like these, there are two techniques that will help greatly. First, always cut away from inside corners, not towards them. When cutting, the edge of your blade makes about a 45 degree angle to the cutting surface, and thus the heel of the blade finishes the cut at the top of the paper before the tip finishes at the bottom. So, if you cut towards an inside corner of a part, the heel of the blade necessarily cuts into the printed area before the cut is completed all the way through the paper. Second thing to be aware of is that as you draw your blade across a sheet of paper, you are actually pulling at the paper's layers of fiber. As a result, the last layer of fiber at the bottom of the sheet of paper may actually tear rather than cut cleanly. This isn't so bad on a large part, which can be trimmed, but it can be disastrous on ultra-tiny parts like the hatch hinges. So how does one avoid this tendency to tear? Simple - one doesn't pull the blade! One pushes it instead, and here's what I mean: In the following picture, I'm cutting out one of the 40c skylight hatches. To cut the top edge of the hatch between the hinges, I start with the tip of my #11 blade right on the inside corner and push the blade down into my cutting mat. This downward push actually cuts more than half the distance from the first hinge to the second. To complete the cut, I reverse the part, and do the same thing starting at the opposite inside corner. I use this same push-cut technique to do all the cuts along the hinge edges as well. I cut all the hatches out rectangular to start with, but the corners are actually very slightly round, so the corners need to be removed. The hatches are too small to effectively hold down with a fingertip while cutting, so I use the points of my tweezers instead. Edge-coloring the tiny hinges can be troublesome, because the delicate hinges are easily damaged. For these, I hold my marking pen lightly against the inside corners and allow the paper to wick the color into the edges. Once all the hatches are cut out and colored, they are glued down to the skylights with PVA, and the finished skylights are mounted to the model.

Thanks to those of you who voted in the poll (all six of you!). Adding the extra detail won in a landslide (can there really be a 'landslide' with only six votes??). All this is moot, however, as upon further study of the diagrams it appears that the bridge is not actually fully enclosed, so the detail is necessary in any case. The only real 'option' is whether to replace the printed windows or not. Since the windows are only printed on one side, they either have to a) be colored on the inside of the part, or b) cut out and replaced with glazing. More on this later... In the meantime, I only had a little time to work on the model, so I tackled some of the deck details. It is perfectly acceptable to work on the parts out of sequence, but it is a good idea to keep two things in mind, namely 1) remembering or noting down somewhere which sub-assemblies you have already completed, and 2) avoiding adding details that are likely to be in the way of something later in the construction sequence. With these two provisos in view, I started by adding some of the flat deck parts. First is parts 36. These are hatches that go just aft of the forward stack. The only thing important about them to be aware of is which side do the hinges go on; in this case, the hinges go aft. Next I added parts 58 (fuel bunker hatches). These give us an opportunity to learn another technique. Cutting each of these small, circular parts out individually would be tedious and also very hard on #11 blade tips, because the short radius of the cut stresses the blade tip and increases the likelihood of breakage. Instead, start by cutting all five hatches out as a single strip. Next, use the heel of the blade like a miniature paper-cutting machine to chop the strip into five individual squares, each with a hatch. In the same fashion, take off the four corners of each square. Now each hatch is on an octagon. Finally, trim off the last remaining bits of white and edge-color the hatches. The finished part isn't truly circular, but hexadecagonal. But at this scale, who can tell the difference? Mount the five hatches at the places indicated on the model (one at the stern, three amidships, and one at the forecastle), noting that again the hinges go aft. And, yes, I know there is a skylight in those pictures! That will be the subject of the next post.