greyhawk

Well there's still two layers of planking to be done. Also these ships tend to have a bajillion of very very tiny parts to be built.

Scharnhorst issue 21 We finally finish working on the foreward deck superstructure by sticking in the little "side roofs" we built last week and extending the forward platform with some small bits. We're reached the 15% point in this build so I guess it's time for another look at the whole thing so far.

Been a while. I've finally found enough courage to paint the hull and I'm pretty happy with the results. Some small errors to correct, but nothing too bad.

You are not too far off, though there is a single non roof related episode in between.

Scharnhorst 20 We stick yet another roof onto our layercake of roofs. We also build a couple of side roofs to stick into the recesses because there's an obvious lack of roofs there. I realize this is incredibly boring being stuck at doing minute and invisible things to the forward deck structure week after week. Luckily next week is the last one to deal with this particular section for a while.

Scharnhorst 19 The next round of horizontal layers is slotted in, this time extending the forward deck structure quite a bit. It's starting to look like an actual thing found on the ship.

Scharnhorst Issue 18 Instead of putting up vertical walls around the forward upper deck structure like normal people we begin to install a number of suspended ceilings to build up the structure. I can only guess the German engineers are mightily drunk and fear the sky dropping down on their heads.

Yeah, it's being built top to bottom. Very very weird.

Scharnhorst issue 17 We begin working on the front deck structures and this is where this kit gets weirder than anything else I have seen in ship building. Usually one would put up some vertical walls and put a roof on top. Instead in this issue we get the roof and some vertical internal supports to build some kind of drunkenly dysfunctional carport, then will proceed to add horizontal panels over the next few weeks to build the whole thing up into a massive weighty blob of "What? Why would they...? This is weird."

No one noticed, including the designers and publisher. I almost missed it myself. I already had the wood glue in hand when I suddenly went "Waaaaaaaaaait a minute, this can't work."

Hey Morgan. Building this one myself, I'm up somewhere in building phase 95 or so right now. One thing you might consider about the treenails is "how many of them are even going to be visible?", "Who is going to notice?" and "Would they even be visible in this scale?" When the kit is done, there is a lot of stuff going on on the decks and above to distract from the planking. There is a trend in model ship building right now to strongly mark the heck out of deck planking, but if one looks at photographs of decks or is on an actual deck, these things are actually tiny and barely visible. I myself have barely touched the deck planks up and still think they come over too strong compared to real life decks.

Almost. The main problem is that they are in different places. Both should be situated like the one on the upper left. So the lower one will need a redrill and fill or the secondary artillery won't fit later down the road. I've not weighed them. I'd guess the Scharnhorst is somewhere north of 3 kilos right now. The Hood is still rather light. Maybe a kilo and a half?

Scharnhorst issue 16 Those parts of the deck structures that will later be "outdoors" are decked with a thin sheet of lime wood (not quite a veneer though). You may notice I have only temporarily fitted the side panels in the middle structure. That is because I have found an error with the precut pieces affecting the entire run which will make installation of a piece of secondary armament impossible/awkward in about two years time. Let's see if you can find it, apparently I was the first/only one in Germany to see it. Hachette has acknowledged and is currently discussing whether to replace the panels or have us do the necessary changes ourselves later down the line.

Scharnhorst Issue 15 Added a few additional layers to the middle deck structure. Not very exciting. What is exciting though (to me, at least) is that two weeks ago I got my hands on an unbuilt partwork kit of HMS Hood (the original UK edition, not the botched German one) at half price. This gives me the unique opportunity to build both cruisers with aspirations of being battleships in sync side by side and have a look at the differences between them and the way they are built up. So I quickly went on a building rampage and got the Hood built up to issue 15 too (here in the foreground with Scharnhorst in the back). One can readily see the size difference between both ships. The Hood has the option of being made RC capable, so she features an open design with detachable deck structures, making the build so far more complex (165 parts vs Scharnhorsts 118 at this point). Comparison shots between ships will be made every month.

Scharnhorst issue 14 Work begins on the middle deck structures. The kit is now 10% done so here's a a look at everything built so far.

Well, I'm also building a 1:95 Gorch Fock, a 1:70 Soleil Royal, a 1:200 HMS Hood, a huge brass StuKa in 1:32 and a plethora of smaller kits at the same time, so it's not like I'm getting bored inbetween.

Scharnhorst issue 13. More parts are added to the aft deck structure. Little tabs on the bottom slot against the hull support frames and keep the deck structure in alignment.

The deck structures are not yet fixed to the hull. I just like to store stuff where it will eventually sit on the ship.

Back on track with the Scharnhorst after the quick bout of delivery problems. Scharnhorst issue 12: Now usually at this point we would start planking the hull, but this kit does things a bit differently, so instead we start building the stern deck structures. I guess they want to get the easy stuff out of the way first.

We have a very well organized system in place throughout the country for news agents to order issues. Basically you can walk into any newsagent anywhere and ask them to supply you with any magazine they don't carry. Man-in-the-middle suppliers make sure you get the issue 1-2 days later. They also keep back issues, in the case of partworks for about 2 months. If you missed that timeframe they will get the issues from the publishers archive (about 1-2 years worth of issues are ususally kept on hand). I have a standing order with my news agent for another partwork, where he will simply grab the newest issue out of his delivery and keep it behind the counter for me, even collecting them for several weeks. Most agents offer this service A lot of partwork modelers for reasons unfathomable to me just collect until the entire run is finished and only then will start building. That's the point in time where they notice they forgot to buy issue 34 of 120 and there's a broken part in issue 62. Then they try to find these issues which at this point has become difficult. The UK has specialiced partwork resellers that will collect and sell individual issues. And then of course there's Ebay. Usually you will have to subscribe within the first year with Hachette. You have more time with DeAgostini, they like to convert magazine runs into a subscribable product some time after the run is done. The HMS Victory partwork for instance has been available (with intermittent pauses to allow for new production) for over 10 years now.

Basically what happens is that every week there is a magazine at the newsstands with articles on the topic you're building and related materials. You also receive a number of kit parts with the magazine and the corresponding instructions to add these parts to your model. You have the option of taking out a subscription instead where you will receive a pack of four issues every month. This is what I did and is also why we have no update yet this week. I've been calculating a bit too close to comfort and have no parts yet. Delivery should hopefully arrive over the weekend and we should be back on track next Wednesday. The instructions are also online for ease of access: https://scharnhorst-bauen.de/vorschau/ (though it's in German)

Nice barrels, but yeah, I'd have to redo the entire interior of the turrets to make these fit correctly. I'm going to stay with the one's I got. Scharnhorst part 11: Every 4th frame is doubled up with 4 support parts each. This will make it easier to lay down the first planking (which is still a ways off). It is now that one will see if one worked cleanly enough while putting together the hull structure. Any dried glue will interfere with placement of the supports. One of the Youtube model builders doing this kit will have a lot of "fun" with this as he tends to drench his models in glue until they look somewhat akin to dripping candles.

So far I've only went and done a coarse removal of casting lines on the barrels. They will get a nice proper rubdown with steel wool yet before priming and painting. I've looked at some sample turned barrels and I'm not a big fan. There's apparently only one Polish company offering Scharnhorst turned barrels in this scale and their offer looks to me like they quickly redesignated some other barrels as Scharnhorst barrels to quickly cash in on this. They certainly don't look like a good match to the barrels in historic photographs to me. In any case, I expect after a proper cleanse, priming and painting these barrels will look their part well enough for now. Who knows what the aftermarket will release. We're only a few weeks into this multi-year-project :-)

It's not plywood. It's an MDF board. I'm glad I'm not planning to make this swimable - The ship is ridiculously heavy already at this point. Scharnhorst Issue 10 Photo etch is added to the second 28cm gun turret and the barrels are test fitted Both 28cm guns done so far side by side

Issue 9 The last side beams arrive and are added to the hull structure (As mentioned I already did that together with issue 8 to be sure everything sits ok) I also get to build the base of the second 28mm turret "Bruno". This one differs a bit from "Caesar" which was built in issues 1-3 in that there are 2 small parts added to the upper back (we suspect these are storage containers for tarps). One of the parts came with this issue, the other one is the one you needed to retain from issue 1.