CDW

Those chutes on the front of the gun remind me of the copious amounts of spent shell casings that must have fallen from an AA emplacement with 8 guns when it was all fired up! 

You might have jinxed me.  Just about the time someone mentions I'm making quick progress on this model, I run into the British 2 pdr. pom pom guns. 
Seriously, I spent several hours just building this one measly gun! The gun consists of more than 30 separate parts, and a lot of them must be bent/folded to shape. I struggled to read and focus on the printed instruction sheet photographs. And that was with magnifying aids. Unlike some Pontos sets, this one does not have their instructions on pdf file at their website. As a result, I cannot zoom in to get a good view of what they are trying to show me. But all's well that ends well, and I managed to get the first of 6 of these built today. it should go faster tomorrow as now I know what folding I need to do and where each part goes. 
 
 

This is some of the photo etch and paint work completed today. More to come tomorrow. Thanks for following along.
 
 

Thanks to all for the kind comments and encouragement. This kit and detail set falls in the correct range for my liking - not extremely difficult, but not too simple, either. Work seems to go faster when one enjoys what they are doing and I am enjoying this build.
 

Almost ready to paint these and the previous gun turrets. 
 
 

Main gun turrets
 

Going through the Pontos instruction photos, it becomes obvious the same instructions are shared by the King George V update, the Prince of Wales update, and the Duke of York. Certain construction/detail photos are marked for KJV, PoW, and DoY, only. It's quite possible the only difference in the sets will be the wooden decks, which are different for each variation.
That means for my build, will have quite a few rocket launchers left over. So far, I like this set well enough that I am tempted to build both of the other versions after I finish this one. 

Painted the hull with hull red and dark gray, painted raised portions of the deck with light gray. After paint dried, attached deck to hull.
Stained the wooden deck stick-on with a dark gray acrylic wash (Vallejo). After 2 coats, I was satisfied with the finish. I sprayed the wash on using my airbrush, then wiped down excess with paper towels.
***One particular thing to take note if you might attempt this conversion yourself...my donor kit, the Tamiya King George V, has in the very center of the deck a raised structure with a deck on top for mounting the ship's boats. To model the Duke of York, the Pontos set provides cranes and railways that accommodate the observation aircraft and hangar, in place of the structure and deck (provided in the Tamiya kit). The ship's boats get mounted elsewhere on the ship.
This is not made clear at all in the Pontos instructions, but you should quickly realize it by looking ahead in the building sequence and comparing it to the Tamiya plans. You will need to measure and cut an appropriate sized styrene sheet to fill in the "hole" that's left by not using the Tamiya ship's boat deck. The wooden stick-on deck covers this area and later on in the construction sequence, the railways are constructed with photo etch and glued to the wooden deck. I do not know for sure exactly how the Tamiya Prince of Wales is configured if you are using that kit as the donor. Either the KJV or the PoW should work fine for the conversion, but there may be differences in how that center section gets handled. Hope this makes sense.
Anyway, I placed the stained wooden deck and fastened her down. 
Next, will begin building the superstructures, painting them, and building/painting the other conversion set details as required.
Stay tuned. 
 
 

Thanks - I'll look for those AK products in my favorite places. 

What is the AK wash, Greg? Not familiar with it. Painting it would be simple enough.
I don't think there are any pre-stained decks available for this model so I'll have to do it myself or just use the natural wood deck.

Experimenting on a scrap piece of natural colored wood deck material, I stained it with Vallejo dark gray wash. It seems to have turned out okay, so maybe there is a way to stain that wood deck after all. My concern will be how consistent the stain works over the entire deck and that it will not look splotchy in places. I guess the only way to find out is to just do one up and see. As it turns out I do have an entire extra deck I can experiment with.   

OC
 
The reference I have shows that scheme (your photo) as being from 1941, so maybe there was some period in 1943 she wore that scheme before receiving the newer scheme which she wore in December, 1943. Don't know for sure, but just guessing.

I had these pictures that were labeled as the 1943 color scheme, but I doubted them. After reading your description from the Roger Chesnau book, maybe they are correct after all? What do you think?
My wooden deck is more of a natural wood color, not stained dark as pictured here. I don't know a way of restaining a wood deck a darker color like that, so I would leave it as is I think. Comments?
 
 

It doesn't look like much, but spent several hours cutting away unwanted raised detail, sanding and smoothing out the deck pieces in preparation for the wood deck.
 
Finding color call outs or pictures of the 1943 configured HMS Duke of York is turning up rather empty. Best I can tell, the colors are pretty basic...a white-gray on the hull, turrets, and superstructures, a dark gray on top of the turrets, and a black-gray on the hull armor belt.
Does anyone have any information that either agrees or disagrees with this? The ship went through several or more paint schemes, but the December 1943 scheme is what I'm after.
 
 

Got started tonight. Not too much done yet, though. 
When I have multi-piece decks, I like to glue a styrene strip to the bottom of the deck pieces at the joints so that the pieces have something to glue to each other and not allow the deck to flex at the joints.
Then, there is a ton of raised deck details that must be cut off and sanded smooth as the wood deck covers it, then replacement resin pieces are provided in the Pontos set to take their place. I started cutting off the raised details and sanding the deck smooth.
Also, sanded smooth the raised mold line along the bottom of the hull to prepare it for painting.
 
 

This old 1:350 Tamiya 1:350 King George V kit has been in my possession a long time. Maybe 20 years or more, I forget. A short while back I took it out of storage from my attic and decided I would build it. Discovering that Pontos made a conversion set to build this model as the HMS Duke of York gained my interest because I had already finished the Scharnhorst and it's in my display cabinet. As you probably know, these two ships have significant combat history against each other. In December of 1943, the HMS Duke of York along with other British ships sank the Scharnhorst off the coast of Norway. In one salvo, the DoY destroyed the front main gun turrets of the Scharnhorst and everything went downhill from there for the ill-fated German Battleship.
 
Here's my starting shot of what I'm working with. Even as old as this kit is, it's a testament to how well Tamiya kits are engineered for good fit. I am hoping it's going to turn out to be a nice model in the end. 
The Pontos set comes with five nice photo etch sheets, a heavy bag of turned brass gun barrels and ship's masts, and a large number of resin parts. In addition, it brings a wooden deck and a small sheet of dry transfers.

You'd probably find anything from Ebay coming from China won't matter as they generally don't care about rules. 

Your email spoilt for choice in your part of the world, SE Asia seems to produce a lot of the aftermarket tho and shipping is quick here. 

Thanks for the tip on Gator Grip glue, I hnave made a note on it. Where did you purchase it? I have used a medium thick CA for the O16 build, seems to work quite nice, when using it VERY sparingly.
 
Cheers,

Hello Jan, good seeing you here and in the meantime I have changed my login name to Piet. I have to apologize to you. Remember you asked me the question if they welded the pressure hull on the O19? My answer was a shot from the hip without any research in responding that 'they were not advanced enough in the welding technique.' Well, I was wrong by assuming that.
In doing the research in the O16 I found out that the O16 was a unique prototype by employing a few new techniques. The main one was a new steel alloy called St52-3, which is now S355. They reduced the carbon content to 1/4% and added 1.6% manganese.  This made the steel more malleable, improved cold forming and weldable. It was also stronger allowing for a greater max dive depth.  As a metallurgist, among other things, I am familiar with the different steels and aluminum alloys.  S355 has now been superseded by better materials but never the less it really was a step in the right direction.
So, long story short, because the O19 was designed by the same engineer and laid down not long after the O16 was laid down, I surmise that they must have used the same technique and also welded about 49% of the O19 pressure hull. That allowed the O19 to go to a unheard of depth of 100 meters.
We must remember that metals tend to get more brittle the colder they get and that was a great concern, and still is today. At a depth of 100 meters water is rather cold.  
When I worked for the US government as an airworthiness safety inspector I got acquainted with a non-destructive testing engineer from GE, who did the weld tests on the atomic subs. I asked him what the steel alloy was on the atomic subs they build - - - yeah, you guessed it, a big laugh. He could not tell me, it was classified, but rest assured it was rather special stuff.
 
Okay, I hope that clears that up
 
Cheers, 
 
 

A problem with a lot of the faulty products is a lack of proper quality control. Good quality control catches a bad run of products. But the reason much of the Chinese products are less costly is due to the lack of quality control. Sadly, the customers are their quality control.
Glad you got those sorted out. 

Really looks awesome at this stage. Very realistic.
Does the jig your fuselage sits on come with the kit or is it something you fabricated for the build?

Not a whole lot to report at this time, but work continues on the DoY just at a little slower pace. The Admiral decided she wanted the back patio reworked for the summer and that has taken a high priority in the grand scheme of things. The good news is, it's mostly done now. Our youngest daughter turns twenty at the end of this month and my wife intends to throw a party for her, thus the patio priority. 
Now, to turn attention to the ship...completed is some work on one of the main gun turrets, and the eight secondary gun turrets. 
I am finding these Pontos instruction photos very difficult to follow, rendering them unusually time consuming for me. The problem is a lack of continuity between any logical construction sequence and the photos on the printed pages. One has to sift through the pages many multiple times to find the appropriate detail photos for the construction at hand. 
Currently, I am working on an area of the superstructure that gets reworked to accommodate the ship's boats and cranes. It receives a new deck, and completely overhauled deck fittings.  

A problem with a lot of the faulty products is a lack of proper quality control. Good quality control catches a bad run of products. But the reason much of the Chinese products are less costly is due to the lack of quality control. Sadly, the customers are their quality control.
Glad you got those sorted out. 

Thanks to all for the kind comments and encouragement. This kit and detail set falls in the correct range for my liking - not extremely difficult, but not too simple, either. Work seems to go faster when one enjoys what they are doing and I am enjoying this build.