RGL

Draft 1 of the deck.

I'm at the stage where i have to place the deck or I cannot progress. It looks as rough as guts at the moment but I can't remedy any of the gaps and errors until it was stuck down. There are little areas where it is not 100% flush but with the railings and the davits it will cover many sins.

As I cut the deck in three pieces, it adds to the challenge as there are photo etch ladders to go to the amidship area.

The lines on the deck are .01mm brass that replicate the strips to hold down the red linoleum. They bend very easily and will be straitened up now the deck is attached. I'm happy with the wine colour as it is very close to the red black required.

Amidships requires 4 sets of double doors. To the stern there will be an I beam that runs the length of the amidships area which is a trolley for ammo. The eduard doors are not to scale and waaaay to big, even though I had to fabricate the bulkheads. The doors are aftermarket and reduced at the stern end to facilitate the I beam.

There are a few gaps, some which I will remedy, and others will not be visible when the deck furniture is attached. Once I have fixed up the messiness of the deck as it is, I can add the red pinstripe to the hull, then start on the details.

There are heaps of vents not mentioned anywhere in the instructions which I ordered from battle fleet models which appears to have gone bust or the owner has had a breakdown meaning lots of scratch building, which at this scale is a lot harder to make look authentic. There is no company in the world that makes cowl vents at 1/350.

Thanks guys, I spent 6 hours today (last day of leave, wife at work and kids at school) laying the brass strips on the deck that hold the Lino. Apparently they are 5cm wide which at 1/350 are 0.142mm. It's been an adventure getting them to stick at that scale! Once that's done to my satisfaction I can finally do the bulkheads on either end of the amidships section, get the fore and rear decks glued down, fill the gaps, do the pinstripes, and then start attaching the etch housings I have already posted.

Soo much to do but no where near as daunting as the grown ups doing a 3 master.

Kev, you may be better off reading the online reviews and comparing the parts included, as some are designed for specific manufacturers

Nice work

Today's update. I scraped off all the vajello red/black paint and half of the brass. I found a Humbrol Wine colour which is very similar and it will still need about three coats and maybe a bit of black added.

The housing has been given a pinwash and two lighter shades of yellow drybrush.

The Fire Hose reels have been added as well as a nozzle (from the end of a set of barrels I misordered.

I am pretty happy to date.

Slog, I managed to find the last set of plans available on ABE.com, $50 from Germany, a set of 10 A3 plans, I'd be lost without them. They are in German and I have to use the German keyboard in google translate.

The kit is so old the only way to get a decent one is to fork out $500 for a 1/200 resin kit. The big bonus in getting a double kit is spares, but apart from the hull and deck everything is after market. New kits have heaps of really good stuff but they are only now starting to push out pre WW1 stuff and most of the etch comes from Russia (it's really good stuff and reasonably priced to Oz). Russia and Poland have some excellent forums, but no one seems to be building this kit.

There are coal bunker vents on the plans but not on the kit, so i used some coal scuttles on the sides to represent these. As you can see the Eduard Etch is engraved, but the addition of actual doors and  windows makes a world of difference, these will need to be washed and dry brushed yet, but a lot of these details will be hard to see on the completed ship.

I still need to add some more hatches and fire hoses but they do not need to go on yet.

Now going off the Huff plans, I decided to start painting and detailing. As you can see from the plans, there is very little difference but very little detail. the MK1 designs german doors was also added the ever increasing list of aftermarket.

Congrats Mate, well done, now you'll have free time and itchy fingers.

Hof, I do use an etch bender, and I only recently read about using white glue on railings, so that's something I'm going to have to practice first, but if it makes a good gap filler I'm keen to try it out. I only use CA due to its instant bond and strength and it's the only way to bond the etch together. The varyag's deck fit perfectly, but the Emden......not so good! I want to use individual stanchions again so that can preclude it. If I was doing 1/200 it would be easier than the smaller scale.

Problem solved. The planks line up and it will still be fairly invisible when I finish as most of the stiff is covered and i can have the last little bit of housing off centre to allow the gangway to run true. Working on an even surface should allow things to speed up considerably.

The Eduard etch is just that, the doors and hatches are etched into the brass. I shall paint them first then add after market German hatches and doors over the top. I find that if I do it this way the details come out better with a pin wash.

The hammock boxes are going to have to be re done. The vajello paint keeps coming off and taking the brass with it even after it has been varnished down. You can see the white stripes on the red bits. Maybe I needed to get thier primer but I'm just not going to start playing that game. No biggie as I intend on using a red brown (there is no red black available in an enamel). 

It's pretty simple really, level up the centre of the deck, use a scalpel to cut along the plank lines, use the extras that came with the Artwox to lay another layer along the centreline, lay the housing on top! Just not what expected if have to do.

No mate, the holes in the deck come with the ship! Nothing I can't fix.

Now this is an exercise in why one should not assume. I started the housing for the amidships today, of course expecting the Artxox deck would match up.

Not a chance in hell. Huge gaps and the last bit of housing is about 2 mil off so it does not sit correctly and in alignment at all.

The instructions are pretty good, just does not align. Give I have already layed the deck,  this causes some significant revision.

Sigh. Sometimes nothing is easy. I can see now why I cannot find a single build in any language using this photo etch.

Oh well, challenge set.

back from 10 days at the beach and back to the deck.

To get the anchor chains to run correctly I had to scrap the capstans at the front, and fabricate new ones that the chain will actually run around. More filing required but I needed to ensure they fit properly on the metal deck. The eduard fret comes with a  flywheel that goes on the top of the capstan. You an see a little piece of grey plastic that is the Revell capstan.

Now I have stuck down the metal deck the rest can go back into a container until the entire deck is done. I can then add the chain brakes etc.

I then scored the two upper decks for the brass strips that will run on the deck to hold down the linoleum. I did this as they will show up after painting and give me a guide.  I did a practice run with the Vajello Red Black paint and it is rubbish on plastic, even after I varnished it, the slightest scrape and it comes off. Off to get some red brown enamel paint. 

The AWM photos of the front of the Emden shows the metal area for the chains and the Huff plans state that this area is black and the other parts of the deck are red brown. His own model has the entire deck black, but as you can see from the contrast in the photo it is different. I was thinking of taking the easy way out until I looked at the photo and thought no, do it properly.

Looks interesting, I'm looking forward to the build.

Sorry to butt in Pat, Paul, use a grown up size file on a dowel, that's what I did.

Nice work, that's the hardest part of the rigging done now. Anchor bouys will look great.

Great work

Finally, how it supposed to look if Huff is correct.

the fordeck has traditional molded chains which are of course ridiculous. Artox provides a chain with the deck set but is is very much out of scale, the leftover Varyag chain is perfect, but t requires a lot of work to make sure it all runs properly.

I intend to use some 1/700 etched decking plate to cover the front deck which is paper thin (and in real terms more to scale than 1/700 where you would just not see the detail). After the first try at making a template, I realized that it would just be too hard to cut, so I removed the anchor holes and capstan bases from the Dresden kit and sanded the deck completely flush. 

I also had to cut a hole for the hatch that sits between the gun which is not referenced in the kit.

This allows for one piece of etch with minimal cuts to go over the top. They need to be reduced a fair bit yet so the plates can run a lot narrower. At least the chains will fit in the hawser holes this way.

The capstans are just pathetic and I have ordered some from the US which seems to have the slowest postal system in the world.

Next a primer coat then decking colour and a varnish coat over the top.

I'm off to the beach for 2 weeks so into storage it goes.

As there is going to be photo etch to replace nearly everything topside, the decks have been cut flush. A little bit of sanding n the edges to make sure they'll sit flush and cover the internal guns properly.

Finally the stern chasers. The plans has this as the officers mess, thus the attempt at a mess table again.

I wont attach the hinged doors to any of these till the end of the build. I was going to leave the guns out till the end but they do not fit through the holses

The second set of waist guns is in a much smaller area on the plans. Macro is not flattering but I am happy with their appearance to the naked eye. I think if I used a camera with a 50mm lens and not my phone

This front waist 105mm gun is actually open on the kit, and I added a torpedo loading hatch, a few coaling scuttles (on the plans) and a few other doors. the reason i have added the contrasting colours was that if I did not they would just not be visible when the roof is on without internal lighting. It's like being a little bit pregnant, I'd have to do the entire thing.

you can see from the first picture what the kit 105mm gun looks like in comparison to a scratch built one.