drobinson02199
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Everything posted by drobinson02199
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Built, painted and decorated these two little Arado floatplanes. I need to wait for some clear spray to arrive from Amazon today, to be sure the decals are secured, and then I can mount them on the catapults. I read up on the Arados. All German heavy ships were equipped with them. The Bismarck's never flew. In her last battle, they wanted to use an Arado to get some important documents off to land, but discovered that the catapults weren't working, so the planes went down with the ship. Regards, David
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AA guns built, painted and mounted. Also a couple of pics of additional deck detail. Regards, David
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There's a ladder that sticks up through the deck. The instructions want you to build the ladder, then install it up through the hole, but I tried that and it didn't fit. So I disassembled it, and assembled it piece by piece in the hole. There's a picture of the unpainted version installed, and then I hand-painted it. Also a picture of a small bell. Regards, David
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Here's an example of the intricacy of this model. This gun assembly is constructed from 8 parts. Regards, David
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Catwalks installed. If you look at the side profile, there is a little "foot" at the base next to the hull. The instructions say to glue this on to the catwalk before gluing the assembly to the hull, but I thought that could cause some alignment issues, so I first glued the catwalk in place and then glued on the "foot". Regards, David
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Klaasvg: On the planking: 1) I have a small steamer that I use to bend planks, and it really works well. You can get one online. They are normally used to steam clothes. 2) You can use a putty knife and put a layer of wood filler on the stern planks, then sand and varnish before painting. Regards, David
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So now all those detail pieces are painted and mounted. Pictures below are five of the area around the large superstructure stern turret, and five of the area around the bow turret. There are two more large turrets aft and fore of these respectively, yet to be built. The little winders are finished with thread to represent rope. On the sides you will also see paravanes. I was not aware that large ships like the Bismarck had paravanes to do their own minesweeping, but apparently so. Regards, David
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Been working on a bunch of small parts, which all now need to be painted, so here they are on a board ready for the spray booth, with some closeups of some of the interesting ones. As has been the case, these are small, and a challenge -- and if you look closely you can see where I've adapted one of them to account for a part that slipped out of the tweezers and skittered away, gone forever. Regards, David
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One of the stern turrets. I found the little railings to be a bear -- the pics in the manual are wonderfully aligned. Mine are just sort of "there" but the gray paint will cover some of my sins. One tip: mount the platform with the base dry fitted on the model to get the alignment right so it will fit later on, then do the railings. Regards, David
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It takes some time to set up my spray booth, so even though the manual is now in a build/paint/install sequence for each assembly, I'm going to build and hold until I have a bunch of things to paint. Here are two cranes, and the second bow turret -- in place but not glued. Regards, David
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Pictures showing the buildup of the stern superstructure, now completed and mounted. Regards, David
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In the looking ahead for problems department, I was concerned about how the stern superstructure buts up against the bow one. That concern arose from an obvious misalignment of the stern structure with the deck pattern, as shown in the picture. The bow structure is perfectly aligned. There are some plastic thingies on the end of the stern superstructure (they cause the gap between the structures, which is normal), and those could be sanded back where they meet the bow structure, but I was concerned about clearance for the catapults. So I built one, and before making any adjustments you can see that it aligns perfectly with the railings. I did see a way to deal with that if I narrow the gap, so I sanded down the part of those "thingies" that meets the bow structure, and you can see afterward that the alignment is much closer -- and in fact with a bit more fiddling and slight rotation, it gets close to perfect (not shown). Regarding the catapult clearance, you can see in the final picture where the arrow points a railing misalignment that can be easily addressed by trimming the railing on the bow structure back to evenly meet the catapult walkway. What also has to be adjusted is a brass cladding that goes over the deck and abuts the catapult, but that can be trimmed where it meets the bow tower to accommodate the narrowed gap. Way back to my second model ever, I got bitten on things not lining up, so I read ahead and look for it now. Regards, David
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Here's a tower that goes on the stern superstructure. A pretty intricate assembly. Regards, David
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A couple of assemblies. The two matched items are lifeboat racks. The larger one (front and back views shown) is a signal bridge that will be mounted on the stern superstructure. I have found that it's almost impossible to build these brass assemblies without using accelerator. Because spray is so undirected and wasteful, I bought an eyedropper bottle and put accelerator in that, and it really works well. Regards, David
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Nice little turret assembly. Shown alone and where it will ultimately go on the structure. There's a seam at the front that isn't quite closed, but this is a very small assembly and the paint will fill it in. Regards, David
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More levels of the stern superstructure. The leftmost turret is dry fitted at this point, and the upper levels are dry fitted awaiting painting. Regards, David
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I've had a few pieces that needed painting, and since I put my spray booth away, I've been waiting for a good day to spray those pieces outside. That was today, so I've now finished the bow structure. New parts: mast, ladder next to mast, small catwalk, some braces, two turrets. I started the stern structure a few days ago, so that's underway. Regards, David
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And the funnel and hangars. Now I have to build and paint a couple of brass fixtures, mount them, and then mount some turrets and this structure will be done. Regards, David
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Next set of levels mounted. I'm into painting completed structures, so this should go up fairly quickly, and I'll keep posting progress pics as I go. Regards, David
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Put up my spray booth and have now started to paint and assemble the bow superstructure. First and second levels shown here, in position and glued to the ship. Regards, David
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