Captain Slog

Hi Wayne, You are correct. Your turn. Cheers Slog

Good to see the repairs coming along. Lantern looks great. Cheers Slog

Thanks Kevin, I struggle to find ships to post but here it goes; I have removed some flags at the bow and stern jack staffs. Cheers Slog

My guess is the Blue Ribbon ship SS Sirius. Cheers Slog

Hi Kevin, Looking good. Are you able to still swap the main 38cm turrets around as it was 'Anton' which didn't have rangefinders (removed winter 1940/41). Your pictures show 'Casar' without the rangefinders. Cheers Slog

Hi Sam, Your carriages are stunning. I got so far with my Endeavour ones and put them aside until I my mind set for doing them is right. Cheers Slog

Hi All, Hi Joe, the Missouri would build into one fine ship, look forward to seeing it one day. Thanks David, it's certainly going to test my patience. Hi Sam, its definitely got some presence. The Admiral got a shock in the morning when it suddenly appeared on top of the computer desk hutch Continuing on, the middle deck which separates the upper and lower hulls comes in three parts. After careful measuring and using a 600mm steel rule to line everything up I joined the 3 parts using big squares of card cut-offs to bridge the joins. I also placed cut-offs down one side of the centre ‘Keel’ to have a firm edge to hold against when it was time to attach the hull halves. During glue up I pressed the keel against these cut-offs and stuck down more sandwiching the keel. At I couple of spots I did both sides of the keel and bulkhead. This kept the hull positioned both centrally and longitudinally for gluing. When it came time to glue up both halves I placed the horizontal deck upside down on the kitchen counter (and applied more guide scraps) and glued the lower hull down to the deck using PVA glue. The handy thing about working in the kitchen is I raided the cupboard for tins and jars of soups, sauces etc and used these to weigh down the hull. Once this was left for a hour or so I flipped it over and repeated for the upper deck. Underside of finished hull Topside of finished hull Looking down the spine of the hull it is pretty straight(ish), there a few bulkheads slightly to one side or the other but this was my fault due to rushing to get it all positioned before the glue started to go off. There is the very slightist twist to the leading edge of the bow. This is in part to the narrow cross section of the first few bulkheads. Once you go back 4 or 5 they are wider and support more on the centredeck so resist twisting. I can get rid of the twist when I come to shape the bow. Well the hull frame is more or less complete and as usual being the first time doing this lots of lessons learned and a few ideas to improve the assembly the next time I do a card hull. Still have the strips of tabs set back from the edge to do. First thing was the amount of gluing surface with the full length of the keel plus all the bulkheads meant that I was working pretty quick during glue up so the PVA didn’t start to skin up. This caused 1 or 2 little alignment issues. In future depending on the hull configuration I think I would try locating and gluing the centre keel down first then do the bulkheads. Moving on, apparently only need to fair up and then stick some card strips on to the edges then ‘skin up’ with the hull sections. This I think would be very difficult to get right, so I am going to get some balsa and bulk up the bulkheads and put in longitudinal stringers before fairing the hull. Will probably fully fill in the bow and stern with balsa so I can get the correct shapes sanded. Cheers Slog

Hi Grant, yeah the forms are so much quicker and easier, not to mention cleaner! The longitudinal “keel” comes in 4 lengths, which I glued in all the bulkheads too, leaving off the ones covering the joints. I wondered how to hold these whilst I slid the bulkheads down over the joint. Turns out it was relatively straightforward. I use ordinary woodworkers PVA so just ran a bead down the join and then pressed the butts together for a few seconds and smoothing the sides with my fingers to ensure the edges were flush. After leaving the joint alone for 15 – 20 minutes the bond was strong enough to glue up and slide the bulkhead down into place. To strengthen the butt joint I glued some scrap balsa wood into the 4 corners. The lower hull ribs all glued into place and finished. The photo gives an idea of length. Next up is the upper hull which is a little more complicated as it has an intermediate deck and differing widths to account for the armoured belt of the hull. Here are the upper intermediate decks that slot horizontally into the upper bulkheads. These also have tabs to glue on, set back from the edge so the upper skins are recessed at the armour belt. The upper hull ‘keel’ and bulkheads all glued into place. All of the upper hull components slotted together straight off with no tweeking. Overall length according to the cover of the book is 1250mm (shade over 49”) Cheers Slog

Hi Sam, having very little modelling past experience I had no idea that PE even existed until only a few years ago and am continually amazed by what is available now. It’s awesome stuff and certainly sharpens up models. Hi Bob, I’ve included a link in my signature to my card artillery tractor (Mazur D-350) log. If you want to see some incredible card detail, check out the Halinski Sherman firefly (by romanmodel) with a fully detailed interior etc. To give you an idea of detail each track link of the Mazur has 7 parts and need 81 links per side. The Halinski firefly has 27 parts per link alone! I will post something in the thread you mentioned once I progress a bit more. Have only done a couple of trial track links to see how they go together so far. Hi Tim, thanks for dropping by and the likes! Hi Barry, that’s fantastic news. I hope you will start a build log so we can progress and learn along together as I won’t be much further on than you by the time your package full of goodies arrives. Let me know when it arrives and I will PM you a translation of the instructions from Polish to English. There is only a page and a half of A4 instructions but gives some info in the steps. There are a few funny bits where it didn’t translate very well but you’ll get the idea. The majority of the build is following the schematics. Did you manage to repair your Mississippi? Did I mention how much I love the laser cut forms? What initially took a few hours to glue the templates to card, cut out; trim to shape and fit to each now took 15 minutes to pop out of sheets and push fit. From the 4 longitudinal sections and 21 ribs of the lower hull only 1 rib needs to be fitted. These are just trial fitted, I will go through and glue them into place next. In my opinion there is a design flaw as shown in the picture below. To join two longitudinal sections the joint has been located at a transverse rib/bulkhead. I think it would have been far better to move the joint off of the bulkhead so a piece of scrap could have been glued across the both sides, bridging and strengthening the joint. Small point as once the horizontal intermediate deck is fitted it won’t move but still very flexible and weak until that is done. Cheers Slog

I remember this beautiful build from MSW 1.0, good to see it back. Cheers Slog

Hi Steve, Excellent build so far. I like the interior colour chosen, goes well with the natural exterior. Cheers Slog

Hi Steve, Your launch is looking fantastic! Whats a Fit-Pack? I am guessing it contains the syringes you were after? Did you get grief buying syringes. I vaguely remember wanting syringes a while ago to try something (Some of the Russian builders were using them, which I forget now) and ended up not bothering as expected a heap of hassle from the chemist. Cheers Slog

Hi Steve, I like your thinking But think I might go HMS Lion and SMS Seydlitz for The Battle of Dogger Bank and Jutland recreation I doubt I will live long enough to do all these. That’s the beauty of card models, compared to wood and plastic kits they are so much cheaper so can build up a stash pretty quickly. Hi Chris, thanks for the additional info that clears up my confusion. I really want to do the later release as the detail straight from the ‘book’ is incredible. Remember Martanek’s multiple builds, one of them was the later release Hood. I will probably give the Hood shown above away free to a good home to anyone in Australia who wants to give it a go. I’ve been sitting pouring over the laser cut forms and they are so nice it’s a shame to use them! Hopefully some progress to show next weekend. Cheers Slog

Hi Steve, surely high velocity explosive projectiles is more fun than spray Hi David and rafterrat, the Admiralty paints I mention are actually Caldercrafts own Admiralty Paint range. A very pigment heavy paint which brushes on beautifully but this is the 3rd time its messed up airbrushing. The Tamiya acrylics with their own thinners worked great. I will keep an eye out for other brands of paints you mentioned to try. Sam it was ‘Challenge’ enough just to glue the tiny parts, never mind make them move Okay I am finally able to get going again after wasting time trying to get my order through to GPM and accepted and after finally getting it sorted had a 13 day wait for the items to arrive from Poland to Australia. I got another Kit book so got doubles of most parts now. Also got the laser cut form set. It comes as 9 sheets of card with all forms pre-cut including hull skeleton, gun turrets , superstructures and more. These are incredible and for want of better words, laser sharp. I think I will now use laser cut forms for all card models if they are available. Since I am a now a glutton for punishment with photo etch I also got the quad 20mm cannons. The sheet is enough to make 3 cannons although only need 2 for the Bismarck. I also believe I don’t need to include the gun shields for these. I plan on punching out the portholes and replacing them and the drip lips (?) with photo etch. I ordered 3 different sizes as there appears to be different sizes on the hull and superstructure and they were only a few bucks each. I got 1.6mm, 1.8mm and 2mm sizes and each sheet contains 500 portholes. Lastly from GPM I got a pool of 0.2mm elastic thread, which is very stretchy and have seen this used for the aerial / antenna wires and also hand rails so thought I would give it a go. Again only a few bucks for 200metres of the stuff. Since I was having difficulties ordering from GPM and getting pretty peeved I went looking around for alternatives and came across another Polish company Orlik, http://www.sklep.orlik-models.pl/ and got a few bits and pieces from them. I was impressed with their service and they answered all my e-mails to them the next day and was very helpful. Whats a Bismarck without an HMS Hood to fight? I feel a bit of a fool as I actually thought I was buying the Halinski version and indeed it is Halinski’s with the AH badge and his name on the back cover but when I opened it and went through the pages I realised it was pretty basic and had rather less detail than other examples I have seen. I think this must be a very early release as after checking on-line the highly detailed Halinski’s have “Military Model” in large gold letters across the top of the front cover. Oh well, this is far down the track so when the time comes I may get the ‘proper’ Halinski version. Plenty of time for that. I also got some 10metre rolls of brass wire in 0.1mm, 0.15mm, 0.2mm, 0.2mm and 0.3mm since these will be useful for making hand holds, hoops, hand wheels etc , since the smallest local brass size I can find is 0.5mm rod. During my stay of absence I found a dedicated card forum and was mesmerised by the detail on the military vehicles and aircraft and unfortunately succumb to my weak will and got a couple of vehicles all from Orlik. First is the GPM WII M26 Dragon Wagon (1:25 scale) as it is a cool looking shape and has wheels to try and build. To try my hand at doing tracks I picked the Orlik Mazur D-350 (1:25 scale) as the other forum has a great looking example of this. I also got the laser cut forms for this. So I will probably do the vehicles when needing a break from the Bismarck. I was going to post some photos of the card vehicle books but decided against it in a ship build log. Next up will be to build the Bismarck hull using the laser cut forums. These are going to be so much quicker and accurate as opposed to my gluing and cutting out by hand the first set of forms. Cheers Slog

Hi Grant, Its been awhile since I last dropped by and she is looking amazing. How you've managed to keep track of the miles of rigging I don't know. Cheers slog

Greg, Sorry to hear about the mishap, that is heart breaking. Is it recoverable from or is damaged beyond repair? I would imagine most models would be salvageable from these types of incidents but guess the real question is if you have the heart and inclination to redo all your previous hard work. I hope you are able to continue with it as your build was a great inspiration to me but if it happened to me personally I don't think I have the mental constitution to redo. More importantly I hope your leg isn't to badly hurt. You really got the crappy end of the stick with this as might have meant having some sick leave to spend working on the model, you certainly copped both barrels with this. All the best Slog

Congratulations Patrick on finishing. That is one very nice clean sharp looking build. Cheers Slog

Well done David. Looking very sharp for a 1st card build. Cheers Slog

Looking very nice Wayne. These were my 1st thoughts also when I saw your new rail. Shouldn't be a problem for you though. Cheers Slog

Hi Guys, Thanks for all the nice comments! and the likes. Hi rafterrat, the PE is very easy to bend being only 0.15mm thick and the fold lines are grooves etched into the surface so it’s a simple case of using a blade to hold the part down, just showing the bend line and then using another blade to pry it up. Thanks David not so sure about that though! Hi Greg it isn’t too bad on the eyes, but I find I can only do a few hours at a sitting before eye and hand strain set in. Thanks Sam but might leave that off for these…although you got me thinking about the main 15” guns! Okay the 37mm guns are totally finished as far as I am concerned and even packed away in a little storage container never to see the light of day again for who knows how long. The trials and tribulations at working at the kitchen table. I made a spray ‘booth’ out of some poster board to keep any overspray contained. The compressor was fired up and left in the shed and the airline run up the side of the house and in through the door to the filter/moisture trap/gauge which was clamped to the table. The parts were held in various configurations to hold whilst spraying. The main bodies were stuck down on to some blu-tac on the end of a bamboo skewer and then held by a clothes peg. The side assemblies were stuck onto blu-tac and then stuck into some balsa blocks with piano wire. These parts could be held by the wire and skewers and rotated when spraying. The side seats were stuck down onto some Tamiya tape along the edges of a balsa block with the arms hanging over the edge for access. Here are the main parts all sprayed up with Tamiya Dark Sea Grey. Other than a few trials spraying the lantern on my Endeavour this is my first real attempt at using the airbrush in anger and a few points of note I would like to make. The Tamiya grey was mixed 50/50 with Tamiya acrylic thinners and the pressure was set at 15psi although I turned this down a couple of psi as I progressed. The above set up and ratio sprayed beautifully giving fine lines to broader spray no problems. The spray worked perfectly during the whole time with no splatter or clogging even with multiple stops for a minute or two to swap over parts and I could have sprayed for hours like this. This is in total contrast to spraying the black barrels. In the morning I went to the local hobby store for Tamiya flat black but they didn’t have any so went home knowing I had Admiralty Paints Metal black. Admiralty Paints paint beautifully with a brush but DO NOT AIRBRUSH. Within a couple of minutes the airbrush would clog and splatter and stop then blast out full bore before clogging and splattering again. Not to mention the problems cleaning the airbrush at the end. The grey cleaned up in a few minutes! In the end I used the last of some Games Workshop Chaos Black spray I had in the shed. After I glued all the parts together and left overnight it was time to insert the barrels. I struggled for a long time trying to line up all the holes to feed the nylon bristle through to hold in place until I realised that the elevating quadrant was hitting the gun mounting. For the first 2 assemblies I bent the front sector of the quadrant to give more movement but this was difficult. In the end I used the craft knife to remove the front sector completely as trying to bend them was breaking them off and had to reglue them back on. Once the front sector was removed the barrels dropped right in and then wiggled about to get the bristle through. Once all the barrels were in place and the bristle slipped right through, I stuck the gun bases down on to masking tape and used a balsa block to set the heights of the barrels all the same. Then using a needle I touched some CA to the breech/mount/bristle to fix the barrels at height. Then I used nail clippers to snip off the bristles from each side of the mounting and a final touch up with grey and black. Although the macro shows I missed some bits and pieces. Guns totally finished and all laid out. Not bad for a first real attempt at constructing with PE (used PE in the Endeavour build but nothing like this) but could do better I think. As usual lots of lessons learned. Firstly shiny brass appears to look really good since CA glue dries clear you don’t really notice it until painted when it shows up in lumps and bumps and rough spots. Some of the bending could be better, especially the side arms but these are very difficult to hold and bend in multiple directions without disturbing previous bends. Overall I enjoyed the experience and like I mentioned I have the 20mm cannons to do but might have a break for a weekend or two. I should be ordering the hull forms and another ‘kit’ book next week so will be a relief to work on something that can be seen without being 3 inches in front the face LOL Cheers Slog

Hi, David, already lost some parts. Thankfully only needs 8 guns so 2 spare of everything Right, that’s the construction of the 37mm SKC/30 Dopp LC/37 cannons finished and ready for paint and final assembly. The side (elevation?) hand wheels were fitted into the holes mentioned previously on the side arms. This was a major pain. The tube/bar on top of the breech, although the half the size of an eye lash was pretty straight forward. At first glance they could be mistaken for a sight but I don’t think they are. The AOTS shows them in a reverse position and lying down flat so who knows. The 2 central (traversing?) hand wheels were the last part to be glued to the central seating position and pretty quick and easy. Couldn’t help but layout all the assemblies to make 1 gun ready for paint. Just remembered after paint there are a couple of bars to be made from brass rod which fit to the front of the side seating positions. These aren’t supplied but given the length and where to attach them. They appear to be some kind of shock absorber. Total of 48hrs with each gun containing 65+ parts. I haven’t ordered the laser cut hull bulkheads and forms yet so if I finish painting these next weekend then it will be on to 12x 20mm single cannons…oh joy I can hear everyone groaning from here. Cheers Slog

Hi David, I heard/read/was told that card modelers also use water colour pencils. They look like ordinary coloured pencils but the 'lead' is quite waxy feeling and dissolve slightly with water. I didn't really get the hang of them and will try 'almost' dry brushing with acrylic next time. Cheers Slog

Hi All, Thank you all for the comments Thanks David I am pretty chuffed with them although as usual lots of areas for improvement. Thanks for the kind words Doris. If your Bismarck is to the same standards as your current build then I can only imagine it would be a stunning example. I doubt I will reach your level of skill in this lifetime considering I still haven’t actually done a card model except for a few bits and pieces which I am going to redo. Hi Grant, it gets worse Wait till you see the hand wheels below! Unfortunately who can tell when they will be fitted? I haven’t actually did any real card work yet. Hi Steve, I think you are correct about painting before final assembly. There are too many sticking out bits to guarantee full coverage. Really on to the home stretch now and finishing off the little bits and pieces. First up is a little angled plate which is fitted on to the left hand gun mount only. Simple bend and glue job. Wish I could say the same about the 2 plates on the end of the gun breeches (guards?). These were a nightmare to fit. There is the tiniest little flange which I assume is supposed to be bent to 90 degrees but the glue area is so small for a sticking out vulnerable part. I can think of a number of ways these could be better designed. The base plate ribs were again straight forward, if not a little bit fiddley. The gun elevating quadrants were straight forward and the picture is self-explanatory. There is just little pipe/tube/something to fit to the top of the breech to finish these. There are 2 types of hand wheels used a pair of smaller ones for the central station and larger singles for each side. I was a bit confused when I saw them at first until I realised what I had to do with them. Not sure if someone at GPM is playing a joke or messing about to see if anyone is stupid enough to build these but… The parts are on a No.11 blade. The first wheel on the left is how they are removed from the sheet. The little prong on the bottom left is the handle and this gets bent up to 90 degree to the wheel. I expected this (and the central position hand wheels just have this handle to bend up)but I couldn't work out the prong top right. Then it dawned on me that this was the hand wheel spindle to fit into the hole on the side parts shown in a previous post. The second hand wheel shows the spindle removed and lying next to the wheel. The last wheel shows it turned upside down to reveal a tiny dimple in the middle to glue the spindle too; I just need to bend the handle down to finish. Only another 15 more of these to do. Total time to date is 45hrs. I started off doing all ten but the parts war of attrition brought this down to the required 8 guns. There is probably another 2 to 3 hrs work left before paint. Probably works out around 5 to 51/2 hrs per gun. Cheers Slog

Hi guys, Thanks for the likes and comments. David, I will be airbrushing them with Tamiya acrylic Dark Sea Grey, which seems like it matches a lot of the superstructure colour. Can’t decide whether to spray the individual assemblies before or after final assembly. Not sure how the spray will get into all the nooks and crannies if fully assembled before painting. Rafterrat I just use the MK1 eyeball or the Admirals reading glasses if she isn’t using them. Glue wise I have used 2 part epoxy, CA (superglue) and what I assume is a gel superglue but the pack doesn’t mention CA at all. I think you only need to worry about CA fogging up clear plastic. Doesn’t seem to effect the brass at all. Also the amounts of glue are tiny, applied with a needle. Moving on to the guns now. The gun breech starts like everything else as a flat part. The photo shows from left to right the progressive bending to form the rectangle box which is the breech. I previously bought the gun barrel set which includes the 37mm barrels. I stopped making the remaining 2 guns as they supply 16 barrels to make the 8 gun sets needed so got a couple of extra bits and pieces. The brass barrels more or less match the diagram length wise but they only go as far in to the breech as the pivot holes. I placed a 0.2mm drill bit through the mounting holes so I could push the barrels in up to this point so I didn’t block the mounting holes and barrels are the same length. I also had to bore out the front hole to 0.8mm to match the replacement barrel diameter. The gun mounts are made in handed pairs. Each mount has a central U-shaped part with a plate on each side, and then the left and right handed mounts are joined together. I used the 0.2mm drill slid through the mounting holes of the central U-shaped part then applied CA glue to the outside face and slid the end plate over the drill. This was placed on to the central part, quickly aligned and then squeezed with tweezers for a few seconds. The process was repeated for the other side plate. Once each mounting was glued up it was tweeked to shape to square up. Then the drill bit was slid through a left and right handed mounting before gluing and squeezing together to form a pair. Photo shows left and right handed mounting with final pairing in the centre of the photo. A pairs of guns placed in a completed mounting with the 0.2mm drill holding it all together. When final assembly comes I will use a 0.2mm nylon bristle as used previously to hold everything. The guns themselves still have an elevating quadrant to fit on the underside, a couple of breech guards and a pipe of some sort on the top. Quick mock up to show how the guns are going to look. As mentioned not sure if go to this stage before painting or paint individual assemblies. The end is in sight now. Still to do on each gun; 2 bracing ribs on the base plate. 4 handwheels And 4 parts to finish the gun breeches as mentioned above. Cheers Slog

Hi Colin, Looking nice. Does this 'kit' come with a full hull or is it waterline only? Cheers Slog