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DocRob

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  1. DocRob
    I ran in some trouble again with the build up of the superstructure, as I realized, al compartments folded from PE have a 'roof'. I hadn't checked it and left a bit of the structure on the underside of the platforms as a guide line for the compartments. This was easy fixed for platforms one to three, but the top one was already finished with fragile PE and printed parts. On the pic you can see the underside before surgery. Somehow I managed to get rid of the plastic without destroying the assembled parts, using a bench full of tools. Dabbing the sweat from my forehead, I continued with building up the superstructure, which is only stacked on the above pic. Platform by platform, I continued, until this was done according to the manual. I hope all 'connections' to other component fit, which is very difficult to check beforehand. Now this is what I achieved, I'm not entirely satisfied, but I'm still completely out of my comfort zone with this build. Slightly strange angles only depict the state of the art of American engineering scale wise . After: Before: (Find the 1247 differences ) Cheers Rob
  2. DocRob
    I've done crazier things than this, but this must have been long ago . Today I assembled one platform with PE and printed parts. This is something else than adding some PE parts here and there on a plane kit. I definitely have to burn my macro lens. The tiny stuff looks ok to my blurred eyes. Cheers Rob
  3. DocRob
    That's what I call understatement . Cheers Rob
  4. DocRob
    This peace of junk should transform into the superstructure . What have I done to be tormented with that kind of plastic. My sins must have been infinite, I hope I enjoyed them . After hacking and slaying, sawing and grinding, cursing and chiseling, I removed what is only partly shown on the pic. There was more debris than usable plastic left, but it took a while to get there, mainly because I pre bent some of the then to add PE-parts, to cut everything to shape. All red in the manual has to go and it's a lot. Cheers Rob
  5. DocRob
    Thank you Alan, this is only the overture to some heavy bending and gluing, possibly soldering as well. Cheers Rob
  6. DocRob
    Thank you Edward, I continued with the PE and as far as it works, it has a relaxing component, but I fear, there will be issues later. I hope, I do not blow away half of the detail away with the airbrush later. I finalized the first catapult today, where a ton of parts went in. This is mounted on turret #three and is luckily the more complicated of the two catapults, which sent the Kingfishers skywards. Cheers Rob
  7. DocRob
    Thank you for your generous offer, Paul. If I need photos, I will come back to you. I hope to use not so much reference, as I don't want to dig too deep into history and have a relatively fast build. The USS Arizona should look right, but I'm not a rivet counter. I rather build for an overall convincing looking result. Of course, I see problems arising with such a well researched subject and so many experts around here . Cheers Rob
  8. DocRob
    Thank you Alan, there is a lot more to follow, five huge sheets of PE, phew... Cheers Rob
  9. DocRob
    Progress is slow, even slower due to different issues. First, I discovered, there are only nine bollards included instead of sixteen. I mailed to the Eduard helpdesk and they reacted promptly and said they sent the rest, so i hope they will show up soon. I started with the turrets, where the manual is a it irritating, because there are three different types of turret assemblies out of four. There is some very delicate PE to add. For cutting PE, I use a sharp blade normally on a hard plastic tile, but with the superfine borders of the gun openings, I cut on a glass pane, because there is less deformation, but obviously it's not good for the service life of the blades. The second issue I ran in, were the plastic parts, which hold the barrels in the turret. They didn't fit well with the openings in the front shields and in one case adjustment wasn't enough and I had to make a new bed from drilled brass tube. The basic equipment on the turrets is finished, except some very delicate railings, which I will add later, along with PE ladders. I started to build up the catapult for turret #3, but it is only fitted loosely for the picture. The front turrets: Cheers Rob
  10. DocRob
    Chroming, it's very difficult to achieve great results. I tried different products and type of application for years now and I found no solution covering all sorts of parts. Molotow pens had been great, when I painted car and motorcycle headlights with them, but looked horrible on protruding parts. They seem to settle with a nice and shiny chrome finish in crevices. There are tapes and foils, like Bare Metal Foil or AK adhesive chrome tape, but they work only under certain conditions, but do look good, when applied correctly. There are Alclad and AK Extreme Metal colors, which look good, when applied correctly. Don't use the AK black primer, specified for their Extreme Metal colors as a base, it never dries thoroughly. Tamiya gloss black, acrylic or even better lacquer are much better suited. You have to try onto dummies first, because you have to figure out, which results look best, layered efforts or flooding the part in one go. A solution, I very often come back to are Uschi van der Rosten's chrome pigments. They shine a little less, when applied, but do look right very often scale wise, because too much shine can look toyish on scale models. The extra benefit on pigments is, there is nearly no coat thickness and therefore no loss of detail, the downside is, you have to reach all nooks and crannies to polish out the effect. To me these pigments are among the best, because they are extremely fine grained and cover well, if the underlying surface is properly primed. Cheers Rob
  11. DocRob
    You are absolutely right Greg, on many builds, only the builder himself complains about the bits and pieces, where the onlookers only say wow, but aren't we all perfectionists more or less? There are so many details build, rarely visible after completion, like engine wiring with spark plugs or cockpit detailing with planes, but to me it feels good to be able to reproduce it, to apply knowledge, technique and skills as a self satisfactory aspect. This is my motor in modeling and I like to challenge myself with every build. Cheers Rob
  12. DocRob
    Thank you for your confidence Ken. I hope to turn that build into a decent result and at least learn a lot through the construction, I could have chosen a better base kit though. Cheers Rob
  13. DocRob
    Congratulations, you built a great Opel trio. To honor your effort, I add a link to the song Opel Gang by die Toten Hosen who still fill stadiums and perform this song. Cheers Rob
  14. DocRob
    I feel with you Yves, the plastic of this kit is a joke. It doesn't look like that kit was designed in 2001. I built very obscure kits in the past, like a Fokker D.VIII from MikroMir, where the plastic was also bad, but this was different. It was like a challenge to get the most out of it, where the Arizona kit only leads to head shaking. I would have immidietely stopped the build, if there would have been only the base kit. It would have been a waste of time and effort, but with all the goodies, let's see. Cheers Rob
  15. DocRob
    Thanks for your wishes Chris, I will need them and hopefully some expertise through the members here. I also have lots of fond memories about Arizona, which I visited multiple times and still have friends there. Until your post, I never thought about a connection between the ship and the state. Thanks for this trip down memory lane. Cheers Rob
  16. DocRob
    I will search for your Arizona gallery Johnny and take a look. I built only one plastic warship in my modelling career and it was the Admiral Hipper, when I was a teen. I was proud about the result, which would cause some laughs today, I guess. The USS Arizona build is a challenge for myself, as I like to test myself constantly modelling wise. I get easily bored with repetitions, so the best for my wandering mind is to push myself out of my comfort zone into the cold water. Cheers Rob
  17. DocRob
    Inspecting the plastic, I have to say, I'm very disappointed with what's supplied. The sprues are sourced from Hobby Boss, which date back to a Banner Models kit from 2001. I never heard about Banner and don't know about their reputation, but this kit is partly very badly designed. The hull is a two part affair which is parted at or close to the waterline and on first sight, here the fit seemed to be good. There is a battery compartment casted into , but that doesn't matter. All plastic parts have all kind of irritations, bad casting, strange design, irregular shapes, burr and flash. Many details are casted on, but there is some light there too. The deck planking isn't too shabby, but will be covered with a wooden deck on my build. One example for head scratching design. The halved sidewalls will luckily be substituted by PE later. Another example are the portholes, where I don't want to comment what is there . I drilled out all of the 200-300 portholes with a 0,8mm drill bit and removed burr and other imperfections as a first step. I will not correct all the shortcomings of the kit, but will do my best to build a decent model in the end. The manual suggests continuing with the gun turrets, which I did. First steps were to remove the casted ladders and the other casting oddities with chisels and round bladed scalpels. I think, these tools along everything which cuts and sands in my arsenal will be used heavily through this build. Next, I prepared the main artillery barrels. I cut the plastic barrels from their foundation, drilled a guiding hole and glued the barrels in with CA and got them aligned properly, hopefully. Then it was cutting, chiseling and sanding again, removing winches, anchor chain and pollards from the fore deck which is halfway done on the picture. It looks now perfectly clean, but I wanted to show the casted detail to these of you, who were curious. Cheers Rob
  18. DocRob
    A belated happy new year to you all and I finally decided about the build I will contribute to the 'Let's get wet-GB' over on LargeScaleModeler. My year started a bit rough with house issues AND modelling issues to solve. Some were connected and affecting my initial choice to build the Fore Schnellboot S-38 in 1/72. One reason, I choose the Schnellboot was, that during a heavy rain in December water entered my cave and soaked the box of the S-38 to pulp. I took the manual, decals and PE away from the sprues to a safe and dry place and when I started the build the PE and decals were gone. I know, where I stored them, know that I took them to check some reference and then the tracks went blurry. So now to something completely different. I chose the Eduard limited edition boxing from USS Arizona as a substitute, after I cooled off my hot temper about the loss. This will be my first plastic ship build, since I was maybe 12, building an Admiral Hipper, possibly a Revell boxing. First, let's have a look into the box and onto the AM goodies, I plan to use. Dramatic box art: The two piece hull with the decks loosely fitted on: Not that much plastic on the sprues and a lot of what is there will be substituted by PE and printed parts: 3D printed parts and Master barrels: Lots of PE, and I forgot to take photos of another sheet: The goodies, I bought on top of what's in the box, an Artwox wooden deck and Ion Models US Navy figure set: Cheers Rob
  19. DocRob
    That's a very interesting discussion, I never coppered a hull, but plan to do so, when grown up, wooden ship model wise. As I have a sweet spot for weathered subjects, that might turn out with a lot of patina applied. Some years ago, I built a plastic model of the Submarine Nautilus, mainly because I wanted to install lighting for te first time and also because I wanted to achieve a hopefully realistic weathering/ patina job on my airbrushed non ferrous surfaces, namely bronze for the hull and copper for the rudder. The areas were post shaded for a bit more volume effect with different shades of the base color and the patina was applied with pigments mostly from the MIG-range. I used different blue and green hues, dabbed them in with a flat brush, let them settle around rivets and other details and then streaking everything in the direction of the waterflow. I used a more bluish finish for the copper, where the bronze was finished green. After I finished the model, I bought some AK weathering pencils and I think, they are very good to apply patina too. you can use them dry, like normal pencils, but you also can moisten the tip, apply the color and use a brush or cotton swab afterwards to achieve the desired effect of blending more easily. Here are some pics from Nautilus (Please mind, it's 1/144 scale): Cheers Rob
  20. DocRob
    I can't tell about your Pledge, this is what I use since years (the left bottle). The right one is still unopened and bought later, but I hope it's the same. The liquid should look more or less clear. Take care, when using aggressive decal solutions. The underlying pledge can appear a bit cloudy afterwards. Luckily another coat of Pledge solves this. You can also matte the appearance of a Pledge coating by adding Tamiya's acrylic flat base. Add never more than 30% flat base, other ways the finish will be milky or cloudy. There is a link about mixing Pledge with flat base from the talented designer and builder fichtenfoo, which meets my experiences. Clear Coats with Future Floor Acrylic – FichtenFoo Cheers Rob
  21. DocRob
    I use Pledge/Future a lot for clear coating. I alter the shininess with the addition of Tamiya's flat clear acrylic. Never add more than 30% flat clear, as it appears milky/cloudy above this rate and spray in fine layers. I add a link which explains ehat you have to expect with different mixing ratios. It originates from the very talented designer and builder fichtenfoo and meets my experiences. Clear Coats with Future Floor Acrylic – FichtenFoo Cheers Rob
  22. DocRob
    ... and a happy new year to you all and of course happy modeling Cheers Rob
  23. DocRob
    Thank you Dan, I always create a picture in my mind, with a very detailed vision of what I'm planning to achieve with a build. Normally I get into a kind of building and painting groove than and follow my vision like painting by numbers . Except for the finishing touches, it worked with the Corsair. Cheers Rob
  24. DocRob
    I'm very sorry to hear about your vision problems Dave, but I also read the willingness to build in your post and that's what it's all about. Modelling is a hobby we do for fun and everybody contributes what he is able or willing to do. I used a lot of different masking materials over the years, but Kabuki has become my go to solution. Tamiya Kabuki tapes and a little less refined, but cheaper is the Tesa professional tape are what I use mainly, along with pre cut masking sets from Eduard or in this case from HGW, which are made from Kabuki as well. Cheers Rob
  25. DocRob
    I have not even thought about starting this and there's the first controversy , but thank you for your confidence in my shaky abilities when it comes to ships in small scale, Ken. Cheers Rob

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