rvchima

The "sticky sticks" are called "Pic-n-stic".

Ted, I posted some "What's in the Box" photos yesterday. I won't be able to start for 8-10 days, so you can get a good lead. Search for "airbrush holder sticks" on eBay or Amazon. Mine came disassembled and took an evening to put together. The EZ line worked very well but I am concerned that it could turn brittle with age. Get yourself a "Glue Looper" for applying CA to small parts. It's just a tiny PE loop that fits into an X-Acto handle and picks up a tiny drop of CA by capillary action. Also get yourself a PE bender - a 3" square aluminum "clamp" that holds the part down while you bend it around a square edge. Both available on Amazon or eBay. They sell "sticky sticks" for handling small parts. (That's not the right name, but it's all I can think of.) I think they're made for dentists, but model train builders use them. They look like those disposable micro paintbrushes but have a sticky glob on one end. I found that they had too much grab and frequently pulled parts back off after I thought the CA was dry, so I tossed mine. Instead, I have a roll of 3M double sided tape. I cut off a tiny piece and tape it over the end of a 1/8" balsa stick, then use that to pick up PE parts. I use it a few times then replace the tape. I have the book "Anatomy of the Ship, The Battleship Bismarck" by Stefan Draminski. It looks like a perfect reference for this model. I really can't see panel lines in any of the photos, but the drawings show them on the hull below the waterline and around the portholes fore and aft. Most of the upper hull has a few long, horizontal lines. I believe that's the armour belting. I will look into this later, but I don't usually get into such fine detail. Have fun with your build. I am looking forward to exchanging notes with you, and I suspect we'll see some more build logs pop up soon. Rod

What's in the Box The box has a beautiful, full-color photo on the front. The box is packed like a new iPhone. Three boxes of beautiful plastic parts, a small box of resin parts, and a small box of eyes, rigging, and miscellaneous brass parts. Two full-color instruction manuals with details of every little part. More details than a LEGO kit. A full-sized 3-view of the model, suitable for framing. Six sheets of parts layout diagrams. Three huge bundles of sanded basswood planks. The Bismark has a plank on frame hull. The Prinz Eugen had a plastic hull that saved a lot of time, but hey, I like working with wood. Lots of plywood sheets of laser cut parts. Stencils for the bow-wave camoflage. Planked decking printed to scale! I planked the hull of my Prinz Eugen with 4 mm wide basswood. It looks good but it's 5x too wide for this scale. Fourteen sheet of photo etched brass, including an awesome nameplate for the display stand. That's what's in the box. I can hardly wait to get started, but I have some other commitments for the next week or so. Stay tuned.

Back in 2020 I saw this post on MSW: 1:200 Bismarck - coming soon! The Bismarck kit was announced by Amati. I have built Amati kits before and know that they are top quality. I was working on an Aeronaut model of the Prinz Eugen heavy cruiser at the time - not a great kit but it turned out OK. I started checking the Amati site every few days, and over a year later I finally found it offered for sale on agesofsail.com. I ordered it immediately and am about ready to start.

Ted, I will be starting this kit soon and will be following your build log with great interest. Rod

Two More Things to Build Two laminated towing beams will protect the equipment on the aft deck.

A Bunch of Photos Before Final Assembly - Aft Cabin I didn't use the color scheme from the original Marie Felling either. Looks like I have some touch up to do on that rail! Watch out for that last step! Other build logs have noticed that the stairs in the main cabin don't reach the upper deck - the castings are about two steps short. I didn't notice until I had built the first set, and I wasn't about to build them again. The towing hooks and release levers would actually work if they were made of something stronger. The kit does not show these beams over the skylights but another photo of the actual ship does. I bent them from some thick copper rod.

A Bunch of Photos Before Final Assembly - Forward Cabin, Mast, and Lifeboat The instructions call for a tall mast with three lights, a yard arm for signal flags, a derrick, a lifeboat, and a searchlight on top of the bridge. There are a few old photos of the Marie Felling around. This one shows a low mast, one light (maybe?), no yard arm, no derrick, life rafts, and no searchlight. It turns out that the owner of Caldercraft wasn't too keen on scale details as long as the model looked somewhat like the real thing. I mostly went by the instructions but made some changes for practical reasons. The instructions call for the mast to extend 370 mm above the boat deck, making the model 650 mm (25.5") high. I cut the mast down about 100 mm and removed the junk on top. The model now stands 550 mm (21.5") high. I kept the derrick. It is rigged with a 5:1 pulley system for the boat but a 1:1 pulley for the boom. I wonder if you could really handle that boom with a simple pulley? The lifeboat comes as two vacuum formed halves, with nice gratings but white metal oars, oar locks, and rudder. I added wooden seats and built a wooden rudder and oars.

A Bunch of Photos Before Final Assembly - Hull The rope fender is by Caldercraft. I soaked it in coffee to darken the color. Now my ship smells like a Starbucks. I made the Marie Felling text using a Brother label maker, white on clear. You can see the clear if you look closely but it's not bad. The tires are by Amati. They seem small to me but at 1:32 scale they are about thee size of the tires on my Honda CRV. I held the line with a spring clamp while I tied them in place. Power steering! The ship had a small steam engine inside a cabin that will be installed at the right. It drove chains that looped around the aft deck, through a couple of "spring boxes", and to the tiller under the grating on the left. The steam engine was controlled by the ship's wheel. Mistake 1: I installed the aft grating long before the steering chains, so I had to fish the chains underneath and pin them through the grating. Mistake 2: The pulleys each comprised 3 cast pieces that I cleaned up, painted, and assembled. Then I discovered that the supplied chain didn't fit. I eventually glued the pulley wheels solid and drilled out one side to fit the chain.

Stanchions and Railings The kit includes single-ball stanchions for the searchlight deck, 2-ball stanchions for the main deck, and lots of nice, 1.5 mm diameter brass rod. Every build log mentioned above says that that the cast metal stanchions are just too flimsy, but one builder said that his kit came with brass stanchions, and another managed to buy replacements. Caldercraft does sell brass stanchions the correct height so I ordered some a while ago. I ordered 3-ball stanchions for the main deck, planning to cut off the top ball and cap it with a wood railing. When it was time to install them I discovered that the 3-ball stanchions had 1 mm holes, and the single-ball stanchions have .02" (.51 mm) holes, both too small for my brass rod. I ended up buying more brass rod the correct diameters. Here's a sample of the cast stanchions at the top and the brass stanchions below. I drilled mounting holes in the deck and assembled the railings in place. I lifted the entire rail assembly from the deck and sprayed it separately. The cap rails were made from some scrap mahogany using this jig to hold each piece while I rounded the edges.

Searchlight Deck Ladder The cast metal pieces for the ladder to the searchlight deck came out of the molds bent, cracked, and with lots of flash. I thought it would be easier to build my own from some square brass tubing and brass rod. It came out pretty nice.

Yves, This looks like an amazing kit. I suppose that you need something to do while your 3-D parts are printing! I had never heard of CAF models but a quick search turned up their copyright infringement issues. I'm glad that they got it sorted out. Are you concerned that they might disappear before you get all five sessions? Rod

Making Progress But More to Do Here's everything stacked up. You can see the boat deck attached to atop the forward cabin now. Most of the small parts have been attached to the deck, but the cabins and bridge are all separate. Lest you think that I'm almost finished, here are all the parts that I still have to complete.

Miscellaneous Small Parts and Bridge, 195 hours Map and flag chest, two hatches, and stern companionway ready to spray. Four ladders with white metal sides. The kit includes laser-cut ply steps but I used some scrap mahogany. Parts for the skylights. I sure dreaded cleaning up all that white metal ... but it only took a few hours. Ten vents ready to paint. The kit has printed plywood for the bridge. I covered those pieces inside and out with cherry, and used more mahogany for the rails. There were obviously lots of other little parts to clean and paint.

Note to Self: Don't Use White Metal for Structural Parts The forward cabin has a boat deck mounted on top with 8 little pillars made of white metal. I aligned the wooden deck and cabin, and carefully drilled the 8 holes through both pieces. Then I epoxied the pillars to the cabin, and later to the deck, and clamped everything lightly. Every thing seemed to go OK, but the next day, because of the curvature of the cabin, two pillars had snapped in half and two more had pulled away from the deck. After a few choice swear words I came up with an easy repair. First I cut the remaining pillars, separated the cabin and deck, and removed the pillar parts from the deck. I had to fill the holes and repaint the bottom of the deck. Next I filed the pillars remaining on the cabin down to the base, and drilled through the center to fit a narrow nail. I put nails into all 8 holes and flipped the cabin upside down over a narrow board on my bench, so that the nail heads were all level. Then I epoxied all the nails from the inside of the cabin. When that was dry I flipped the cabin upright and reglued the deck. Poor photo of some broken pillars. The cabin with new pillars made with nails. I'll post a photo with the deck in a minute. The kit comes with a big sheet of acetate for windows, but I painted some styrene black and glued it inside with RC cabin glue.