rvchima

Aeronaut vs. Amati
About a year and a half ago I completed a 1/200 scale model of the Prinz Eugen light cruiser  by Aeronaut. They also make a 1/200 model of the Bismarck and several other German WWII ships. Now I am working on Amati's 1/200 model of the Bismarck and I thought it might be interesting to make a quick comparison between the manufacturers.
 

The Amati hull is built up plank on bulkhead, with some photo-etched (PE) brass pieces. It took over 100 hours to get to this much done. It would be challenging to install RC.
 

The Aeronaut hull is molded plastic. It took a few hours to get this much done and would be perfect for RC. I have seen the Aeronaut Bismarck kit for sale without all the accessories relatively cheap. I wonder if the Amati model would fit on the Aeronaut hull?
 

The Aeronaut Prinz Eugen superstructure is made of thick blocks with thin decks. Some eyelet portholes get added later. There is no PE included with the kit but I bought a PE kit made by Pontos for a 1/200 plastic Bismarck kit and used a lot of doors and other details on my model.
 

I am just getting started on the Amati Bismarck superstructure. This little section has about 30 pieces in it. It will get wrapped in PE later. I feel like it is unnecessarily complicated. Thick blocks would work just fine.
 
The Amati kit costs about 1.5 times what the Aeronaut kit did, but it will make up into a much nicer model.

My neighborhood here in Asheville, NC  puts out about 900 luminaria on the three nights leading up to Christmas. The display is quite beautiful.
Happy Holidays to you all!

Harry,
 
The patient survived and is doing fine 😷. I've since attached the prop shafts, ladders, and hull gratings. I wanted to get some primer on them before posting but my spray booth, AKA garage, is blocked by my son's car here for the holidays.
Rod
 

The ladder rungs were not fun to attach. Since my port and starboard pieces got swapped I had to drill a few new holes for miscellaneous eyelets that were in the wrong places.
 

Note to RC builders -- The shaft supports are flimsy plastic and are not drilled. You would probably have to drill the long support and remake the short support from stronger material. The plastic rudder shafts are long but there is no bearing for them.
 

The gratings popped in easily.
 

I did not bevel the top of the armor belt at first. There is a cross section in Anatomy of the Ship that that clearly shows a bevel, so as long as I was refinishing the hull I sanded it in. You probably can't tell from this photo but it's there. It's probably to keep cigarettes from landing on the flat step :^/

I haven't unwrapped the deck veneers until now. The answer to your question is yes and no. In some places there is a space at the edge of the veneer as intended, but elsewhere the veneer is pretty close to the deck. I may have to trim it back a little, but not enough to lose the holes for the rail stanchions.

I Can't Stand It
I decided to build the cradle while waiting for primer to dry. Amati's cradle is made of two end pieces joined by 8 small pieces stacked together like Lincoln Logs. The notches are cut a little large so everything is quite flimsy. I suppose this is another consequence of the original model being designed to fit inside a magazine.

 
I replaced the Lincoln Logs with two pieces of basswood, and put gussets in the corners just for fun. More elegant now.

 
However, I don't plan to use the cradle for the finished model. I have noticed that it is awkward to move a finished model on a cradle, so I have mounted most of my recent models on brass pedestals screwed through a wooden base into the hull. I've already placed an order for the pedestals.

Do your Models Rattle?
After I closed up the Bismarck hull for good I flipped it around on the bench and something rattled inside. It seems like that has happened on every model I've ever made. Now I know that no one will ever shake my models (they had better not!), but It bothers me to know that there is something unintended inside. Well, after removing the upside-down back corner of the Bismarck I gave the hull a good shake and out fell a glob of wood filler that had squeezed through the cracks. I feel much better now. Ever happen to you?

More Deconstruction
I started to sand the primer on the hull and found that it came off in gooey globs that clogged my sandpaper quickly. That was after 24 hours of drying time.
 
I have had problems with Rustoleum products in the past.
Last September I posted problems with Rustoleum primer not sticking to the hull on my Marie Felling tug.
In 2016 I had problems with Rustoleum products on my Arleigh-Burke destroyer.
Kurtvd19 did not have good things to say about their products at that time.
 
Will I never learn?  I eventually gave up and stripped the primer off the Bismarck with mineral spirits. I am discarding all my Rustoleum products and will never use them again.

Every Project Gets One BIG Mistake
While I was waiting for the primer to dry I read this post by Piet:
Thank you for catching this Piet. You are absolutely correct -- I interchanged the stern porthole cutouts on the port and starboard sides. There are slight differences in the number of portholes that no one will notice, but to make matters worse I got the starboard side upside down.
 
Explanation
The area with the portholes has three layers: a layer of planks, a plywood layer with the portholes pre-cut, and a matching PE layer. The PE pieces have tiny eyebrows etched over the portholes, but when I lined them up with the ply, the eyebrows ended up between the layers and not on the outside. I overlooked that clue. In fact I got the bow wrong too, but that won't matter much. Here's the port side showing where the ladders go.

I did not realize that all the tiny holes are for ladder rungs. On the port side all the ladders point up. It will be OK.
 

On the starboard side the ladders point down. And so,
 
Deconstruction

 

The PE didn't get too mangled, so I should be able to flip that piece and butter it back into place.
 

Primer
So far I have used three full sheets of the laser-cut ply, built the hull, and sanded it until it looked like a piece of furniture. Time for primer.

Superstructure  -- 150 hours, 76 days
While waiting for paint to dry I've been building parts of the superstructure. The construction technique is all new to me - complicated plywood frame and some plastic components, all skinned with photo-etched brass. The instructions are excellent and the brass parts are numbered almost sequentially on the sheets, making them easy to find.
 

 

It helps to secure the structure in a vise to keep from breaking off the delicate details. You can only bend a PE piece 3 times before it snaps. (Don't ask how I know.)
 

 

Amazing how the shiny brass is covered with fingerprints after just a few days.
 

Color Schemes
I've never built a model where the colors were given exactly.  The Amati instructions specify RAL colors, a German color-matching system. I made up color charts for the hull using paints that I have used. For the grays I painted some samples, scanned them, then averaged the pixels and got the RGB colors using Photoshop. For the reds I used color swatches from the Krylon and Rustoleum web sites. Here's what I found.
 

Upper hull, RAL 7000. I had 4 kinds of gray paint and thought that surely one would work. Wrong. RAL 7000 is fairly light but has a lot of blue in it.
 

Lower  hull, RAL 8012, almost a brick color. I used Rustoleum Colonial Red on my Arleigh Burke, my Prinz Eugen, and even on a couple of stationary steam engines. I used Krylon Satin Brick on my Marie Felling. Ted99 is is using Rustoleum Claret Wine on his Bismarck. It is actually pretty close to RAL 8012.
 
I ended up ordering cans of acrylic spray RAL 7000 and RAL 8012 from LVP Paints. It was fairly expensive and the postage cost more than the paints, but it arrived quickly, sprays perfectly, and looks great.
 

Partially painted with temporary pedestal base.
 

I couldn't tolerate plastic props on a $700 model so I ordered brass Raboesch props from agesofsail.com, two left and one right. The props and rudders are not attached yet.
 

 

Masking for the white dazzle camouflage. Good thing I just had all that practice wrapping Christmas presents.
 

Hull painting completed save for some minor touch up. Back in its cradle for now.

Harry,
 
Thanks for the "heads up" but I'm not sure what area you're referring to. Would it be possible for you to post a photo of that area?
 
Rod

Ted,
 
I am using the 10mm Tamiya tape that you had problems with. My only "trick" is to burnish the edge A LOT with the round barrel of a Sharpie pen. I used 3/4" Scotch masking tape for the false bow & stern waves. I didn't bother with the templates supplied with the kit.
 
To be honest, my stripes required 2 iterations. I did the white first, then tried to selectively remove tape and paper, and re-tape the black areas.  When I was done painting black I removed the masks and discovered 3 black stripes over top of white. I had to re-tape all the white and re-paint. In technical terms, it  takes a ZILLION coats of white to cover over black.

Harry,
 
Thanks for the "heads up" but I'm not sure what area you're referring to. Would it be possible for you to post a photo of that area?
 
Rod

Ted,
 
I am using the 10mm Tamiya tape that you had problems with. My only "trick" is to burnish the edge A LOT with the round barrel of a Sharpie pen. I used 3/4" Scotch masking tape for the false bow & stern waves. I didn't bother with the templates supplied with the kit.
 
To be honest, my stripes required 2 iterations. I did the white first, then tried to selectively remove tape and paper, and re-tape the black areas.  When I was done painting black I removed the masks and discovered 3 black stripes over top of white. I had to re-tape all the white and re-paint. In technical terms, it  takes a ZILLION coats of white to cover over black.

Superstructure  -- 150 hours, 76 days
While waiting for paint to dry I've been building parts of the superstructure. The construction technique is all new to me - complicated plywood frame and some plastic components, all skinned with photo-etched brass. The instructions are excellent and the brass parts are numbered almost sequentially on the sheets, making them easy to find.
 

 

It helps to secure the structure in a vise to keep from breaking off the delicate details. You can only bend a PE piece 3 times before it snaps. (Don't ask how I know.)
 

 

Amazing how the shiny brass is covered with fingerprints after just a few days.
 

Superstructure  -- 150 hours, 76 days
While waiting for paint to dry I've been building parts of the superstructure. The construction technique is all new to me - complicated plywood frame and some plastic components, all skinned with photo-etched brass. The instructions are excellent and the brass parts are numbered almost sequentially on the sheets, making them easy to find.
 

 

It helps to secure the structure in a vise to keep from breaking off the delicate details. You can only bend a PE piece 3 times before it snaps. (Don't ask how I know.)
 

 

Amazing how the shiny brass is covered with fingerprints after just a few days.
 

Color Schemes
I've never built a model where the colors were given exactly.  The Amati instructions specify RAL colors, a German color-matching system. I made up color charts for the hull using paints that I have used. For the grays I painted some samples, scanned them, then averaged the pixels and got the RGB colors using Photoshop. For the reds I used color swatches from the Krylon and Rustoleum web sites. Here's what I found.
 

Upper hull, RAL 7000. I had 4 kinds of gray paint and thought that surely one would work. Wrong. RAL 7000 is fairly light but has a lot of blue in it.
 

Lower  hull, RAL 8012, almost a brick color. I used Rustoleum Colonial Red on my Arleigh Burke, my Prinz Eugen, and even on a couple of stationary steam engines. I used Krylon Satin Brick on my Marie Felling. Ted99 is is using Rustoleum Claret Wine on his Bismarck. It is actually pretty close to RAL 8012.
 
I ended up ordering cans of acrylic spray RAL 7000 and RAL 8012 from LVP Paints. It was fairly expensive and the postage cost more than the paints, but it arrived quickly, sprays perfectly, and looks great.
 

Partially painted with temporary pedestal base.
 

I couldn't tolerate plastic props on a $700 model so I ordered brass Raboesch props from agesofsail.com, two left and one right. The props and rudders are not attached yet.
 

 

Masking for the white dazzle camouflage. Good thing I just had all that practice wrapping Christmas presents.
 

Hull painting completed save for some minor touch up. Back in its cradle for now.

Superstructure  -- 150 hours, 76 days
While waiting for paint to dry I've been building parts of the superstructure. The construction technique is all new to me - complicated plywood frame and some plastic components, all skinned with photo-etched brass. The instructions are excellent and the brass parts are numbered almost sequentially on the sheets, making them easy to find.
 

 

It helps to secure the structure in a vise to keep from breaking off the delicate details. You can only bend a PE piece 3 times before it snaps. (Don't ask how I know.)
 

 

Amazing how the shiny brass is covered with fingerprints after just a few days.
 

Color Schemes
I've never built a model where the colors were given exactly.  The Amati instructions specify RAL colors, a German color-matching system. I made up color charts for the hull using paints that I have used. For the grays I painted some samples, scanned them, then averaged the pixels and got the RGB colors using Photoshop. For the reds I used color swatches from the Krylon and Rustoleum web sites. Here's what I found.
 

Upper hull, RAL 7000. I had 4 kinds of gray paint and thought that surely one would work. Wrong. RAL 7000 is fairly light but has a lot of blue in it.
 

Lower  hull, RAL 8012, almost a brick color. I used Rustoleum Colonial Red on my Arleigh Burke, my Prinz Eugen, and even on a couple of stationary steam engines. I used Krylon Satin Brick on my Marie Felling. Ted99 is is using Rustoleum Claret Wine on his Bismarck. It is actually pretty close to RAL 8012.
 
I ended up ordering cans of acrylic spray RAL 7000 and RAL 8012 from LVP Paints. It was fairly expensive and the postage cost more than the paints, but it arrived quickly, sprays perfectly, and looks great.
 

Partially painted with temporary pedestal base.
 

I couldn't tolerate plastic props on a $700 model so I ordered brass Raboesch props from agesofsail.com, two left and one right. The props and rudders are not attached yet.
 

 

Masking for the white dazzle camouflage. Good thing I just had all that practice wrapping Christmas presents.
 

Hull painting completed save for some minor touch up. Back in its cradle for now.

Glad yours is ok.  I was on another site this morning, and someone posted looking for a lower hull as theirs arrived looking like this 😬

Well  I have  given in to temptation  and brought this  little bad boy,    I will  build her  (when / after I have finished my Waterloo Dio)   in her Battle of the Denmark  Straits  set up,   that as we know  during her  battle with Bismark  led to her  catastrophic  loss  when her magazine blew up.
 
The last time I built a model of  Hood was the old 1/600  Airfix kit  back in the  70's   so I am  full of excitement  to  build this one.
 
These are the screen shots  from the Flyhawks  advert.
 
OC.

Evening all, hope everyones holidays are going well,   I had to  pull my fingure out  and clear the table  ready for my spraying booth,   first  was to lay some primer down on all the  sub assemblies,   these were attached to blue tack  lids on my bottles and  tap on the end of lolly sticks,  I then got everything set up and put a coat down,  after drying with the dryer, I mixed up  my AP507A and put down a few light coats.
These parts are put a side  waiting to fully dry before they get some detail painting  like the corticene  on a couple of  sub assembly decks.
 
OC.

Superstructure  -- 150 hours, 76 days
While waiting for paint to dry I've been building parts of the superstructure. The construction technique is all new to me - complicated plywood frame and some plastic components, all skinned with photo-etched brass. The instructions are excellent and the brass parts are numbered almost sequentially on the sheets, making them easy to find.
 

 

It helps to secure the structure in a vise to keep from breaking off the delicate details. You can only bend a PE piece 3 times before it snaps. (Don't ask how I know.)
 

 

Amazing how the shiny brass is covered with fingerprints after just a few days.