Bismarck by Dan Vadas - FINISHED - GPM - 1:200 - CARD and PE

[maaaslo]

Danny, those guns look realy good. It make me not regretting selling the Bismarck to you. I would have sodomised her too much.

[Dan Vadas]

Thanks for that Pav .

 

The top deck of the conning tower is completed. I didn't take any progress pics of it's construction. It has a rather tricky edging around it, which is double-thickness and very narrow so it took some rather careful cutting out :

 

Another tricky part to cut out was a support for two shields (?) above the bridge. Same double-thickness stuff :

 

I also forgot to take pics of the Radar Turret during construction. These pieces were a bit of a puzzle to work out, as the miniscule drawing of them in the instructions didn't give much of a clue :

 

But I managed to work them out :

 

The 2nd of the three Radars. There are 9 pieces that make them up. Something I realised when making this one is that I'd only put less than half the pieces in the one I built before, I'll correct that tomorrow :

 

The radar turret completed. Those two pieces I mentioned earlier in this post are the inboard supports for the range finder arms :

 

The antenna-like piece on top of the turret is a light tower. It's not shown at all in the kit, but I picked up on it in the 3D book. I made it from 3 pices of 0.3mm wire and a section of spare ladder :

 

And some overall views of the conning tower to where I am at the moment :

 

The light only looks like it's skewed, it's the macro lens distortion :

 

Overall pics of the forward superstructure :

 

  Danny

 

[Fernando E]

Stunning work Danny. Always a great joy to see where you are at as well as admire the craftsmanship.

 

Cheers.........Fernando

[cog]

Impressive feat ... you really make paper shine

[popeye the sailor]

amazing structure Danny........the guns look awesome!   you make it look WAY to freak'in easy   

[BANYAN]

Impressive work Danny, some very well presented detail.

 

cheers

 

Pat

[mtaylor]

I know we're seeing the build, but the result sure doesn't look like "paper".   Amazing work.

[Jim Lad]

It's already been said Danny but - amazing work!

 

John

[Dan Vadas]

Thank you all, you're too kind (but keep it up ).

 

There are four pipes that hang out at angles from the conning tower. These are made from 1.0mm brass rod, and the footwalks are supplied in the PE set :

 

I realised I'd forgotten to fit the support girders underneath the top deck before I'd glued it on. This made the task a lot more difficult with all the fragile things I'd already added making it hard to get a good hold of the tower without damaging anything else. Most of it survived intact, but I had to re-glue a piece of railing :

 

I was in two minds whether to roll the masts and spars from paper or use brass tubing, but I thought I may as well give it a go - I could always revert to tubing if they turned out rubbish. I surprised myself . Here are some pics of the Forward Mast in progress, showing my method of construction :

 

The mast finished and the two tubes I used. The larger one has another plastic tube inside it with a slit cut lengthways to get the right diameter. The outer brass tube clamps the plastic tube tightly, and the thinner tube supports the inside of the paper :

 

The seam cane out almost invisible :

 

And I've also done the Main Mast. This one is 180mm long and 3.25mm in diameter, and it came out as straight as a gun barrel. I'm happy :

 

  Danny

[Dan Vadas]

I spent the rest of today rolling all the Spars for the masts. These were actually harder to do than the masts, as they are only 2.0mm and 1.8mm in diameter and I had to roll them from 0.23mm card which gets pretty tight  :

 

  Danny

[BANYAN]

Sure you haven't had a lot of practice rolling other things Danny?   They are very nicely finished.

 

cheers

 

Pat

[Dan Vadas]

5 minutes ago, BANYAN said:

Sure you haven't had a lot of practice rolling other things Danny?

Actually Pat, yes I have. When I was 19 and rode a motorbike from Gloucester to Newcastle every weekend to see my girlfriend I perfected the art of rolling a (TOBACCO ) smoke in the pocket of my leather jacket with my left hand and lighting it without stopping the bike .

 

  Danny

[CDW]

17 minutes ago, Dan Vadas said:

Actually Pat, yes I have. When I was 19 and rode a motorbike from Gloucester to Newcastle every weekend to see my girlfriend I perfected the art of rolling a (TOBACCO ) smoke in the pocket of my leather jacket with my left hand and lighting it without stopping the bike .

 

  Danny

Our rolling challenge was to do it with one hand, under the brim of our hat, while plowing with a mule. 

[Dan Vadas]

19 minutes ago, CDW said:

Our rolling challenge was to do it with one hand, under the brim of our hat, while plowing with a mule.

Hmm ... I don't see much of a challenge in that. You're only doing about 3kph, whereas I was pulling 130kph on one of the worst roads in Australia at the time .

 

  Danny

[Old Collingwood]

1 hour ago, Dan Vadas said:

Hmm ... I don't see much of a challenge in that. You're only doing about 3kph, whereas I was pulling 130kph on one of the worst roads in Australia at the time .

 

  Danny

Thout you ment UK danny   Gloucester  - Newcastle.

 

OC.

[Old Collingwood]

Anyway  -  have a great xmas to you and yours.

 

OC.

[Dan Vadas]

4 hours ago, Old Collingwood said:

Thout you ment UK danny   Gloucester  - Newcastle.

 

OC.

Lots of our place names over here were "borrowed" from the Old Dart . Merry Xmas to you too.

 

  Danny

[matelot]

Hello Dan,

Just checked in on your nice build. Am especially impressed by the 20mm AA. Looking at the plans they are very small.

One minor note which has nothing to do with the build. German ships are not a he. It is die (fem) Bismarck or die Prinz Eugen etc.

I know because my native tongue is German.

Henry

[Dan Vadas]

1 hour ago, matelot said:

One minor note which has nothing to do with the build. German ships are not a he. It is die (fem) Bismarck or die Prinz Eugen etc.

Thanks Henry . Hmm, I wonder where I got that from - probably confused it with Russian ships which are male. I'm a little embarrassed, as I was born in Germany but came to Australia when I was 4 years old and soon forgot most of the German language .

 

EDIT - I discovered THIS DISCUSSION in a forum about Bismarck where the consensus seems to be that Bismarck (but certainly not every German warship) was referred to in the masculine gender. I must have read something similar earlier on.

 

Back to the build, and I've finished and installed the first mast - the easier one of the two. The other one won't go on for quite a while yet, but I've made all the bits for it.

 

I wish there was some way of tapering the mast and spars, there probably is but it would be very difficult due to the small diameters and it's beyond me at the moment. An alternative would have been to make them from wood (very easy ) but I want to use as much paper in the build as possible.

 

Here are the pics of the mast fitted to the conning tower. There was no PE supplied for the footwalks on the spars so I made them from 0.2mm wire. The ladder is PE :

 

  Danny

[matelot]

Hello Dan,

Hate to drag this out. I was correct only if you're dealing with the ship's name. However, If you say the cruiser Prinz Eugen or the destroyer

Z25  in other words if you mention the shiptype and the name, the article goes by the type of ship. der Kreuzer (cruiser), der Zerstoerer

(desrtoyer) or das Schlachtschiff (battleship). then you would say das Schlachtschiff Bismarck or "it".

Sorry for stretching this out, but I didn't want to someone to come in and tell me I was wrong. I will now shut up.

Happy holydays. Henry

[popeye the sailor]

Merry Christmas Dan!   

[Dan Vadas]

I've built the Aft 2nd Deck, there are only small details left to do later on. As usual I added a lot more framing, the only ones in the kit were the three central ones :

 

Lots of weights held the deck piece to the framing while the glue dried :

 

Next the walls were glued on, and the detailing added - shutters, life rings and a small conduit made from 0.2mm wire :

 

There's also a conduit either side of the range finder column. I made this from 0.2mm soft brass wire and painted it :

 

Last for now I fitted two bulwarks and the railing. Paint touchups to the railing will be done later on :

 

  Danny

[popeye the sailor]

the conduit you put on there....is that printed detail on the paper parts?   very nice work there   

[Dan Vadas]

1 hour ago, popeye the sailor said:

the conduit you put on there....is that printed detail on the paper parts?   very nice work there   

Yep, just a line over which I CA glue the wire. Sometimes I find more conduits in the 3D book and add them as well.

 

  Danny

[Old Collingwood]

Very nice work danny,   I was thinking the other day - "how can that card be strong enough for all that PE"   but it struck me with pe not being very heavy it wouldn't be a problem.

 

OC.

[amateur]

And a neatly folded cardbox is surprisingly strong: see how much weight Danny put o on that deck.

 

Jan

[Dan Vadas]

6 hours ago, amateur said:

And a neatly folded cardbox is surprisingly strong: see how much weight Danny put o on that deck.

 

Jan

Very true Jan. That's about 2kg, I have no doubt it would have held more than twice that amount without a problem.

 

  Danny

[Jim Lad]

Still looking absolutely first class, Danny!

 

John

[Dan Vadas]

The next sub-assembly to make was the Large Hangar. I added a LOT of extra framing - the kit framing would have been virtually useless on it's own :

 

The whole design of the hangar was awful. Why they designed it to have two joins right at the top is beyond me, a much better alternative would have been to have the two side walls and roof in one piece with the front and back walls as separate pieces. Corner joins are relatively easy. Despite that it still came out well :

 

Attached to each side wall are two louvred boxes and two plain ones. First thing was to fold up the boxes. Some of the pics below are of the four plain ones, but the louvred boxes were made using the same method.

 

First I used my PE pliers to fold the sides and top of the box. I overbent each one, this prevents a lot of "spring-back" when gluing :

 

Next I cut a backing piece for each box from 0.5mm card the exact size of the inside of the back of the box. These were stuck to my MDF block with double-sided tape. One side was glued to the base and allowed to dry before the other side was glued :

 

Then the top was glued down :

 

The louvres take a while to fit. First they were all cut and edge-coloured. Next I applied a thin bead of PVA using my squeeze bottle :

 

The bead of glue is till too large, so I "shaped" it using a small paintbrush until I had the right amount (less is better than too much) :

 

Each louvre was placed in position using tweezers :

 

Most of them fell into place without further adjustment, but some needed re-aligning using a toothpick :

 

The two larger boxes finished. The smaller ones weren't much harder too make, but I had to use the toothpick on most of them :

 

  Danny

 

 

[matelot]

Hello Dan,

I keep looking at the radar assembly on the main range finder. Pretty nice work and quite realistic.

Did you solder parts of it or is it all glued together?

Henry