Mogami 1944 by Azzoun - FINISHED - Tamiya - 1/350 - PLASTIC - IJN heavy cruiser

[Azzoun]

Been needing to satisfy that PE itch again, granted that taking close up pictures can be a bit brutal.   I overworked this grating for the bridge and it became many pieces.  After 6 attempts, I landed with this.  A bit glazed but it's a relatively small part and once painted, won't look so frumpy.      I did straighten it out a little bit after I took this pic, here it is compared to its plastic counterpart.  

Edited June 4 by Azzoun

[Azzoun]

This part of the Superstructure turned out nice so far.  The seam gaps won't be noticeable once other portions of the superstructure are layered on.   For now, I'm working as much brass and build as I can before pulling out the airbrush.  Dry fitting as needed to see the progress.   

[Azzoun]

Everyone has their own preferences and I'm trying to work out mind for the types of glue to use.  One of our more experienced members swears by Duco cement, some pretty old school stuff!   What I like is that it sets relatively quickly but you have about 20 seconds to adjust things, dries clear but the most important thing is it allows for a do over.   Parts with this glue can be peeled off without destroying the part and the residue is easy to remove leaving both parts looking like the glue was never there.   Been a nice add to the arsenal.  The one CON I have is the metal tube it comes in, one small indentation of the tube and you end up with excess glue waste.   I let it drip on my build plate and once dries, scrapes up really easy.     Price has gone up a bit in the past 2 years but you can pick up a 6 pack for about $20 on amazon.  

[RGL]

CA all the way! Looks good mate 

[Azzoun]

I'm always amused how you try to sit down to do what you think is a small isolated project for your main build, like building a motor launch only to realize it needs to be integrated sooner than you think.   Last night, I said, "Self, we'll need these eventually, let's just build a motorlaunch."  But as I scoured the details and dug into it, considering all the fine detail that the photo etch kit provides, there's no way that I can think to safely handle this part once its completed.   You can see an example below of how small the propellor and rudder is in the sheet.    Therefore, I decided to build out the underside with the stands, prop and rudder, then glue it to the main project and build off the ship all of the topside details.   From a painting perspective, the initial coat of the launch will be the same as the rest of the ship and then I'll still have access to detail paint the other parts.   Below are pictures the overall instructions and as always, love to show the comparison of value that the photo etch offers compared to the stock part, which is shown complete as the kit alone intended.   This is how far 2 hours got me between planning and executing on one motorlaunch.  As you can see in the instructions, there are several more parts to be added.   I need to figure out a good material to coat the grating once it's in place, maybe 00 silkspan soaked in diluted pva.   Added an overview of the Mogami status with most structures only dry fitted to the painted deck.  Thoughts?  

[Roger Pellett]

I keep a tube of Duco cement on my workbench.  I use it for temporary glue joints such as the brass/plywood sandwiches that I make for ripping brass strips on my Byrnes Saw.  The cement allows the plywood to be peeled away from the brass strip after sawing.

 

I buy mine at our local Ace Hardware.  A tube costs less than $5.00.

 

Roger

[Azzoun]

31 minutes ago, Roger Pellett said:

I keep a tube of Duco cement on my workbench.  I use it for temporary glue joints such as the brass/plywood sandwiches that I make for ripping brass strips on my Byrnes Saw.  The cement allows the plywood to be peeled away from the brass strip after sawing.

 

I buy mine at our local Ace Hardware.  A tube costs less than $5.00.

 

Roger

Yeah, the more I was working with it, the more I realized it's value really is for only temporary work.  To really get it to stick on, you have to stick with CA. 

 

[cog]

On 12/15/2022 at 7:50 PM, Roger Pellett said:

I keep a tube of Duco cement on my workbench.  I use it for temporary glue joints such as the brass/plywood sandwiches that I make for ripping brass strips on my Byrnes Saw.  The cement allows the plywood to be peeled away from the brass strip after sawing.

 

I buy mine at our local Ace Hardware.  A tube costs less than $5.00.

 

Roger

Rogert, what blade do you use on your Byrnes for ripping brass strips?

[Azzoun]

Ah  when 3 parts become 20ish!   Detailing out this motor launch became a small project in of itself.   I threw up my hands after the detail kit instructed me to cut off the plastic molded supports to stack the motor launch on top of the barge in exchange for brass only to discover that they're not tall enough.   And then, entertainingly, the exampled photo doesn't show all the parts offered being used!  I worked it out as best as I could for now and this is what I ended up with.   Couple discoveries along the way,  Blue Tack is great for holding small parts to a build plate and Duco is best used for super small parts like that the bow flag staff, which took about 10 attempts to achieve the picture.   In the end, I love this stuff!  I love the madness of the hyperdetailing and it's great practice, and I really loved when I shared this picture below to laymen friend of mine, he thought the penny was a coaster!.    

Edited December 19, 2022 by Azzoun

[TomShipModel]

Great description of your detailing work.  Very impressive.

[Azzoun]

Hello all,

 

All I can say is what I've heard in many places, photoetch is a love/hate relationship!   But!  To put more into the love bucket out of the hate bucket, I bought a new tool that I found in the circuit hobbyist section of Amazon, a digital microscope.   I wasn't sure how useful this tool was going to be but I had some Christmas money.  I'd say it's great for things like getting in close to line up your knife to the PE tabs when cutting out a part, bending certain individual pieces and lining up the seams with the bender tool, or to determine which side has the textured side.   General assembly seems to still prefer the headgear magnifiers hunched over two pairs of tweezers.     Overall, I'd recommend it to anyone who has trouble seeing this stuff!   

[Azzoun]

Along with new toys, work continues which includes the radar array, the aft masting and planes, planes, planes.    I tried adding PE to the given plastic mast, screwed things up, tried to use a lighter to clean up the glue.   Yes, this was a bad idea, before I knew it, the part was a cloud of plastic floating particles.  Somehow I knew I was going to building this part from brass because of the rigging I plan to do, so it just became a self-fulfilling prophecy.   To accomplish, I took the angles from the drawing, made a jig by sawing guide slots in the wood and soldered the part together.   Second attempt was better than the first which in below, it's the left most part that needs to be trimmed.    Otherwise, the Mogami has 13 planes, which I'm deciding on the final presentation which all had PE detail parts along with their related carriages.  Finished a good portion of the aft bridge and crane, however I did notice I had the hooks on backward.  In order to get these PE parts to sit right while the glue sets often requires, for me at least, to orient the part to allow gravity to assist, so to fix, the whole model had to be mounted upside down to fix the hooks.   Other wise, blue tack and patience is the order of the day!

 

 

Edited March 13, 2023 by Azzoun

[yvesvidal]

Incredible and precise work. Nice microscope that you got yourself.

 

Yves

[Azzoun]

Hello!

 

Been pushing steady on this Mogami the past 9 months, starting to feel like a need a break.   When I start feeling impatient, it’s better to put it down for a bit, so I’ve been messing with a side paper model of the Koln.   I intend to create a build log for that soon.   Since our last discussion, I focused on finishing all photo etching details on the aft deck to be painted the spray can lacquer IJN Gray I’ve been using on the rest of the hull (Tamiya T-69).   I started by determining the placement of the plane carrying carts by modeling out the configuration.   It was neat to see all the planes on the model, it was a feature that initially attracted me to this subject.     Then I taped off the aft deck and hull portions to be painted, shot that section.  

 

[Azzoun]

Then I focused on adding some details to the gun turrets including ladders, arial tower, and railings.   The arial tower was scratch made from available brass.  Using a stencil, I determined a proper shape of the base pattern, marked them in piece of wood and then drilled holes in each angle to hold the legs.   Then soldered the legs together at the top, soldered the cross member and trimmed that to the proper length.   Using heat sinking clamps, I then soldered the inner support trusses.   I’ll admit that it’s a bit overscale in terms of leg thickness.   Then I mounted all the subassemblies to holders for airbrushing.  

[Azzoun]

I obtained the Tamiya Acrylic Flat IJN Gray paint pot equivalent to the T-69 which is…XF-77.   Why couldn’t it be the same number??    I rattle can primed the subassemblies with Tamiya white primer for fine detail which does a nice job.    I thought the lacquer rattle can laid paint too thick, too fast so I became determined to use a newish tool for me, the airbrush.  I picked up the flag ship, Harder and Steinbeck, because part of the fun of this hobby is spending money on it.   That was my victim some fateful Friday two some years ago.   It is a fine tool that I have no business owning because it’s for an expert that I aspire to be.    I diluted the Tamiya paint with 91% alcohol using the bottle top-off technique and it sprayed very nicely, dried quickly, and provided a very nice fine matte finish.  I then attempted a zenithal technique to highlight the horizontal upward facing surfaces and got a bit carried away.   The deck ended up lighter than I was hoping for but believe some weathering will tone it down.   Plus, it’ll be well covered with planes at some point, a lot of the deck stays in shadow, probably want it a bit lighter?  Happy Accident? 

  

[Azzoun]

Taping off this funnel was interesting, I attempted it with blue painters tape and it was going horribly.  The blue tape is what happened below where the zenithal highlighting overshot on to the brown linoleum decking.   Of course, I taped it off and reshot that section!   No.. I really did though, this time with Tamiya tape.   But with the smokestack, the Tamiya tape was light enough to hang onto the small surface area of the funnel.    Here’s the ship’s currently most assembled-so-far status.  I’m going to have to work out painting those turret bases.   Not sure how I missed painting those yet and then I was hoping the turrets would mostly cover them.  They’ll have to be carefully brush painted now!

[Azzoun]

Hey there, 

 

It's been a little while I've posted to this log, I've since completed the model and it's nagging at me that I didn't finish this build log.   So here's the catch up.   Working through the build of the planes was fairly straight forward, although doing the PE struts was certainly fiddly.    I used the Flyhawk plane carts.  Unfortunately I don't show the decaling since almost all the decals were only for the planes.    Once complete, I modeled to see how they'd look on the overall model.   The paint scheme for the planes was top side as green with a white underbelly.   Trying to tape mask this was extremely tedious and didn't seem very secure, so I switched into some liquid mask.   The green adds a nice contrast to all the grey.

  

 

[Azzoun]

After the ship was mostly assembled, I went about doing some weathering by first applying the Tamiya panel liner which I initially found a little difficult to use.  It was very oily and kind of just smeared applying straight from the bottle.   What i discovered is if you use some enamel thinner and apply directly to the surface prior to applying the liner, it travels very nicely into the corners, cracks and crevices.   Utilizing some AK rust streaking but tried to keep it subtle.  

[Azzoun]

I decided to rig the model after finishing the base as I didn't want to be handling it and inviting a moment for accidents.   The base is a simple select pine - routed a groove around the edge.  I purchased a plexiglass cover from shopPopdisplays and was very happy with the product.     Rigging the model was a mix of using 8 ought thread and AK super fine.   Many folks tout using EZ line however the AK product is half the width and is much less noticeable as a ribbon.    Rigging this model was a challenge since it's difficult to see where some lines terminate.   I cobbled this rigging from multiple sources including leveraging previously built models, right or wrong as it may be.  

 

Edited June 4 by Azzoun

[Azzoun]

And so here is the finished model and I was pleasantly surprised to win the Modeler's Choice Award at our recent Northeast Conference for the Power category.   

 

[shipman]

What a lovely job.

Impressed by your laudable restrained presentation.

[Azzoun]

29 minutes ago, shipman said:

What a lovely job.

Impressed by your laudable restrained presentation.

Thank you!

[Canute]

Congratulations on a job well done. 👍

[Ryland Craze]

Beautiful model and congratulations on winning the Modelers Choice Award for power at the Northeast Joint Clubs Conference.  It was well deserved.

[mtaylor]

Congratulations on finishing her and the award.   

[Thukydides]

Fantastic!

[RGL]

You made that look easy mate! Well done