IJN HIEI by IJNfan - FINISHED - Fujimi - 1/700 - PLASTIC

[IJNfan]

Hello fellow modelers,

 

I have been working on this ship for quite a while and honestly I had been planning to have it long finished by now, but frustration, error and accident all threw wrenches into my schedule so I am as of yet not finished. And since it will require work to finish it up and seeing that I have very few free hours these months I thought it best to post and ask for a bit of advice.

 

I have employed post-shading for the first time and enhanced it with some weathering Enamels from AK interactive, now honestly I feel it has potential but also it hasn't worked out, maybe some of you can give some pointers on how to improve the results?

 

edit: the ship is not finished, decals varnish and rigging must be added and weathering and paintwork need touchups. I will address this in upcoming updates. 

EDIT2: Some people pointed out to me that I hadn't included any closeups, So I hereby upload some of these too. 

 

Here are the pictures

 

 

[Old Collingwood]

I love the lighting  - very very moody.

 

OC.

[lmagna]

I'm not normally a big fan of Japanese ships, but as a model this is very striking and hard to believe it is 1/700 scale.

 

Very nice work IJNfan

[mtaylor]

I'm not sure what advice you are looking for or even why.  It looks great.

[George-JK]

Very good looking model! I also am a big fan of IJN ships.

 

The weathering looks awesome, much better then what I can produce. 😀

Regarding the weathering, I personally feel, it is a bit too much for a ship in service, meaning it looks more like an abandoned ship, then a ship in service. But this is just my personal opinion on the matter, never seen a ship coming back from deployment in a war, so can't comment on how rusty they are. I just go off what can be seen on modern working ships...

 

Never the less if you like how the model looks, that is the most important thing.

I don't mean to start any argument here, just my opinion on the weathering, even so I think it looks very nice, and very good job, keep at it.

 

Maybe one question, what you use for the rigging? I build model in 1/350 scale, but never do the rigging, as I couldn't find what to use, to make it look realistic, everything I tried looked just way too thick.

 

Looks great!

Cheers,

George

 

[IJNfan]

Thanks everybody,

 

I have chosen for this weathering out of the conviction that IJN ships weren’t that well maintained during operations. Also some pictures of the ships dated from 45 show the state of the paint was generally awful. I won’t always do it like this but I do like it heavily weathered. But I do also agree that it is a bit on the heavy side, even though the pictures do give a magnifying effect to the wheathering. Anyway this ship was a test object.

 

as for the rigging, 

I employ Uschi rigging, it is a difficult thing to glue it, you will have to learn use it but then it works fantastic. Later today or tomorrow I shall post a picture of the Hiei with some minor rigging, but for now this HMS Hood picture will show how it looks (youll need to zoom in) For 1/700 I use 0.01mm and for 1:350 0.03mm.

 

[IJNfan]

These Japanese Ships in general have graceful lines but the Kongo's being battlecruisers and having a short Pagoda are indeed very nice to look at, even in 1/700 it is "charming" in a certain way. Anyway,

I have done some rigging (by no means a full rigging which is far too tedious for me in 1/700) and added the flag, finished the floatplanes, and added some decals there as well. Although this ship is by no means a masterpiece it has thought me a lot of useful tricks and methods to weather. I can also state that this will be the last ship in 1/700. 1/700 PE is something I am not build for, it can be done but with so much frustration that the point in pursuing this hobby would seem pointless.

Anyway here are the pictures, my next build (without a log I think) will be the IJN Mikuma 1/350 from tamiya enhanced with the usual goodies.

Here are three pictures, with that I am glad to pronounce this build finished (at last).

Edited October 26, 2020 by IJNfan

[lmagna]

Very nicely done IJN. It is hard to believe it is 1/700. I think you should reconsider not doing a build log on your 1/35 Mikuma. 

Edited October 26, 2020 by lmagna

[mtaylor]

Nice work.  That ship is tiny... wow.   I agree with Lou about reconsidering and doing a log.