Bismarck by drobinson02199 - Amati - Scale 1:200

[drobinson02199]

One of the stern turrets.  I found the little railings to be a bear -- the pics in the manual are wonderfully aligned.  Mine are just sort of "there" but the gray paint will cover some of my sins.

 

One tip:  mount the platform with the base dry fitted on the model to get the alignment right so it will fit later on, then do the railings.

 

Regards,

David

[drobinson02199]

Been working on a bunch of small parts, which all now need to be painted, so here they are on a board ready for the spray booth, with some closeups of some of the interesting ones.

 

As has been the case, these are small, and a challenge -- and if you look closely you can see where I've adapted one of them to account for a part that slipped out of the tweezers and skittered away, gone forever.

 

Regards,

David

[drobinson02199]

So now all those detail pieces are painted and mounted.  Pictures below are five of the area around the large superstructure stern turret, and five of the area around the bow turret.  There are two more large turrets aft and fore of these respectively, yet to be built.

 

The little winders are finished with thread to represent rope.  On the sides you will also see paravanes.  I was not aware that large ships like the Bismarck had paravanes to do their own minesweeping, but apparently so.

 

Regards,

David

[drobinson02199]

Catwalks installed.  If you look at the side profile, there is a little "foot" at the base next to the hull.  The instructions say to glue this on to the catwalk before gluing the assembly to the hull, but I thought that could cause some alignment issues, so I first glued the catwalk in place and then glued on the "foot".

 

Regards,

David

[drobinson02199]

More deck detail.

 

Regards,

David

[drobinson02199]

Here's an example of the intricacy of this model.  This gun assembly is constructed from 8 parts.

 

Regards,

David

[drobinson02199]

Another gaggle of small parts ready for painting.

 

Regards,

David

[drobinson02199]

And all those parts painted and mounted now.

 

Regards,

David

[drobinson02199]

There's a ladder that sticks up through the deck.  The instructions want you to build the ladder, then install it up through the hole, but I tried that and it didn't fit.  So I disassembled it, and assembled it piece by piece in the hole.  There's a picture of the unpainted version installed, and then I hand-painted it.

 

Also a picture of a small bell.

 

Regards,

David

[drobinson02199]

AA guns built, painted and mounted.  Also a couple of pics of additional deck detail.

 

Regards,

David

[drobinson02199]

Built, painted and decorated these two little Arado floatplanes.  I need to wait for some clear spray to arrive from Amazon today, to be sure the decals are secured, and then I can mount them on the catapults.

 

I read up on the Arados.  All German heavy ships were equipped with them.  The Bismarck's never flew.  In her last battle, they wanted to use an Arado to get some important documents off to land, but discovered that the catapults weren't working, so the planes went down with the ship.

 

Regards,

David

 

[drobinson02199]

Now mounted on the catapult.

 

Regards,

David

[drobinson02199]

Now beginning to work on the boats.

 

Regards,

David

[drobinson02199]

Here's the first motor launch.  Requires some careful hand-painting and small parts assembly.

 

Regards,

David

[drobinson02199]

Officers Launch built and mounted.  Cranes (previously built) also now mounted on both sides.

 

Regards,

David

[drobinson02199]

Last set of boats, called "Connection Boats" in the instructions.  I have no idea what that means, but they look nice.

 

Regards,

David

[drobinson02199]

Midsize guns before painting.  There are four of the type on the left, and two of the type on the right.

 

Regards,

David

[drobinson02199]

Now the medium guns are painted and mounted.  The instructions say to leave them free to rotate on a dowel, and for now I have done that in case they have to be moved later to account for some construction, but before I'm done I will glue them down.  Can't imagine having a loose piece on the model.

 

Regards,

David

[drobinson02199]

Here's one of the four 15 inch turrets fully assembled.  Three more to go.

 

Regards,

David

[drobinson02199]

The 15 inch gun turrets are now painted, and the guns mounted on the ship -- again, not yet glued but they will be at the end.

 

Here's a picture of the whole ship up to this point.  Not yet finished, but the big guns really make it look like a battleship.

 

Regards,

David

[drobinson02199]

Here's the rest of the deck detail at the bow.  The rope racks next to the red and green buoys are actually fabricated from wire -- I somehow lost the photo-etched ones.  I can't figure out how -- if I knew I could probably find them.  So I just built these two.

 

Regards,

David

[drobinson02199]

Deck detail at the stern.

 

Regards,

David

[drobinson02199]

Here's the rigging on the superstructure.  Railings come next.

 

Regards,

David

[drobinson02199]

I'm now working on the railings, and it's going to be a long, delicate process.

 

First picture is of the metal railings, which are installed at points on the deck.

 

Second one shows the start of the cable railings.  The instruction manual says to install all of the stanchions and then thread the wire, but the holes are just fiendishly small.  So my approach, as shown here, is to string the wires as I go, which means I can thread them off the ship where I can manipulate the stanchion to see the holes, and then install the threaded stanchions.  Working well so far, with a LONG way to go.

 

Regards,

David

[drobinson02199]

More work on the railings.  The reason these take so long is that you have to poke the paint out of tiny little holes using a tiny little drill bit, then thread them (like threading a needle), then mount.

 

Regards,

David

[drobinson02199]

Another reason to use the approach I've described above to string the railings vs. mounting all the stanchions first (as recommended in the manual).  I'm finding that even after I poke the paint out of the holes and think I've enlarged them, I occasionally have to go back in with my very small miniature drill bit (manually) and clean them out to get them to accept the thread.  This would be impossible if the stanchions were mounted first, because the adjacent stanchions would block getting the drill bit lined up.

 

Regards,

David

[drobinson02199]

Just about halfway through the first side on the railings.  I can do about 7-10 of these per hour, so it's slow going.

 

Regards,

David

[drobinson02199]

This morning I finally pushed through the first HALF of the railings.  Looking at my logs above, I started this side on August 17, so about 5 months elapsed.

 

I have a lot to say about how the manual says to build these, problems with that, and how I'd do it now if I had it to do over again (and why I can't adopt a revised approach for the starboard side).

 

The problem comes from painting the stanchions ahead of time, and if you are building this ship and haven't done that yet -- DON'T.  The difficulty comes from the paint clogging the holes, and how devilishly hard it is to clear them enough to thread the railing wires.  So the approach I used was:

 

1)  Paint the stanchions before removing them.

 

2)  Use a fine drill bit (manually) to clear the holes.  Often takes 2-3 tries and is hard.

 

3)  Thread the wires thorough the stanchion.  If they don't fit, enlarge the problem hole again.  Sometimes do this repeated enlargement for 2 out of 3 holes on the stanchion.

 

4)  Mount the stanchion.

 

5)  Rinse and repeat.

 

As I noted above, the manual says to mount all of the stanchions after clearing the holes, and then thread the wires.  But that just wouldn't have worked for me, because I'd have run into holes I thought I had cleared but that needed another poke -- which can't be done after they are mounted.

 

This has led to a rate of installation of about 4-5 per hour, and I have to confess that I can't stand to do more than an hour per day, and frankly haven't done work as frequently as I normally do because it's such a tedious task -- MUCH worse than say coppering the bottom of HMS Victory, all 2,500 plates, which was kind of fun.

 

I wish I hadn't painted all of the stanchions, because if I had it to do over again, I would leave them unpainted, which should result in holes that will accept the threads, then thread and mount, and then when they are all done, paint them with a fine brush.  That would have gone much faster.

 

Finally, when you look at the pictures below, you'll see a lot of specks on the forward black section of the deck.  I noticed those in the picture and just blew them off -- so no need to repaint.

 

Now on to the starboard side.  The snow will have melted by the time I get that done.

 

Regards,

David

[drobinson02199]

So I did some searching on Google and came across a number of photo-etched railings that go in as pre-assembled sections.  These are a perfect match in scale and number of horizontal railings, so I have ordered them and they should go in fairly quickly on the starboard side.  Right now, I don't intend to rip out the port side and put these in, as I think they will be a close match and only one side is the display side anyway.  I'll pick that side after I see how these look.

 

They will likely be delivered while I'm away for a couple of weeks, so late February installation.

 

Regards,

David