The Ship Model Forum

[quote="spejic"]There are benefits to leaving the rods in. It makes the mast more three dimensional, filling in the back angles of the structure and making the posts seem more like posts. It also creates styrene points of contact on the top and bottom, allowing you to use standard plastic glues to glue the mast onto the deck or glue plastic parts on top.

For example, the plastic part on top was glued on using that method:

[img]http://i.imgur.com/eNSmxLc.jpg[/img][/quote]

I did something almost identical to this, but I did two things differently (and will do other things differently in the future):

1) I used a larger diameter rod in one of the towers, allowing me to file down the internal sides, giving the searchlight tower legs an actual square cross-section.

2) I allowed the rods to extend beyond the end of the tower so that I could simply drill holes into the deck of the ship into which I could mount the tower (giving it an even stronger bond).

��In the future, though, I will start off with a square rod, of the appropriate dimensions, so that The PE struts will conform to the styrene rod backing. The Square rod will also give more area against which the PE can adhere, creating a joint that would be stronger than anything but soldering the joint using a square brass rod in the same fashion (which I may start doing if I get a soldering-iron. But that is a ways off in my budget).

But, yes... You have exactly the same idea as I did.

MB

P.S. Your tower is assembled much better than is mine (which was my first attempt at using PE parts that are so small. I have used some on 98mm miniatures, but none on a 1/700 scale ship). Mine is pretty ugly, and slightly warped due to a bad job bending one of the joints. I will have to have the extensions of the legs to have the superglue holding in onto the deck have a strong enough joint to hold the tower straight. I will hopefully do a better job of assembling the deckhouses for my Destroyers.

There are benefits to leaving the rods in. It makes the mast more three dimensional, filling in the back angles of the structure and making the posts seem more like posts. It also creates styrene points of contact on the top and bottom, allowing you to use standard plastic glues to glue the mast onto the deck or glue plastic parts on top.

For example, the plastic part on top was glued on using that method:

[img]http://i.imgur.com/eNSmxLc.jpg[/img]

I was trying to assemble a spotlight tower for a Japanese ship (I can't recall which one, I have several going at once right now), and it was super-frustrating trying to get the PE corners to stay glued.

I have some tiny .010 - .020 styrene rods.

I decided to try gluing one of these into the inside corner along the sides of the brass.

Whadayaknow? It worked beautifully.

Then, to remove most of the rod, I filed it down to create a fillet in the joint with a small round file.

I still have the top to deal with (and it will likely be a pain), but that corner is the strongest I have yet achieved with a PE part.

I am looking at my next Agano-class CL for buying a PE kit, and its flight deck is just such a piece where this would come in handy.

It has a lot of corners that do not join at perfect 90� angles. And the rid added to them, and then filed down, would add just enough "Body" to the joint to make it incredibly tough.

MB