Thanks Griz, I needed that info!
Thanks everyone for the kick in the pants ( I think
) I did pull out a couple of my older unfinished projects and tinker with them over the past couple weeks but when it comes down to it, Hood is the one I want to build most! I've been thinking back to what made the Nelson build go well for me for so long and I think a big part of it was organization and planning, with realistic expectations and outcomes. With that in mind, I "threw away" my old vision for this kit and am pondering a new, more attainable plan for what I want my version of Hood to look like in the end.
I spent some time pondering the ceiling of the shelter deck; I first seriously intended to cut it all out and replace it with something complicated but after playing around a bit with .010 X .020 styrene strips I'm thinking that I'll just putty/sand the ceiling smooth and lay the extra thin strips down to represent the boat deck support girders. Yeah they won't be as deep as they should to be truly realistic but the area is hard to see unless you are looking at it from below and I think just adding a hint of the support structure (perhaps with some extra shading for effect) will be enough.
Anyway, I\it's been a couple of months but plastic was again cut on my Hood this weekend.
Trumpeter 1/200 kits always seem to have this problem:
Portholes are not oval shaped so I got to work fixing them:
One of the things that made me loose faith in this project was my earlier work on the hull portholes; I drilled them too big and they did not come out particularly well. While the same size portholes looked good on the Nelson, they looked overly large on the Hood and made the whole ship seem smaller. Also, since I ground them out from behind, just filling and redrilling them smaller wasn't really a viable fix so I'm resorting to "porthole madness" to fix them all.
What I'm doing is punching out a perfectly round hole in .010 sheet styrene, cutting it out in a little square and inletting it into the correct position on the hull (after grinding open the old porthole area). Here's the first quarter slathered in putty:
and after sanding down the first coat:
One positive is that I can more easily and accurately place the portholes on the hull; as the kit comes from trumpeter some are mislocated on the bow and the line of portholes on the stern follows the deck line when the very aft portholes should be positioned a bit lower and straighter on the hull (at least that's how I'm interpreting it from historic pics). Also, this work makes for very thin and even porthole rims that can allow for clear styrene "glass" to be inserted from behind should the mood strike me.
I'm getting some déjà vu; it's the same thing I did to ALL the portholes on the Bismarck a few years back. Somehow it seems appropriate.
!!!!