Last posting in this section, next one to completed models! I finished installing all the handrails. I prefer not to cut them but bend them properly instead before gluing. The ones that gave me some more trouble were the kind of low metal fences that go parallel to the handrails in some places. These metal fences interfere with the rotation of 2 out of the 8 secondary armament turrets (picture below). In real life, the metal fences should be lower than the floor of the turrets, but not in the kit... Anyway, tried to trim them as low as I could, and those two turrets wont have full traverse (not playing the with thing anyway)
I added a series of structures that I think were the support mechanisms for the boat docking booms (that were removed from the Graf Spee during the war), tie ropes, etc, and a metal sort of protection below the eagle on the stern. Those are not like bulky, but add details an interest to the sides of the hull. I scratch built those with sprue and plastic sheet. I have read somewhere that the metal structure below the eagle was to protect the eagle from the ropes that would be thrown over the stern.
My final thoughts were whether to use a flag or not. Supposedly, as a corsair, the Graf Spee did not use a flag while sailing. It only raised the KM flag when it had identified an enemy vessel and prepared to board… that is what I have heard. In the only picture that I have of the Graf Spee in the process of boarding an enemy merchant ship, the Tairoa Dec 03, 1939, well, there is... no flag to be seen and in all the wartime pictures of the Graf Spee, I found only 2 pictures where the flag can be seen (I mean wartime before entering Montevideo Harbour). But, apart from the red life rings, Graf Spee is sort of grey... and nobody will know which country it belonged to… so I decided to put a flag on it. I chose a small flag (not the gigantic one that the kit provides for the rear flagstaff), the proper size for the rear mast (Bow and stern flag staffs were not installed during cruise, so flags were hanged either from the main mast, of from the rear mast). I printed it with a high resolution printer, retouched in with acrylic red and black, bent it properly and dipped in dull coat. And glued it to one of the rigging lines. I think it looks good, subtle.
Not so big, not so small, a nice touch of color to the ship. Oh and added the antenna to the hydroplane. At this stage of the game, I can´t break it anymore. Adding the wire antenna to the plan is not worth of, would be too thick unless I use something from a spider´s web.
I scratch built a ship "bell" (looks like an old reading lamp, but is is a bell...), and installed it in the area between the funnel and the airplane catapult.
Difficult to see, but I know it is there
And another thing that caught my attention were the sort of "isolators" that some rigging showed, I simulated them with white glue tinted with acrylic black, following Kagero´s blueprints and reference pictures. Didn´t intend to simulate every isolator, just the most notorious.
AAaaannd I guess that is it for the Admiral Graf Spee. I started building this kit in December, 2017. It took then 17+34-5/3(3+12)… 2 years and 6 months (no, not totally devoted to the Graf only), and I REALLY enjoyed this thing! I got the HMS Exeter warming up to start soon!
Marco
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