Hello everyone,
I hope you are all good. I started a new ship model, the SMS König in 1/700 from the ICM kit. I also have the Flyhawk upgrades and plan to use them. I want to make the version from 1916. The kit is very nice but as everything, there is room for improvement. As reference I am using the plans from the publication "Planmappe: Linienschiffe Ostfriesland und König" from Gerhard Koop and Klaus-Peter Schmolke, Bernard & Graefe Verlag. These are very nice drawings, but part of the superstructure is from very late war. I also will use the drawings included in the Kombrig kit.
I started with the hull. I am going to do it full-hull as all my other ships. I am in the process of cleaning up the seams and sharpening some parts of it.
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I also started with the cleanup of the decks. Some sharpening of bulkheads to have them nice and straight. Some filler will be needed in the future.
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As part of the assembly, the secondary 15cm guns casemates have to be installed. There is definitely room for improvement for these ones. The kit part is only a cylinder with the gun barrel. The Flyhawk upgrade provides the metal gun barrels, but the casemate also has square openings and in that scale, it would be difficult to achieve. I could not find any aftermarket ones that could be used. I can do one scratch, but I need 14 and they have to all look the same, so the solution would be to make one digitally and 3D print it.
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The design is very simple, just a cylinder with the right dimensions, substract the boxes of the right dimensions and position. The gun opening is two cylinders joined by a box, combined together and substracted from the main cylinder. I am in no way a 3D designer, I just watched some tutorial videos and used free software. I am trying to learn a bit more, but just for this small things. I don't want to spend too much time in front of the computer.
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Some time ago I got one of those cheap 3D resin printers, really an entry model level "just to see" how it works. It is not very reliable, but with some trial and error some good things can be achieved. This is what came out of the printer.
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These are already cut out and primed. I think that for a cheap printer, the results are OK.
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A comparison with the kit part.
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as always, coments and critique are welcomed