The Ship Model Forum

I received the old tool Tamiya 1:350 Yamato as a Christmas gift last month. I know there’s a newer updated version, but I thought I’d do my best to make the kit into a good representation of the ship with the help of some aftermarket parts and scratchbuilding. It’s an interesting project, so I thought I’d do a Work In Progress Post for it.

I started by getting the Pontos detail set, and the first thing I realized was that the basic shapes of the new and old tool kits is different! For some sections this won’t matter, but for others, I’ll have to get creative.

I decided to build the model as full-hull, so I started by doing some masking and spraying with Mr surfaced 500 so simulate the lines of armor plating. I’ve never tried that before, so we’ll see how it turns out. I also drilled out the portholes and put the fly hawk dead lights over the kit circles.

The Pontos set has a nice PE brass deck for the aircraft hangar. I ended in building on to the kit version so I could make use of this, as the old kit’s hangar is very shallow. I did the same for the boat storage area.

Lovely job on the hangar.

The boat hangars on the kit have very rudimentary and inaccurate doors. I tried to scratch build something a little better, as I’d like to model them open.

See photos

I started working on the bow deck. The kit is not entirely accurate in what is covered in the diamond plate and what is not. I tried to modify this somewhat. Also, the molded-on anchor chain was removed and other details were added. Still a lot more more work to do on this piece.

More work done on the bow. The kit just has plain flat holes for the hawseholes, so I’m modifying them with some tube styrene to look more realistic. These will be sanded down and putty will be applied to approximate the right shape The deck side of the hawseholes were molded shut with the anchor chasing molded on. I cut these out and applied photoetch from WEM and a piece of obliquely cut tube.

Since the secondary barbettes are molded onto the deck, I decided to add some details to these before attaching the deck to the hull. It’s a lot easier to manipulate and add detail when it’s not so bulky.

Yes, agreed!

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Martin

"Tomorrow is the most important thing in life. Comes into us at midnight very clean. It's perfect when it arrives and it puts itself in our hands. It hopes we've learned something from yesterday." John Wayne

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I’ve been working on a few details here and there prior to starting to paint the hull and aft deck.

I placed the tracks for the aircraft hangar and the boats. These are awfully tedious parts to work with, but they look pretty good when placed.

The degaussing cables were added. I used miliput and styrene to make the part where the cables come out of the starboard side of the ship.

I used miliput to mold more realistic hawseholes on the bow.

Some additional bow details were added, again, working towards getting it ready for painting.

I placed some nuts in the bottom of the hull that fit with the machine screws that I will use to mount the ship to its base.

Great work! This is a very promising start of an ambitious project!

Fortunately for me, many modelers far more skilled than I am have built the Yamato, and there’s plenty of good examples on modelwarships.com and other sites. From one of these I got the idea to add perforated gussets you detail the boat hangars.

I purchased the veteran models type 96 covered 25 mm anti-aircraft guns to replace the kit parts. They are very detailed, and each is like a kit in itself - 3 resin and 15 brass parts. I built one to see what it would look like.

Really nice work.

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I finally got a bit more done. I painted the boat and aircraft hanger interiors white and the deck gray. I weathered the areas a little bit to get a used grimy look. Honestly, I don’t think you’re going to be able to see much of this at all when the model is finished. I used tamiya Kure gray acrylic for the color. This allowed me to glue the aft section of the deck on. It makes me feel like I’ve actually made progress. Tomorrow I’ll get the clamps off and see how things look.

Great to see progress on this and enjoying following along. I know what you mean about investing effort and pride in building something that is unlikely to show. But we all know it’s there

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In the shipyard - Trumpeter 1/350 USS Kitty Hawk

great work

Thank you for your kind comments. Now that I have the aft deck glued on, I turned the ship upside down and have been working on the support structures underneath the aft sponsons. Anatomy of the Ship has some nice drawings of this section. I used the Pontos set parts for the large beams, and then some generic perforated gussets for the rest. The Pontos parts don’t exactly fit the kit, so a little trimming and propping up with strip styrene was required. I think the result is good enough.

Excellent work! That's some sharp and thorough detailing!

I have been working on the funnel lately. Anatomy of the ship has been a very helpful resource here. I decided to remove the piping since it is molded onto the funnel. This will allow me to place some photoetched parts underneath. Next I worked on the interior. Apparently the funnel was sub-divided into 16 compartments for the various boilers. I used some thin brass sheet and styrene strips to simulate that. There were ladders going down into the compartments, so I put a few on the get the feel of that. I wonder whose job it was to climb down there? I used the Pontos PE for the structure at the top.

I’ve been doing some work on the aft tower. The director tower supports were moved inboard into the base of this piece. Otherwise there’s a lot of detail that can be added. I tried to go off of the Anatomy of the Ship drawings. The Pontos detail parts help quite a bit. I used some perforated beams and gussets from Alliance modelworks as well. Hopefully after it’s primed and painted it will come out OK.