The Ship Model Forum

I haven't built a ship kit since I was thirteen or fourteen. The last plastic kit I built was in 1998...and it was a 1/48 scale fighter plane. I've read a ton of threads, looked at probably 10% of all of the ship models in the gallery, and after opening my kit, feel a bit intimidated. There are so many fine pieces (I define 'fine' as them being less than 1mm thick in 2 different dimensions) that I wonder if I haven't bit off more than my eyes and less-than-nimble fingers can handle.

I've got a great desktop magnifier, and will gather other tools as I need them...so, let's go!

First thing I did was to wash all the sprues in warm and soapy and rinse them in clear. Then drip dry. At this time, I remembered all of the guys who built masts of bronze or brass tube because the originals were too weak. On inspection I decided to do the same. However, I didn't want to buy brass rod for two pieces totalling 10.5 cm. So, I opted to look in my odds and ends box. I have a bench grinder that has a fast 'dry' wheel and a slower 'wet' wheel which hasn't gotten much use, so I found a nail long enough for the foremast and a rivet long enough for the aftermast and set to grinding. It's a slow process since I really am just learning this stuff. I hope to do more in a couple of days. Below you can see today's work.

If anyone knows any perils about using steel instead of bronze, please let me know.

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stash:
1/350 Grosser Kurfurst by ICM
1/350 Seydlitz

You might try darning needles. They look like regular sewing needles and made of steel but are proportionally much larger - the longest ones can be over 6" long and have a gentle taper. You might find a set of a half-dozen at a $ store.

Thanks for the thought. I actually thought about pinching one of my wife's larger sewing needles for the aftermast. The problem being that the higher the proportion of stainless steel, the harder it is to tool. heh....it's scary that parts I'm using are thinner than a large sewing needle. Some of them make me wonder how I'm supposed to remove them safely from the sprue.

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stash:
1/350 Grosser Kurfurst by ICM
1/350 Seydlitz

Dollar store needles are cheap quality steel.

I'm now wondering if I should have got something fine/narrow/skinnier than what I needed, build it up with milliput (or something) and then carved it to shape. Waddya reckon?

Just back from the hobby store. Bought some fine files, small drill bits (which hopefully fit the collet of my Dremel), pin vise, an a few paint brushes. Another 60 bucks spent and it all fits in the palm of my hand. The detritus is piling up. I think it's time for a tool box Just for modelling.

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stash:
1/350 Grosser Kurfurst by ICM
1/350 Seydlitz

You cant solder steel I think. Harder to work . but if your not soldering guess it makes no difference

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"The vast majority of Iraqis want to live in a peaceful, free world. And we will find these people and we will bring them to justice."
Washington DC, 27 October, 2003. President George W Bush

I've never tried soldering. I rate it slightly less difficult than alchemy...so I'll hold off. I've got some industrial strength adhesives to try when all else fails. If these work well without destroying the plastic I'll let you know.

_________________
stash:
1/350 Grosser Kurfurst by ICM
1/350 Seydlitz

Ive seen a few people use needles. Its very tough steel though, hard to cut. easier to file and taper brass rod. and stronger bond in multi piece masts with soldering. With steel use of epoxy will be fine and you can use CA as well. Your steel stuff will be fine. Soldering just handy when you want those extra strong bonds where there is shear stress or butt joints. Like on gaffs or multi part mainmasts. Probably more of an issue in my 700 scale with its lower area for bonding. All power to you

_________________
"The vast majority of Iraqis want to live in a peaceful, free world. And we will find these people and we will bring them to justice."
Washington DC, 27 October, 2003. President George W Bush

Thank you for more very useful tips Allan. It makes me wonder how many types of adhesive I'll end up with before completing the kit.

Yesterday I began my 7-week holiday. I hope to get a lot of building done. I'd prefer a great trip to a place with military museums and great fishing, but instead since I'm sorta laid up, I'll return to an old love: Model Building

Last night I ground on my foremast a while until the mossies drove me indoors. This morning I set to putting the base coat on all of my parts (except PE) while they were still on the sprue.

Only then did the magnitude of my task become clear. The number of pieces on this kit is huge. Moreover, some of them are so tiny I don't even know what they are. I can tell you this now: If I ever scratchbuild, it'll be in at least 1/72 scale. I applaud all of you guys who use every piece of a kit like this, and scratchbuilders who work in any small scale I'd give you a standing ovation.

Anyway, on to the base coat... I'm using sargentx's thread: Scale Color and Creating Atmosphere in a Model as my inspiration for the color scheme. As I read this thread, the words he typed were ringing true with words I've heard spoken at hobby workshops in my youth. So, my color goals for the diorama are a lifelike blending of ship and sea which when photographed in black and white will look relatively close to a photo taken in WWII.

There'll be lots of photos later so I won't add any yet.

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stash:
1/350 Grosser Kurfurst by ICM
1/350 Seydlitz

My inexperience with this scale is really beginning to show. Step one in the plans is to build all of the AA armament. Some of these mounts have more pieces than some Tamiya 1/35 antitank kits. (ok, maybe I'm exaggerating a little.)...(but not much) After seeing what zs180 was doing with his Lion, it dawned on me that I should work on pieces mounted either on a sheet of cardboard or still on the tree (since I'm doing injected). That has made things somewhat easier. But I'm still not very satisfied with my results.

Maybe this is training my brain and hands to work on finer things. I'll keep telling myself that.

_________________
stash:
1/350 Grosser Kurfurst by ICM
1/350 Seydlitz

I've missed a few days of modelling due to real life adventures. But, I've been toiling away and learning all kinds of things. I fear though the main thing I'm learning is that I'm too large/old/clumsy/blind for this scale. 1/35 is looking better all of the time.

I'm gonna post a few pictures to show you exactly where I am, and would be thankful to read anything useful you can think of especially regarding milliput. Below is the AA suite with the fore turret plonked in the middle of it.

I didn't use all of the pieces for two reasons. A lot of the pieces are just too small for me to manipulate at my current skill level and I've fed many pieces to the carpet monster. Another reason is that they'll be surrounded by crew at action stations though not involved in the firing.

The next two shots are the fore turret. This is my first attempt at blast bags.



I followed the directions for mixing the milliput and then placed the cannons in their trunnions. I was going to use some Skyhawk brass barrels I purchased but they wouldn't fit through the gun apertures and I wasn't going to widen them. Fortunately I thought to test fit before I sawed off the original tubes.

Then I pulled the cannons off the trunnions far enough to force some milliput through the top and bottoms of the apertures with the guns still poking through. Then I pushed the guns back into place. Then I spent an eternity shaping it under my 3X desk magnifier. I've got to the point where the milliput either comes off at the slightest touch so I stopped in hopes that I can shape/file/scrape it more later and what I can't shape I can make look decent with paint and shading.

The milliput seems pretty dry and not as tacky is I'd imagined. It's more like blu-tack and less like Testors or Squadron putty's. Despite more than seven minutes of kneading there were still still some dry bits that would not mix with the rest. So, I wonder if the stuff is past it's shelf life. The box wasn't dated that I could see, and there wasn't a shelf life mentioned.

This turret is my favorite part of the entire warship class. On the model it is depicted as having both sides and the top covered with Marx floats. I'm thinking about forgetting about the top float just to keep the turret prettier. I love it's modern (for 1943) mixture of slopes and angles and don't want to dirty it up too much despite historical correctness.

Love to hear your thoughts.

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stash:
1/350 Grosser Kurfurst by ICM
1/350 Seydlitz

I have only just started using miliput myself but i have found if you use water on your fingers or tools you can mould it much like you can with clay.

Maybe that's it. I used water during the kneading process, but worked with dry toothpick and improvised plastic spatula while shaping.

_________________
stash:
1/350 Grosser Kurfurst by ICM
1/350 Seydlitz

Aggro du jour:

After doing a little more trimming work on the blast bags of the fore turret I moved on to the after turrets. I looked at the barrels on the sprue and thought they looked too short. I did a comparison, and sure enough, there was a great difference. So, onto the interweb to find what was right. Research. I couldn't find anything to state that the barrel length in calibers was different on any of the German 15cm torpedobooteskanone (type that 15 times fast!).

Nevertheless, on every picture sporting a line drawing there was a huge difference. I thought this might just be a difference in the trunnion location on the different mounts. But, to my eyes, the forward most segment of the barrels was different as well. It just didn't make sense. So, I turned to pictures of the actual mountings available on the web. These are cruiser size guns and they certainly looked bigger compared to the shielding in real life photos than they did sitting on my desk or on the line drawing. Below is a photo with comparisons:



So, I removed the old tubes and put on the 15cm barrels that I didn't use for the fore turret. I still had to remove 2mm from the new brass barrels to bring everything even. I'm not so concerned with perfect measurement as I am with things not looking totally wrong and all of my efforts were more to bring uniformity to barrel length.

In the poor-ish shot below you can see the results after blast bags have been applied and putty left to dry.



BTW, all of my photos thus far have been done with a Samsung Galaxy II

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stash:
1/350 Grosser Kurfurst by ICM
1/350 Seydlitz

Nobody told me I'd be painting with a toothpick! I spent a shipload of time with toothpick vice paintbrush. Very maddening. In fact the only time I used a paintbrush was when I was far enough away from anything of importance. But at least, all of the armaments are finished.

This is one view of the foreturret. You can see that the mono-tone grey is making the marx float just blend in with the turret as if it weren't a separate piece. Before I put the main assemblies and armament on the hull, I'm going to have to give it a weak grey wash to bring out detail. I'd have done it already, but I wanna practice on a structure I'll build from unused sprue.



This is a fuzzy vierling with some twin 37's behind it. I apologize for not remembering the German nomenclature. I painted the ammo guides with a bic Markoit to attempt to make it look loaded with a clip of shells. I may go back to grey cause it just don't look impressive. There's no way I'm gonna be able to make a clip of shells to scale. My abilities are being taxed already.



Here are the main shots. I can still see a little bit of PE showing through the back side of one of the AA gun shields. I'm quite happy with my first attempts at blast bags. All of the silver work like the 15cm breaches and the 37mm breaches on the unshielded mounts were done with a silver Bic Markoit. The pens are alright for stuff that will stay dry. I wouldn't use them for an R/C model.

You'll notice my comment and inset on the right. I used my hobby knife and files to scrape them thinner and it really opens up the gun mount as you can see to the left. I have seen a real picture with the rear of that mount covered by a canvas tarpaulin. On my dio, there'll be four gun crew members on each mount covering the end. Ammo man, powder man, rammer-man, and gun captain and we can assume that the trainer and elevating dudes will be deep under the shield. I really don't know for certain how the Germans crewed their guns. So, I'm gonna wing it with memory, and USMC artilleryman savvy! I hope to put simulated ammo on the ready-ammo rails which flank the guns.

I imagine, if the really wanted to please us, they'd make all open-sided gun mounts out of PE so we could bend them into shape. *shudder*

Anyway, your helpful criticisms or helpful hints are always welcome.

Thanks!

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stash:
1/350 Grosser Kurfurst by ICM
1/350 Seydlitz

As far as Im aware these open deck houses arnt armored . Just to splinter shield level I think. Certainly now 24 inch plate yes too thick there.

With your blast bags you can also use tissue paper and white glue. This works great. Can be reworked and can be re whetted and reworked at a later date.

One query. Why are the guns pointing so skyward ? Is the ship in action in your build?

Keep up the good work

_________________
"The vast majority of Iraqis want to live in a peaceful, free world. And we will find these people and we will bring them to justice."
Washington DC, 27 October, 2003. President George W Bush

Thank you Allan. My inspiration is a jacket from a book I used to have before I changed continents.



Although the painting depicts Z-32 under fire at the Battle of Ushant, three days after D-Day, I desire to make a dio much like it. It just won't be depicting any single event in Z-39's career.

It's a great book to have if you're interested in the topic. I'm considering buying another one secondhand...the new price has gone astronomical.

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stash:
1/350 Grosser Kurfurst by ICM
1/350 Seydlitz

I didn't get to do as much today as I wanted. Part of it was my fault. I spent too much time at my local hobby store searching for bronzed pieces and gawking at kits and accessories for kits that would have made me a happier teenager.

I don't want to say this kit is overmodelled. But, I just put together 20 hose reels which are still attached to the sprue since that seems to be the easiest way to handle some parts. While I was looking at the directions I thought I'd stick em to a piece of cardboard like I did with the armaments. The scales were lifted from my eyes, and I could see that building them off sprue would mean many more sacrifices to the carpet monster. As it is I lost one half of a hose reel, so my vessel will have it's firefighting capabilities reduced.

I've decided to give my self a rule: If it looks out of scale, don't model it.

Artwox makes some pretty stuff. However, it is so out of scale. I've looked at as many photos as I can stand, and the average width of a deck plank seems to be about 15cm. Or the width of some dude's foot. At the minimum, at this scale, the Artwox planks are between 30-40cm's wide. The butt joints represent serious tripping hazards and those odd shaped pieces that fit around equipment would be about the size of a man's torso. Just too big.

I've decided to try painting. My result for the bridge:

Some of my lines aren't straight. But, I reckon by the time I get equipment and crew aboard that there'll be less to see. My technique was pretty simple. I started with a solid layer of Tamiya brown that I'd thinned with rubbing alcohol(i'm not paying that much for a little bottle of their alcohol). Then I thinned and lightened applying a a few more layers until it was fainter than flesh tone, applying straight strokes with an almost dry brush. Then I added a bit of yellow for one coat, then a bit more for another. Finally a faint white wash which I'm not sure made any difference.

It'd be nice if the just molded it into the deck at the proper scale.

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stash:
1/350 Grosser Kurfurst by ICM
1/350 Seydlitz

It's been a long while since my last post. I've spent an inordinate amount of time searching for pics or drawings of Z-39's sister ships. Why? I'm glad you asked. The model comes as the ship appeared at the end of the war. You can either put a US flag on her, or a German flag. In either case, the ship has no documented actions after completing her Barbara refit in Feb 1945. My diorama requires action posing. So, I've been learning techniques and making changes.

Yesterday was my first pouring of a resin turret. It woulda been much easier had I done it before I built all of the armaments. So, I had to cast the mold of turret and gun in liquid latex. Once it had set...after about half an hour, I sliced the mold in half, mixed the resin, poured and voila! Then there was endless filing and scraping



Inset center left shows all three aft guns roughly in position dry fitted. Up front (inset lower right) I cut away the mounting for for the two 3.7 cm/69 Flak M42 and cast a new deck from resin. Depending on the date I can either put a single 20mm there or a vierling. I've got two vierlings built already, so I'll use em.

This is my first attempt at PE railing. Well, I should say second since the first is either stuck to the bottom of my socks or hiding in a shadow under the table.
From this view,my faux wood deck don't look so bad. It almost has me convinced.

Inset lower left is a screenshot taken while I was watching some Kriegsmarine footage on u-tube. Needed to fill a hole in the pic.

This hobby can get you hung up on details. For instance, on the forward flak position in front of the bridge I found two line drawings for the class. One showed the ladders to the AA deck between the two hatches whilst another showed them where I have put them. Looked more sensible to me. I won't tell you how many pictures I looked at. I've lost count.

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stash:
1/350 Grosser Kurfurst by ICM
1/350 Seydlitz

Mighty fine , I wish I had used a needle on mine which I am now weathering , as when I had almost finished the rigging I broke the back mast and had to then buy some more zip kicker to quick set the glue on the mast . I will watch yours with great interest

Jenny