Many thanks guys!
Sorry I haven't caught up with this thread sooner. Unfortunately I haven't done much modelling lately…
Many thanks Eric! I know exactly what you mean, this project is certainly less spectacular and dramatic than some of my other dio's indeed. It will be more of a quite emotive scene I hope. I like doing those also, and they sometimes turn out better than the dramatic pieces, even though they are more understated. But for the next one I plan a very spectacular diorama again!
But first this one! After a couple of months of inactivity, I got myself started again on the Amagi.
The underside of the flight deck has nice support beams and gussets molded on. The edge is nicely thin, but this necessitates a chamfer for the deck to molded:
But since I want to replace all beams and gussets by perforated ones, I cut them all away. The chamfer would hinder correct installment of those, and might be visible because the ships is tilted so much. I therefore thinned all visible flight deck underside surfaces, both on the side and the stern:
To compensate for the removed thickness of the deck, I added 0,5mm plastic strip to the top of the hull. I also thinned any hull plating that will be visible from the top because of the battle damage:
A lot of cutting, scraping and sanding, but not very sexy so far…
Then I added the top hangar deck, making sure it would be strongly supported:
Before gluing the deck, the seam around the aft elevator was scribed with a needle. To get the curved edges right, I had to make a template from plastic sheet:
Bruno Gire designed a great additional PE set for Amagi in this setting, and graciously supplied me with copies. Many Thanks again Bruno!!!
The starboard aft elevator mechanism is a bit different from standard because it has an angle in it, so I cobbled it together from pieces of Bruno's set and some generic pieces:
This was glued into a cutout I had made before in the deck:
Lower down, the fit became quite tight, necessitating me to thin the hull side with my Dremel:
Next, some additional structures were added:
This is how it looks like when the deck is on:
The space behind the elevator side wall will later be filled with heavily damaged compartments, since a bomb demolished this area.
But first two more elevator sidewalls to go!
Thanks for watching!
Marijn