Thanks Dan K, PeteM, tweety777, Jim, Christian, Guido and jimbuna for your encouragement and interest. Tweety, you have good eyesight: The coins which slipped accidentally into a picture are not Euros. I think they are from China or Japan from one of my business trips. In Japan I took part in a Steel Conference on the mountain Hiei (near Kyoto). First I thought: mountain Hiei must be wrong because IJN Hiei was a battleship. But then I remembered that Hiei�s career started as battlecruiser.
But here a small update of my progress:
This is the bottom side of the aircraft handling deck from the Lion Roar Mogami set (Mogami07).
- Mogami07-Aircraft handling deck from below
The upper and lower layers are deep etched brass sheets sandwiching a plastic middle layer. The three layers fit well together and have exactly the same shape like the corresponding Tamiya plastic part. It is already quite stiff and the thickness looks good. But it is well known that the Mogami was a very tough ship, surviving even a crossing of the T. So it�s a must to add further reinforcements to the deck. To be honest, I am not sure if much of this construction will be visible later after the complete assembly. But it seems to me at least a good exercise for the 1/350 Hasegawa Akagi.
I used a method by first priming the complete PE sheet and then assembling it. This has some advantages and disadvantages. By the way: I learned a trick from an airbrusher�s book: By using an airbrush for priming you have a better control then by doing it with a �rattlecan.� But if you are stubborn like me and you want still to use your Tamiya primer from the rattlecan, you can attach a straw (the big ones with the joint) to the business end of the rattle can and spay a certain amount into a glass jar. Then you have to wait until the gas escaped the paint (>1h) and then spray it with the airbrush. Especially for small delicate PE parts with tiny holes etc. this works better then the rattlecan.
- Mogami08-all struts assembled
Mogami08 shows all the struts in place and airbrushed in Kure grey. During the assembly of the struts you need some concentration: In the Lion Roar instruction it is sometimes not very clear which strut comes next. I made one mistake and had to remove one of the struts again (where the primer is scratched in Mogami07).
- Mogami09-PE supports for deck
Then next comes a hard decision: Substituting the plastic supports of the �flight deck� with the Lion Roar PE supports? In this case the plastic ones have to be removed. Because the PE supports look very nice (Mogami09) I decided to take the challenge. But for security a took picture Mogami10 to �remember� the correct positions of the supports.
- Mogami10-Positions of deck supports
because you have to hold the step iron some seconds in the correct position until the superglue �bites�. Due to the gel there is a little bit time for fine adjustment.