Calling all Yamato (大和) and Musashi (武蔵) fans

[russclark]

on a 1/192 massachusetts i used small tube ballons,cut off the end to the right length. poke a small hole in the end and slide it over the barrel,glue the cut end into the turrant then slide the other end down intill the right amount of wrinkles are achived.not perfect but not to bad and easy to do.biggest trouble is finding the right sized ballons.

[chuck]

OK, I am throwing out a life line here! I am certainly not new to modeling, but somehow over teh years, I have never had to scratch build blast bags. I have made a couple attempts so far on my 1/200 Yamato, but I am never happy with the results. The pictures show my latest attempt using tissue paper soaked with diluted white glue. I am still very unhappy with how they look, and I am looking for input on weather any experts who have tackled this build think I have at least a decent base so far, or if i should strip it off and try again or try another method???

Any help and input is greatly appreciated, and don't worry about hurting my feelings, be honest, as I said, I am not happy with how they look so far anyways!

My technique is as follows:

1. Determine what profile shape you want your blast bags. This is usually easy to determine from photographs of the real blast bags.

2. Cut a sheet of styrene to the profile of the blast bags, including the turkey gizzard sag and portion held up by the internal framing to keep the bags from touching the hot barrel

3. Glue the styrene sheet bag shape pattern to the top and bottom of the barrel

4. Fill out the h3D shape of the bags with whatever molding substance you use, be it clay, epoxy, or whatever.

[ir3]

If anyone is looking for an alternative Yamato kit to build, consider the Woody Joe 1:250 yammi. Although it is a plank on bulkhead hull, it appears that the kit manufacturer took some of the pain out of planking. The fittings set (about 1200 or so pieces) is increcible. All of the gun tubs have very thin walls and tread plate on the bottom. There are some very detailed castings of parts of the superstructure. I am afraid to take it all out of the box to check all the details but my first impression is that it is an extremely fine kit and one worth looking at if considering an alternative. I believe it is a rekit of the IMAI Yamato from 10 yrs ago. I purchased this one because I am having so much trouble fitting parts on my Nichimo (I gusess I was one of the unlucky ones to get some extremely poor molded sprues) that out of frurstration I decided to try the 1:250. I think it will be a much more enjoyable build and I will proabaly just finish the Nichimo Yamato without worrying about detail and get it floating.

Regards,

IR3

[sgtryan13]

Thanks for the suggestions for the blast bags guys! The idea of using the balloons seems so simple that it just might work!

I put the guns aside for a bit and started work on the supertructure, and I too have some serious fit problems with main components. I do not have the AOTS book, I am using internet rererences for everything and pictures of other's completed models. I can tell that this is going to be a frustrating build from start to finish!

[Thomas E. Johnson]

Can I get away with combining parts from the Tamiya 1/350 Yamato and Musashi kits in order to make the Yamato as she was during the Battle Of Layety Gulf?

[cplchanb]

maybe...but it will still be a hard task because musashi did not have the 6x type 89s on the lower part of the superstructure. instead she had 25mm trips so you will have to mod. that is the hardest task other than that it shouldn't be that hard to do

[bucketfoot-al]

Harry Ohanian, whose custom 1/200 Nichimo Yam is on display at the USN museum, has been offering various 1/200 Nichimo Yamato upgrades on ebay for a couple of years now. I can VOUCH for the amazing quality of his replacement 5" open gun mounts, binoculars for the upper bridge, as well as many other pieces including the custom made .25 cal guns.

Well now he has re-designed and cast in resin the main 18" turrets. And man are they accurate!! The Nichimo 18" turrets look nothing like the real Yamato's turrets (too rectangular and too small) and are the MAJOR defect of this otherwise nice model.

Best of all, Harry's custom-cast parts are very reasonably priced.

Here is a link to his resin-cast replacement 1/200 Nichimo Yamato main gun batteries:

http://cgi.ebay.com/IJN-Yamato-main-tur ... 2a04088212

I can't imagine anyone who has built the Nichimo 1/200 Yamato not wanting to correct this primary shortcoming of the kit!!

[Senkan]

Just got these in the mail. They are very nice. They are full castings on the turrets and are somewhat heavy. You will need to drill to install the turrets.

If you have a Nichimo 1/200 Yamato these are a must. I was going to add some putty to my turrets and see how it looks when I saw these babies. Throw the old turrets away.

[J. Soca]

Well..... it still a battleship right and knowing some of the fellows around here crave scifi stuff why not post it.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TR_u5ftKKkU




Jose

[Admiral John Byng]

Why did the secondary 9" turrets have a gap between the face and the sides?
They seem to be connected with braces spaced all the way along.
It reminds me of spaced armour on tanks but presumably there was another reason for it?

[Dan K]

Heat shielding

[bucketfoot-al]

The secondary turrets were 6" guns. Not sure what you mean by 'braces'; There were 4 blast bag retainers on the secondary guns; one each on the inside of the exterior guns and two around the middle gun;

[Timmy C]

Like Dan K said, these plates where offset from the "true" surface of the turret in order to provide an area where air could flow through, helping to keep the temperature inside the turret down. You can see this in the IJN heavy cruiser turrets a lot, too.

[Admiral John Byng]

The secondary turrets were 6" guns. Not sure what you mean by 'braces'; There were 4 blast bag retainers on the secondary guns; one each on the inside of the exterior guns and two around the middle gun;

I believe the four turrets with 6" guns were replaced by two with 9" later in the war.
I had trouble thinking how to describe the supports for the armour so I called it bracing. Sorry for the confusion. Sometimes laymens terms are not up to the job.

[Admiral John Byng]

Dan and Timmy, thanks for the replies.
Another mystery solved but there are quite a few oddities on these ships so I might be bak again.

[chuck]

The centerline 6" turrets were never replaced and remained with these ships to the end. The wing 6" turrets were removed in early 1944 to make way for more 5"/40 AA guns. There never was any 9" gun on any IJN warship. During early war the US intelligence mistakenly believed the secondary turrets on Yamato were twin 8" turrets. The bracing you refer to supports a sheet metal cladding around the turret. The purpose of the cladding is to shade the actual armor shell of the turret. Otherwise with the tropical sun beating down directly on the armor the inside of 6" turrets would become like ovens. There is an additional row of ventilation holes around the bottom of the fat part of the barbette. These ventilate the inside of the turrets.

Similar cladding is also to be observed on Japanese 8" turrets.

Feel free to inquire about any and all oddities on these ships.

[Admiral John Byng]

Chuck, thanks for the info.
I am sure I read somewhere that the fore and aft turrets had 9" guns and that has remained with me ever since as it is such an unusual calibre.
I suspect it came from a magazine in the '70s and may have been an upside down 6!

Thanks for the correction.

Apologies to Bucketfoot-Al.

[Doug Hallet]

Don't know if any of you have surfed the Wikipedia entry for Yamato before, but it now includes a very nicely done full-color line drawing of Yamato 4/45 in larger size (the file is +2MB). There's a couple of small details that are open to discussion, but the author has appeared to have incorporated every correction noted so far by historians. Includes the white deck markings, sandbagged gun emplacements, extension of the flag deck, reduction of the anchor chain, even indications for metal deck plates and side armor. Although I would suggest painting the deck a much grayer color, at least he hasn't gone for the "brand new hinoki cypress color" which wouldn't have been present after 4 years of accumulated weathering. I would highly highly recommend this drawing as a painting and enhancements guide over the Tamiya paint guide or other sources..

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/c ... to1945.png

[bucketfoot-al]

Doug - I hope I don't sound too cranky - that is not my intention, but given the time of night and my cold ...

...yes, its a nice drawing - but my pet peeve has always been what I believe to be the (mis)location of the number and type of .25 AA guns, as well as their emplacements (not tubs as illustrated in that drawing, but open part-octagonal steel shields screwed directly onto the deck.)

Every time I see these errors carried over and over I want to pull my hair out.

Yes folks, even the 1/100 Kure Museum model has got it wrong - because it was constructed before the mid-2000s revision that the Japanese themselves did based on extensive interviews with survivors and examination of the wreck (all brought about by the 60th anniversary of her sinking in 2005).

Of course, none of us were there, but although I myself do not speak or read Japanese I still believe that they would almost certainly be the ones to have the best chance of 'getting it correct'.

Here is the link to the latest Japanese view of the final configuration (remember, I am only taking issue with the deck AA machine gun emplacements, location and number - I am certain that Doug is quite correct on the points that he makes above - this post is about one of those 'little things' still open to interpretation that he refers to above.)

Again - If I seem to be making a mountain out of a molehill - allow me to repeat that this is my pet peeve with Yamato Ten-ichigo deck restorations. You may not care so much about it, and that's fine too.

The link:

http://ultimatebattleshipyamatosite.tri ... ?i=129&s=1

Go to 'View full-size photo' and then compare that to the Wikipaedia drawing and you'll see what I mean.

[Doug Hallet]

Hi Al, Not sure if you are looking at the latest version of the drawings, because it does portray open-octagon shields. However, yes, the number of 25mm and their exact location is one of the topics I suggest is open to debate. Of course, the artist may have access to research that neither of us is aware of yet. There were a couple of small errors I noticed, such as the missing resting post for the crane. However, whoever he/she is, a lot of detail went into this and the author is obviously someone with an attention to detail and a subject matter aficionado. Without knowing the sources for his/her interpretation, I will give him the benefit of the doubt. My wife does speak and read Japanese if you have any internet resources you can point me to.