First of all thank you all for the comment regarding the build, but more importantly the expressions of condolences for my Dad. He was a great guy, and as I am going through his stuff I am learning things about him I never knew.
I've had some time to continue to flog this thing into some resemblance of submission. The basic superstructure is together and painted. The Eduard set folds very well and fits very well. I was anticipating all kinds of horrors getting them to fit, but knock on wood, so far the parts are very easy to work with. Rather than using CA to hold them together, I opted to solder them for strength. I don't know what coating it is that Eduard uses on their brass, or for what purpose, but it really inhibits soldering, so all the parts had to be sanded to bare brass before any soldering could take place. It wasn't a major snag, just added a few extra steps. Rather than drone on with a lengthy narrative, I'll show the pictures and post comments under each one.
My first "aww crap" moment of the build. It wasn't until AFTER I got the decks painted that I noticed I forgot to lay out the openings for the Paravanes in the deck, plus there was no indication of them at all on the kit hull. Also they really missed the locations of the anchor ways on the deck. According to my drawings in the Stillwell book, the aft ones are molded too far inboard. Sooooo... steeling my nerves, I marked out the new locations on the freshly painted deck, and then glued the brass parts Eduard supplied into place where the opening would be. I then used a small grinder in my Dremel and carefully hogged out the depression for each way. Fortunately, because of the added thickness of the Evergreen over the kit deck, I didn't end up with an oval hole, but a nice oval depression. I then drilled a hole through in the front of each one. I did basically the same for the Paravanes, but I used 1/8 aluminum tube squished into an oval shape, drilled through the bow and up into the deck (sweating bullets the whole time) and then epoxied the tube into place. After the epoxy cured I cut off the excess tube and filed the ends to match the deck and bow profiles. All I have to do now is touch up a small portion of the deck where I had to fill around the tubing. The steel plating for the anchor chains I made form .005 plastic. I made a pattern by enlarging the plans in Stillwell's book to 350th scale, cut the pattern out and glue-stick'ed it to the plastic, then simply cut it out, painted it and tacky glued it into place.
Here's the Superstructure set in place but not glued together yet. It's all a combination of kit parts, Eduard brass and scratchbuilt structure under the platforms. As I stated before, the Eduard set fits beautifully, and I had no issues getting everything to line up. I did add the structure underneath the first level, so there's no longer a huge opening from one side to the other. Stillwell's book has been invaluable as a reference for those areas. The Stack is also finished. I used the Eduard brass for the shacks on either side, but made my own floor and roof from .010 plastic. This allowed me to paint everything separately, so that when they went together the paint parting lines are very crisp and even.
Here I have the cranes started, but not complete yet. The instructions that came with Eduard's set was a little vague on the assembly of these, so I had to tear it apart halfway through and start over. The deck plates on the aft deck are .010 plastic that I made using the same technique as the bow plates. The gun tub you see is from the Eduard set. I thought the raised ribs were going to be impossible, but Eduard engineered them really well. They fold over and go into place with little fuss, but you only get one chance to get them right. Additional bending will cause them to break off. The only thing I found is that the ring is too long. There should be an opening in the back, but when rolled to the correct diameter to fit the base, it was completely closed in the back. The simple solution was to trim the ends back to the next rib, and problem solved.
This rather ugly looking mess is the hull bottom. I am following Mr. Landrum's lead in making new Screw shafts and Supports, so all the openings and placement indicators were filled. I then used 1/8 plastic tube to make the shaft tubes. I'll use the same tube and .030 plastic strip to make the Screw Supports, and 1/16th brass for the shafts themselves.
Thanks for following along. I am dividing the time up between this project and a scratchbuilt Ford Trimotor project, so the next post might be a couple of weeks off. Next steps here will be to sand the tubes and hull, join the top and bottom hull together and do some touch up paintwork. Then I can begin assembling all the sub-assemblies into a completed model. I hope..lol.
Thanks for following along, and as always comment and questions happily accepted.
Cheers
Mike
Some of it can be corrected but not all - unless you scratch build a complete new lower hull. 
). Still busy scratch building the 5"/51 casemates (will be open) and the bulkheads around them from PC, re-drilling all the portholes on the hull (correcting both positions and the number), adding some PE detailing, and a myrriad of other small details before it finally is time to slap some paint on the hull and the deck.....