1/350 Dragon Scharnhorst 1943 WIP

[Tracy White]

Although I have much in my stash, I could not resist starting my Scharnhorst. At this point I have cut out five pieces and glued three of them, so it is still very early in the build.

Here are the two main deck pieces sitting together with the gun deck set (but not glued) in place, with the Academy Graf Spee and... something else ... in the background for scale.



Here is a close up of the two deck pieces and the gun deck. There has been some confusion with early builders in this area due to the way this was set up. MOST of the superstructure pieces pit into recesses that are cut into the deck; the wood deck has a camber to it, but the recesses do not and the parts that fit into this have a flat bottom. However, in this section there is an area where the gun deck extends over the top of a planked section; this was done in order to make another release possible without having to retool the whole deck. It appears that some modelers have seen the step in pieces K52 & K53 as part of an attachment nub that is really close by and have filed it down, which will leave a gap in the joint if you do so. Mine is just sitting on the deck and not glued into place, so you can make out this step just forward (left) of the crease in the deck for a water shield. Make note of this detail!



The last photo I have for now is the bottom of the opposite corner of the gun deck:



The fit so far has been pretty good. The parts are engineered to fit extremely tight, and I found that there was a small gap in the corner where the edges were supposed to meet.I was able to close it for the most part by running my knife blade along the edges to scrape a bit more of a rounded edge to the inner faces. The gap was still there, but when I glued the pieces down with thin liquid cement it was enough to close and fill what little bit remained. I've since hit the top joints with some Mr Surfacer and then covered the portholes with a wee bit of tape to protect the fine detail as I sanded it flush. Looks good so far, we'll see after a coat of primer.

More to come!

[mick]

will be following your build with interest

mick

[Tracy White]

I'm a firm believe in "an ounce of test-fitting prevents a pound of putty," if you will. As I was test fitting my deck pieces today I noticed a couple of areas where the hull edge had a gap, and that this cap would not close by pressing inwards with my fingers.



A quick investigation revealed that this was where Dragon had placed the bulkheads, and they made the hull just fractionally too wide (about .013" according to my thickness gauge) for a tight fit for about a third of an inch. It's certainly not bad, but it was more than I wanted to leave alone. So, in order to allow me to press these areas in, I took a photo-etched saw blade I'd bought some time back and laid it against the inside of the hull and cut down down as so:



Warning: I found some unintended consequences of this action and posted about it here

No need to cut all the way down or through, just enough that you can press the upper edge inward to touch the edge of the deck pieces. I didn't have to do this to all of these stiffeners, just the middle four.

Lower to upper hull fit is good; very well done for the size and complexity of the two parts. My upper hull has a noticeable hog to it, but not one that fights straitening out, just something that waterline builders should check for. I did notice some depressions on the lower hull fore and aft where the stiffeners inside create thicker areas of plastic. I've highlighted these below by airbrushing some black paint and then sanding with a fine sanding stick held flat against the hull:



I'll remove the paint and replace it with some Mr Surfacer and repeat the process. This was only on the fore and aft bulkheads; the two amidships within the area of the bilge keels had no effect on the outer surface.

[Timmy C]

Tracy, not sure if you know, but at the bow of the lower hull, there's an insert that's removable. You may want to consider that if there are any hull fitting issues.

[Simon_Hwood]

Following with interest

Thanks Tracy

[Sean Hert]

Love those Hasegawa PE saws.

[MartinJQuinn]

Nice - looking forward to more updates.

[Tracy White]

Tracy, not sure if you know, but at the bow of the lower hull, there's an insert that's removable. You may want to consider that if there are any hull fitting issues.

Yes, I've pulled it out and put it back in.. I'm not sure that it provides much of anything useful structurally, and I haven't paid really close attention to the fit yet as I'm not ready to join the two hull pieces together. I'm more focusing on getting the main deck on to the hull for now so I can at least keep moving on it. Almost glued them down last night but decided I wanted to review the instructions one last time to make sure I wasn't missing anything before I sealed things up (there were six holes to drill,for example)

[ArizonaBB39]

Looking good Tracy, keep us updated

[GTDEATH13]

Taking notes, keep the progress coming..

[Tracy White]

Will do!

Last night got a little messy and slowed me down, so no new photos. I like to have a firm mounting for my model and will usually build a plastic cofferdam in the lower hull to pour resin in to give something solid for the mounting screw to bite into. I apparently didn't mix my first batch of resin enough yesterday evening and it never fully cured... so after a couple of hours I started chiseling and scraping it out to start over... I don't want this thing oozing down the pedestals for years to come!

My clamps disappeared during a recent move too, so I didn't get all of the deck down, just half of the forward piece and the nose piece. Fit of the nose deck piece was excellent after I made sure the sprue attachment nub was sanded down and the edge true. There is a slight step or change in appearance about a quarter inch from the front of the bow on the upper hull piece; quite apparently a separate mold piece, but it shouldn't need more than a swipe or two with some medium grit sand paper to remove.

I'll be picking up some new clamps today (surest way to make the old ones show up!) so I hope to have the main deck totally down and the resin re-poured by this evening with new photos to follow.

[Rick E Davis]

Tracy,

I have a vision of your wife wondering what these clamps are doing in one of the kitchen supplies boxes?

[Tracy White]

Had some good progress today in between errands an mowing the lawn. I wanted to step back a bit though and explain a couple of things.

I've been fortunate enough to watch this project come to fruition from the beginning. I've spent a lot of time chatting both with Rob, who did the CAD, and with a couple of people with Dragon in China. I will not say that it has been purely business nor that I am unbiased; my relationship with all parties has been good and I've found then to be earnest in their desire to produce a good product. Therefore, I felt myself becoming a bit annoyed and protective when complaints surfaced and when people started having problems.

So this is much an attempt to see if there is merit with the complaints as it is a build of an impressive kit. I am 38 years old; the first memory I have with a model was around 4 years old, so I have been building models in one form or another for roughly 34 years. This is not a statement of skill, just that I have seen a lot of kits and problems and come up with my own opinions, likes, and techniques. I freely admit that things that seem simple and easy to me are not for others. My basic belief, as long as I can remember, has been, "there isn't a problem out there that's any smarter than me, I just need to figure out the proper approach. If you keep this philosophy no kit will ever get the best of you as long as you are in it for more than just a quick and easy build.

I was not a fan of Scharnhorst when the project; the detail put into it and the history I have learned since then has changed that.

So I hope to do the model and the community justice with this build, PLUS have some fun in the process!

Back to less philosophical stuff next!

[Tracy White]

Progress as of this afternoon; I've since started on the forward superstructure while waiting for main deck pieces to dry in place.



Academy Graf Spee in the background for comparison

After a night to sit the uncured resin that was left over had mostly cured. I mixed some more resin and poured; no problems this time!



I had drilled out the holes first and then put a piece of tape over the bottom so the resin didn't leak out... it works well enough:



One caution to pass along. I had presumed that because the deck joint was covered it didn't matter if there was a gap or not, and had used the "opportunity" to make sure that the forward piece was pushed forward (there wasn't really that much difference; the hawse pipes align things nicely). This was not the case; the fit of the gun deck housing is tight enough that it's going to hold the stern deck where it wants to... and if you try and make it so there is a gap to minimize any deck edge gaps. you're going to wind up with a gun house that doesn't fit well. Thankfully I figured this out before I even started the aft deck piece, so it just means I have a larger than otherwise gap on the stern to fill. I'll shoot and post photos of this once I get the rest of the stern deck down. At this point the front two are totally down and the aft piece about a third to a halfway glued down.

[JWintjes]

Arrrgh, that looks really nice and tempting. At my local shop the first ones are already gone - mmmmm......

Jorit

[dylan]

lookin good Tracy.. cant wait to see how this one turns out

[Dave Hill]

Great start Tracy ...what plans do you have for the model...OOB build?...backdate?...can't wait for more!

Dave

[Tracy White]

Pretty much out of Box. I'm not a fan of Dragon's inclined ladders, at least not in comparison to what GMM/WEM do, and might pick up a set, of perhaps the full WEM detail set. I like the camouflage she wore on her last voyage and the history of it.

[Tracy White]

so it just means I have a larger than otherwise gap on the stern to fill.

Hasn't been as much progress as I'd like due to other projects, but I did get the rest of the deck down and have a photo of the afore-mentioned gap:



Like I said, I think this was largely my fault. It's not bad thoough; I'm going to fill it with some apoxie sculpt or Milliput, depending on mood.

Started to look at the upper * lower hull joints. There are a couple of areas on the lower hull that don't match up as nicely as the rest of the hull, but they're coincidentally the same area that I filled with resin, so I may have caused that, even though I took pains to ensure there was no significant heat build up as the resin cured. Forward section *might* be a little narrower but I don't have the little spreader insert with me to see if it helps.

[MartinJQuinn]

Must....resist....temptation....to....start....this....kit............................