Building the 8-8 fleet Battlecruiser IJN Amagi

[vincentcflau]

Love the ship a lot and had always think about sratch buit it. The moment Fujimi announce the release of a 1/700 scale kit of it I know I have to get it and built it right away! Big mistake...

I built the bridge out of the box and once it was almost done, I just found it look weird to me. It didn't look like any line drawings that I have seen and it resemble nothing of other IJN capital ships.

Checking with what references I had on hand at the time, the bridge of any 8-8 fleet should be very close to that of the Nagato class.




Fine. Immediately I started to rebuild the bridge with the plans and use Nagato class as a reference. At the same time I tried to hollow the funnels and the hood openings of them.






So far so good, and suddenly in a gathering of my local model society, a fan of my show me a picture of the Amagi model with the funnels trunked together! Turns out there is new founding about the designer had revised the design in order to deal with the smoke problem suffered in the Nagato class. My friends teasing me that: Hey Vincent, have your Amagi completed yet? Will you change the funnels? hahaha...

WHy not? (>.<)



When I believe I'm approaching the painting phase, two brand new 8-8-fleet books from Japan published. And I finally have a more accountable plan (from the designer Hiraga's himself). The bridge shown in the plan is, well, totally another thing.



So, once again time and effort is wasted and I back to what I have started - building the bridge...
This time I have confident that I finally had something close to the real thing and I need not to do it again! Hurray!

[Timmy C]

I can only shake my head and chuckle. Brilliant work!

I'm sure Atma would love to see this, his beloved Fujimi making such large errors

[Atma]

Timmy, Fujimi's IJN Amagi is based on the Hiraga's plan which is available in this site:
http://rarebook.dl.itc.u-tokyo.ac.jp/hi ... Code=login
The IJN Amagi in this site, which is Admiral's Hiraga archive, is where Fujimi's IJN Amagi is based. Fujimi's IJN Amagi in 1/700 is identical with that drawing by Hiraga in every single detail.
So I dont think that Fujim made any errors at all on her IJN Amagi in 1/700.
In this site there is a one more variant of IJN Amagi class which is the last two ships in the class, IJN Atago and IJN Takao, which have a single large funnel and a different arrangement of the bridge which resemble the plan that Vincentcflau has.



Edit:And by the way, those two Pagoda's are IJN Mutsu's and IJN Nagato bridge, not IJN Amagi class. Just for the record.

[vincentcflau]

Alma, I've checked with Hiraga's archive before too. The plans were not well preserved that most of them are too dark to see the details. Nonetheless, the two new 88 fleet books that I've mentioned (1. Gakken, "The 8-8 fleet plan", 2. The battleship & battlecruiser of the 8-8 fleet) actually took heavy reference from the archeive and other source.



The Gakken book provides a clean up copy of the original plan (a collection of the Yamato Museum in Kure) that was drown in 19-9-1921(during the construction of Amagi) of which is the base that I've made my model. The plan that we seem in the Hiraga Archive was drown in Sep-1920, 3 month before the construction of Amagi, and was a general plan for both Amagi & Akagi. The appearance of the Amagi that shown in the Gakken book was also the same as I could seem from my another reference book. I could not help but trust the newer one. BTW, even the plan from Hiraga archive shown the revised single funnel, rather than the 2 straight funnels in the Fujimi kit.

plans from Gakken:




Plans from "The battleship & battlecruiser of the 8-8 fleet"
1. As schedule:


2. Revised during construction:


3. Plans of bridge levels (BTW still with some errors...)


In addition, actually Fujimi was not make the model directly base on Hiraga's archeive. Fujimi make the model base on a scratch build model of Akagi from a Japanese modeller. The modeller is Mr. Yasuyuki Yonenami. His work was published in "Navy Yard Vol. 12" (Autumn, 2009).





Although Mr. Yonenami did a lot of research, of course including the famous Hiraga Archive, he did admitted that he have difficulty in figure out the actual "look" of Akagi's bridge, And so he had to make from guess from the builder's model of Kaga and that of Nagato class battleships. You can compare Mr. Yonenami's model and that of Fujimi's kit and notice they are almost identical.

Lastly, I posted the drawings of Nagato & Mutsu's bridges just for comparison as to show how the "old" line drawings of Amagi resemble them, not saying they are drawings of Amagi (sorry for those guys who coulnd not read the chinese words in the drawings that clearly written they are Nagato & Mutsu)...

So sad, as Timmy said, the Fujimi kit was not a true replicate of the IJN Amagi.

[JIM BAUMANN]

good work--always good to see you improving stuff--out of the box it looked clunky..!

will you be shaving off the overscale eyebrows on the portholes?



I usually draw mine on with a sharp pencil--simulating the'shadow' that the eyebrow would make...




but my friend Nick improves models with wire versions--applied after the first coat of paint to keep them crisp...

I think mine may be more to scale--but his do give the hull more interest--the plastic versions in any case look too overscale to me

what do you think?

[Atma]

The Gakken IJN Amagi is a single funnel one. IJN Amagi and IJN Akagi was gonna build from the start as a two funnel ones. The single large funnel one where the IJN Atago and IJN Takao. Those two had also different arrangement in the main bridge. I still insist that the IJN Amagi from Fujimi is correct.
Mr. Yasuyuki Yonenami model is based on Hiraga archives. So both ships are based on Hiraga archives.

[Atma]

Forgot to add that the revised version for the last two members of IJN Amagi class (IJN Atago and IJN Takao) occured duirng and after the sea trials of IJN Nagato when smoke problems revealed that the same was expected on the IJN Amagi class bridge. This modifications(single large funnel, modification on the Pagoda) for the last two IJN Amagi class occured at 2 December 1920 according to Fukui Shizuo in the historical "Cruisers, Sloops and Corvettes" page 404.

[Quincy]

Excellent work Vincent! I will be following your build with great interest!!!







Bob Pink.

[vincentcflau]

good work--always good to see you improving stiff--out of the box it looked clunky..!

will you be shaving off the overscale eyebrows on the portholes?



I usually draw mine on with a sharp pencil--simulating the'shadow' that the eyebrow old make...




but my friend Nick improves models with wire versions--applied after the first coat of paint to keep them crisp...

I think mine may be more to scale--but his do give the hull more interest--the plastic versions in any case look too overscale to me

what do you think?

Thanks Jim. Replacing the eyebrows will drive me crazy! I can live with the molded ones...although yours are much better~

[vincentcflau]

The Gakken IJN Amagi is a single funnel one. IJN Amagi and IJN Akagi was gonna build from the start as a two funnel ones. The single large funnel one where the IJN Atago and IJN Takao. Those two had also different arrangement in the main bridge. I still insist that the IJN Amagi from Fujimi is correct.
Mr. Yasuyuki Yonenami model is based on Hiraga archives. So both ships are based on Hiraga archives.

No problem Alma. Believe what you believe, after all the Amagi had never completed, why not model the ship "as planed" in your way and "revised as scheduled" in my way? Someone had even make it as if it had been modernised to enter WWII:



Satisfied with your own built and enjoy the whole process is far more important, right?

[vincentcflau]

Excellent work Vincent! I will be following your build with great interest!!!







Bob Pink.

Thank you! My pleasure to update my built asap if you guys enjoy my works too.

[J. Soca]

That is a fine work on the pagoda Vincent, its a masterpiece!! and do keep us updated please!



Jose

[Rob 2]

Quality work Vincent.
Rob.

[vincentcflau]

Have the bridge sanded and some details added. The trangular supports have not fully added yet. Very slow in progress.

[Dan K]

Looking really good, Vincent.

[vincentcflau]

Looking really good, Vincent.

Thanks Dan!

[vincentcflau]

A bit tired with the bridge, I decided to shift to the main mast as a break.

Similarly, the main mast shown in my plan is quite different from that of the kit and so demand a complete rebuilt of it. It look more compact and more reasonable that that depicted in the kit. It also included a track for a gun director (of the secondary guns?) below the search light platform. I have to say I love the look of it!

[AC Studio]

Hi Vincent, I am Alan. It is nice to see you started on the Amagi. Best of luck!

[MartinJQuinn]

Holy frakking hell. That is awesome. (sigh) I want to build like that when I grow up.

[Dan K]

Agreed, just awesome work.