Hasegawa's 1:350 IJN Mikasa with Lion Roar

[Bill Livingston]

Hi... Thanks.

I have a lot of photo's of Mikasa having been to see her several times during my business trips there... and I was send a disc with further pictures a few weeks ago...but amongst all of them, I have not got anything showing where the funnel stays locate. I have great photo's of the funnels and the stay attachments... but no clue where they were anchored... they could be on the inner edge of the boat deck... so if you are there and could get a photo or two showing were the funnel stays anchor that would be absolutely brilliant... and useful for a whole lot of other ships of that era too...

In fact, any of the anchor points for the rigging would be really very useful indeed...

Here is an example of what I have... and in the second photo it looks very much like they anchor at the inner edge of the boat deck... but where exactly and how many points are there each side...?

Funnel showing funnel stays

The best I have for the anchor points! :-)

Anything that improves on the picture above would be wonderful!

Nicolas and Frank, Thanks for your kind comments... I have a lot to do and each time I realise there are other things I could have done much better or detail I should have added... but it would never get finished and this was supposed to be pretty much 'out of the box' but with the Lion Roar PE added...

I think I will save the real detail and work when I get to do Dreadnought... I am REALLY looking forward to that now I have learnt such a lot from Mikasa... this is the first 350 scale plastic ship I have built... and it's proving to be more work than I thought... I'm far happier with resin... no stupid butt joins or moulding seams in inappropriate places to deal with!

[Guido]

Good to see your making good steam! I certainly hope you'll have her finished for Telford this year! Should be good for the competition.
Today I picked up Lion Roar's "New Tool" Mikasa set from customs service. I have my plate quite full, but I hope to address the changes in that set compared to the one you are using. If you don't mind I'll post some pics here.

By the way... I think if the weathering is not visible in the pics they are probably just right. There are two ways of weathering: One is for the naked eye and one is for the internet and print magazines. To be recognizable and look credible in a print magazine or the internet it will look overdone in real life. Trust your feeling and try not to make it look more intense for the blog. You'll see that shot with a decent camera in front of a black backdrop a lot of those fine shades will become visible.

Keep up the good work!

Cheers,
Guido

[Bill Livingston]

Oh good... I hadn't heard of that set but it would be really interesting to see it. There are a couple of changes I would make... the torpedo shelves are too long and 'ping' off easily in changes of temperature (plastic and brass don't exactly have the same co-effient of linear expansion!) and anything they can do to keep the railings as thin but make them a little stiffer would help... the brass is too soft... and some chain railings would be good too... I'll probably change some of them to the ones in the WEM Koenig set.

There are a few other things I would change too... but it will be interesting to see if they have added hatches, doors and 'faces' for the deck houses under the funnels... The hatches/skylights are the weakest area of the kit and the Lion Roar set I have doesn't address them at all... I'd almost stop this at the stage I am if I could do something with all the hatches and skylights and wait until the new set arrived!

And of course you can add comments about it here... How about NOW!!!????

[Guido]

Well, I am still at the office, so it'll HAVE to wait...
I'll try tonight, if I can get away from the family evening routine!
Guido

(You seen my edited text above?)

[Bill Livingston]

Grrr.... OK... I'll have to wait!

Thanks for the comments on the weathering. It looks pretty good to the naked eye actually. I have just added the torpedo booms and a few other details on the hull and did a little more weathering. The tones look slightly more prominent in the photo's in real life but not much and I am just about to shoot a couple of thin coats of artists matt varnish which will even things out a lot. The hull actually looks pretty good... it looks metal and well used but still very much like my reference photo...

and a colorised version... not sure about the colour of the canvas though...

I'll try and get some shots in daylight as it looks quite different then... with more variation but much more subtle.

[Guido]

Sorry, Bill!
I am too tired! It'll have to wait until tomorrow morning.
Guido

[Bill Livingston]

Amateur!

Don't worry... tomorrow will do...

(I have just rescued myself from a little disaster. Unlike the normal varnish I use, the Winsor and Newton varnish seemed to exaggerate the differences in colour rather than even them up a little. I airbrushed a VERY fine mist of the base colour over it all and toned it down a tiny bit. Very happy now. )

[navydavesof]

In fact, any of the anchor points for the rigging would be really very useful indeed...

Roger that. I will see what I can do this weekend!

[Bill Livingston]

Wonderful.. thank you very much indeed. I've changed my job now, so am unlikely to go back for a long time. I really loved my time in Japan... I was lucky enough to have travelled over most of the country and will miss it. Especially Kyoto in the spring... You live and work there...?

Thanks again...

[Guido]

So I went through the new set and found nothing essentially new. As it is they used the new production run to refine a number of parts, but basically what you'v eseen in your set is what you get in the new one.
Concering brass material: They did try to use harder material on smaller sets about a half a year ago and got flooded by complaints. I guess you just can't please everyone.
Guido

[Bill Livingston]

Thanks Guido... much as I would have liked a true upgrade, particularly hatches and skylights, its good to know I can just get on with what I am doing without looking over my shoulder wondering if I would be better waiting and enhancing the model still further. I need to complete something anyway and have learned finally that a finished model that isn't perfect, is far better than a perfect, but permanently stalled, incomplete build...

Weird that modellers preferred the softer brass... its easily distorted and something like WEM or L'Arsenal seem to have got the balance absolutely right in terms of stiffness of brass in their PE. It bends very easily, can be formed at true right angles with very sharp corners and at the same time, fairly resistant to slight knocks that bend the PE out of true... I really do think the Lion Roar brass is a touch too soft... but there you go...

I suppose we have all been spoilt lately with the later Lion Roar sets and then companies like Pontosmodel bringing out similar upgrade kits helping us all to build to a higher standard yet still remaining challenging.

I'm very impressed with a lot of the recent modelling on here and it seems we are in a bit of a 'Golden Age' for ship modelling... there was a time when the armour and aircraft modellers had a far better time of it with lots of little companies providing very well researched and well executed modelling accessories. We seem to be finally getting the attention we deserve in the ship modelling front as well... Still, there is a lot of really good scratch building and real skill involved too... looking at Jim B's modifications, largely scratch built with a lot of imagination and use of various materials all the way through to the current WIP on Victory... the hand made ropes for the rigging on that model shows real skill, thought and application and that, despite the upgrades now available, there is still a need for true modelling skill... so we now have the best of both worlds... and a very supportive and informative forum like this to share ideas and give mutual support...

...Yep... it truly is a 'Golden Age'...

[DariusP]

Don't know if you are familiar with those drawing Bill but I thought they might might make funnel stays arrangement a little bit clearer. Just keep in mind that side and plan views are not in the same scale.

[Rob 2]

Following your build with interest Bill, she�s looking very tidy.
Rob.

[Bill Livingston]

Thank you everyone for your help and comments...

I have had a few frustrating days... not sure why. Just one of those times where you second guess yourself all the time, wonder whether you have done something right and change a few things and then look back and realise you have made things worse, or spoiled the finish or broken a few things... it's the stage I normally give up and start something new

Anyway... I worked through it. I have redone the finish twice since the last photo's as weathering with WEM Kure grey proved to be a bit of a disaster. The colour matched the Tamiya pretty well (well, well enough at these small scales and variations of colour and lighting on the real thing...).

I tried to get a variation of the dirty grey down the hull sides after she returned from Tsushima... but the WEM Kure is MUCH greener then the Tamiya and of course when I picked some pigment up from the bottom of the tin to dry brush, I ended up with a greenish cast over all the nice Tamiya grey. A few attempts to correct it over the past couple of days failed miserably and so, this morning I decided I would make a concerted effort. So, finally, I have managed to get it back to something that makes me not want to throw it away!

The photo's below are of where I am now. The anti torpedo net booms are all done... the hull sides are pretty much finished with the exception of the net boom rigging. I'm not too happy with it to be honest... the overpainting has taken the edge off it given it was very clean and sharp prior to me messing around... Plus there was a lot of fit issues, mostly caused by me I guess... the wooden deck and brass barrels caused a few little issues but are such considerable improvements on the kit parts in terms of final appearance, despite my frustration, I would do the same again...

Overall view. The hull is now assembled and complete

The torpedo net looks OK from a distance, but I would use something much smaller than the thinnest lace I could find. I have an idea that would be just as easy and smaller but with a similar texture... lead core with a woven outer sleeve. We use it in carp fishing. It was too big for 700 scale, but may be ok... or a touch small for 350... we will see. Certainly much thinner than the thinnest laces I could find and, as the core is lead, it would be easy to bend to shape and flatten...

You can see the variation in the grey's... It actually looks ok in most light... but fiddled about and made this much harder than it needed to be...!

I have learnt a lot from this build so far (I keep telling myself this is a practice run for Dreadnought... it's kept me going through the disaster of yesterday and allows me to accept flaws... and I am not beyond lying to myself if it helps... ).

View of the stern... because I'll be glad to see the back of this!

I am going to tidy up my work bench (desk) and clear the office up a little. I will then start afresh tomorrow. I can draw a line under the hull and look at the bridges and the rest of the build as a different model!

[Gordon Bjorklund]

Bill,

This is a great build and as all of your other builds have been. I do enjoy following along with your progress.

Flaws! What flaws, I don't see any. Perhaps (lol) you could put a red circle around the so-called flaws so that we could see what you are talking about.

I do hope that your next modeling session will be without trials.

Keep the pictures coming.

[Guido]

Stay the corse, Bill!
There will always be a learning curve with every model you do. However, if you try to learn everything in just one model, you are bound to to never finish one. As you said a few postings up: Better to finish a model with some mistakes included, then never to finish anything at all.

Concerning the shoelace. I think there shuld be a good product available. In the NNT Goeben kit is a lace that is about 2mm across. It has about the same structure as your shoelace.



I do not know where else to get it, but it shoud'nt be to hard to find.

Secondly, I think tht the look of the T-net should be enhanced by tying it off in sections every 10 to 12mm using strands of fine copper wiring. However, if it is too difficult to replace now. Just let it be. There will be so much elses added to the model that in the end the net won't be as prominent a feature.

If the shade of grey is not to your liking ou can tone it down using grey pigments (e.g. Artitec) you can add them onto your finish in veticla strokes, this toning down the background shade. By adding grey, white (careful!), and balck (careful, too!) you can tone down the overall green appearance and get a nice and worn ut effect.

Stick to the project at hand, Bill! It'll turn out great!

Cheers,
Guido

[moomoon]

The painting looks very good. The torpedoe net already looks perfect to me

[Bill Livingston]

Thanks for your suggestions Guido... I have already revarnished the whole model and then did some wet very light washes in white and black once again and toned it down quite a lot. Very pleased with the final result.

The first few attempts at the torpedo net HAD wire rings around it every 10 or 12mm... but after having a few failed attempts and that being by far the most time consuming, I decided to try the next version without the rings fitted... as it happened, that was the one I went with. I COULD still add brailing loops by adding brown coloured fishing line and threading them behind the lace and down through the net shelf and then a spot of superglue to tie them off... not sure... I'll see how a feel later on... may just leave it as it is though...

Gordon was looking for the flaws I was complaining about... well, you can see them on the picture below. The wood deck, combined with not a particularly great fit (or parts breakdown) meant the two casemates for the 6" guns on the underside of the boat deck at either end don't fit properly. I had fitted them onto the underside of the boat deck prior to painting as I felt it would be easier to paint them off the model rather than dealing with overspray on the wooden deck and the fact it is nigh on impossible to mask. This meant that the boat deck parts had to be fitted with the casemates in place and this proved to be a problem on both sides, particularly on the starboard side which tells me it would have been possible to have got this right. The result is a small gap under each casemate. I spent ages trying to refit it, removed part of the wooden deck to re-seat the whole assembly, tried using heavy books to keep it clamped in place... all sorts of things. The problem is, there is a built in 'spring' which is meant to help you fit the guns in place and it's that very spring that makes clamping things together to get rid of the gap at this stage nigh on impossible. The frustrating thing is, I know I could have avoided this with better planning. On top of the unsightly gap issues, it also meant that the 6' guns were a struggle to fit which resulted in a crack appearing and there was nothing I could do about it. I'll just have to leave it.

Flaws in the build as described earlier. I'll have to let it go. The problem was the main deck is in three parts and the centre part could have been fitted a touch lower to allow for the thickness of the wooden deck. I tried to get all parts level, assuming that was what was required. Ah well....

Anyway, that was the flaw/flaws I was referring to Gordon... even did it with the red circles as requested!:big_grin:

It's easier to see in black and white... and so is the variation in tone in the greys now as there is none of the weird colour cast I seem to be getting under natural light with my sons older iPhone 3

Black and white shot showing the flaws more clearly...

Anyway, that's it for now. I'll have to live with it and move on to the bridge assemblies and the rest of the model...so thanks moomoon... it helps!

Onwards!!!

(PS... I know the boat on the boat deck looks crude and heavy... its the original basic kit part...lots of work to do yet to bring that up to the same level of detail...).

[Guido]

Hi, Bill!
Being in your place I'd try to fill the gaps and the crack with white glue and touch up. That should help hiding them.
Keep up the good work!
Guido

[navydavesof]

Bill, I was able to get up to the ship today, but I was not able to get on her. I will get on her tomorrow after work, and I will get some better pictures. What I did get was this:

This might give you a hint of where the stack cable anchors are, but when I get up on the ship I will have a better chance to get good pictures.

I hope this helps a little.

-Dave