I bought the Tamiya 1/350 Mogami Aircraft Cruiser for full RRP a few years back in an attempt to support a local model shop. This was before I decided I should just have my own model shop. It was (and still is!) the largest sum of cash I've ever handed over for a model kit and it is typical of recent Tamiya kits; exquisitely engineered and manufactured.
Since all the Japanese packs of AAA guns, cable reels and ladders etc are opened for Gill's Akagi (that should rightfully be mine) I thought "what the heck" and retrieved the lovely Mogami from the stash. I spent the first night drilling out the portholes in the hull.
Several manufacturers are producing framed hulls. We will soon find out how good Hasegawa's is (and I expect Gill shall find it excellent too) but the Tamiya effort is worthy of commendation for clicking together like Lego.
I'm not rightly sure why, but Tamiya included a fair bit of ironmongery in this kit. The little steel brackets screw on to the upper hull sides and in turn screw on to the hull framing. You even get a nice little screwdriver in the kit.
Unsurprisingly, it pretty much falls together. I assembled it dry then painted the joins with Tamiya's extra thin cement. Whilst I like the stuff, I do find it prone to causing gluey finger prints when it weeps out the other side of a join whilst pressing it together. I've already had to rectify one such boo boo on this. I shall try to be more careful in future�
With the hull together, I felt now was the time to break out the White Ensign Models PE set for Mogami, and I cut out the degaussing cables
And fitted them
It is a nice kit so far. I find myself�wondering why I left it so long!
More nuts to be installed before assembly
I removed the moulded on stairs and replaced the moulded deck hatches with WEM items. The plastic was fine and this isn't strictly necessary, but I figure I should do the best I can otherwise what's the point?
Whilst nice, the kit has revealed a shortcoming. The posts under the extended flight deck don't meet the deck below. As the gaps are at the bottom and fairly visible, this was unacceptable
...so I cut them off and drilled out the stumps on the quarter deck.
Plastic rod was inserted into the holes in the quarterdeck and touched with cement. One at a time, I fitted a rod and placed the flight deck on top to pushe the rod down to the correct height.
Much better
I remembered to fit PE ladders to replace the two I chopped off
Can't quite photograph it but you get the idea
I've never really done dioramas but though I might have a go with this one. I like the idea of a model ship in water but am less enthusiastic about waterlining the model. I like a full hull. The talented Won-Hui Lee makes incredible dioramas using tinted epoxy for water. I would like to try that. Likewise, a long-term customer of mine by the name of Alan Bird makes rather nice warship models too and his recent 1/200 HMS Rodney was a full hull model on pedestals featuring ratings sat on boards hanging down painting the hull. I liked that idea too so have thought I'd try to combine the two.
So to summarise - I'm well out of my comfort zone here. Still, if I want to get better I have to push myself a little!
Now then, time for some paint. According to my reference - the WEM published book on IJN Greys, Mogami was painted in the Kure Naval Arsenal's shade of grey from 1935 until sunk at Leyte Gulf in 1944. IJN02 Kure Grey is the lightest of the 4 Colourcoats IJN greys. Granting myself a little artistic license though, I used some IJN04 Yokosuka Grey left over in the airbrush jar after teaching Gill how to build up a shaded, patchy coat with the airbrush in close for her Akagi build, and I painted the whole hull badly and very unevenly in the slightly different shade. I then tried the rusting technique I'd seen by wetting the model with the relevant thinners and touching on a rusty colour, letting it disperse into the thinner. I used Tamiya X-9 Brown with Xtracrylics thinners for this. Although a strong brown, the Tamiya paint gives a nice reddish rusty tone when used this way and doesn't hassle the enamel underneath.
And cruel closeup
To be honest I planned to go quite heavy on this for effect and may have overdone it, but I'm telling myself it'll work out fine in the end...
IJN10 Linoleum was brush painted. I didn't feel like masking today.
And the quarter deck received some dirty wash using whichever Tamiya paint is the tyre black colour. This is heavily shadowed so I deliberately went OTT here in the hope that something would be apparent in the shadows.
That dried, and it was on to stage 3 of the master plan. This is why I didn't use IJN02 Kure Grey to paint the hull first time around - I masked with blutac squarish areas and sprayed in them with the Kure Grey without much patchy shading to represent freshly applied paint. To try to enhance the effect slightly, I sprayed a light satin clearcoat over the fresh Kure Grey. My cunning plan is that the painters will be positioned on boards hanging down looking like they're part way through repainting the ship.
