Hi All,
First, let me thank everyone who has been busily working away on their Hoods while I have had to take a little bit of a break... this time of year is pretty hectic at work... last week I was in Amsterdam, next week, slightly less exotic Bristol and the following week, Denmark... so between trips, I have finally picked up the courage to waterline my 200 scale Hood.
The first point was marking where I was going to make the cut... and this is a BIG hull... and a mistake would have been disastrous. The first thing I did was decide to make the waterline a couple of mm below the top of the boot topping and then leave my 2mm sheet as a base, giving a total of 4mm below the actual late war waterline.
I had to check it was right... and level... so I marked the hull with Tamiya masking tape using the lower armour plate as a guide and then carefully went round the hull ensuring everything was straight and level. I then bought some 10mm wide Dymo tape (the stuff you use in those old Demo label makers) and used that to put down a line so that I had a clear contrast between the hull and my 'waterline' so I could keep checking over the ensuing couple of weeks until I was completely happy I hadn't made any major mistakes (you only get one chance to get this right!). I used the Demo tape because it is very heavy, plastic tape and doesn't bend easily... so although it would conform to the very complex hull shapes, the top edge would remain straight.
Here...
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I probably checked this two or three times a day for the next two or three weeks before I felt comfortable enough to make a cut. Then came the day I was going to make the actual cut. I genuinely went to bed early so I would be fresh and fully awake... yep, thats how much I stressed about it!
The first thing I did was run my Bare Metal Foil scribing tool all along the tape edge. My initial idea was to run the scribing tool round a few times making a clean, accurate scribed line that a Stanley knife (box cutter in the US) with several totally fresh blades would be able to follow accurately and with a few passes could separate the upper and lower halves relatively easily and with next to no clean up.
I have done this several times with 700 scale and 350 scale models and I have always been very pleased with how patient I am and how neat the cuts are.
I hadn't reckoned on 200 scale Trumpeter plastic!!!!
The first thing is the plastic is VERY soft, so a scribed line seems easy enough, but you actually get a groove with some walls either side, rather than a flat surface with just a groove cut away. The net result is any blade following the groove can 'jump' the scribed line and then follow the outer edge of the 'walls'.
Not good. Not good at all.
So... after my best laid plans seemed to have come apart at almost the first stage (I eventually got the scribed lines done.. and they are both clean and accurate, so I'm quite pleased) I realised that separating the upper and lower hull was going to be an issue... The Trumpeter plastic is around 3 to 4mm thick at the point in the hull I needed to make the cut. The idea of multiple knife strokes along an accurately scribed line wasn't really an option. So I got my 'big' Dremel and a cutting disc and decided that was the only option.
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Even then it took well over an hour to separate them... and because I was using something so crude, and because the plastic was so thick and so soft it was prone to melting, even at the slowest speed, I had to cut three or four mm below my marked line... so I still have a lot of clean up to do before I can fix the hull to the 2 mm baseplate.
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Although its probably going to take me most of the rest off the weekend to get this finished to my satisfaction, I have absolutely no regrets. Immediately the hull took on a much more 'Hood like" feel to it... it looks sleek and fast, even just as an empty hull...
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Obviously there is a LOT of work to bring the hull sides up to the scribed waterline... but as far as I am concerned, its better to be a few mm out this way that to have cut too close to the final waterline and given myself no room for manoeuvre.
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The one thing I can say from todays experience... I have absolutely no regrets. The hull is now much more Hood like and I can see clearly precisely what I need to do to the hull plating to get everything right... The rear armour belts in particular annoy me... Trumpeter seemed to make a complete mess of them... and some of the other armour belts are far too prominent... and one of them is actually nowhere prominent enough (if you can believe it).
With the hull in this form, with a heavy, one piece, 2mm waterline plate and the decks in place, hopefully by the end of the weekend, it will be considerably lighter, very strong and rigid and will be relatively easy to manipulate it enough to sand most of the armour away and replace the armour plates with plastic card and/or CA infused tape/paper.
Which is the next stage in my hull work.
Oh... and Greenglade... I am very, very impressed with your Hood. I have been following your build closely and I am really impressed with your approach and attention to detail in terms of modelling practice and solutions... and I cant believe how
fast you are!