Graf Spee Battle of the River Plate, Trumpeter 1/350

[Marco]

After a short recess, some advances on the Graf Spee. The anchor chains were giving me trouble, as I started with a chain of about 24 LPI, and well, looked completely out of scale. I ended up using 40 LPI chain (Builders in Scale Fine Craft Models), it comes in black color already, and this one looks much better. For a more realistic fit, I simulated with wire the ring of the anchor that protrudes a little bit from the hause pipe up on the deck. Barely noticeable, but there. The chains are glued only on the ends, which allows for a realistic mild "curving" of the chains. on the deck, as seen in several pictures of the real thing.


The "third" bow anchor is never seen in use in available references, is was kept in place by smaller caliber chains. These are luckily provided in the Eduard PE set, only need to properly bend the links and paint them. The position of the small chain holding the anchor ring can be seen on the center-left of the picture.


Same case with the stern anchor, I could not find a single picture where an anchor chain is attached to it, it always appears held in place by a smaller caliber chain, provided in the Eduard PE set.


All the anchors were painted same Medium Gray color as the hull, weathered with a black of black-brown and glued in place.




I had my doubts about the PE "chain", but it looks quite convincing.




Marco

[MartinJQuinn]

Nice work! MosquitoCon is fast approaching...(hint, hint).

[Dan K]

Yes, she is looking very good, Marco.

[Marco]

We�ll see� unexplored territory to me, masts and rigging ahead!

Marco

[Marco]

I have been working on the row boats and Admirals Pinnaces. Trumpeter provides like a dozen row boats in the kit, but as far as I can see, only two were in use at the time around the Battle of the River Plate. There is not much you can do tot he plastic row boats, I only added the notches for the rows on each side (5 per side),then painted them Light gray and Wood. I will add the PE rows later.

The Admirals Pinnaces were something different. First thing was, usual detergent washing of the Shapeways 3D pinnaces does not work to get rid of the oily coat the have. I learned it the hard way when the primer would not stick at all. I had to rinse them in Lacquer Thinner to get rid of the stuff. Second thing was that the surface seems to have mini/scratches all ofer the hull and upper structure. I managed to smoothen most of it by sanding.

I am having issues uploading the pictures by browsing, will continue on a second posting.

Marco

[Marco]

I added the railings using thin copper wire, bored opened the skylights to make painting easier later. I painted the hull dark gray, side walls Light Ghost gray and the decks Wood, with the inner planking teak. It is interesting how the camouflage was so hastily painted on these boats. The scarce references available show irregular patches, breaking the horizontal line between the dark gray hull and light fray walls, mixed with larger dark gray areas that in one case runs down to the keel. Pretty interesting, tried to simulate them as much as I could using three tones of gray. Clear parts were painted Chrome (windshield) and a mix of Gunmetal/Chrome for the cabin windows. Sealed everything with Alclad semigloss, windows with Future.
I can see two Admiral's Pinnaces on the Graf Spee in the pictures after the Battle of the River Plate.

[Marco]

Well it has been a while, but what is important is that the project goes on! I tried first time ever to simulate water� I think that I am missing some more white water near the sides of the bow, and of course the gloss varnish has not been applied yet. Acrylic paint, tried to copy as much as I could from some real life picture of the wake that the Graf Spee left.












Marco

[MartinJQuinn]

She looks great in the water!

[Marco]

Definitively Martin, it injects life to the project!

Marco

[Marco]

Some more advances, the torpedo launchers are in place now.


Added some detail to the stern boat booms according to references. It looks like the boat booms forward had been removed during the campaign and thus I will omit them from the ship.


Started working on the masts. I used the kit�s foremast, didn�t feel safe trying to replicate the conical shape of the thing using metal tubing, and the part looks good.


The rear mast was another story, the part provided in the kit can be definitely improved. The part would have fared better if the pole across the mast would have been molded separetely, maybe the most notorious flaw of the part. I issued the mast using metal tubing and wire, adding some details according to references and finally adding the PE details. I think it does look much better that the plastic part.






I painted the camo on the main cranes, masking was somehow painstaking but the result was satisfying.


Marco

[Dan K]

Beautiful detailing work, Marco.

[davidwaples]

I'm just getting caught up with this build. Excellent work and tutorial! I'm looking forward the next steps.
Dave

[Roger Torgeson]

Marco. If it's not to late White Ensign Models makes a set of PE 1/350 Boat Oars (page 11 of the PE Catalog for 1/350 items available) The oars come in three different lengths with between 20 oars for the smallest to 60 for the large ones. The PE stock # is PE35159. The oars do make a nice detail touch to the boats as does adding a small rudder.

Like your work very much, it may be all I need to pull it from my kit stash and have a go at building one myself.

[Willie]

Hi there Marco and all,

Excellent project, with excellent solutions and superb results.
One question, if you don�t mind, that I would like to do : How did you manage to achieve this excellent planking effect on the teak decks ???? This is something that seriously worries me when I think in some future construction that I am planning.

TIA, and very best regards from this side,

Willie.

[Marco]

I had been absent for a while, kind of shy starting my first rigging, but well. Here we go. First of all, thank you for all the positive comments, they really motivate me to go on, and Roger, I will check the oar boats that you mention, great advice. Willie, I appreciate your opinion about the deck (I always am jealous of the wooden decks�), well the process was kind of simple: I painted the whole thing "Teak" (Ensign Models-Color Coats). I then applied a wash with a mix of black and brown, water colors. Then applied randomly thinned mix of various shades of brown to different planks. I have thought many times during the process that I will repeat this latter part once more to intensify the effect, I think that it can be improved. And that is how I painted and weathered the deck.

Ok back to advances. I used rigging lycra 0.004" (0.1mm) for rigging. First time I am using this product, I soon realized that it is easy to use when glued to firm parts, but tricky when gluing thread to thread, the tension must be evenly matched if you don�t want to end with one lose line at the end (as it happened couple times to me).







All the lines were glued using CA and a jig that allowed me to tense the lines with the same strength, while waiting for the CA to dry. I used Kagero blueprints and pictures as reference, quite satisfied with the results, this is as far as I can go with the rigging before gluing the forecastle and funnel to the deck (and will add AAs and crew). Not that I am the expert in rigging after this, HA! But feel reassured that I can tackle the long lines that go between the masts when the moment comes.

Marco

[Dan K]

Really nice work, Marco.

[marijn van gils]

She is coming together very nicely!

[Marco]

Some additional work on the Flak batteries. I got from Veteran Models both the 20mm and the 37mm Flaks, very nice definitely, but very difficult to assemble. First the 20mm ones. I had to buy a set of jewelry tweezers, impossible to manipulate with the ones that I had.


The set provides everything, and I mean everything, even separate magazines for the cannons. I will glue the cannons in place only after painting the supports in light gray and the cannons in black.


Oh and these are my old tweezers...


Now regarding the 37mm batteries.


Each one has consists of 21 parts, they all fit together perfectly but they are reeeeeally tiny.


Compared to the 37mm Flak provided in the kit... no comments.


I painted the supports Dunkelgrau 2 (most references show them in Light Gray, but the pictures at Montevideo, the few of them, show them in a dark color). Cannons black.


I glued the cannons with Gators Grip Glue, gives me better control and time to align them.




I glued two units with the cannons in elevation, and two horizontal, just for the sake of the difference.

Marco

[marijn van gils]

Very nice!

To say that these are an improvement over the kit parts would be quite an understatement...

[Marco]

Well guys, somebody made me realize that I had screwed up biiiig assembling the FuMO22 radar on my Graf Spee�! Big leagues screw up... I don�t know why, I understood the instructions backwards, HA! And thanks God managed to correct it. Let me share with you what I did wrong:

1. These are the instructions for the PE FuMO22. Kind of intuitive, and I ended up assembling some things wrong�


My Graf Spee�s radar looked like this, HA! Maybe it was too late at night, or I was taking the wall support for my TV as a guide, thing is that I ended up assembling both the radar "grill" AND the supports backwards, AND the grill was tilting downwards, AND the whole thing was located too low in front of the turret� :


But as the only thing that can�t be fixed in life, is death, I took the challenge to fix it! I detached the radar from the tower, rinsed it in thinner ro remove the paint, applied some acetone to soften the SuperGlue, and dissembled the whole thing. Reassembled hopefully correctly this time, repainted, and reattached to the tower, now I think it looks better!!! Still think that the instructions are messy, but maybe that is to recover some of my lost self-esteem.


Marco