I was a little bit under-the-weather.....I think it was something I ate, but on with the build...
.
Here is the work on JS Hyuga hull, the reason I spray the hull a Gloss Black, is to allow the area to be smooth so that I can mask the waterline. This is the MAJOR Problem for me in doing my builds of ships, I tried scotch tape, masking tape (brown stuff), even taping areas separately then painting
[you get my drift], I even tried decals of strips, rounded areas!!!
. So I paint the area black, in general, then mask off the blacken area to paint the hull red.....it seems to work okay for me!
But here I also stiffen up the struts of the shafts leading up to the screws of the ship.
Much care needs to be taken because I don't want to damage the shaft supports where the brass rod will go THROUGH!!
. I use a small pin drill....Size is a #61 or #62 (0.039 mm - 0.038mm respectfully)
depending on the size of the support.
I drill through both sides at a time, first one end then the other, hopefully meeting!! ( only once in another build I totally missed )
The rod is a 0.032 (0.81mm) brass rod Stock #1602 from K & S Engineering, it gives me five (5) pcs/bag, more than enough to build several ships...( in fact I used one rod to build five [5] ships so far ). This is narrow in size to 'play' around in fitting the brass to the ship, thru the support and to the end support near the screw of the ship. I like it because it just gives it more "Solid" structure!!
In this photo, I just cut off the plastic struts with my PE cutter (Xuron).
Here I drill a small starting 'Dot' with a knife, just to get the drill bit to "bite"!
The start drilling!!
!!!
Sending whole rod through first, to check for 'straightness'.
Another view, but now I try to straighten up the shaft before I SupG the supports down first onto the hull, then around the hull of the ship, lastly shafts around the supports.
Finished product....takes about 20 minutes for each shaft, with most of the time drilling out the first support nearest hull, then drilling out a little bit on support for screw.
M