Joined: Sat Apr 29, 2006 7:36 am Posts: 658 Location: Vigo, Spain
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Hi all again,
I have been discussing recently with Hank Strub about the deck rings of the 5"/38 gun bases. Hank wants to detete them completely, and replace them, and I was more prone to use the kit offer and complete it. The more you remove from your kit, the more problems you will have to replace it, and I am always afraid of making a carnage for nothing. After this discussion I had a first go and tried to find out how it would be to build the elements upwards before removing anything from deck downwards.
Well, this is what you get in the box:
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Even if not 100% perfect, these rings have the correct diameter and can be used, but the problem is that they are incomplete all the same, as they are only the first ring, and lack half of the elements upwards just below the gun mount. As a result of this, the gun mounts are too low on deck, while it is clear in every picture of this mount system, that they were just the opposite, i.e., quite high. This is what has to be made, on Jorge Juan herself, and notice how high the mounts are:
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Going into further detail, the deck ring has twelve brackets (to call them so), and the upper one just double, twenty-four, as it can be deduced from these pictures:
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I did the eight basic pieces using as a reference the base elements offered in the Revell kit, using the 0.5 mm. base of four yogurt containers for my lower ring, and 1.00 mm. Evergreen plate for the upper one. I used a 1 cent coin to draw the rings, refined the borders with a pair of scissors and some rough sandpaper, and finished the job nailing the roundels on the tip of a file and rolling them in some much finer sandpaper again.
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I let it dry for a ful day, and emptied all four elements, to fit perfectly around the axis of the gun mounts, so that they cannot move when set in place, completing them with 1.00x04.00 mm. Evergreen strips, and refining with sandpaper:
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The guns are now 1.5 mm. higher, what seems way more realistic than before. It was not difficult at all to make:
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Even if not perfect, this solution suits me much better than removing everything, specially if I had to adapt the shape of the fore guns rings to the shape of the deck, so that the guns remain even.
Nice going from this corner of the North Atlantic,
Willie.
_________________ Amen dico tibi, hodie mecum eris in paradiso (Lk 23,43).
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