The Ship Model Forum

That is a very nice looking model, Gabriel!!!!! It deserves all the recognition it gets! I especially like how well, neatly and precisely you can bend and place PE parts!!! You have a wonderful gift!!!!

Cheers: Laci

Coming from someone of your amazing caliber Laci, I am flattered. You just made my morning.

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Gabriel

Don't sell yourself short. You've done well.

Truly excellent work. Perhaps you could post details of how the water base was made?

The IJN was obviously not concerned with making life easy for future model builders. Rightfully so. Sounds like you had to deal with some manufacturer issues demonstrating the same problem. Combine the difficulty inherent in most IJN ships plus the detail kit issues and the end result is even more amazing. Now that it is complete, an exceptional performance is obvious. Bravo Zulu.

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FRED BRANYAN

Thank you Dan and Fred.

For the water, here is what I did:

1: Sheet Styrofoam. Put the hull on and traced it. Cut it out then glued the sheet to the base.

2: Using sanding sticks I created the wakes and other major details I wanted in the water.

3: I used Golden Artist Extra Heavy Gel in as thin a layer as I could on the sheet. This allowed me to get rid of the porous aspects of the sheet and add a little bit more detail. Messy but kind of fun.

4: Paint. I used I think five layers of coloring. Hand brushed the base color. Let that one dry. The rest I did one after the other so even if it was still wet that is fine. Airbrushed the rest of the layers except the last which was dry brushed.

5: Add the ship. There will be a bit of a gap around the hull. That is where you add the cotton. Some of the cotton gets painted if there is too much.

6: Make it look wet. Woodland Scenic has a product called Realistic Water. It is a liquid. I used a paint syringe to get it on the base and a brush to spread it out. Let dry.

Really easy. Total time hot including drying is about four hours give or take.

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Gabriel

Hello Gabriel,

DanK suggested I take at look at this post as I have the Aoshima Nagara and the Flyhawk P.E. and brass set. This is a gold mine for me on this future project and I'll be taking heavy advantage of all the effort you put into sharing your build; thanks so much!

I have a question for you about the Flyhawk set instructions. Mine came as two sheets marked pages 1 to 4 but they seem a bit anemic. I was wondering if maybe the set I received is missing a sheet or two. Did yours come with just the two sheets?

Again, thanks for posting this fantastic build. I have to wonder, if this got second place at that W. Va. meet, what on Earth got first place?!

Cheers, Newbie Roy

Hello Roy,

Wow, thanks Dan for compliment or referring someone here.

First, I did I review of the PE set. Before you start and as you plan your build, I would suggest you read through this first: http://www.shipmodels.info/mws_forum/viewtopic.php?f=85&t=161354. I detailed what they got wrong with the set.

For my build I went after a specific time period which lead to some scratch building and changing the kit a bit. I think I detailed those out in the build decently so if you are doing a different time frame be aware of those.

If memory serves the instructions are two pages with front and back. There is a lot of information crammed in there and too me a while to get through it all. A trick I started doing to help me with those is before I started building I took the kit instructions and with a pencil start editing them by crossing out the parts that are being replaced by PE as well as listing the PE part numbers needed. This helped me greatly to keep track of what I was doing so I did not miss anything.

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Gabriel

Thanks for your reply Gabriel, I'll look over the review carefully and definitely use your "pencil-out"; I've done that myself in the past with some P.E. heavy armoured vehicle conversions I've worked on. I can see that being double necessary on something like this Flyhawk set!

I gotta say I'm really glad I stumbled onto this forum; classy place with really nice, helpful people!

Cheers, Roy

I hope it helps. But if you have questions please ask. If I can be of assistance I will.

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Gabriel