The Ship Model Forum

Couple advances during the quarantine.

1. Secondary armament: I installed the secondary armament, inserting previously scratch built pins in place, all the turrets rotate and elevate the cannons. I tried to follow the camo scheme applied to each turret, they were specific for each one, all of them different.




2. Railways: I installed all the PE guardrails of the upper decks. Those that have specific shapes to follow proved a challenge but I think that look decent.


https://i.imgur.com/Y0qpdaal.jpg





3. Transport boats and admiral pinnaces in place. Issued the belts securing the boats to the deck with metal foil.




4. Discarded the mechanism that deployed the "Landesegel" for the hydroplane and put caps on the holes, no idea how these sere covered.


5. Hydroplane: glued the Arado to the catapult, and the catapult to the deck. It turns freely, I was surprised by the narrow separation between the rail and the admiral pinnaces, but it was that way in reality.




6. Superstructure: glued the forward superstructure and funnel in place, using slow drying CA. no issues at all.


7. Flak, glued the 20mm and 37mm in place.






Scratch built the 20mm cannons supports behind the rear main turret, no cannons for these ones.


8. And started working on the row boats cranes, issuing some scratch built accessories that are not provided and are evident in the references.



Marco

Absolutely beautiful work, Marco.

Beautiful work. Love all the details.

Nice details, very clean build.

Working on the row boats cranes, added some scratch details, copper wire cables and lycra lines.








Glue the boats with Gators Acrylic Glue,and added boarding ladders from leftovers of the PE set, and lines made from lycra.









And as far as I found out, the Graf Spee had only these 6 boats on board before the Battle of the River Plate, most boat racks were empty.


Marco

Some relaxing time playing with the figures, I distributed the available figures in whatever place I found either interesting or empty. I tried to modify some figures to positions where they look like they are doing something. I still got like 20 more, all of them "in action" that I will locate in different places at the end.






The area in front of the hydroplane seems to be a big mystery regarding available references, but there was stuff there, oh yes there was! In the few available pictures, that area seems to have been used as a storage area, I guess for the parts of the Arado 196, and for other things. I added some boxes and stuff made scratch, and a couple sailors. That is enough not to see that area empty. What I still haven�t been able to find is any reference at all of the main deck area below the boat racks, right behind the funnel. I only have a very clear picture of that area but on the Admiral Scheer and, well, it looks empty, apart from the ship bell. But the Scheer didn�t have boat racks like those of the Graf Spee above and I don�t really know how much the area might have varied from ship to ship.


Now to the rigging� If I would have tried rigging this without having learned the many techniques in ships forums, and without having the proper materials and tools, it would have been a mess, really. I used rigging lycra (0.091mm), stretched sprue, and followed Kagero�s blueprints which I think match the photographic references that I checked. The most difficult parts were the double lines running from the fore to the mid-mast, as seen on this Kagero drawing:


Impossible making those with lycra, it got entangled every time I tried. Then I tried with stretched sprue and it worked fine! By far the most demanding work on this kit.
First I stretched sprue to the desired width, mounted parallel lines in a jig, and glued the "spacers" at 4cm intervals, according to scale drawings.


Then I cut the extremes and bent to a triangular shape, gluing the endings.


I painted black, and glued rigging lycra to the extremes so that I could stretch the segments between the masts. And the result was this:


And after putting both parallel lines in place, it looks decent!.


And this is the completed rigging, all the lines as shown in the Kagero blueprints. And I guess I�ll leave it to rest for a while.


Honestly, I was like this close to abandoning, after the lycra tries, nothing working, I was really about to quit and issue couple of crude lines running from mast to mast. I was lucky that the stretched sprue worked on the first try!

Marco

Fantastic work, Marco. Good for you for persevering.

� and next time I either use a metal foremast, or I reduce the tension of the lycra rigging, it looks bent to the back... I issued the mid mast in metal, but because the foremast having a conical structure, I did not have any option (and it looked robust, HA! too much tension)

Marco

A lesson in modeling step by step.

Last posting in this section, next one to completed models! I finished installing all the handrails. I prefer not to cut them but bend them properly instead before gluing. The ones that gave me some more trouble were the kind of low metal fences that go parallel to the handrails in some places. These metal fences interfere with the rotation of 2 out of the 8 secondary armament turrets (picture below). In real life, the metal fences should be lower than the floor of the turrets, but not in the kit... Anyway, tried to trim them as low as I could, and those two turrets wont have full traverse (not playing the with thing anyway)


I added a series of structures that I think were the support mechanisms for the boat docking booms (that were removed from the Graf Spee during the war), tie ropes, etc, and a metal sort of protection below the eagle on the stern. Those are not like bulky, but add details an interest to the sides of the hull. I scratch built those with sprue and plastic sheet. I have read somewhere that the metal structure below the eagle was to protect the eagle from the ropes that would be thrown over the stern.




My final thoughts were whether to use a flag or not. Supposedly, as a corsair, the Graf Spee did not use a flag while sailing. It only raised the KM flag when it had identified an enemy vessel and prepared to board� that is what I have heard. In the only picture that I have of the Graf Spee in the process of boarding an enemy merchant ship, the Tairoa Dec 03, 1939, well, there is... no flag to be seen and in all the wartime pictures of the Graf Spee, I found only 2 pictures where the flag can be seen (I mean wartime before entering Montevideo Harbour). But, apart from the red life rings, Graf Spee is sort of grey... and nobody will know which country it belonged to� so I decided to put a flag on it. I chose a small flag (not the gigantic one that the kit provides for the rear flagstaff), the proper size for the rear mast (Bow and stern flag staffs were not installed during cruise, so flags were hanged either from the main mast, of from the rear mast). I printed it with a high resolution printer, retouched in with acrylic red and black, bent it properly and dipped in dull coat. And glued it to one of the rigging lines. I think it looks good, subtle.


Not so big, not so small, a nice touch of color to the ship. Oh and added the antenna to the hydroplane. At this stage of the game, I can�t break it anymore. Adding the wire antenna to the plan is not worth of, would be too thick unless I use something from a spider�s web.


I scratch built a ship "bell" (looks like an old reading lamp, but is is a bell...), and installed it in the area between the funnel and the airplane catapult.


Difficult to see, but I know it is there


And another thing that caught my attention were the sort of "isolators" that some rigging showed, I simulated them with white glue tinted with acrylic black, following Kagero�s blueprints and reference pictures. Didn�t intend to simulate every isolator, just the most notorious.


AAaaannd I guess that is it for the Admiral Graf Spee. I started building this kit in December, 2017. It took then 17+34-5/3(3+12)� 2 years and 6 months (no, not totally devoted to the Graf only), and I REALLY enjoyed this thing! I got the HMS Exeter warming up to start soon!





Marco

Nice build!

She looks great. Beautiful work!

Outstanding, Marco. Very Well done!

Thank you all!

Marco