Atma wrote:I have asked and I got that answer, the reason the hull is warped while still in the box is cause the vendor your brought it dosent have a good storage ventilation to fight extreme changes in temperature.
Whatever ! Typical answer from a Japanese manufacture
This is complete nonsense and don't buy it for a minute.
The problem is a general caving-in of the flat belly of a battleship's leaf shape hull, due to lack of plastic cooling at the de-moulding stage, and it appears to be universal to all 1/350 Fujimi kits with a flat bottom and broad hull like a battleship.
It is so universal (for Fujimi) I think it could be something fundamental about their mould's design (lack of cooling relief for these large, thick and shape-sensitive parts?), otherwise the problem would not be so consistent and would come and go over the years...
I marginally managed to improve this by standing in socks on one foot inside the hull with my 190 lbs weight fully on the bilge keels dug into a thick carpet (they didn't deform!)...
I observed the exact same thing on 3 different kits of very different box vintages: Fuso, Yamashiro, and Ise.
The problem is extremely difficult to eradicate but is easy to overlook if you are not a stickler for perfectly continuous and perfectly flat hull bottoms (and certainly not too fussy about fully erasing the center join...).
Trouble is, I am...
The problem took an absolutely huge amount of effort to solve, and then only on the Ise was I really successful. I never managed a good job on the Fuso or Yamashiro, but that was in part due to the difficulties in sharpening the bow from the inside, while keeping the bow's edge perfectly vertical... Fuso and Yamashiro seemed to have blunter bows than Ise, and for that reason sharpening them made them hard to keep exactly perpendicular for some reason, since on all some slight "pinching" between powerful clamps was necessary, in addition to the sharpening within the prow's joint....
Ise took me three months to really iron out, in part due to my use of lacquers spray cans, which made the (large) amounts of putty re-appear through their aggressive action on this underlying putty. I really like laquer toughness for hulls, but won't go through that again... Hasegawa's Nagato in 1/350 does not have that problem, and its wrong panel lines were a small easy issue compared to the Fujimi kits warpage... Fujimi kits with a round bottom, such as the carriers, are not a problem either.
Gaston
[EDIT]: Slight dimples, and the hull's central joint in some places to a lesser extent, reappeared on the Ise's bottom after a few weeks: This is truly unsolvable and I will just build it as is, trying to find a stand that will hide the problem... So far I have found no way of getting a smooth bottom on all 3 Fujimi Battleship kits I have assembled... I did get the Fujimi Kongo because it was really cheap, and will comment on correcting the casemates and the hull join later, since it is more appropriate to this thread. G.
I looked already at the Youtube video about the ship model and extracted 26 screenshots from this video, although not the sharpest pictures they are still useable to me !
All these problems have been regular things resolved peacefully and enjoyably by veteran modelers for decades. Your hull looks awesome; rather than being angry you should feel a sense of accomplishment for achieving a good hull under less than ideal circumstances. As for hull dimples, several coats of squadron putty and a homemade small sanding block will work wonders.
