IJN Mogami (Tamiya 1/350)

[JIM BAUMANN]

Its making good progress-- lots of work!!




JIM B

[Dirk]

Thanks Jim !
The changing from motor pinnance to motor boat is completed:

Mogami105

Mogami106

Mogami107

Dirk

[Dirk]

I added another 9 m cutter, this time covered by a tarpaulin. I used Teflon� tape (Polytetrafluorethen (PTFE)). The inspiration came from sirmaumau (viewtopic.php?f=59&t=49603&start=20).
Greetings to ??!

Mogami108

Mogami109

Dirk

[Dirk]

When I saw sirmaumau using the PTFE for boat tarpaulins I immediately started to do some experiments with this material. It seems to be difficult to produce wrinkles with this material. Typically it will be very straight and smooth. Then I had an idea which I want to show here:

Mogami110

(1) Starting with a spare cutter with a nice (airbrushed) bottom. The inside can be ugly as shown here.
(2) Bending a spare PE part for such a cutter
(3) Gluing it roughly to the cutter. This is only for producing some features in the PTFE cover.

Mogami111

(4) Putting the PTFE tape in place. I fixed three points with a little bit of CA glue.
(5) Attaching very fine thread (here UNI-Thread W6/0)
(6) Producing additional wrinkles carefully with a pair of tweezers

Mogami112

Mogami112, 108 and 109 show the result.

I want to add here that this one possibility and my main aim is do give some inspiration. The PTFE is very white but Enamel colors can be used. I also made experiments with a very fine layer of a pale yellow by airbrushing. Then by elongating the tape a little bit this seems to give nice aging effects. More experiments are required but I think this material is interesting for us ship modellers.
Dirk

[Dirk]

I finished the first 3 Jakes. They are from the Hasegawa seaplane set A and are coming with a clear canopy.
Dirk

[nick]

It doesn't even look like it's 1/350!



Nick

[Dirk]

Hi Nick,
do you mean it is 1/350 but it looks like 1/700?
If not: thank you!
By the way, do you have some spare paper pilots in your fleet?
Dirk

[J. Soca]

Great job on the planes Dirk!! canopy painting looks amazing i think i will try the teflon tape idea once i get to the boats i'm impressesed by how easily the ripples on the canvas can be recreated . keep it up!!



Jose

[gtbred]

Man, you just have shake your head.

[William J]

Brilliant work Dirk.

Bill Keough

[Dirk]

Thanks, Jose, gtbred, and Bill.
Still with the additional motivation from you, the next progress update will take a while. The reason: I am now mass-producing Jakes, Petes and AA guns.
Later it will be a hard decision to choose between the following options:
- 5 Jakes (from my sources the state for the advance to Surigao Strait)
- more Jakes
- Jakes + Petes
Dirk

[Dan K]

Outstanding work, Dirk. Love it.

[Christian Bruer]

Hi Dirk,

I hope you're well! Long time no see/hear! Amazing progress on your Mogami! Very very well done

[Dirk]

Thank you very much indeed, Dan and Christian!
How are you, Christian? Please keep me informed when you and the other Gamblers will go to an event. I am so lazy to search for upcoming events that I miss a lot (like Fuldatal).

I am no producing five Petes and five additional Jakes.
In the case of the Petes I am bold and start without prototype.
The Petes in the Hasegawa kit don�t have transparent cockpits and unfortunately no PE parts are included for that. So I have to produce them myself. It is not very difficult and a lot others here have shown the advantage of glazed PE cockpits. Here some details for my Petes:
Mogami115 shows the process:

Mogami115

(1) Initial Hasegawa fuselage with plastic cockpits
(2) After removing plastic cockpits
(3) PE parts in place

I want to go a little bit more in detail (example rear cockpit of a Pete).
I started with a Flyhawk grid (0.8 mm x 0.8 mm) with has an appropriate distance and is not too coarse.

Mogami116

Mogami117 shows details of cutting and bending:

Mogami117

(1) After cutting from FH700052 (this is for 1/700 and not 1/350; I don�t care.) and (left) removing three struts
(2) In-plane bending
(3) Shearing with two pairs of tweezers
(4) 3D bending with the help of a tooth pick
(5) New part in place
Dirk

[Quincy]

Dirk, your workmanship is unbelievable!!!




Bob Pink.

[Dirk]

Thanks a lot, Bob!
Here is more of my progress with the Petes:
Mogami118 and 119 shows two of them in the �normal� configuration.
This time I also used the Hasegawa decals for the propeller stripes. With my Optivisor this is now possible.

Mogami118

Mogami119

Mogami120 shows a Pete protected by PTFE tape (before appling it I airbrushed it with a thin layer of yellow/brown.). There are still some parts missing (color not dry) and I hope I can add this tomorrow. I want to prepare two Jakes and two Petes in this version.

Mogami120

Dirk

[USN_Matt]

Very nice! It looks amazing! But are you sure its 1/350? with all its detail it looks bigger than it is!

[Dirk]

Thanks, USN_Matt!
I am sure it is 1/350 (This is at least stated on the kit boxes).
Here the high magnifications of my macro photographs are misleading (and no reference coin or match). The pictures also show small flaws very clearly at this magnification.
Dirk

[Dirk]

I added the support constructions to the wings of the Pete.

Mogami121

Mogami122

Mogami123

I think this construction was used during cruising to protect the planes against damage from storm and heavy sea. As a guideline I employed the famous picture of Mogami showing her in July 1943 with 4 Jakes and 3 Petes on the floatplane handling deck. This picture can be found (digitally colorized) on the fantastic home page
http://blog.livedoor.jp/irootoko_jr
Dirk

[Dirk]

� and here a Jake rigged for cruising.

Mogami124

Mogami125

Mogami126

In the 1943 picture of Mogami all visible 7 planes are prepared like this.
My intention is to have 2 Jakes and 2 Petes in this configuration and 3 Jakes and 3 Petes in the �ready for takeoff� state.
Dirk