Apr 10, 2013

Revell 1/1200 Yamato + Loki's Great Hall giveaway


The Yamato was a huge Japanese battleship in the Second World War constructed to bring fear to the opposing fleet. It was 263 metres long, 36 metres wide, larger than any other unit including the German twin battleships Bismarck and Tirpitz. Main armament was 9x46cm guns. It was sunk by US aircraft. They were not so much afraid of it.

This Revell representation of the ship was not easy to assemble. The mold's age is shown, miscasts and lines and flash everywhere. As it usually goes with ships, however, painting have been rather easy.


The kit comes with 5 main gun turrets, either with AA guns on their top or not. The Yamato had more than 250 AA guns on deck, yet it was not enough to stop it being destroyed. Compared to the ships I've worked on earlier, it has a very interesting silhouette.


Before continuing with more photos, please check the very generous Andrew's (Loki's) Great Hall blog which has passed its 2nd birthday and has a nice giveaway, it is really worth joining in.

Picture deliberately stolen from Andrew's place. Now that the slideshow is back you can't even miss it.




The work phases were the usual: black undercoat, grey&dark earth block painting, then a light grey drybrush all over it, after 2-3 hours of drying a finish with quickshade included. Works perfectly for this scale. 
Also figured that the quickshade needs room temperature (20-22°C) not to become glossy when it dries. Either too cold (leaving the windows open) or too warm (leaving it on the radiator) can cause problems.


The scale allows a lot of detail while not being too nerve-killing to paint, for example there are staircases visible and singularly mounted AA gun turrets which are really tiny. Also the kits are cheap (a good point for me as always) so I see no trouble buying a few more.


The included painting guide in the assembly instructions said the main deck's wooden planking should be coloured 'beige'... what.


The aft has two catapults to launch planes.


Here is the Yamato or its brother ship Musashi on a coloured photo, not as if there were many colors to be seen. There were 3 made of the class but the third was converted to an aircraft carrier wisely.

8 comments:

  1. Nice work, Andras. I'm pretty sure I built that one as a kid. She sunk under a hail of BB gun fire.

    Regards,
    Steve

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    Replies
    1. Thank you. I remember having a few back in school and they could swim but they weren't really well balanced.

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    2. You did, and then I lit it on fire and we watched the thick black smoke until it melted down. Sure did stink up the atmosphere.

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    3. Nothing smells like molten plastic and burning paper.

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  2. Real good paintwork! Nice ship.

    Regards
    Bruno

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  3. It sure painted up well! Quite the imposing model, until a model aircraft carrier is placed near it. ;-)

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    Replies
    1. Thank you, Revell makes both WW2 US aircraft carriers and a modern one (the Nimitz I believe) in 1/1200 but I'm a battleship guy so these have to wait if I ever buy them at all.

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  4. What a beautiful ship! Great work!
    Phil.

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