Aoshima 1/700 IJN Nagato 1927, a.k.a. Ole Grimey

I got this model kit for last Christmas from my wife. As usual, I built it with some gaps in between certain tasks. First I assembled the hull and turrrets, and then continued with other projects. Some time later I did the rest of the subassemblies, then it again took a while to paint them. 

The Nagato-class is perhaps the most powerful of all pre-treaty battleships, and their heptapodal main mast is a trademark feature - also more ergonomical in design than the restructured Fuso-class for example. In the far future I plan to build a Tosa using pieces from a Nagato and a Kaga kit, but that prospect is yet very distant.

The weird slanted funnel was also a focus point when choosing this version instead of the WW2 era rig.

All in all, the build was enjoyable, apart from the casual matter of things getting lost or broken off. I lost an AA gun on the aft platform, and all of the boat davits forward. I replicated these from scratch or turned to my spares box for solutions. 

Proud of PE

This is just a short post to let you know I'm working on the Snowman Model 1/700 scale SMS Derfflinger (post-Jutland full hull version), and I think I'm starting to get the gist of properly placing photoetched parts.

Most of the ship is going to be built straight out of the box, but the three bar rails around the bridge are third party, first shaped, then primed and painted, glued in place, and finally touched up a bit.

The fun thing is I'm going to cover all of that in canvas, as per the reference image I posted earlier on this blog, but it's still satisfying to know that all that brass is there.

I'm going to add a few more ladders and staircases once this subassembly is placed on the hull (as some of those connect it to the aft funnel, there is no point in doing them right now).

So no, PE this time does not mean physical education.

USS Arizona '36 Edition - Completed

Long time no see, dear blog readers, but that does not mean I'm completely lost or forgot about the hobby. In actual fact, I have been rather busy these past few weeks, I just focused more on producing stuff and less about taking photos and writing about them.

Among other things, I managed to wrap up the Arizona kit, with a lot of swearing re photoetch related misadventures. Lesson learned: I bought a professional PE bender. It's a hefty piece and produced locally. 

The kit could still be improved, for example I tried to replicate the bilge keels but failed, however, it was a learning experience from the beginning, and I think it turned out fine, especially compared to the original material.

Here follows a showcase of the few worthwhile pictures I could manage:

USS Arizona '36 Edition WIP #3 - Life Signs Edition

 

First of all, a Happy New Year to everyone.

It just occurred to me that although blog posting is sparse, I actually did a lot more hobby-related things during the past year - more available free time I guess, because of less commuting. I hope that in time I'll be able to catch up with my painting output and post on this blog more frequently.

Among other things, some progress had been made on the Arizona. The bottom of the hull was painted red, and some sub-assemblies completed. After repositioning all the barrels, I painted and varnished the turrets. My homemade PE bender turned out to be faulty, but two scalpel blades helped me out in completing the first larger (1/700 scale so ther term is up to debate) PE part I ever did, the turret-mounted catapult in these images. I'm really proud of the result. The catapult is five or six pieces and includes multiple 90° bends. The good-lookin Seagull mounted on it is made out of another five pieces. It was not frustrating at all to put together.

I could bore you further with details about how horrible everything is on the Hobby Boss kit, but let's just be happy for a little while.

USS Arizona '36 Edition WIP #2

 

Some progress was made during the long weekend with the Arizona build. I sanded the hull to a better shape and corrected the torpedo bulge at the bow. The gun shields were trimmed off the deck above the secondary casemates. And finally, the metal barrels were glued to the turrets which were more or less corrected.

There are obvious mould lines and marks all across, which makes the process, erm, interesting. I'm glad I don't have to work with the plastic barrels. I'll salvage those for another project.

Next up is sanding the second deck tier to a smooth finish, and doing something about those nasty porthole-looking things. I'll probably fill them up, add some card on the outside and drill proper holes.

USS Arizona '36 Edition WIP #1

 

I might have mentioned previously that I'm on the lookout for the Takom 1/700 scale Derfflinger kit. Well it was made available in local model stores recently, so, to clear the queue and do some practice, I started working on the 1/700 scale Hobby Boss USS Arizona.

1/700 IJN Kongo WIP: 'I Couldn't Leave It Like That' Edition

In my previous post I praised the quality of the model, and while I'm still kind of happy with it, a few problems arose that needed addressing - people with historical OCD can, I believe, relate to this.

The hull supplied in the set is suitable for the 1935 and 1944 builds of the Kongo. The bases for all the secondary casemates are cast together with the hull. However, examining models and period photos I had found out that in her 1944 form, the unused ports for the removed guns were welded over. This means that I had to scrape away the bases of the casemates and apply filler to be sanded later.

The rear conning tower (or similar structure, IDK) has an AA platform that is connected with a walkway to the one at the midsection of the rear tripod. While a walkway was supplied connecting the AA platform directly between the pagoda and the searchlights and further AA on the side of the first funnel, the one I'm talking about was missing. I had to fabricate it from cardstock, and added some PE railings (again, not very historical) both to this one and the one forwards.

There should be a large crane that is connected to the rear tripod, and this one was missing entirely from the kit. A Zvezda pikeman's arm came to the rescue, along with some stretched sprue.

Speaking of stretched sprue, a length of it was used to upgrade the crane servicing the seaplane catapult between turrets 3 & 4.

The kit was missing blast bags on all main guns, which was remedied with some goopy epoxy putty. When dried, it gives the appropriate effect. First I was a bit afraid of using it, but it works wonders.

The rather clumsy main radar antenna broke off during construction (this can actually be seen in the previous post), so I fabricated another using PE railings and card. There was a spare main rangefinder, from which I trimmed the periscopes off and used it as the base for the new radar appliance.

The flat bottom was attached without a hassle or any need for rubber bands, there is a metal bar glued to it to weigh the ship down, which is an excellent solution IMHO.

One thing I messed up doing the Bismarck was leaving way too many sub-assemblies separate for painting. I'm good enough with a small brush to reach everything on here while assembled, leaving only the seaplanes and the boats to be painted separately.

1/700 IJN Kongo WIP: Professional Pagoda Planning

When there was some hobby time available, I started sub-assemblies on the Kongo. It comes together much easier than the Trumpeter Bismarck. There still is a lot of filing and scraping involved.

New Project for the New Year

 

While browsing through a local FB group, I found a listing of multiple 1/700 scale ships. Most of them were Krigesmarine ships, just the regular stuff, but in the same listing there was this gem, an 1993 issue of the Hasegawa waterline model of the IJN Kongo, post-1935 refit. I really like the Japanese dreadnoughts for their oddness (except for the Yamato-class, which IMHO are ugly), so I decided to buy. 

This is most likely going to be a simple, out of the box build, the beginning of a learning curve, so to speak, of assembling and painting more detailed scale models. I have an 1/700 Trumpeter Bismarck that is still unfinished and its main mast has broken off, but I might just deal with it later after all the frustration it caused. Let us hope that the Kongo will not cause such disappointment.

Hobby Diary Post (Amidst COVID-19)

Hello dear readers, long time no see. This is slightly off topic, but I hope it will make sense in the end.

We have finished moving flats and we are in an overall safer and quieter place than before. The move could not have been timed better, because we have left behind the raging proles of our previous environment, where an early close at the local Lidl meant the beginning of The Hunger Games' new episode. I can't imagine the situation there now.

Just after we moved in and collected our first pieces of furniture, the first reports of the global virus hysteria began reaching Hungary. It took little time to identify the first contagions as well. 

Here's the thing though: the Hungarian medical services are understaffed, underpaid, and in general unprepared for dealing with the number of virus patients we are likely to see, where more advanced countires such as Italy had proven to be failing. While government news outlets made it an issue to point out at every possible occasion that the first proven patients were foreigners (Iranians to top it off), simultaneously they failed to diagnose Hungarian citizens arriving home from, amongst other places, Northern Italy, also elderly patients with coronavirus symptoms but no proven contact. At the time of writing this post, we are at 50 proven contagions, 2 cured and 1 death, but considering that neighbouring Slovakia with half of our population has more, well...

People are fighting it out over daily items- you may have heard from the mass TP buys in Australia, well here one of the home delivery guys told us that somebody just bought a literal metric ton of supplies, before there were more than 10 diagnosed patients in the country. This includes purchasing all the ANTIBACTERIAL disinfectants and surgery masks, which have no effect on the virus at all, but people with recent operations or chronic respiratory diseases can't get them because of all these idiots.

But there's good things amongst all the bad. We can shut ourselves in, avoiding almost all contacts. This affects most hobbyists and model makers around the world, as I found out in many Facebook groups, as they can launch themselves against the piles of plastic and paints bought earlier and finish them in good time.

I am between jobs currently, but we have enough reserves so I do not have to rush things, so I, too, can focus on some of my projects. In the picture above, you can see the semi-assembled Trumpeter 1/700 Bismarck, which I'm currently painting (finished adding the grey and washes, plus some smaller pieces like the seaplane and boats). I'll make a nice sea base for it as well and make it a display piece.

My further plans include building (at least) two versions of the MNF Bretagne in her 1935-40 refit, one ship in a bottle, and the other a desert diorama. I really like the tripod structure, and it could prove a nice challenge to reconstruct it using period photos and blueprints. Well, getting the blueprint on paper is also somewhat of a challenge currently, but I can manage. I also managed to finish Camus' The Plague just before the real large turd hit the fan and larger numbers of contagions began to surface.

So, we are fine (including the tiny pug), and I hope it will stay this way. I wish for the following period to be as trouble-free as it can for all of you.