This was my first ship model as well as first serious ship model. Took about 4 months to complete and very much a crash course in PE. This is my favourite carrier design, hurricane bow, largish island and big stack, as slick as a carrier can be. I think at the time I used about 9 different frets of generic PE sets. Probably have hundreds now a few years on. It was pretty ambitious for me back then, after getting rid of all the raised details on deck, drilled aircraft tiedowns, some 1300 of them by hand drill. That was when I vowed for future kits, if there are PE replacement decks, I will buy them instead.
Last weekend I tore off the old mast (which was the kit mast, terribly thick) and replaced with PE replacement, added a few flags and applied a wash. It still looks alright, the effort will always be there if a bit messy in execution.
I cannot wait to get a start on the newly tooled Fujimi kit! [<:o)]
[t$t] Your dedication, perserverance, and attention to detail shows! Even more impressive than it being your first ship model is the fact that it is 1/700 as well![:D[
Manny, it’s not ‘that’ scale, it’s ‘The’ scale [A] oh, JFYI, currently building a Tirpitz (in town camou) and Zuiho. [;)][;)]
gonavycv64, is yours the new Fujimi or the same Tamiya? The new Fujimi kit other than some molding blemish, is very good.
tigerman, the drilling took place over a few TV sessions, broke 2 drill bits though…This is not a recent build, it’s retouched but about 4 years old.
Lots of things that were difficult to do back then is now easy due to tools. Eg I tried to get rid of platform supports with nothing other than a hobby knife. Chisel would’ve made short/tidy work of that. I also had to stretch sprue for all the vertical beams, now there’s plenty of evergreen rods around. If I’m to build the same again probably would’ve taken less than 3 weeks. Or I can just use the Fujimi kit which already has those details and more. Aircraft canopies were a major pain from nets. Now there are commercially available sets for the same. The hobby is awash with AM, little wonder some people felt it is no longer challenging enough and started doing ‘odd’ scales like 1/450 etc just because there’s not as much AM and a lot must be scratch built = more uniqueness.
