Sorry, I have a couple of other projects come up that have kept me too busy. I have started and stopped a couple times on them. Lots of fine detail and a steady hand needed. Not forgotten by any means, just kind of in a holding pattern for the time being.
John
We all know how that go’s ! ( I have 4 kit’s "staring at me right now.)
Not to mention the Wife’s { To Do } list… Sigh …
Apologies to all for the long delay. After losing my Dad last fall, I decided that life is too short and I wanted to focus on some things that I enjoy and not just working. So, I decided to retire early. I moved across the country to be back with family and am finally getting settled. I have a full 800 sf man cave in the basement for all the toys and hobbies, so it is time to get started again.
The good news is that the sub made it back in all its various bits and pieces without incident. Bad news is getting the assembly line so to speak back up and running. We left off with the crew. What a tough place to get back to it as there are 48 of these guys and painting them was no easy task. Here are some photos of a few of them.
Others have posted and I will concur with them about the figures:
Some of the detail was almost impossible for me to do. The small insignia on the hats and the stripes on the Captain’s sleeve come to mind. At least they are done!
Next up is getting the conning tower put together and then reviewing where I am and what the rest of the steps will be. More to come.
John
Welcome back, John, happy to see you again.
Filippo
Thanks, it is good to be modelling again. I have some new photography gear that I am getting used to, so hopefully the pictures will be better. OK, let’s look at the deck guns for this. There is the AA gun and the main deck gun. The AA gun is very straightforward with a couple of exceptions:
The catch basket for the shells is made up of two main pieces and a frame. Two are plastic and one is photo etched. The thing that is odd is that one piece of the basket is plastic and the other piece is the photo etch. So the catch bag looks great for half and not so great for the other in comparison.
The photo etch part is a tough little “bend” as there are no real hard straight lines and you must form it to two plastic pieces and the glue is on the edges of the pieces.
Patience, patience, an did I mention patience…
I finally applied the CA liberally and then with a pin cleaned out most of the mesh on the photo etch.
Now for the main event; the deck gun. I had purchased the Eduard brassin gun for this guy. As I looked at all the parts, I realized this was going to be a tough little build. The main reason is the parts are very small, but more importantly, you are gluing the “heads of pins to the heads of pins” and trying to get 90-degree angles. The ends of some of the pieces are literally the size of a pin head and that gets a “handle” attached to it. And there are a lot of them. My main issue with this was one of angles. I have a decent amount them and that makes the gun look off balance.
So, as I was going through it, I went to the web and thought I would look at the reviewer’s builds and see how they did it. Much to my chagrin, I hit Scalemates and a Google search, and all the reviews talk about what a great kit it is but only of them appeared to have actually built the thing. The reviews are mostly just of the components, not the finished product. The one build had a side-by-side of a finished painted and weathered Eduard piece next to a just glued together kit gun. Eduard has some great photos, so I persevered.
I finally finished and even added some of the wire that was not included but referenced in the instructions. I used 36 gauge wire and there are actually cleats cast on the resin for the wire to wrap around. I got it to work, but then broke one of the cleats while working on one of the sections. Fragile stuff here.
When I was fiddling around getting all the arms and legs attached to the main section, I broke another couple of pieces. Did I say small and fragile…
There are actually 4 photo etch pieces that are only about 1/32 of an inch square that are to be glued on! I didn’t really see them in any of the photos however.
So after basically finishing it, I decided hey; why not build the kit gun and compare them. So just 16 parts and a lot less aggravation, here is the comparison:
Now with the crew to be assigned to it:
I am not saying the Eduard piece is a bad add-on. The detail they did on this is amazing. The downside is there are a lot of fiddly parts and you will need some nice magnifiers and lots of time to get it all right which I failed to do in a couple areas. You will have to decide for yourself if you think it is worth it.
John
ALRIGHT ! My favorite WIP is back !
The kit’s main gun appear’s to be just a hint larger than the aftermarket gun. But the aftermarket stuff DEFENETLY look’s better ( totally worth the extra hassle in my opinion)
Cant wait to see more.
Well the next item is what the instructions call “Set Sail”. There are not that many parts, but there are several very fragile railings that must be dealt with. Also, half of the unit is in the clear plastic. What is very odd is that the clear side is opposite of the hull. So, if you are looking through the clear side of the hull, the conning tower will be blocked. You would have to go to the other side to see through the tower, but then the hull is solid. I have no idea what that is all about.
There are a few sub-assemblies, but they are pretty easy. Both periscopes are molded clear. I think that is more about filling a sprue than the need for that. Both periscopes are to be painted anyway.
Here is a sampling of the railings. There was a bit of flash on some of them. They are about 1mm in thickness. The ones that attach to the clear side will need to be painted before attaching them obviously.
Here is a section of the clear side. Nice detail and the plastic is nice and clear.
I had used my oil paints for the wooden sections but neglected to see that there was another piece that attaches that also has wooden slats. Sigh; I will try to match with some acrylics as I don’t want to mess with oils for that small amount. You can see there are some sink marks that will need to be dealt with as they will be visible through the clear side.
Here is a very small piece (1 inch by 1 ½ inches) that attaches to the clear side. The sink marks would be visible as well, but they are at the “bottom” of the piece and filling and/or sanding them would be a bit tough.
So, I decided to cut a piece of balsa wood and press it into the indentation and then paint it up. Should be better than those sink marks.
Well, that is it for the assembly of the “set sail”. Next I will get it painted and put together. It will be then ready to mate to the hull. We are getting closer
the lighting in that engine space captures the feel to a tee… after having toured the USS LING in NJ several times growing up , i can look at that and smell the aroma of diesel , grease and oil!
I love the control Room work you have done and the Guns and figures look very good too. Beautiful work overall so far…Cheers mark
Well I am happy to say, that I have completed this build! I received the kit on March 1st of 2017. So almost 2 ½ years to complete albeit off and on. She has been taking up my whole hobby area in the basement as the size is quite large. After painting all the figures and getting ready from the last update, I kept having setbacks with this thing:
I lost a couple of pieces that I did eventually find, but it made me wait thinking of alternatives.
I was dry fitting the compartments and rolled the hull too far and the forward compartment slipped out and crashed to the floor. Lots of fixing….
I inadvertently glued a piece in the coning tower in the wrong place and that meant that the two top halves of the conning tower would not fit together. This turned out to help me with a big decision, as I decided to not put the clear halves on for either the conning tower or the main hull. The “open” side of the conning tower will not be seen anyway as it is on the opposite side.
What to weather? I was getting beaten down thinking that it could take months to properly weather this boat, and I was just wanting to get her done after over 2 years. Then I decided that I would not weather it at all. I am presenting her as if she was on her first shake down cruise. Loaded with torpedoes, but not with a full crew and looking very new. With that huge obstacle behind me, it was on to the next big part; the wiring.
I have never messed with these kinds of tiny lights, so it was a learning experience for me. Trying to convert milliamps to 9-volt battery capacity made me worry, so I decided to get an electric plug. I will be putting this on a shelf near an outlet eventually, so it won’t be an issue. Well there is still the issue of wiring from the outside in, but I put that off for the moment. I placed 20 tiny LEDs inside the compartments. I decided against one in the conning tower as you would never see it. So, each light has two wires coming from it. The wires that come with the lights are only about 8 inches long and all of them will have to be traced to the center compartment as that is where the main power source is connected. That meant adding wiring. At first, I just twisted them all together and that seemed to be working but I was worried about moving it around and also about fitting all the compartments together as there would be no way to go back and forth with it. So, I decided to solder the wiring all together. Well a cheapo soldering iron and some solder in a kit and off I went. Each compartment had 2 to 4 lights, so I was soldering each compartment’s bundle and then each of those ends would be soldered to a longer wire. Those wires would then go to the central section where they would be joined with the switch wires and that has a small plug which attaches to the main connection. Everything went very well, and the lights all worked the first time. There is plenty of room behind each of the compartments for the wiring bundles and a small hole drilled in the bottom of the hull for the switch wires completed the task.
pic
Put the plate in front, and you cannot even tell
Here is each compartment (from front to aft) lit up.
After the wiring tests, it was time to fit all the compartments into the hull. I worked from front to center and back to center to make feeding the wires to the center easiest. It also gave me a chance to do one last test on the spacing of the compartments. There are good locator tabs in the hull for each compartment, but you must be very careful as the tolerances are very small. When it came time to put in the center section, I had to very gently pry open the space left to get it to fit in. You also must make sure that the top parts of some of the compartments have the slots aligned for some piping and the ladders and periscopes. I do give Trumpeter a shout out here as being very careful everything did fit.
Now there are a couple of “are you kidding me” pieces to consider. The last aft section has a completely clear “sleeve” that goes over it making up the hull and deck. It fits pretty well making sure that some long parts don’t bind. Once that section is sleeved over, you are then to place the rudder posts up through holes in the hull. Nothing to that EXCEPT that the ends of those posts are supposed to be attached to a floating control arm at the top. Now keep in mind you have just placed that floating arm, and the rest of the last aft compartment, inside a solid piece (ship in a bottle…). See the last photo above.
I stopped and pondered for a couple more days until I realized that there is a small access area from where the rear firing torpedo would exit. So by not gluing things together I was able to get some long tweezers in the hole and grab that floating arm and then having placed a drop of CA glue on the end of the rudder post kind of mate the two and keep them together for a few seconds until the glue firms up. Then you can complete the gluing of the support arms from the outside rudder ends.
That whole concept is buried in very small print on page 63 with “Connect to B8 and B11”. That was a real pain in the a** let me tell you. If you paint that clear section over as some have it won’t matter as you won’t see it.
Here are a few more shots
Lastly, here she is in all her glory
She is remarkedly heavy considering it is all plastic. There is no description of the rigging except for the box photos. Now since I had not been able to glue both sides of the conning tower, I did not have the connection points on the port side for the rigging to attach to… More frustration. So, I just decided to leave the rigging off as opposed to having half of it.
So, after all of this and looking back from the beginning to what I know now, what are my take aways?
What must you do:
Light it. Otherwise, you will have folks squinting and saying, “what is back in there?”
Display it. Too much time and effort to relegate this to the back of some room.
So, what are the reasons to buy it:
It is a showstopper and a conversation piece. No one will walk by it without talking about it. Great way to talk about the hobby and generate interest with people.
If you like U-boats, or maritime stuff in general, it is going to be tough to beat kit wise.
Many options to detail and take it over the top.
Reasons, not to buy it:
Fiddly parts. This is not a Tamiya tank with 6 sprues and 20 steps. I think the diesel engine had close to 100 itself! There are many assemblies where you are gluing the tiniest of parts to another tiny area with no locating pins. Think of trying to keep 2 ping pong balls from rolling around while you try to glue a string to them while they are on a hardwood floor.
TINY parts. Countless tubes and small railings to be cleaned up.
Lots of parts. First step is the torpedoes and you are instructed to make 12. You will be working a long time on this one. Instant gratification it is not.
Time and Space. To me this turned out to be the biggest negative. Each compartment is like a kit unto itself at about 1/35 scale. So, I built half a dozen 1/35 Panzers IVs. Sounds cool, but then you realize you must take each of those guys and build them onto a freight train complete with locomotive and tracks. Once you get to that stage, you will NEED space. Fit that into a spray booth…. The longer it goes on the more space you need.
Some annoyances that don’t really tip the scales either way for me:
Figures. They are average at best and I did not know that there were that many sets of identical twins in the Kriegsmarine… It becomes obvious that there are duplicates in the compartments. I just didn’t put them all in.
Painting diagrams. This could have been done better as there is some guess work in areas.
Assembly diagrams. Now this goes to say with a large kit but be CAREFUL. There are lots of arrows that you end up tracing to find exactly which hole in the roof that piece goes into. That is what bit me with the conning tower piece.
Loss of detail. Even with the lighting, I found myself bummed out that many nice details would not be visible. The head and the galley as prime examples.
Accuracy. This is a topic that seems to always have people coming to blows. The deck and hull do not have the open slots. Everything is molded solid although there are indentations. There is add on PE and I saw one fellow who basically removed almost the whole top of the deck to put the PE on to make it better. Way too much for me.
Lastly, money. I don’t necessarily look at just the price, but rather the cost per hour for the enjoyment I get. I got a LOT of build time for my $400 and have quite a cool looking item. I never really found myself thinking about how much it cost.
Well, these are my opinions only and you may be completely opposite from me. I hope you found this enjoyable and helpful. Thanks for sticking around for the whole thing.
John
wow beauitful job!!!
Here is a full size photo of the whole thing:
And a really big one:
What a stellar piece of work!! I’ve followed along from the beginning and think you’ve really done a superb job. The lighting really finished it off. You’re painting skills are top notch - every compartment looks so crisp and the colors just seem right.
Pilotjohn - FANTASTIC!!!
I was following your build from the beginning and in fact it made get the kit and build it too! Thanks for posting your in progress and finished pics!
Very, very, very nice!!!
Thank you everyone! It definitely made me a better modeler.
John
John, that is really something. I mean like really something.
I completely missed this thread, but what a treat to see it start to finish. I’d never heard of this kit, and you turned it into a showstopper. Who woulda thunk of lighting up the inside of a sub model.
Good for you. As you mentioned, display this with pride. You deserve it. [Y][Y][Y]
Did I mention those lights? [:D[
I love this build and have been looking to buy this kit for 2 years. Can’t believe I didn’t see this thread before. Beautifully done!
unbelievable… you definitly caught the “essence”. now you have to dip the figures in rotten onion juice to simulate the smell after two weeks into the patrol…[:D]
Fantastic work John! I received mine at Christmas and I’m now in the planning stages. Your posts will be displayed on my big screen TV in my shop when I start on this beast.