Paper Ship: Bismarck, HMV, 1:250

[dr_gn]

Benni said:

I am wathing your builds with total respect to the stamina, patience,
creativity to overcome design / manufacturing flaws and the various challenges arising with the material(s).
Even if "building" is more satiyfying to you than "looking at" or "presenting" your models,
Do some of them really go in the bin ?
Would be quite fitting for the Bismarck (sunk on the first outing) but I would think a model of that scale,
and perfection, could fetch some money from a "collect only" buyer ?
Profit could go in your model-stuff fund or maybe to a charity like RNLI ?
€dit : Holy crapp, I just did a quick search and this came up :
https://www.ebay.com/itm/174928595928?hash=item28b...

Thanks Benni. No, none of the finished models go in the bin, someone asked what would happen to them when I snuff it, and I said I suppose they would be thrown out, or end up in someone's loft. I've thrown away a few models mid-build, because I'd made a mistake I couldn't correct, but always got another and finished then in the end. In general, kits from quality manufacturers like Eduard and Tamiya are fine, and are enjoyable builds.

That Bismarck you linked to looks like a plastic kit, and it's smaller and less detailed than my paper version. Even so, the hourly rate for the builder can't be much, especially if you subtract initial kit cost, materials and overheads from the final price. I've seen a few "Pro built" models on EBay, and some individuals who make custom-built kits for people, but I fail to see how it can be a viable business for what they charge.

[dr_gn]

Continued with detail work on the bows - fitted the hawser pipe, and formed the small cutouts at either side:



There is a doubler plate that fits over everything, eventually:





The pipe fitted ok, and kept itself fairly round. Good job, because the front anchor shank and shackle have to pass through it eventually:



Also started on the port side anchor recess. Began by painting out the location lines:



The fillet piece will cover any gaps in the structure behind, but I’ll do that tomorrow when the first parts are secure.

[dr_gn]

Continued this evening with some of the bow details. There's a separate panel to make the deck double thickness under the main anchor chains, and then a further two doubled pieces to reinforce the area around the anchor recesses. There's also a small doubled panel that fits around the hawser pipe bell mouth:



I applied cyano along the visible edges of the cut-out reinforcements, to get rid of the laminations, then painted grey:



Then attached to the deck doubler plate:



Then, after carefully aligning the deck doubler (and the missing swastika I painted on), dotted PVA underneath, and weighted down with slip gauges:



And wicked dilute PVA around the periphery to stop it lifting;



Then added the hawser doubler:



That pretty much covers the basic structure of the bows:





The main anchors will cover the small gaps around the recesses. Might add some more PVA anyway, but no big deal either way.

[dr_gn]

Fitted the secondary armament bases. Started by painting around the bottom of the flanges in black, so that any gaps won’t be as obvious:



Fitted initially using the 3D printed taper plugs, then weighted in position with slip gauges:






Then reamed out the A turret aperture:



Painted around the A and D turret bases:



Glued in place:



D turret wad more problematic, because the deck wasn’t perfectly flat. I shored it up with balsa:





Still fiddling about with the fit:



Also visible is some water staining - no idea where it came from, but will take some careful paint mixing and brushing to get rid of it.

Also got rid of the white cut lines on the armour return:

[dr_gn]

Jenny Tailor said:

OP - Any update that you can share?

Nope - not done much to it recenty.

[dr_gn]

wolfracesonic said:

Jenny Tailor said:

OP - Any update that you can share?

It was sunk by the Fairey Swordfish in the bath.

If only that were true - bath mixer tap started leaking last night, so that's another thing on the list of things to do.