…
That’s a lot of bottles! I bet you’ve used all of them at least once.
The ship is looking great!
Colin 
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Hi Jorg,
I have been absent from the bench for a while, just picked up on your build. I built the 1902 fit, had great “fun” adapting the Pontos 1905 to get as much out of it as I could.
Will be along for the ride on your build.
Cheers,
Si
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Thank you guys.
Yes, that’s a lot of bottles. I think I have a tendency to exaggerate. 
@RedDuster
I admired your Mikasa in the old forum. A very good building. 
A new update.
The holes for the crampons were still missing on the upper casemates.
I repeat myself, but this is one of Ponto’s great strengths. The drilling templates!
Simply fix it with an adhesive strip and off you go…
Next I checked the wooden deck amidships. It had to be trimmed a bit to get it to fit properly. Because of the slightly different approach, I have little leeway when installing the parts.
But done satisfactorily.
So I was able to add the next floor.
Additional parts placed on top to check whether everything is in the correct position.
Everything fits perfectly.
Here are the pictures to show why I go to this length.
The slits in the four round casemates would still be manageable.
But this one isn’t very nice.
I think this is better.
After sanding three times…
…and prime, I am very satisfied.
And I especially like this one a lot better now.
The extra two days of effort were worth it.
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Off to the dry dock with the Mikasa.
There’s enough space in here on the port and starboard sides to protect the ship while you’re tinkering without it becoming too big and unwieldy.
This means it can be safely laid on its side, for example to work on the portholes.
I can also attach sheet pile walls of different heights to further increase the protection at the top.
Let’s attach the first large etched parts. The anchor supports…
…and the doors at the rear. The ship also had electrical cables all around the back. What purpose they had, however, is unknown to me. It will not have been demagnetizing cables.
In another forum a user asked me how I work with acrylic etched part glue.
I would like to show this using the rain deflectors of the portholes as an example.
We need an old brush, some paper towel, a little water and the glue. I dilute this until it has about the consistency of buttermilk.
Then I draw a guide line with adhesive tape to attach the etched parts neatly and straight.
Now I put a ring of glue around the porthole.
Then in with the etched part. The big advantage is that you have a very long time to properly align the component. Completely in contrast to superglue.
After I have aligned it, I pick up the excess glue again with the brush that has been cleaned in water and dried on the Zewa.
I can easily remove any edges of the glue with a dampened brush. This is also not possible with superglue.
The slight shine of the dried glue can no longer be seen after painting.
And so you get rain deflectors on the portholes like a string of pearls, which are also glued on extremely neatly.
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Amazing
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Thanks Johnny.
And now a little mini update.
The portholes are closed on the port side. At the bow.
I noticed another error in the model amidships. Three more portholes were missing from the upper row of casemates.
They cannot be seen in the pictures from back then. Most of the images of the ship are of poor quality and taken from a great distance. There are only some in a decent resolution very close up from the front. But of course you can’t see the casemates from the side.
But on the museum ship. And since I can’t imagine that they were added later, I adopted them.
And the portholes at the stern.
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Ahoy everyone.
One of the reasons why I bother to publish my construction reports in forums is the subsequent exchange of ideas. Construction phases should be questioned from time to time, this stimulates research and thus increases the historical correctness of the models. In another forum the question arose about the purpose of the barred portholes. That didn’t give me peace of mind. The grid would only have had a right to exist at the height of the anchors. On this ship, the anchors were pulled back on board with the davits and an anchor could have hit the hull or the porthole. In addition, the anchor chains ran past the portholes.
So I looked at everything I had in detail again.
The fact is that during active service, here in 1921, the front portholes were barred. You can see this in the following and best quality picture of the ship that I have. It was taken in Vladivostok in 1921.
Here the section is enlarged. So there were bars, but you can’t really tell whether all the lower portholes on the bow were barred.
Then this picture of the stern, also taken in Vladivostok in 1921. So quite late in their active service. She was in this dry dock for repairs.
Here the enlarged and brightened section shows that there were definitely no grilles in front of the portholes at the rear.
So the question arises as to where this protective measure went. The anchor area would be logical. I found the solution in the following picture.
The white arrow points to the same porthole in both photos. You can clearly see here that the portholes were protected with grilles right up to the anchor storage areas.
So get it down again. Good thing I don’t use superglue. So no act. Again, sanded clean and everything from the beginning.
And replaced everything at the rear.
Thank God Pontos isn’t stingy with his portholes. There are more than enough of them.
Completed.
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Some great info and photos here. And of course great model making! 
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Yes , that is very interesting for me and I like to watch your phantastic work . Very good .
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Just shows that in depth research is needed on builds sometimes…those images prove your point and although it’s extra work, it is better to have it as it should be. The build is moving along great and looking good.
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Hey,
sorry for my absence…that’s some great work and progress!
It is stunning to see your dedication to details most of us would not regard, but certainly that will make a great model - as you proofed with your Bismarck!
(Those pictures showing parts of your workbench make me feel bad…how can one be that organized? I truly wish for some more space…but regardless…it would never be as tidy as yours…)
Cheers
Jan
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Hi Jorg,
Another one I am very late to the party on, but have very much enjoyed reading through your blog.
I built the 1902 version a few years back, I will be follwoing along.
Cheers. Si
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Ahoy dear model building community.
Due to my wife’s illness, I’m making slow progress at the moment. But it’s nice that you can distract yourself a little by doing crafts.
I am very pleased that you appreciate my research. You really can’t find out everything, especially since there isn’t a lot of material about this ship. But I think it’s fun to search for clues like Sherlock Holmes. 
Believe me Jan, it doesn’t always look like this on my workbench. This is just for posing for the photos.
Nice to welcome you on board too, RedDuster.
And so I put my ship on its side again.
It was time for the final details to be added before painting. For me there are always very few. Most of it is only processed towards the end. This includes the grilles in front of the bow and stern cannons and of course the crampons.
I don’t use the crampons on the etched part boards. I don’t like these one hundred percent because they are of course flat. So I prefer to take thin wire and bend it to size.
In addition, crampons of different thicknesses were probably installed on the Mikasa.
Documented here in two old photo clippings. The arrows point to the two types of crampons.
You can really see that two different diameters were used. The crampons for climbing the torpedo net racks were much thicker.
And I want to represent this using 0.2 or 0.3 mm thick wire. I initially had 0.1mm wire in mind, but that wasn’t practical because it was too unstable. ( 0,2mm is 0,007 inch and 0,3mm is 0,01 inch)
And this is how it turns out after checking the primer. I like it quite a bit.
A few small irregularities can still be seen and will be removed with fine 1000 grit sandpaper after it has dried.
But I think you can guess that the different strength crampons are like the original.
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Lovely update. very intricate work making all the crampon/rungs but it looks so much better than the flat PE. Hope your wife makes a speedy recovery.
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Thank you very much, Johnny.
I finished all the rough work on the fuselage and was finally able to finish painting it.
After a proper preshading the whole thing now looks like this.
What followed was an accentuation.
Which means nothing other than that I painted fine details in a lighter gray.
Which was a real fiddly job. The dry decals from Pontos are really impressive. The depth marks are razor sharp.
Here too, water-soluble acrylic paints have a big advantage. Small slips can be removed immediately with water without leaving any residue.
This gives a decent contrast to the preshading areas.
Now i can start aging.
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The hull is looking superb!!! 
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That hull looks stunning … what fantastic colouring …
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Many, many thank guys.
At the moment my progress is very slow because I have to take care of my sick wife.
But I’ve already started aging.
As always, very tedious. But the result that a little diluted dark gray paint leaves on a painted surface still amazes and fascinates me. Even after all the years I’ve been doing this.
A little every day and I’ll report back when it’s done. 
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