Maybe I will or not. They’re not that easy to visualize.
With the full court press to get this thing down by December 25, I had another short, but productive, Saturday work session.
Here’s a comparison of the Badger Model Tech Early WW2 Haze Grey and the Life Color Late War Haze Gray. This Life Color is the correct version in my estimation and is the one I used on my Missouri.
So I shot the whole model and here’s what it looks like.
It’s better. The Life Color airbrushes beautifully. After it was dry to the touch, I pulled the turret carefully off the base plate, easing as little slack in the LED leads that I fished yesterday and removed the masking. I was rewarded with no leakage.
It was time to fasten down the shell permanently. And Boy! Am I glad that I chose to screw it on instead of gluing. Gluing would have been almost impossible. There’s so much stuff inside and little things here and there pushing in the opposite direction, that unless I clamped and epoxied the whole deal, it would not have stayed together. As it was, I did have to apply significant pressure in the rear to get the pre-drilled and hardened (with thin CA) screw holes to line up. The fronts also needed some coaxing to settle in, but I prevailed. I also knocked off one of the rangefinder armored ears, the port side front ladder and the shell derrick. All were fixed.
There’s a lot of stuff going on it there.
Before I could button up the rangefinder armor I had to put in the RF optics. And before I did that I had to do the optics themselves. I used Molotow Chrome, folloed by a lens of Bondic, and finally Tamiya Clear Green.
Then it was time to fit them in. And of course they were about 1/4" too short. Again, a screw up that is a product of designing them without the actual model dimensions. At first I was going to extend them using Plastruct butyrate pipe, but then I remembered that I had extra optics. Glad I didn’t throw them out. I needed the ends since one has a male stub with a half-moon slice and the other the female version of the same shape.
If you can’t see the optical head in the open RF shield there’s no point in having it there are all.
I measured the shortfall with the caliper and transferred this measurement to the spare. I then needed to make a square cut of the spare to create the extension. I could have chucked it my Taig Lathe, but it’s all stored away and too much of a hassle to resurrect it just of this one thing. Instead, I gently chucked it in my drill press with the cut line just sticking out. I used a razor saw to inscribe the cut. I didn’t go all the way through since it was unnecessary and could go flying off somewhere. The cut was deep enough all the way around that i could hand saw the rest. I then lightly sanded the newly cut face for a good joint.
The oddball shape of the extended part is not visible at all. I put the corrected optics into the shield and was rewarded with a good view of the lens.
I closed off the ends of the RF shields and took another picture.
The only thing left to do on the entire turret shell is highlight the cutaway edges with the bright red and install the bloomers.
The kit has some nice gun plugs which are great since the barrel’s bore only goes in about 1/4" and has no rifling. The plugs are red and on Monday I highlight the center nub with some yellow.
Last thing I did was demask the gun barrels. No leakage. The polished slides on the real guns are never this color since they’re lubricated and have a much browner cast to them. I may dull them down with some Tamiya Clear Yellow mixed with a little Clear Smoke.
On Monday I will also be painting the bloomers and permanenly installing the guns. I’ve been handling the wiring a lot and sincerely hope that all the circuits are still intact. I used Bondic as a strain relief so tension was not directly on the copper foil. I did notice one of my my Bondic “cable clamps” came loose under the turret shell roof and is no longer fixable. I hope this was an isolated incident. In most places I can reach the circuitry.
I’m predicting the turret stack will be assembled on Monday leaving the rest of the week to install a off-on switch in the wood base and build the enclosure. And maybe make some crew. If the weather is poor we may postpone the trip. If that happens and I can’t deliver the model until Spring, it will give me time to purchase those perfect 1/72 scale USN crew for the insides. That would be the silver lining.