Building The Fujimi 1/350 IJN Kongo, Part 2

After getting the deck to how I wanted it, a coat of Tamiya dull coat spray is put on to seal it all in and make everything nice and flat. Compare this picture with the earlier picture of the decks being sealed. Note how much more visible the planking is in this picture...

It's very hard to capture the subtle differences between wood with the wash and without, but this picture shows it fairly well. The piece of wood in the top right is the spare square that came with the deck. It has been sealed, but no wash applied. A close look shows the planks on the washed wood "popping" a little more, along with some of the darkening from all of the gun fire and smoke. This effect is more visible in real life.

For attaching the deck, I went the spray adhesive route. I settled on 3M General Purpose adhesive (extra strength would have been overkill).

Now, the scary thing about spray adhesive is how you have to handle everything or you may find your deck glued to your spraying surface. My work flow went like so:

1) Pick out ONE deck piece to mount and work on that piece ONLY. In other words, don't spray adhesive on all of your deck pieces at once because I guarantee that most of those pieces will have their adhesive dry before you get to them. Yes, you'll waste a little extra adhesive spraying and clearing the nozzle between each piece, but it's worth being patient.

2) Place a very small piece of folded over tape to keep the piece from blowing away by the spray.

3) This is important- Keep another piece of paper or something nearby to transfer your deck piece to IMMEDIATELY after spraying, or the deck will want to start to glue itself to the over spray area of your original surface.

4) Spray the underside of the deck piece, hold the can upside down and clear the nozzle, and transfer the deck piece to other surface (glue side up of course).

5) When the adhesive starts to get tacky, place the deck on to the model. Be very careful to get the openings lined up for above deck items to fit through. Needless to say, the aft area of the Kongo was a pain to get on there because it had to fit around the aft barbette and still encircle the flight deck and some other stuff. It's very good to have something small and flat nearby to push the deck down into the little crevices and around the aforementioned above deck items. I used a micro chisel usually associated with raised panel line removal...

6) You'll have a little while to work the deck around because the adhesive has just the right amount of set up time (up to 15 minutes) so just keep pressing down into those little trouble spots. Thankfully the deck is just thick enough to not have to worry about air bubbles and such.

7) You will still probably get some adhesive where you don't want it, no matter how careful you are. No worries, due to the nature of the adhesive, you will be able to rub off some of the stuff as it gets more tacky (it's rubbery). But for the stuff you couldn't get off, just wait for it to dry and touch it up with some little spots of paint here and there. You'll see some shiny spots in the pictures below- this is where those touch ups have been, but they'll be "dulled out" when the final dull coat is sprayed on. Any little niggling edges can be glued down with a spot of super glue. While using superglue to do the entire deck is dangerous and may crack the deck, little spots here and there are safe.

The deck is mounted and really brings out the feel of the ship. The superstructure base hasn't been glued on yet, thus the small gap. (Apologies for some of the weird borders- I had some crooked borders after rotating the pictures during prep.)