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Building the Beast!

building the beast - part one

Andrea Miniatures 1/32 Type VII-C U-boat

Back in April of this year I acquired possession of Andrea Miniatures 1/32 U-boat. The gentleman who owned it bought for a lot of money, approximately US$2000.00. I’m not sure when he bought his model, but the same kit today will cost about US$2500.00 thru Squadron Mail Order. The original owner quickly determined that the dexterity in his fingers wasn’t up to the task of such an undertaking. He put the U-boat up for sale for US$400. I was initially going to buy it, but I determined that the money would be better spent on my Harley instead. So the option of buying was out. I contacted the seller/owner and asked if he would be willing to let me build it for him, so he wouldn’t be out all of that money. He agreed and we settled on a fair price for him and I carted the huge chunk of resin home in the bed of my truck.

i need space!

Once I got the sub home, I did a quick assessment of what it was going to take to build this thing. The first thing that came to mind was room; lots and lots of room. My workshop at the time was 11’x17’ with two display cases and a lot of models. It would have to do. I pulled out my trusty Black & Decker Workmate and clamped the hull halves together for some dry runs. Everything looked okay thus far. I cut out the photo etch deck plates, all 2 pounds worth of them and test fit them as well. Again everything looked good. After removing the photo etch plates and setting them aside, I set to work on joining the hull halves together. The owner had attempted to glue them at some point using either super glue or epoxy. I wasn’t able to determine which. The glue had run out and along the bottom of the hull, and completely ruined all the surrounding detail.

let the works begin

I marked all of these damaged areas with a black Sharpie marker. I then used a Makita palm sander and began the task of removing the damaged areas, while trying to save as much detail as I could. For the most part, I was successful. What detail was lost, was on the bottom of the hull and wouldn’t be seen. I planned on replacing it with styrene bits and pieces anyway. Now that the damaged areas were cleaned, I cleaned the mating surfaces between the hull halves, and then clamped them together. I now noticed that the left and right halves didn’t match exactly. One was actually shorter than the other. Not much, but shorter none the less. I decided to align then based off of the rear of the boat. I did so and started gluing the halves. I quickly ran out of glue after only a foot or so of progress. What to do?