¹⁄35

Building the Beast - Part Two

12/13/05 finds me finishing the rigging. I attached the smaller antenna leads, and painted them. I had no clear pictures of how these attached to the main lead, so they were simply glued to them and the junction painted black. Are they correct? I don’t know, but it looks good to me. I painted the deck gun in the light gray and further detailed it with paint chips and some minor rust stains. I added the muzzle plug from some styrene disks punched with my Waldron set and glued to the muzzle. The lanyard for it was made using fine gauge copper wire wrapped around the gun tube and then painted it. I had lost one of the traversing wheels at some point, so a new one was scratch built from styrene bits and pieces.

almost disaster

Disaster strikes sometime around noon on Tuesday, as I am moving the boat around the garage. I lose my grip and I drop the boat. It never reaches the floor as I grab it in mid-air. The death grip I have on this bad boy crushes one of the deck rails, but other than some colorful words and a strained fore arm muscle, nothing is severely damaged. The railing was re-shaped and then re-glued into place.

finishing up

The final major pieces to go on are the screws. I have differing information about them; some were steel, others were brass. I liked the way the brass looked instead of the steel color so I went with these. I glued them in place with 5 minute epoxy and left things to cure while I went to lunch. After Lunch I added the weathering to the screws and added the dry transfers to the conning tower and the water marks to the hull. With the differing colors, I really liked the way things were looking. A few more minor touch ups, a good coat of flat lacquer and the beast was done.

finished! another one?

After almost 9 complete months, I had finished it. Granted a lot of time the sub spent sitting in the corner as I had absolutely no room to work on it. Once I got situated and made some room, things progressed rather smoothly. I enjoyed seeing it thru to the end, and in a bitter sweet way, I am glad to see this thing go on to its new owner. If anybody has any questions in regards to this massive kit, feel free to ask and I will do my best to answer them. I hope you enjoyed the write up.

Thanks- Red4

From the editor: Thank you Matthew, for such a good story on your built of the "monster U-ber model"

Building the Beast! Part One