I'm just starting to get into using PE railings on a few of my upcoming projects so I am totally inexperienced in the how-to's of at what point in the construction process to attach railings and what is the best adhesive to use in doing so etc.

Are the railings prepainted before mounting or are they touched up afterwards? Are some railings (ie bridge, searchlight platforms, other superstructure) mounted during assembly with main deck railings mounted after complete assembly and painting? These are the kinds of things that I am not really sure of. I have a Trumpeter USS San Francisco coming and since I am really in love with this ship I would like to avoid as many PE newbie pitfalls as possible.

Thanks.

Bill, here's what I found to be pretty effective with PE railings:

1) I paint them first before I install them. The biggest reason is that it's hard to get the back side when they're installed.

2) I install them as just about the last step in completing the model. Otherwise for me they tend to get bent by accident as you handle/work on the build.

3) I use small dabs of super glue on the bottom of the stanchions as well as where the lines attach to the bulkheads. And I always have to go back and to spot painting as the glue seems to dry white and has to be touched up. Remember, with super glue, not enough is TOO much!!!

The one thing you do need to be careful of is to make sure that you plan ahead as you're building. There are going to be some places where it may make sense to install the railings as you're doing a sub-assembly, because if you wait, the location will be hard to get to say if it's recessed behind some other structure. You'll immediately spot these places AFTER you've got things together and fitting the railing becomes a nightmare

The other thing to plan carefully is where to bend the railings to fit particularly where there are lots of corners. Sometimes the more complex bends are easier to measure and fit the part before you complete the structure, but for the very outer railings, that's usually not a problem.

Because the interval between stanchions in the PE tends to be constant between sections and the lengths of deck sections wont be, you're going to find that sometimes you have a 90 degree corner, right in the middle between two stanchions, which of course isn't possible. (My solution? I just ignore it although if you REALLY want to get it perfect you can place a vertical post in the corner made of thin sprue, or use a small piece of the horizontal run as a stanchion, but that's a whole lot of trouble.)

Tom

Thanks for the input Tom. I know what you mean about not enough super glue being too much. I put a together a PE bridge structure for a 1/700 USS Belleau Wood and thought that super glue dries practically residue free so I was very liberal applying it to the joints- BIG MISTAKE. So I will be VERY SPARING with the C.A. glue on my beloved Franny.

I saw a line drawing of the San Francisco in 1963 in a book called 'Men Ships and the Sea' by the National Geographic Society and have been smitten by the New Orleans Class cruisers ever since. I had to wait 45 years to get a model of this ship but Trumpeter finally made my dream come true.

Cheers, Bill.