Today I stumbled across a build thread on the Subsim site.

U-552 build by Siara

The work and detail is simply mind-blowing!!!

Thanks for the link Glenn, once I got started looking, I had to go through all the pages to see what it was all about. Then that led to checking out your sites on your subs, also equally impressive. When I finally get around to working on my kit, I will be refering to all three for tips and ideas.

Looking forward to watching the progress on both boats, yours and his. Thanks again.

It is beautiful and an amazing amount of detail work. Siara has posted pix and some info on his brilliant soldering at the AMP Forum too:

http://models.rokket.biz/index.php?topic=58.0

Glenn, great to see you back in the shipyard! She's a beauty!

This kit came out in2004. In short order there was more PE and resin aftermarket stuff then you could shake a stick at. I went to the trouble of drilling out all the limber holes, then carving out all the vents and getting a metal replacement deck. A lot of work. If I were to do it all over again, I would go OOB. The kit is that good. You may want to drill out limbers, but then you are going to have to scratch something for inside. CMK also came out with interior pieces. I think they planned at one time to do them all and probably add a clear hull and conning tower piece to show them, but I think by this time folks had already built their kits and the demand for the interior stuff (it was real nice) never materialized.

I agree with Steve regarding the quality of the kit ,however I wouldnt be able to simply build OOB without tricking it out in several areas,and saying this I dont mean by using after market stuff...alot of it can be done with wire and pipes and putty...I will build another definitely and TRY to emulate Glens rendition of the hull plates ,as when I saw it I was BLOWN AWAY at how good they looked