Hi George,

The general rule of thumb with wood decks is to always, always ALWAYS seal them. Use a spray sealer as brush sealer will go on too thick. I've seen some people also use paper sealing varnish as used on paper models (makes sense).

After that, you can use either a thin coat of rubber glue, or even good old white glue. Paper model glue by Uhu also works and I know someone who actually used spray adhesive with good results (Spray the adhesive to the back of the deck and then lay it down).

By all accounts, do not use CA glue as the wood will want to flex and breathe (even after sealing) and CA doesn't flex. So you can really mess up your deck if you use it.

Good luck and I hope this helps. I myself am leaning toward the white glue concept for mounting mine...

Good stuff, Dade. Thanks! I will definitely use a sealer on those decks then. Any advice as to what brand or type of spray varnish would be best?

I figure white glue would probably work fine once I've sealed the wood, but I'll probably try the 3M spray adhesive this time, after sealing the wood.

Hi George,

Thompson's WaterSeal Clear Multi-Surface Waterproofer is a pretty good product. Like with anything else, try not to spray on too much at once but build up a bunch of fine coats- you won't need many as it works pretty well and the decks are thin.

Here's a link to the product:
http://www.thompsonswaterseal.com/products/product_detail.cfm?prod_id=31

Make sure to use an acrylic dull coat over the sealed deck because I don't know how a lacquer based dull coat will react with the sealer.

Okay, that's enough jumping ahead to the end of the story of this build. I've got the deck bowing squared away and just need to upload the pics and do the write up. Stay tuned!

I think I got my question answered. The wooden deck pieces cost over $100? Too bad, if they were around $50 I would have purchased them. still, I would like to know where I can get them. as you said, it saves a lot of time and they do look sooooo good. I still have to pick up that deluxe PE set. RIght now, it seems only HLJ is the only place to get it.

A significant hole was cut out of the deck area under the superstructure to relieve pressure and not cause the deck to bow. It's not pretty, but it works and it will be covered up.



With a little extra sanding on the superstructure bottom, we're in good shape. There is still a slight gap, but it disappears with just a tiny bit of pressure, so gluing it down will make the issue moot.



The gaps between the deck and edge of hull has been puttied and smoothed. Again, we don't have to worry about filling and sanding the plank detail because the wood deck will cover it anyway. Otherwise, this part could get rather time consuming and very frustrating.



While I'm at it, the anchor chain pipes and hawse are hollowed out for better realism.



Now we can really start to see this come together:





You may notice how there is a slight gap in the wood deck where the mounting slats for the structures glue in. This is not an issue as Shinsengumi includes an extra square (about 1.5" x 2") of wood with engraved planking to be used to cut "filler pieces" out of. Excellent.

The PE flight deck dry fit. The railings haven't been folded up so painting the linoleum will be easier. The piece is very thin, so like the wood, it curls slightly until it has been glued down.



That should take care of the hull and deck issues. Now we can start to focus on building the bridge area...

Fujimi has decided to jump into the fray by releasing their own wood deck with some PE extras. It is a little cheaper, so you may want to look into that. Dragon has it up for pre-order:

http://www.dragonusaonline.com/item_detail.aspx?ItemCode=FUJ11155

I knew about this set's impending arrival, but I spent the extra money for Shinsengumi's because I was already familiar with their material quality and perfect fit. I have to say, after working through the fit issues on the Kongo itself, I feel even more secure with my choice.

Still, with this Fujimi set, there is another option to Shinsengumi, so you may want to give it a shot. On a related note, Hasegawa is also jumping into the fray with this wood deck for the Mutsu:

http://www.hlj.com/product/HSG40070?nav=rss

It could be that Fujimi and Hasegawa may be simply reverse-engineering Shinsengumi's work. It will be interesting to see how the story plays out. I'm curious to see the actual material quality that Fujimi and Hasegawa are using at their lower price points as Shinsengumi's is second to none.

Lot's of nice work there, Dade. Great update - looking forward to more. Barry

Hi Dade,

You're scaring me with this thread. This model was one I was looking forward to assembling without hassle and now it seems I'll have to actually put some effort into it!... Thanks for ruining it!!

Frank

P.S. Great work so far!

I already know that this is going to be one contest winning ship, great work so far! I'll try not to look too much at your work since I'm also working on the Kongo and don't want to be discouraged .
I personally don't have that many issues with the deck fitting though, all parts, including the bridge seem to fit pretty tight with no gaps.
I'll try and hold on the weathering until you're ready for painting, since I'm not that good at it I'm really interested to see what techniques you're going to use.

Keep up the good work!



Anyone else psyched about Aoshima's upcoming Konig? I am!

Thanks a bunch guys!

Frank, after the incredible work you've done with the Nagato, even this kit should be a breeze! By waterlining that bad boy, you've definitely gone where I fear to tread!

JH80, good to know. It may be that I have a "lemon" of sorts, it happens. I'll be curious to see as more people build this, if mine is the exception and not the rule (I hope so!).

I'm most definitely excited about Aoshima's Konig. I did get a lemon with ICM's a while ago and was so annoyed with the fit issues there (makes this Kongo look like a dream), I haven't worked on it in over a year and a half. I have PE for it from Tom's and White Ensign, and barrels from Burkhardt, so I may wait for Aoshima's and just use the stuff there.

Awesome work Dade. Thanks for the info on the info on the deck.

Kenny

Wonderful! It seems to me that I recall that those linoleum decks had shiny brass dividers between the brown linoleum sections. Do you intend to do yours in that manner?

That photo etch part complete with railings looks really great.

I ordered the Fujimi wooden deck and deluxe PE from HLJ today. Both items are listed out of stock. Lord with the huge order I dropped last week on Lucky models, I hope this stays out of stock for a few weeks, that way when the credit card bill comes I will only get hit for one at a time.

Steve you hit the nail on the head with that one. Often times, I pre-order stuff and wait for months and then suddenly, WHAM! A huge shipment and huge bill! I pre-ordered tubing of varying sizes by Lion Roar from Dragon as well as that special edition Buchanan. I'm perfectly happy if that stuff takes another month or so to ship out...

A side note about the build log: an update will be coming tonight or tomorrow.

Dade I look forward to seeing this progress. I plan to kick off my build in January. I did sand down the mold line in the hull. Right now I'm going to do a few quickee's to clear out the stash a bit. Figure to start the Hood in late Sept whcih will give me time to finish her get another tank in and be ready to go again on a long term build. I just finished up the BR52 by Trumpeter which came out real nice. I'm glad you did the wooden deck as my impressoin was it as a lot of work for little gain prior to seeing one. I envisioned them as being much much thicker like when guys were using bass wood strips to do decks a few years back. Of course the Kongo is ideal for one becasue there is so little to cut away to use it. I hope the Fujimi is as nice as the Shinsengumi one you used.

A word to the wise if you don't do it already- dry fit, dry fit, DRY FIT! While the upper decks of the superstructure fit together fairly well, there are nonetheless niggling little items that keep everything from being square. To paraphrase the carpenter's mantra, "dry fit twice, glue once."

While dry fitting the superstructure pieces and the legs of the tripod, this bizarre issue popped up:



What the...? As you can see, the closest leg is down as far as it will go, and yet it still sticks up too far to keep the level above from locating where it does without the legs (right picture). The farthest leg will also have to filed down some as well. Note that the glass is only really a "spacer" and will be replaced by the PE.



Okay, now that the offending bits have been taken care of, we can dry fit the superstructure levels together- they look pretty nice!



On a related note, I recommend that even if you don't get PE, you still replace the glass with some horizontally mounted PE ladder. The glass is too thick and has some rather unfortunate plastic plugs that will have to be removed and polished to transparency.

Yep, I know exactly what you're talking about. There were some wood replacements for carriers, etc., and the wood was about 1/8" thick, so you either had to do a lot surgery to make it fit flush or just have this wood deck sticking up beyond. I noticed that many did the latter with lousy results. Thankfully, these more recent items from Shinsengumi, Fujimi, and Hasegawa don't have that issue- they're even thin enough for 1/700.

1/700 would be awesome. Especially for flight decks on carriers. Nice work Dade.

Kenny

I've got the deluxe PE and the wooden deck on backorder with HLJ. (Only hope the dollar doesn't keep falling over there) I posted a new topic about the spreaders , from what I can gather, that may be the source of the deck fitting problem. It would have been nice to have a wooden stained version for the Lexington build I did a year or so ago. I also saw they had a set out for the Yamato, but I have a feeling that given the amount of stuff molded onto the deck would be a nightmare to deal with,

Kenny go to Hobby Link Japan web and key in Shinsengumo, I believe they have some sets out for 700 carriers.

Here's an idea I had about avoiding deck-to-hull fit problems with these new 1/350 scale kits... They are all coming equipped with an internal bracing system of bulkheads. What I do is test fit the bbulkheads to both sides of the hull...then I make sure to glue them all to the starboard hull only. I then press fit the port hull on to the braces, and leave them permanently unglued on the port side. I glue the hull halves together where they meet along the seam, but the internal bulkheads remain unglued on the port side. This means that you've still got a little play left when fitting the decks in, so you can either press the hull sides in a little or spread them out a little to eliminate any small gaps between the hull and the deck.

I have tried this on the Hasegawa Nagato with very good results, and I think it's a good safety precaution on any kit with inner bulkheads to leave one side unglued.

Believe me, after sanding and filing, there's plenty of play with the spreaders on this build where possible (see my post in the dedicated topic about this). But it doesn't matter because if you squeeze the hull together at the deck, the keel separates. Keel mates, hull separates. It was more important to me that the keel halves mated because I could always putty the hull gaps as described. 1/16" gaps at the hull and deck join aren't as much of an issue as ones at the keel.

Also, since the secondary guns that run down the sides of this kit are mounted on three of those ribs, you can't screw around with them too much or the guns will be messed up (one side may be "in" while another is "out").

I've built enough ships with internal bracing to be able to say with some experience that this kit (or at least my copy of this kit) just plain doesn't square up. BTW, I don't glue the spreaders on either side until the hull is dry.

Well, not gluing the bulkheads on either side sounds like an okay idea to me. Then you've got some play either which way. The main thing is getting the hull halves mated properly along the keel line, I think. It's pretty easy to fill in any slight openings between hull and deck, and if one is mounting a wooden deck over top afterward, so much the better.

On the Kongo, I think I will concentrate on gettin the hull halves together rather than the deck to match up perfectly because I am going to do the wooden deck. On the Nagato, I'll probably do the opposite. I got a can of spray Mr Surfacer 1000 that I plan to use as I plan to use that to fill in all that scribbing on the hull and it can also fill in the gap btwn hull halves if it occurs.

The past few days have been spent on all of the superstructure/ bridge PE. The rear structure in particular has been an exciting adventure in bending and CA glue... Thankfully, there have been very few fit issues, so it's all good.

The rear structure is supposed to "hug" the main structure more, but since all of this is dry fit, I had to lean it at a less extreme angle to keep from falling over.

Some points of interest:
While all of the "glass" gets replaced with PE frames, for some reason the center glass on the 04 level has no PE replacement, so some PE ladder will have to be used as a replacement. Meanwhile, the side glass pieces on that level are each one panel too wide, so they will have to be trimmed to fit.

The instructions show PE part B2-35 (the main rear structure) plus B2-21. This had me scratching my head for a while until I realized that part B2-21 actually goes farther down (the lowest PE structure on the pictures) and does not attach to part B2-35 in any way. B2-21 will also have to be trimmed slightly at the top to properly fit over the plastic.

The PE ladders that go inside haven't been attached yet as they will go on after the floors have been painted. The same goes for all the binoculars, etc. Remember that this is all dry fit, thus the gaps that will tighten up when glued.






The radar hasn't been glued on yet...



This is to better facilitate painting of both the tower and the multi part radar itself (this is also why the radar isn't "closed up").



Now on to the funnels, etc., which will probably take a little while (not to mention having to squeeze some build time for my community build Hiryu in there too).

Wow, Dade. Great work on the PE - do you use a bending jig of some sort to get the odd angles on the window frames and curves on the railings?