Hello Dave,

Excellent progress so far!! Question....I understand that you are using Gator Glue to tack your PE parts and then using CA to finish. Why not just use Gator Glue? From what I've read about it is that it bonds quite well and also has flex..I'm worried about temperature/climate changes causing LARGE PE sections to "pop out" when using CA. Also what glue did you use to attach the hull halves together? I was thinking to use 5min epoxy to give me time to set up and clamp together.

Hi Dave: This is great, thank you so much for putting all this good info and pix up for the rest of us. I'm watching you like a hawk; my boat is in but no PE has shown up yet. My build will definitely benefit from your skill, experience and generosity! Good luck with the rest of it. Do you have a real job or is this what you do all day everyday? At my rate, when I start, give me ten years.... Stephen

All that brass looks great, pity it has to be painted. I'm still trying to decide whether to join all the deck sections first before adding the wood veneer and underside P/E or just section by section.
Does anybody see any benefits in either way?

IMO I would go Dave's route...PE under-decking in sections....paint and weather in sections...attach deck sections.. then wood deck sections. Attaching the deck in sections should butt up nice. I wouldn't want to mask off the wooden deck to paint either.

This is another question that I forgot to answer. Actually, the primer I use is Tamiya's gray primer, although it's light enough to appear as white in some shots. It's dark enough to see the difference with white plastic and light enough to see from gray plastic. Another point of interest is that it matches Tamiya's filler putty almost perfectly (this is by design). It will adhere to most metals too, although it has chipped off in tiny spots on the Kongo's brass barrels (no big deal to touch up).

Glad to see your Akagi coming along. I feel even slower looking at how fast you've been doing this!

Thanks to all for the compliments.

This was about a weekend's worth of steady work but it really goes together faster than it would look. The most time consuming part is filing the leftover metal nubs when a PE piece is cut from the fret. This is like a miniature, fragile jigsaw puzzle.




I'm too impatient to use Gator Glue for actually locking the PE onto the deck. Guess I never really thought about temperature flutuations. The house is usually between 60 - 80 farenheit most of the year and will touch mid 90s during the hottest days of summer (San Francisco Bay Area so AC is purely optional 99% of the time). Guess I'll kick myself if the whole thing pops off. But I think since the ambient temperature doesn't take dramatic leaps and dives, the slow expansion/contraction should be okay.

The hull halves are not glued together yet. I need to pre-assemble and paint a few parts before I do that. I plan on using liquid cement, applied from the inside, and clamped when I finally do it.



Given the tight fit overall and the amount of working room I needed, it would've definitely been a real challenge trying to put the PE on after the deck has been glued onto the hull. Some of the places can't really be got at because interference from the hull.




The deck PE looks a lot harder than it really is and I like jigsaw puzzles; they're like potato chips. I'll slow up quite a bit once the sanding, fitting, painting of the part starts. Then I'll have some real questions for the experts.

Are you going to PE the aft crane system or use the plastic kit pieces. Looking at what I've seen of that it is pretty twisted and convoluted. I thought the PE instructions for the under-deck PE looked complicated and not enough instructions, but seeing it on your kit doesnt look to bad. I'll copy and print a ton of pix on this before I start mine. Looks like they also went and did that hair-hick sttuff on the the smoke stack. Man I hope old big fingered me can get that on. I may have to send it to Kym to get it looking good

Hmmm...let's see...the instructions for the Akagi PE sets state that they are not suitable for children under the age of 3. That is true. Does it mean that since I am 60 that I can do it? I can hardly see the little buggers - but I'm also old enough that I can afford a good magnifying glass. Is that cheating? What have I gotten myself into? Stephen

Yeah, going to do that but I'm still waiting for PE set B to get here.




Think I'm going to skip the Jack Stays, on the funnels and everywhere that they're suppose to go, I'm not that much of a masochist




Shouldn't be a problem. The biggest issue to be able to hold on to the long, thin, fragile pieces while trying to file down the fret cut-off nubs. I have smaller hands so that definitely helped. Just take it slow. The Hasegawa PE is easier to work than some of the other stuff (Aber, Eduard) that I've used before.

Kym,
Nice work on yours so far (thread over at ModelWarship.com) . Did you paint the linoleum sections before assembly? I'm scratching my head as to how to paint the linoleum sections, weather them, glue the sections onto the hull, assemble the hull halves, then paint the hull w/o messing the linoleum areas. Masking is okay but some of those section are hard to get to once the hull has been glued together .

Beautiful work Dave.

Kenny

Dave,

I was thinking about that too...This might sound weird but this is what I've come up with. Paint and weather all the "hard to reach" sections first. Paint and weather the hulls (as separate halves) attach prebuilt sections.....then assemble the hull halves. Its easier to putty and sand JUST the hull seam...than the deck areas. Its like building model planes...you paint and weather the cockpit first then attach the body. What do you think?

Try sandwiching the PE between folded cardboard so that just the cut-off nubs stick out...this will give you a better hold of small, long and delicate parts and provide rigidity so you can file and sand the nubs flush.. I'd tape the PE to the cardboard "sleave" to keep it from moving and/or flying out into oblivion. What do you guys clean/prep the PE with prior to paint???

Dave,
Before adding the rear boat deck section, I added some rail cart line P/E (leftovers from previous kits) to the floor and the painted everything. Once dry, I assembled it (linoleum area masked) and the hull halves before waterlining. The stern and bow decks were then masked and air brushed linoleum on the appropriate sections, then when dried, the linoleum sections masked and the decks added to the hull. Then I assembled the bow superstructure over the masked deck, started adding galleries and photo-etch. Once I was happy that all the P/E was in place, loaded up the air brush and sprayed the lot. When dried, used a knife and tweezers to remove the masking tape very carefully. I made sure that when applying the tape to the bow deck, I laid it in 2 sections split at centreline so it would be easy to remove from port and starboard sides from underneathe the covering superstructure.

sorry, forgot the photo's.
These are the sections I mean

Thanks Kym. Looks great.

Merry Xmas Everyone.

Time for a small update. Told you guys I'm slow. Kym is probably done with his by now.

Primed and paint the parts that are specified as "linoleum" - mixed 2/3 Tamiya red-brown XF-64 with 1/3 flat red.


This is one of the sub-assemblies that needs to tbe painted and attached before the hull can go together


The hull is finally together


The linoleum walk ways were painted and masked as well before gluing the hull halves

Port side


From aft


I deviated from the instructions and did not assemble the boats that went on either side of the rear hanger area. I do that after the hull has been painted and weathered, but before the flight deck goes on. To give myself working room I did not attached the top stiffener that went over the boat/hangar deck. When I'm ready to do that I will cut most of 4 big locating pins off and force the hull slightly apart to fit the stiffener. That gives me the opportunity to work on the boats and take my time.

Starboard side


I've masked the section, "circled", that the pre-assembled piece went so subsequent priming and painting will not screw it up.


Closer shot of the rear area.


The section hasn't been glued down yet. I need to prime it first before gluing it. Gotta hand it to you guys who does railings on a regular basis. My focus was fried after I did the three rails on top of the rear hangar door section.

Closer shot of the port area right under/behind the tower. The whole thing has been primed so you can't see the linoleum masking. Forgot to put the handrail on one of the ladder (extreme right) so it's still brass color. Hey Kenny, Gator Glue works on primed areas as well


That's it for now. I'll focus on the front section for a while. I think I will prime, paint, the hull before attaching all of the gun platforms and supporting struts. Several reasons:

1) All those platforms and struts makes spraying a bit tougher. Some areas get covered while others don't.

2) There are so many platforms on the top half on the hull that getting a good weathering continuity on the top half will be tougher.

3) Attaching all of the railings, boat davits, etc. will be easier without all ot the platforms and struts getting in the way.

Dave.............thank you for providing so much insight on this kit for us,you are truly going where no man has gone before,and it is really helpful

Awesome work Dave!

Kenny

No mate, not by a long shot, I to am taking this build very slowly. I just don't want to make another mistake, like having to add the bow anchor chains after the forward superstructure was in place. Some deft work with the tweezers finally completed the job. After that, I spent most of the day constructing and adding P/E to all the ships boats - great fun
This kit with all the P/E might be expensive, but comparing dollar per hour in build time, great value for money.

Hi Dave,

Your so called small updates dwarf my big updates! Well done, keep it up...

Frank

Thanks for all of the kind words. I have two weeks off from work since last Friday so I figure I should've done more.

Here's somthing that I hope will help those agonizing over the sequence of the rear hangar/boatdeck section - how to install it w/o having to completely finish (installing the boats, weathering, etc.) and still get access later. My previous solution is sort of a hack (partially cutting the top stiffener tabs and forcing the glued hull). Kept thinking about and did not think it was a really good idea as the rear section of the hull needs to be glued and to the rear bulkhead and its really close to wher I would be forcing the hull apart to attach the stiffener. So here's my solution


The glue points to the rear bulkhead is shown by the arrows. What I did was to cut wide slots on all four stiffener insertion sections, circled. This will allow me to glue and align the rear bulkhead w/o forcing the hull later to attach the stiffener. I can now dry fit the stiffener and pull it on/off at will.

Wish I would've though of it sooner while the hull pieces was still apart. Combination of side cutter, needle nose pryers, and exacto knife did the trick Not pretty but it'll do. Hope this helps.

great work, great blog, thanks for posting, really looking forward to the rest

Thank you James.

Just primed the hull and will be doing some pre-shading before putting on the base coat. I will be trying out a pre-shading technique in which the base color is slopped on, at random places on the hull, with a stiff brush, creating a very streaky look. Then the base coat is sprayed on, blending the slop and creating a nice, subtle, random streakiness. Wish me luck on this one. I will post progress pics once I have something.

On another note, just looked at Dade's work on the Hiryu build contest andthe Lion's Roar 25mm AA guns look great. Would anyone recommend replacing the Akagi kit parts with a after market set?

Hull paint update:

Primed the entire hull with Duplicolor sandable white primer. The Duplicolor Grey is too dark and I wanted the lighter primer to control the shading. The anti-fouling was done with Duplicolor sandable Rust primer - a dead match for Tamiya's Hull Red, maybe a touch lighter.


The anti-fouling is masked off and hull is pre-shaded. Using Dade's mixture of Tamiya Red-Brown and black. Mostly random areas (I've abandoned the idea of pre-shading with a stiff brush. The streaks will be done with washes).







The hull painted with Tamiya Neutral Grey (XF-53). The linoleum masking have been taken off. Lots of little touch-ups to do.










Next is to finish the fore-deck: Add the rest of the stanchions, hose reels, etc. and then wash it. Once that's done then I can complete the fore-section under the flight deck.

Cheers

Wonderful work Dave.

Kenny