These photo's are of a small section of my latest diorama. I'm doing another view of Truk Lagoon, but this time in 1944 and showing a larger section of the base including the airstrip.

Wow, _very_ nice. 1/700 I suppose?

Do you have a picture that shows the entire thing?
And I'd love to see a close up on the airplanes...

Wonderful work Kym!

JT, all of Kym's work is in 1/350.

That's a huge Lagoon then.

Should have recognized Fujimi's Kongo...

How do you make waterline models out of not supposed to be waterline models?

It's a pretty long process, but one that gives me a good clean result. First I mask just below the waterline with tape, taking great care to get both sides exactly the same and dead straight, then with a 1mm drill bit in my dremmel, drill along the edge of the tape at as close a interval as I can. Constantly cleaning melted plastic off the drill bit with an exacto knife slows this process down somewhat, but that way all the holes are kept the same size. I should note here that before the drilling process, any interior hull braces are cut to waterline height and glued in place, or if like my soon to be started Tamiya Yamato hull, adding my own bracing and stiffeners above the waterline area.
Once the circumference of the waterline is drilled, using a new heavy exacto blade, carefully cut between the holes or as I now do, run the Dremmel flat out and very carefully , drag the bit from hole to hole, melting a straight line. Sometimes the plastic will seal up again behind the bit, but this can be easily cut again with the blade.
Now you should have your two hull pieces. Here I will temporarily tape the deck in place on the well braced top half and carefully sand the half holes flat on my table belt sander. This part must be done slowly and light handed as it doesn't take much force to start melting the edges. After I'm satisfied that it's as flat as I can get it, clamp it on a roughly cut to shape piece of 2 or 3mm acrylic sheet, testing that the deck fits nicely (then remove deck) and glue in place. Once dried, simply trim excess base to the hulls shape.
Heres the Kongo clamped to the base. Since I had a slight rise in one end of this ship, I now add a piece of 4 x 4mm piece of wood glued to the entire interior length of the base to help keep it flat.
If you have any questions, let me know. When I start the Yamato, I will post pictures on the process to give you a better idea.

I started out with base that would house the tanker at dock, 2 battleships, 2 cruisers and a destroyer, but since there has been some new kit releases and a plea from a mate to include the Yamato, I've had to add an extension. This extension also gave me a chance to extend the runway and show more of the island base.

Thanks for the detailed reply and the extra pictures. I'm sure the huge Yamato will change the scenery somewhat. I hope you can share that picture, too.

It really sounds like a lot of work to make good waterline models out of these kits, I don't think I have the guts to try this in the near future.

It does sound a time consuming technique, but you have great results!

Looking forward to seeing the Yamato.

Gorgeous work, all around!

On the waterline conversion issue, I have found keeping kits full hull helps not just structurally, but allows me to position the ships in the water at interesting angles such as a heel in a steep turn, lists, or when the bow creates a trough right aft which makes the ship appear to be moving at high speed. I can do this because I use a very stiff type of foamcore called "Gatorboard" which can be cut precisely with a knife and does not warp when exposed to wet plaster.

--Karl

very nice, very inspiring work! LOVE the water.... thanks for posting and really look forward to more WIP cheers

As I promised, here's me trimming the Tamiya 1:350 Yamato of excess plastic. The first photo shows the deck taped down after I'd added the hull stiffeners. #2 shows the waterline taped and drilling started. #3 shows the hull completely drilled and ready for cutting. #4 shows the 2 halves split and the bracing in the top half. #5 shows the ship with bracing and the base stiffener next to the traced out base. #6 shows the ship glued onto the base. All that has to be done now, is trim the excess styrene sheet from around the waterline.

With these few pics, it looks like the easiest thing in the world, but still like a lot of work.

Again a very good result on that one, thanks for sharing!

You did one eearlier with a ton of cruisers. Is this a redo of that or you just copied the land mass and are putting different ships in it. I didn't know you had done the Ise. Wish you had done a build article on her while you did it.

No Steve, the first one (1942 version) only had a small strip of island, this 44' dio has about 4x's the land mass and much more going on.






Actually, I didn't take many photo's at all during the build, just put my head down and arse up and went for it.

Just looking at some of the pictures, I can see a ton of tables and benches that obviusly contain other models and dios. I live in a 3 bedroom and 2 car garge home (only 1 car and by myself) and still don't have that kind of space