OK, some additional progress on the aircraft hangar...



I was able to trim the tips of the locator pins from underneath the non-skid deck piece by sawing them gently with a new Exacto blade, and then glued the piece into the hangar well. It was necessary to tamp down the edges due to the slight curve coming from the PE sheet. A few pieces of square rod to simulate vertical ribbing came next. I used a flat strip to simulate some horizontal bracing inside the hangar well as is portrayed in several depictions of the ship. This was so thin that all I had to do was hold it in place at the bend to get it to match the curve of the wall.

I decided to give the two doors to the aircraft hangar some additional width by gluing them over the original Tamiya pieces, after sanding off detail. This required recreating the curve of the PE parts, which was not present on the Tamiya parts. I am not totally happy with these doors and may replace with the resin parts when they are finally available. There is a slight indentation between the two PE parts, but I will try running some super glue along it to fill in the gap.

Next, fitting the hangar frame piece required stiffening with a piece of Evergreen square rod. I then attached the doors. This took a while as the small connectors on the PE pieces did not hold together very well as adjustments were made to the angle and amount of swing shown.

I do not plan to have any planes in the hangar. The inclined ladder leading down to the well will be added later in the build.

You are already ahead of me Doug.
One thing i observed about the hangar doors is that if they are let open, then the gap is sufficient for someone to peep through them , and from a gentle angle he can indeed look all the way down , so i am thinking maybe it is a bad idea to leave the doors open without having the interior tunnels extended to some length .They are just too shallow as they are in the kit .

Kostas, thanks for the input. You are probably correct. I did a cursory test view myself and figured it was not worth the effort, but perhaps extending the hangar without bothering with the additional non-skid deck will be an acceptable compromise. Still have plenty of track from Lionroar Set #1 to use. Here's a projected hangar layout from a Russian site:

Kostas, I see from your picture that your design for the hangar differs from the one above. No idea which would be more accurate.

I know.I didnt bother too much with the exact dimensions and shape since once i put the roof almost nothing will be seen.I just wanted to make sure there is going to be a tunnel seen to continue ,and not a wall were it shouldnt be one.For one, i can tell you right now that is too long and runs below the rear main turret , which it shouldnt, but you wont be able to see that at the end.Cant be bother to correct it as i see no point for it now.

Greetings folks. Yesterday I took up Kostas' suggestion and removed the rear wall of the aircraft hangar piece in anticipation of extending the size. The new hangar is not yet started, so no pictures at this time. Also trimmed up the bottom of the hull to about 4 mm below the waterline and built new doors to the motor launch hangars. The kit portrays this as one piece, but in actuality they are hexagonal and sit in a frame. Pics tonight, hopefully.

Some work on the motor launch hangars....



Contrary to the parts included in the Tamiya kit, the doors to these hangars were considerably smaller and had a rounded, hexagonal shape. To make them, I used the Eduard version of the doors (also wrong but extending higher than the Tamiya ones) to make a stencil for the door frame and rebuilt the pieces out of plastic stock.

I then free-handed an approximation of the door out of card stock as a stencil for both the opening in the frames and the doors themselves. I then drew this over the frame piece and cut and sanded the opening into the proper shape.

The inside of the hangars have been enhanced with some ribbing and a piece of aircraft handling track taken from Lionroar set #1. I've added an inclined ladder at the far end of the hangar (conjectural) to "busy" up the view as you look down the length from the door. The Eduard set also includes some non-skid for the area outside of the hangar doors, as shown in the pic. Some of these pieces are just dry-fitted for now until I finish the plating on the hull, as this will require a lot of handling of the hull piece.

Very nice work Doug.I will leave this part closed as my Yamato will be in a rather dramatic dio.

Had a go today at placing the porthole caps and realized the Lion Roar set in the instructions it gives the position for too few of them , plus there should be 3 rows of portholes instead of only 2 it shows.So i consulted the Anatomy of the Battleship Yamato book and added the rest.

Another mistake is the side pipes that run in the mid section of the hull.There should be 8 in total.The spacing as well as the number in the Tamiya kit is plain wrong.I decided to scrape off No 3 and No 5 counting from the stern forward, on the starboard side , and No3,5,6,8, and place 2 more in between the old 7(now scrapped off) and old 9(now 7) on the board side.

The exact spacing in between them might still be a bit off the drawings on the book, but at least now it looks a lot closer to the real thing.

Thanks for catching that Kostas - I hadn't noticed that myself but will make the adjustment too. Now that I've thought about that inclined ladder a bit (its not yet glued down), I'm going to build a small platform on the outside corner of the hangar where someone would be overseeing operations of the crane, with the ladder going down the opposite side from the way I have it now. This will also allow me to add a door onto the rear wall.

BTW, my consignment of Tamiya acrylic XF-75 Kure Arsenal paint arrived in the post today. Also, the name of the company that's doing those resin pieces you alerted me to is called "Chrysanthemum & Katakana Studios", which my wife tells me is the name of a popular novel in Japan.

Cheers, Doug

Outstanding work Doug!

Thanks Kenny. I've been thinking about this build for a long time, as Guido can attest. Still, as soon as you start, you realize there are things you missed, which is the great thing about a blog - Kostas's input has already been invaluable. Any feedback will be greatly appreciated, although I realize we are still barely beginning here. Cheers, Doug

Well Doug I finally stayed still long enough to read it all and can only say that it really looks great what you have accomplished so far.What you and Kosta are doing is like what some of us do to planes filling them up with the goodies.I will be really watching to see how the deck gets produced with the wood grain effect.Cheers

You and me both, Kevin.



This is a picture of museum ship Mikasa (not taken by me) in the middle of a re-planking project, with both old and new Hinoki Cypress lying side by side. The darker color is what Yamato would have had by 4/45, the problem being that some sources say the deck was over-painted a black color sometime before the Okinawa sortie, which makes for an easier paint job but a tad less interesting. Not sure which direction I will go yet...

Here is another one for you Doug

The bollards at the stern are to be glued according to Tamiya AND Lion Roar's replacement steel surface at the wrong place.So after i realized that i now trying to figure out how to deal with that empty guide on the steel surface which should be corrugated steel as the rest of the surface.

If you decide to represent the Yamato with the dark deck then you have to study the AA configuration , specially the arrangements for the extra AA on the deck itself as they were different from that when the deck was unpainted.

Interesting - I'm sure we can come up with something to cover it up. Out of curiosity, how many fairleads come in the resin set? Looks like you've made a lot of progress...the issue with the deck color is whether one chooses to believe that the deck was painted at all rather than just left weathered to the end. Can't really say from the one good picture available. If I do the gray tones, it would be more for the sake of the effect and I'd sacrifice strict historical accuracy, but I'm leaning towards the solid darker color right now.

6 Fairleads .Basically it gives you exactly the number of parts needed so no mistakes allowed.

But i think i will need at least one more pair of fairleads...

Kostas, I am thinking that the easiest solution would be to simply reverse the locations of the fairlead and bollard and incorporate the inaccuracy, if this doesn't give any rivet counters heartburn. One of the remaining single-mount 25mm guns was located at the approximate location of the (correct) fairlead position, but it would not have been so close to the deck edge. You could also have a few sailors standing on top of the spot, but that would only work for one side.

OK, here's the revised aircraft hangar -



I used my Dremel to shave off the back wall to the Tamiya abbreviated hangar and drew a floor plan based on the same drawing I've included on Page 1 on some sheet plastic. A printing of the drawing served as a guide for the pattern. Building new walls was not too difficult, but it turns out another piece of sheeting on the bottom of the aircraft handling deck (covering the place where I sanded off a vent) interfered with a snug fit, and I had to trim that piece as well.

The new tracking inside the hangar comes from Lionroar Set#1. Based on the design of the hangar, two turntables would have had to be located just inside the new area. All the detail inside the hangar is conjectural, and includes some stuff out of the parts box that looks like it belongs in a hangar, but for which I have no idea whether it would actually belong there. The idea is basically to make it look busy. I included a series of vents taken from the Eduard set, on the assumption that the area would have been well ventilated. The equipment and general design is kind of based on some views I recall of hangars in warships I've visited in recent years.

Of course, all of this is going to be barely visible from the very narrow angled view one will have from outside the hangar doors, but might prove relatively impressive if you get that far.

Update - Only the lower half of the area is visible through the hangar doors, so the air vents are all wasted, but the effect is pretty nice anyway. I also built a couple of empty trolleys from the sets included in Lionroar #1, which will be added to the room before its finished.

As discussed earlier in the text, the spacing and number of the braces on the side of the hull are incorrect on the Tamiya kit. Correcting them requires removing three from each side and adding two to the port side to even out the spacing:



This does not quite match drawings such as Skulski, but will be sufficient for me. Much thanks to Kostas for catching this. Also, note that hull is now completely sanded of all other detail, length below water line is shortened, and locator pins for the davits are filled in. I'm now ready to add some pseudo-hull plating to flesh out the appearance, before adding portholes, capped portholes, and degaussing cable, among others.

Mr. Ishida of Chrysanthemum and Katakana Studios sent me a preview of the new items he is going to produce in March:





There is also a sheet of PE with some modifications to the open mount gun shields and a few other items different from Lionroar #2 that I have not included here. The 127 mm mounts appear to be the best available anywhere, and the replacement tubs for the AA guns and area around the radar shack are also welcome, although some advance modelers should be able to scratch build some of this. No idea what the pricing would be (but it can't be cheap).

Very nice work again.Its a shame it wont be visible but its nice to know its there just in case.I thought of puting 2 float planes right at the edge , behind the hangar doors so pretty much everything behind them will be of limits.

As for the price of these sets , i can tell you that mine was around 2500 yen if i remember correctly , which works around 20-30 usd range.I think they are reasonable given their quality .It seems i might have to slow down on the built myself , in order to catch up with the updated sets too.

I am not sure if I'll go for the 127 mm mounts, but will definitely buy the gun tubs. There are some additional PE parts in the WEM set that help flesh out those 127 mounts, so between that and a bit of scratch building onto the Lionroar parts, I think they will come out very acceptable. Am constantly being torn between all the extra goodies available and finding an end-line for all the additional costs. I've already spent about $350 or more on this kit and that doesn't even include the two free PE sets. That's kind of why I've been avoiding some of those Veteran sets, nice though they are.

I will be back to work on Monday, so my progress will also be slowing down shortly. One of these days I should also work on a couple of other projects. I have a 1/400 APA 85% done, which has been languishing for the last two weeks because of Yamato. Not enough time in the day, is there?

Happy New Years, everyone, Seattle is experiencing one of its infrequent very cold, high pressure weather patterns, which provides for clear skies and an unusual light in the sky (some call it "the sun", so it was much too cold to do much modeling work down in the basement yesterday. I did some test fitting of my hull plating, but otherwise the day was spent doing jigsaw puzzles and watching Sherlock Holmes (Jeremy Brett version). Here's a couple more nicely done kits by Japanese modelers, both using Lionroar set #1 and incorporating some scratch building:

http://space.geocities.jp/mmhme36/yamato.html

http://model.kumacre.com/ship/yamato3/

Cheers, Doug

Beautiful work so far Doug. Will enjoy watching your build of her.....Cheers Mark