A huge collection of ammunition boxes, liquid waste/oil barrels, equipment hampers, and trash buckets that will be highly useful for creating some clutter on your ship.

Two views of a large collection of deck pieces. Includes new hawser pipes, replacements for the raised deck vents, elbow vents, deck winches, chocks, and the bow and stern hawser arrangements, the bottom part of anchors, and replacement shields around two of the upper superstructure observation platforms.

Two views of another set of deck pieces, in this case including the much anticipated replacement parts for the bow mushroom vents. The tapered parts that look like fingernails go under the raised aa mounts on the superstructure. I had actually located some drop tanks from a 1/72 jet for that purpose but these will work much better. The thing that looks like a toilet seat is a cover for the ship-to-shore communications port, through which they ran the telecom cable from the bow. However, I suppose the lid would be "open" if the ship was at anchor as I intend to portray, that will end up being a minor inaccuracy on my part. The items marked with black marker are to be disposed of, as Mr. Ishida has already made more accurate replacement versions and included them as well (they are the pieces not on the resin block).

Replacement parts for the rudder, frame around the entrance to the aircraft hangar, and hangar doors in both open and closed positions. Plus a couple of other parts. Note in particular the emergency rudder, which is still subject to some controversy as to whether Yamato or Musashi carried one (but logical to assume so). My inclination would be to position it inside the aircraft hangar well rather than hanging from the side of the stern, as Yamato's crane could easily reach it there. In fact, if you are portraying Yamato as already on the way to Okinawa, the emergency rudder would probably already have been hooked up to the crane, since Yamato had no plans to retrieve the float planes it launched prior to battle.

OK, that should be enough to keep both you and me occupied for a while, and if you are interested, Mr. Daisuke Ishida can be reached at [email protected]. It sounds like he does respond in English, so give it a go. He's certainly appreciative of your business...

Mr. Ishida has sent me his professionally done photos of two of the replacement sets I reviewed on Friday, which should give you a better idea of what they will look like assembled:



Bear in mind that this is just part of the set, the full set being shown by me in unassembled form.



I particularly like the sand bags, which have individual bags on the corners angled realistically away from the main line of the row to help anchor the arrangement. Note the tarp covering portions of the rear AA platform shield. Mr. Ishida also confirmed that latest research in Japan places the emergency rudder inside the hangar well as I had suggested.

Beautiful add-ons Doug, the sandbags are worth doing a murder for
Can't wait to see this all incorporated on your build,
cheers,
Julian

Hi Julian, am just finishing up my water scene on the APA, then its back to work on Yamato. I'm also very excited to get all the new parts too.

Back to work on Yamato today. No pics yet. Took doors off the aircraft hangar in anticipation of replacing them with the new resin versions. However, the new doors don't have as much detail, so will use the Lionroar rear sides and glue them over the resin ones. Also, built one of the two motor launches, the one that will go into the boat hangar. Lionroar includes a rudder, propeller and shaft for this boat, which are so miniscule that they are very difficult to assemble and will be virtually unnoticeable in the hangar. Prop itself is over scale and I had to reposition the shaft to get it on. Pics tomorrow, hopefully.

Another day painting but no finishing touches to anything yet. Sprayed the inside of the boat and aircraft hangars a sea gray, rather than white or light gray as I had first thought to do. Was concerned over too much contrast between the dark Kure gray in the hangar well and too light a color inside. I'll chalk it up to "shadows" within the interior and see how it goes. My motor launch is mostly done, just need to let the canopy paint dry and attach it to the boat. I had attached the five elbow vents to the front of the boat before building, but it turns out they interfered with painting the very small navigation windows. The whole thing is irrelevant anyway, since the windows can't be seen once the boat is placed in the hangar with the bow facing forwards.

hey, you have probably already mentioned this, but those resin upgrade peices you have shown on this page, when and where are they going to be avaliable and also can you please mention what colours and brand you used to paint your 1/350 Yamato

Thanks

Hi Peter, the resin parts are made by a small cottage firm in Japan called "Katakana and Chrysanthemum" and are only sold via Yahoo.jp or directly from the producer. You can't get them from normal mail-order companies like Hobby Link Japan. If you want to purchase, contact Mr. Ishida at [email protected] and he will work out the details with you. Be aware that they are fairly expensive, running $25-45 a set plus shipping, so you will need to evaluate how much you want them for your build. I have only started painting as of last night, and that only the one ship's motor launch that will appear in the hangar, but I purchased Tamiya XF-75 Kure Naval Arsenal Grey as my basic hull color. This usually won't appear in hobby store displays, so you'll have to order it, but most of the American and overseas hobby mail order companies do carry it. It only comes in the smaller 1.5 OZ bottle, so at least 10-12 bottles will be necessary for Yamato. I plan to paint my deck a dark gray-black, as it was painted over for the Okinawa mission, a detail only starting to be recognized among modelers.

OK, my first actual construction and painting in a while, the motor launch that will be positioned inside the ship hangar with the hangar door in open position. These pictures belie how tiny and difficult this thing was to paint. Since the boat will be positioned facing towards Yamato's bow, only the stern will be seen, so painting all of it was more an exercise than serving a useful purpose. A couple of notes - Lionroar included a very small rudder which should go under the hull at the extreme stern. However, the oversize propeller included in the PE would only go on if I hung it over the end of the ship's hull, which meant either leaving the rudder off the build or placing it on the stern. I chose the latter. Also, the Lionroar gives you lots of stem on the five elbow vents. Even though I trimmed these, they probably should be even more stubby to allow the crew to see out the front windows. Finally, I added a small mast out of left over PE, and painted a dividing line through the side windows, not completely straight. But, as mentioned, it won't be seen, so I won't kill myself trying to correct it.

Hey Doug. If you have any left over parts from your Japanese connection Id be glad to take them off your hands,

Ken, I can certainly send you the rudders and the closed hangar doors if you'd like, but I'd have to say that since you are planning to do the kit and know how to get these pieces, obtaining at least the deck fittings set is pretty much a requirement for an accurate build. So, I'd splurge on that set at least. But, let me know...

Doug, Im a good year away from touching my 1/350 Yamato. My 1/200 Yamato is getting all my time.

Im sure I will purchase a couple things from Mr. Ishida when Im ready.

Good to see you putting pieces together, Doug!
Don't burn yourself out by overloading your plate.
Always watching,
Guido

Not much danger of that. BTW, finished the APA except for painting the water. My first attempt at a deep Pacific blue was not satisfactory, so will mix up another batch shortly.

Maked me want to get out and Build her again with all those Goodies. Love your work so far Doug.....Cheers Mark

Thanks Mark,

Recently I painted the insides of the three hangar areas and am about ready to attach the aircraft hangar assembly to the hull. Before adding the deck, I will need to do a partial hull color paint around the outsides of the open doors, as the "mask" (some card stock cut to fit) for the paint job has to go on the inside of the hangar, which will be inaccessible once the deck pieces go on. Also, have noticed that the opening for the anchor chains on the sides of the hull are not correctly positioned on the Tamiya kit - they should actually be about halfway closer to the corresponding opening on the deck than where they are now. I already spent a considerable amount of time sanding down some scratch-built lips for the openings and have them already glued on, but am considering taking them off and repositioning with the replacement lips that Mr. Ishida provided. Determining factor will be how this impacts the degaussing cable, which runs very close to this spot and which was designed with the original location in mind.

OK, Some additional progress this weekend to finish up part I of the build, namely, finishing off the interiors of the boat and aircraft hangars. For today, these pics are of the two boat hangars...



In the first pic, we see my completed and painted motor pinace inside the starboard boat hangar. Unfortunately, all of this detail will not be viewable once the deck piece goes on, so this pic is something of a farewell.



On the port side, I am leaving the hangar empty so you can get a glimpse of the boat carriage and the interior of the hangar itself. Note that the curved side of the ships hull makes the tracks veer a little to the left. As mentioned, these boat hangars are only about 1/3rd actual size and would have extended much further back, but since the only view of them is going to be through the very narrow doorway, tunnel vision will simulate the rest of the hangar, as the human eye will not really be able to judge depth from this angle.



Another view of the starboard hangar with the pinace in place. As you can see, there is only room for one boat on each side of the hangar, so the two additional launches that Lionroar provided will have to go in the water, assuming you make a sea scene. DO NOT place them on the stern boat handling area - the hangars located here are far to low to allow these boats to be stored here, let alone the carriages they need to lie in. The stern was only used for the smaller whale boats, which could also be dropped on the deck in a pinch (as noted in several pictures) via the crane without having to worry about capsizing.

This is something of a back track, but not covered previously in my blog. I mentioned that the lips of the ports for the anchor chains are far too small on the Tamiya kit, so I scratch-built these bigger ones out of a piece of scrap plastic. I did this on the assumption that Mr. Ishida's replacement pieces would not be available in time, a wrong assumption on my part. Since placing them, I also realized that the location for the ports is not correct, and should actually be about one-length further aft. I debated whether to remove them and use the Ishida pieces, but ended up opting not to - size of the lips is about right, and since you will not see any anchors, only the anchor chain on my diorama, I will leave this as an acceptable inaccuracy.

Well, some minor annoyances trying to finish off the airplane hangar. First, dull coat frosted over some of the darker colored objects and had to repaint. Then, pictures I took of completed hangar showed gaps on the edges of the door frames, so took the Lionroar piece off and tested the fit of the resin Ishida version open hangar frame. This was also not a snug fit, so ended up gluing the Lionroar piece back in, and using some semi-thick CA glue to fill in the gaps. Will now have to repaint the areas on both sides of the frame, so at least one more day until this is finished.

Here's a link to a collection of shots of a very well done 3D model of Yamato, by Thomas Schmid, who apparently does graphics for both European and American TV history shows:

http://3dhistory.de/wordpress/?page_id=27

This particular 3D effort appears to be heavily based on the Kure Museum 1/10 model and has a few inaccuracies also reflected in that model, such as the round shields on the deck-mounted open 25mm AA guns. Extremely well done work none the less.

A very well-done super-detailed 1/700 Yamato by Australian modeler Alan Chung. This is, I believe, the Fujimi kit.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/acstudio/3718040715/

Note that the capped portholes on the hull are grossly out of scale, so you may want to consider sanding them off and adding replacements, assuming you are crazy enough to deal with 1/700 scale capped portholes, that is...Alan also produces a a CD-Rom outlining super detailing techniques, which might well be worth picking up.