OK, completion of the aircraft hangar, minus hangar doors and ladder from the stern deck...



This view shows the general arrangement of the trolleys, railing and equipment, which is conjectural, outside of the basic shape of the hangar itself. As mentioned, I went with a light sea grey color for the interior, as I felt white, which is possibly more likely, would not look right when scale effect is factored in. The area beyond the hangar door is painted Kure Arsenal Grey (Tamiya XF-75), which comes across very dark in this constricted area. The line running through the hangar represents the point at which I hacked off the rear of the Tamiya hangar and added additional space. From the angle you will see it, the line will not be so noticeable. One note - the trolley/ carriages that go into the aircraft hangar are not the taller ones used on the deck handling area - they are far too tall to allow aircraft to actually fit into the hangar on them. You will need to use the same carriages used to place aircraft right on the catapults. Unfortunately, there will not be spares in any PE set you buy, unless you buy a second set. Considering the other extra pieces available for use in the WEM set, that's not a bad idea if you do buy that in addition to Lionroar #2.



This is about all you will actually see of the hangar once the deck piece goes on. Should be impressive once you shine your mini flashlight in it, or so I hope. My next step will be to place the main (wooden) deck, which fortunately, has been test fitted and goes on pretty well. Note two oil barrels from the Ishida set just inside the hangar entrance. The doors to the hangar will go on after I paint the stern deck to avoid any over-spray.

Continuing with the beautiful work Doug. Am really enjoying this. I met Alan Chung at our Nationals last Month in Melbourne and he is a fantastic Modeller. Even though noe a Battleship, he won with the old Nichimo kit of the Zuikaku. To see what he did to it up close and personal was incredible. Here are a few shots of Zui for you.....Cheers Mark

Mark, thanks for the pics of Alan's kit. The thought always occurs to me when I see this camouflage (but I've never seen it stated anywhere) that this attempt at disguising an aircraft carrier to look like a merchant ship was intended to be "static" camouflage, i.e., an attempt to make US reconnaissance planes to not identify them as ACs when moored at port. The need, resulting from the loss of Saipan, which brought the entire Japanese Islands in range of B-29 scout planes. The effect has very limited usefulness when the ship is in motion.

Deck attachment in progress..



Because of the sheer of the bow, which drops considerably from midships, gluing the deck in place needs to be a three-part process, starting at the bow and working aft. As mentioned, the deck is two pieces of grooved, 1 mm sheeting (I forget whether it was Evergreen or Plastruct), glued on top of a sheet of blank styrene, and using Tamiya's original deck piece as a stencil. The grooved sheet had a mild corrugated effect to it when considering 1/350 scale, but a bit of light sanding across the top has made a big improvement and should allow it to work. As mentioned, the deck color for 4/45 needs to be a dark grey/black, so buying a pre-cut real wood deck would have been a waste of time and money. This is unpainted - the sheeting comes in brown since the original intent was planking.

More updates from Elmo over at the Model Ship Club Taiwan site...

http://translate.google.com/translate?u=http%3A%2F%2Fforum.modelship.com.tw%2FphpBB2%2F&sl=zh-CN&tl=en&hl=en&ie=UTF-8

go to: "Ships Published work", Japan (7 / 14) update (after the deck)

A very nice build by Michael Marti (AKA Mima) from Switzerkland, over at MWS. Michael also purchased the Ishida replacement parts and Lionroar #2, and is attempting corrections to many of the other issues with the kit.

http://www.shipmodels.info/mws_forum/viewtopic.php?f=59&t=78238&start=0

BTW, off this week, so should have some progress to show shortly.

Here is a more extensive build report by Michael on the Swiss IPMS site:

http://www.ipms.ch/plugins/forum/forum_viewtopic.php?82.0

Another Japanese modeler with an odd home site consisting of PDF files rather than embedded photos/commentary, using Ishida replacement pieces as well as Lionroar #1 and many other add-ons.

http://members2.jcom.home.ne.jp/ken_nii/bs_yamato350.htm

The path taken for the deck planking strikes me as odd and a tad on the garish side, but much other info and solutions to be gleaned.

Indeed hat deck looks like more to a basketball court floor to me.Other than that , these are all great builds , excellent for some extra refs.

Some progress this week, and I'm finally past the hangar phase:



Added the fair leads and hawser pipes, rear hawser reel and stern fair lead (all Ishida pieces), plus the stern boat handling deck and boat handling rails and some scratch-built ribbing along the sides of the whale boat hangars. The deck piece turned out to be very problematical, as it did not fit the assigned area very well, requiring some careful trimming in several places. Whether this was because of my skirt around the aircraft hangar, or simply a bad fit is hard to tell. Another problem encountered was that the brass deck piece tended to warp along both far edges, and the first attempt to glue it in place left pockets between it and the original deck. My second attempt to glue it down involved an overdose of superglue, as you can see from the less than pristine condition of the brass. No matter, it will all disappear with paint. There is still a gap along the edge of the brass as it touches the skirt, but some Mr. Surfacer, plus some strategically placed ammo boxes should hide that. Next step will be to paint a couple of whale boats to place on the tracks. This area needs to be painted before the roof, AKA the aircraft handling area, is placed on top of it. The aircraft crane and the stern AA mounts will be placed much later in the build process.

One other problem, now that I have the "wood" deck added to the hull, all the careful aligning has added a notable warp at the bow. It appears I will need to screw the hull down to the mounting plaque earlier in the process than I was anticipating.

Love your work so far Doug. She is looking great.....Cheers Mark

I've been working for months with a very patient customer in an attempt to recreate the look of an aged cypress deck for a laser cut 1/350 offering for the Yamato. Here is a photo of where we are at in terms of tinting. This is printed on matte presentation paper, and can be cut in either a box fit or a High Detail Fit (without the annoying holes for plastic dec fittings that would be replaced by brass.)

I'd be interested in receiving comments here via private message.

Thanks!

-- John D. --
(scaledecks.com)

http://gallery.kitmaker.net/showphoto.php/photo/364365

OK folks, back to work and all that. First issue is to address the warp in the bow caused by adding the new deck, which had to conform to the slope in the deck as it angles towards the bow. I cut .080 plastic stock into rectangular pieces, and stacked and glued them into a block roughly approximating the distance from underneath the deck to the new waterline. Once glued onto the bottom of the hull, these will provide an anchor onto which I can drill a couple of screws from the bottom of my display base and force both the bow and stern to be level with the horizontal sea surface. The base is on order and hopefully I will pick it up soon. Some priming, painting and work on the hull still to be done before attaching, however.

I originally posted this news a couple of days, then withdrew it to get confirmation - Tamiya is planning to release entirely new versions of both the 1/350 Yamato and Musashi kits before the end of the year, with an official announcement coming out sometime in the next several months. These will be completely new molds, not reboxes of the existing kits. I don't have any details on what the kits will look like, but judging from recent WWII ship kits coming out of Japan over the last few years, one will have to assume these will be major improvements over the existing kits. Naturally, this presents something of a quandary for me, since many of the scratch building and corrections I was anticipating doing to the current kit will not be necessary. Rather than throw out my efforts so far, I'm thinking to convert this kit into an "early" version Yamato from 1941-42, with the additional 6" turrets, and buy the new kit for the 4/45 version. This will allow me to continue working on the hull and other items over the next several months until the picture becomes clearer. One assumes that much of the Lionroar #2 and other add-ons will apply to the new mold as well. I don't suppose we will here any more details until the official announcement comes out, so stay tuned...

Typical.
At least one improvement is the deck engraving , plus the rear plane deck surface detail.Not that the superstructure doesnt have some omissions , but these were generally easy to fix.I expect better AA guns etc, and some more hull detail , along with better range finders etc.Something i the lines of Fujimi's 1/500 Yamato which by the way cost around 150-200 usd to buy it!!

Well, you'd have to assume that the cost would be around there, or similar to the Nagato kit. Fortunately, I've been procrastinating so much this summer on the kit, that most of the PE I have should now be usable on the new mold. For the one I have, a 1942 version will not require many of the PE in the sets and I should have more than enough to do both kits. I will continue working on the hull until I get a better picture what is coming out.

I had not seen anything about the new kits coming out. I can imagine they will be nice and will also carry a new price tag.



BTW...your build is fantastic!!

Its being discussed on some of the modeling boards in Japan, but as I said, official announcement not out yet by Tamiya.

Hello folks, another set of Ishida replacement pieces from Chrysanthemum and Katakana in Japan...in this case, remakes of all fourteen guns tubs that are situated on the Yamato and Musashi superstructure, as opposed to the deck. I debated whether to buy these since brass PE parts for many of these enhancements are included in the Lionroar #2 set, but this certainly expedites construction and, in the case of the rear 25mm gun tub, corrects errors in the Tamiya mold.







Note that the bottom of the 25mm tubs have the corrected support cones that are portrayed incorrectly on the Tamiya pieces. Although they are hard to see, there are also perforated holes along the bottoms of the rear tubs. You will need to gently pop out the resin covers to make them fully visible.




The larger piece you see on the right is a short tunnel connecting the superstructure to the rear range finder complex. It also includes a replacement for the radar shack, although you will still need to add a door to the shack. The observation windows are also corrected from the original. Not cheap - 3500 yen, which comes out to about $45. The AA guns which sit in the larger tubs are being sold in a separate set and are not ready yet.

Another set from Mr. Ishida:



These are by far the best binocular stands available for any IJN war ship. Be aware that many portrayals of Yamato/Musashi include stands with built-in metal seats, and one company does offer those, but you will probably not have room for them in the Tamiya observation deck area, since the circular support stand for the range finder in the middle of this deck is over scale.

I picked up my wood base from Steve Cozad today, so the issue of the warped bow can now be addressed. Steve was kind enough to drill a couple of locator holes for the wood screws I will use to fasten the bottom of the kit to it. Pics after I get back from a short business trip on Thursday.

Pics of my base and arrangements for securing the kit down....



New base with Yamato in approximate final position. You can see a little of the warp on the bow. The mid-part of the base will be covered with latex paint to simulate calm water (Yamato at anchor) and has thus not been painted.



Close-up of the warp at the bow.



This shows both the built-up sheet plastic glued to the bottom of the hull, and the pre-positioned hole drilled in the base for the wood screws that will go through the bottom of the base and into the plastic block. As an aside, you can also see the sanded down height of the strips positioned horizontally along the hull, which are the same approximate height as the rivet strips and portholes.

Yesterday I sprayed the primer on the rear boat/aircraft hangar deck. More about that in the next posting.

Hmmm, my link to the Taiwan model forum appears to be broken. If anyone knows how find these people, please let me know...

http://forum.modelship.com.tw/phpBB2/

Primed and painted the boat and aircraft hangar deck. This had to be painted prior to the aircraft handling deck (which is essentially its roof) being in place in order to get all the nooks and crannies. For primer, I've been using the Tamiya extra fine spray can primer, decanted into a bottle per some how-to instructions I found on the web. Decanting went as planned, but the instructions for allowing the paint to sit in the jar before putting the lid on doesn't give you enough time to get all the freon gas out, and I still had a bubbling-over-the-sides accident and lost some. Fortunately, that which I saved went on really nicely.

In addition to the paint job, I also attached the doors to the aircraft hangar, which are one side of the Lionroar #2 parts glued over the original Tamiya doors, after sanding. The ladder up from the aircraft hangar well will go on later, after I deal with the intricacies of getting the deck piece on.