Hi everyone.
While some bits were drying on the Markgraf I thought I may as well start this little gem, the SMS Emden.

As you can see I have the Artwox wooden deck and copper anchor chain

And I have the Gold Medal Models PE set for him


And joy of joys it has PE ratlines!!
I also have some BMK barrels coming. I ordered them months ago but they have just come back into stock and should be here in a week or so, just in time to be installed I hope or the Emden will have to go on the pending list until they do arrive.
The SMS Emden was probably the second 1/350 ship I purchased, the first being the Tamiya Tirpitz, so I thought I may as well build it after it has been sitting in my stash for at least 8 years. Can't rush these things..
First of all there are six sets of stairs to replace. They are pretty good for plastic, but nothing on the PE ones. One already gone..

Stairs, prepare to meet thy maker...

And that isn't a Dremel either. I find whenever that name is attached to a rotary tool the cost of everything triples..
Then the moulded on anchor chains just had to be removed.

After all the surgery I decided to spray the deck in Revell 83 called out in the instructions. This is a big change for me as I have never sprayed enamel out of an airbrush before. I find clean up is a pain next to the ease in which acrylics get cleaned up. But all I did was spray some thinners through the brush after wards and give the rest of it a clean with cotton buds with thinners on them and all seems well. But I still like acrylics.
More news as it comes to hand.

YOu certainly don't wait around Warren. Off to a very nice start. Will watch with interest as I have this Kit also in my stash.....Cheers mark

Hi Everyone.

Now that the San Francisco has gone as far as it will for the moment and has entered the display cabinet I will continue with the Emden.

I got the correct colour for the Sand colour from WEM. The barrels set also came so I may as well make another start on the little Emden that seemed to be everywhere in WW1.

Cheers
Warren

This is the first time I have used WEM paints and they cover very well, dry fast and have a great flat finish.

I have found a problem with my PE set and will get in touch with GMM in a few minutes.

How's that for a quick update!!

Great start Warren, following with interest.

Fancy one of these myself, look good with the Varyag.

Si

Beautiful ship, I have no doubt that you will do it justice!

Cheers/Jan

Very nice so far,perhaps my favorite ship.Looking forward to see how the Artwox deck works out.

Hello All from the other side of the world.

Welcome aboard the good ship Emden Blog guys.

@ Simon, the whole kit and extra cost very little and I am sure it would look great with the Varyag.. go for it!!

@ Jan, thanks for that Sir.

@ Anthony, I would be lost without these decks now as they make it so easy and look so realistic. Installing the deck is one of the next things I need to do.

Has anyone out there got any good reference photos showing the locations of where the funnel bracing wires were attached to the hull?

Cheers
Warren

Hmmm.. it would appear that for all these years I have been missing the Emden's decal sheet and didn't know it.. And when I try to send an email to Revell (Germany) it rejects it all the time as the anti-spam thing is not working properly and no matter what answer I give it fails. Anyone know another way to contact them?

How much decal can there be, except for the flags ? Don´t let that stop you!
;)

Cheers/Jan

Oh don't worry Jan it has not stopped me at all..

In fact, as you can see from the following images I have been a little busy.
The SMS Emden had ten 105mm rapid fire guns in three different mounts, six enclosed and four open. The following is one of the closed type.

Too get the brass barrel into place I glued the shell halves together and after they dried I drilled one size hole in the front and a slightly larger one in the rear. I then inserted the barrel into the mount and used CA glue to fill the area over the back of the barrel. You can see the back of the barrel through the clear CA. I will paint the rear of the mount black to simulate a hollow area as I don't wish to build whole new turrets for this build.
The open mounts ended up looking like this after a bit of surgery..

I had to use a razor saw to remove the plastic parts I no longer needed the drilled and cut away the remaining mount part to allow me to place the barrel in a plastic cradle. The part on the back will be removed after this as I just had a look at a reference photo of one of the Emden's guns and I can't see anything even vaguely resembling that part.

The bridge arear has also had a bit of surgery where I replaced the Revell canvas covered railing with the GMM PE version. No ribs on the Revell one, well none on the inside anyway.

Then we have the PE replacement compass tower.

And finally for this update a wider view of the midships area. This wook a lot of filling and sanding as the sides of the superstructure did not line up with the roof. After I filled the gaps with CA I then sanded them all down and painted them again.
A hint for future reference, don't bother painting these areas until everything is in place, filled and sanded. Then you won't have to paint it a second time...
Cheers
Warren

Coming on great Warren, wooden deck is really going to lift the midships section.

What colour did you use for the midships section deckhouse roofs?

Si

Revell 83. That is what is suggested in the instructions. But I have found that the WEM deck colour is much browner than the one I used. I trust them more than Revell's so I will be doing a little repainting by the look of it. I was not 100% happy with the colour in the first place, but was fat, dumb and happy with the Revell callout until I looked at the WEM colour.
Only hitch is that WEM are out of stock of that colour so I ordered it from a store in the Czech Republic. Not sure how long it will take to get here so the SMS Emden will just have to wait a bit.
Or maybe I will just use the chocolate brown I have from Gunze..
Or I was just looking through my paint collection and it would appear that Tamiya XF-79, Deck Linoleum, may just be what I will use.
Thanks again Simon for motivating me to find the correct colour.

You have done some real nice work on her Warren. Watching with interest as I have one in the Stash also.....Cheers mark

Hi Mark

Hot enough for you?

Cherish it Mark as they are discontinued. Hopefully one day they will re-release it as I want the Dresden as well.

Cheers
Warren

The SMS Emden is starting to resemble a it's namesake now. The size of the ship doesn't seem to influence the time it takes to complete a project once PE, brass barrels and Wooden Decks become involved.
Hmmm.. looks like the Gallery is not working as advertised at the moment. Won't let me upload photos. Oh well.
The break-water on the bow forward of the two gun turrets supplied by Revell looks like it is made from 12 inch thick steel so I made another from scrap brass that was part of the sprue for the GMM Queen Mary II PE Set I used.
Next up was constructing the rear director platform and compass tower. Brass curved very nicely and the railings only took a few minutes.
Then I installed the wooden deck. Was simple but I had to paint some areas of the deck left uncovered under stairs at either end of the lower deck. Luckily I didn't get any linoleum colour on the wood.
Will post some pictures once the Gallery is up and running again.
Later...

If that is whats is called a teaser, then its working

lol.. I fixed my problem and here are the piccies..


As you can see, the wave breaker looks a little better made out of thinner PE.

Then we have the rear director tower. The Revell one is just the director in a thick sided plast basket so this is a bit better..

Then there is the compass tower to replace the chunky Revell version. And yes, that is a No.11 knife blade in the background.

Forgive the superstructure paint. The touch ups haven't happened yet. This is the compass tower mounted in position.

And finally the self-adhesive wooden deck from Artwox. There were also wooden parts for the deck under each of the four upper deck gun turrets.
So, that's it for the moment.
Hopefully will get a bit more done this afternoon.
Cheers
Warren

Just as an aside, today was very good for me for two reasons,
1. I finally ordered my 1/200 Bismarck and paid less than $270 delivered to my door,and
2. I got my Pontos Sevatopol upgrade set for 10% off and free shipping.
Gotta be happy with that.
Oh wait a sec, I forgot I am still unemployed. Oops...

Yet another update for this slowly finishing build..
First up, I have found a problem with the Artwox Wooden Deck, it has been printed up the wrong way. I got around it by putting the sides of the centre superstructure on the opposite sides to how Revell wanted them. I thought I had got away qith it until I went to put the boat racks on and they didn't fit properly on the side with the walkway. SO I got around that by sawing off the walkway on the wrong side and fabricating a new one from the runner of a PE sprue. It is probably a much better scale thickness, but it annoys me that Artwox have stuffed up their deck. I told them about it and hopefully they will admit their mistake and fix the problem.

The new walkway.

Then I had a slight disaster when removing paint from my stirrer.. dullard.. Luckily I had some 'Thinners For Washes' from Mig Productions and I dipped a tissue in and rubbed the paint thinking :it can't get any worse" and amazingly the thinners took off the oil based enamel and didn;t harm the acrylic at all! Woohoo!

Next up we have a picture of two of the four gun turret mount wooden deck parts. These are the rear ones.

These are some boarding ladders that go on the front of the ship. I had to cut off the ladders from the rough plastic rod from Revell so I decided to fabricate whole new assemblies using PE ladders and some plastic rod. The Evergreen rod is lovely and smooth and after I rounded off the ends I think they look much better than the kit parts.

Here is one of them installed.

Macro shots with the flash makes paint look terrible!! Anyway, these are the PE bridge wing supports supplied with the PE set but missing from the Revell kit.
Then I decided to do the railings.. front

Forward centre

and the rear, sorry, stern..

Centre.. with the modified ship's wheel..

And that's it for now. Too much fun for one day. And my eyes need a rest..

Cheers 'n' beers
Warren

Looking Good Warren, nice build.
Julian

Thank you Mr Gremlin56.

Looks good Warren,with the deck,did you give it any treatments,or is that it's natural color ?

That is how it comes Anthony. But I can't recommend it due to it being incorrectly printed. The cutouts for the centre superstructure are on the wrong sides. Other than that I have never had any problems with Artwox decks.

Another day, another few steps closer to completition.

Not to many problems today, except the usual one of trying to spray white paint. Not sure what it is but it always seems to go wrong somehow. Oh well..
First up, ship's crests for the bow..

There were no painting instructions for them (that I saw) so I made a decision and painted them with Dark Blue Gloss, then dry brushed them with yellow which picked out the very fine detail in these mouldings.

Props and rudder are on.
Then came the eight boats..

For the ones with their own supports I glued the boats to them then have run a fine copper wire (about 0.12mm) that I got on Ebay between the davits to simulate the bracing wire.

Then for the four hanging boats I used my WW1 aircraft rigging experience and drilled fin holes into the lifeboat decks. I then glued the fine wire into each of these holes. When everything was dry I took the ends of the wires and threaded them through the holes I drilled in the davits et voila, instant hanging boats. a spot of thin CA glue on each locked the wires in place.

I like to give everything a few hours to dry before I trim all the wires.
Does anyone out there have the Emden decal sheet that they can send a scan of to me via email? Due to Revell's fantastic end opening boxes (|:() the original decal sheet has disappeared. Any help would be most appreciated.
Time for a beer or two and a meal up at the local Italian Restaurant... mmmmmm

Cheers
Warren