Hi Thomas,

great work!! I like your attention to detail, and the PE deck really looks fantastic - I would assume the effort you put into the pressure hull really pays!

Keep up the good work, I am following with great interest!

Cheers,
Jan

Ahoi Kameraden! Thank you all for your encouraging words. Last week I was lazy because I was busy in my company and my two small daughters asked for their fair share of my time, so not much spare for the hobby... But this weekend I was able to make some small progres. It is not much visible but its time consuming because I approach the detail works now...

First I created all the new locker doors in the correct size and place with my olfa and after this filling some excess seams from cutting with putty and polish and filling and polish...

Then I wanted to do the hinges of these doors. All of them are Photoetched in AMP´s aftermarket set. But they are so tiny you can not clean them up even with tweezers! Thats why I decided to leave them off and use my thinnest plastic sheet I have here...and I think it also works!

The outer turret handles are also photoetched ones insid of Special Navies small PE-fret. I decided to try brass tubes from Albion Alloys but somehow I was not able to solder this §$&#* tubes... thats why I again decided for plastic tubes which worked nicely without too much pain. But as the eyes start to get tired I just was able to finish one turret side today. The other one will be finished tomorrow after a final sanding of the new filled vent holes on one side (opened again after all the handling...). Have a look; its a small step for humankind but a big one for me tonight:

Making some decent progress Thomas! Even with having to tend to the typical responsibilities! Keep plugging away!!!

Quick note on the tiny A$$ PE Doors...if you double back some masking tape wrapped around a Popsicle stick, set the door just over the edge of the tape. You should be able to take a sanding stick or emery board and knock off the gate burs. No need to worry about that now....for next time! Fine job in making up the hinges from styrene!!

Sorry for the brake in my blog mates but I had an obligatory build blog to do for a free review sample tank kit I received over there on track-link: http://www.track-link.com/forums/site_blogs/22739

But as I did finish this joyful build today I´m glad I can turn my focus back again on my U-Boot. I hope you keep your faith in me! New updates will come now soon again. Stay alerted!

Hello men! The last few days we spent on detailing the conning towers interior. AMP provides here a lot small parts which improve the look considerably. Only the resin part for the commanders voicepipe was obviously taken by foreign insurgents which managed somehow to get into the restricted area. But with a small plastic sparepart and some patience we were able to make a new one.

As you also can see through the open bulkhead wheny you look from above down we also made as small ladder down the conning tower with evergreen styrene rods.

Now there is only the Kompass missing at the left side of the conning towers desk which I will do tomorrow. After this we can turn our attention to the outer details.

Beautiful job Thomas!! Some great detailing!!

Thank you Todd for your comments, they are very encouraging for someones first submarine build. I´ll keep on doing my best! But without my magnifiyng lenses I would be lost with this project

You are doing a fine job!! I still have a couple shelf queen subs needing a little love myself here! LOL...I know the feeling with the eyes...I had to resort to using magnification for a while now! Just the way it is!!

Ahoi again!

As I finished the last interior part of the conning tower (a compass with 2 mm diameter out of four parts) I finished the outside details. The cord of the life-safer was made with very thin lead wire and add a lot to a realisic impression. The frontal wire is still missing as this will be connected with the turret wire at the very end.





After this I prepared a socket for the whole boat. It is better for the upcoming works at the boat´s deck and the dive planes to have the boat sitting safe on a socket...





Then I was able to start with some details for the upper deck. I made the life-buoy with some thin wire instead of Special Navys flat PE-handles



After this I wanted to finish the 20 mm Flak 30 gun. Regrettably there is no after market barrel available for it. Therefore I drilled out the existing gun´s muzzle. As the molded shoulder support (the right word for it in english?) for the gun was badly warped and disintegrated into several tiny parts during my try to clean it up I was forced to do a new one with Styrene. After this I did some small detail improvements. This was necessary and give it a much more sophisticated look now in my eyes

Looking good Thomas!! Nice to see the deck going down!! Sharp work on the CT and Flak! "Shoulder support" is correct my friend!! U-braces is another term. Keep up the great work!

Its getting fiddly Kameraden! Next step in construction was to do the deck railing. I started with the railings around the 20 mm gun. I tried to do this railing completely out of styrene rod but failed. After this I used the kit´s white metal ones and fitted the wooden seat in it. After this I added some extra stanchions to the outer railings as they were present at the real boat.



After this the naval yard job safety officer ordered us to place the deck railings now to prevent some dockyard workers fall into the water during the build. We did this with the kit´s white metal railings again but used a fine 0,2 mm copper wire for the railing wire. 50% is done and I think it looks nice now!



The boats had two grapnels at the bow and two at the stern deck. These grapnels were done with styrine rod again. The grapnel ends were photoetched parts from AMP but as they needed to be bended half it was impossible for me to do this with this thick PE-parts and used a thin half circled styrene sheet from my punch and die set. The attachments for the grapnels were done from fine lead foil out of requisitioned stock of spanish and french wine bottles
. PROSIT!

Slick work - looks great!!

Hi Thomas!

**Tut mir leid, ich habe irgendwie die letzten Updates total verpasst...irgendwie durchgerutscht-Tschuldigung!!...***

Sorry, missed your latest...great work, your Einbaum is really coming together. I like the material mix, white metal, styrene, wire... this is going to be a great model

Cheers

Jan

Hello Jan (and I mean both from Germany and Denmark),

thank you very much for your encouraging comments for this first U-Boat build of mine. This will let my built spirit keep high until the finish

Dankeschön und Tak!

Thomas

Hello Mates,

because of serious exhaustion the whole naval workers got Heimaturlaub by the Oberkommando. I spend my ten days holiday at the wonderful Robinson Club Calimera Kriti at Crete with wonderful sunny weather, comfortable water temperatures, plentiful high quality food and a lot mountainbiking there.



After returned completely refurbished the whole crew is back at the shipyard and doing double shifts again. Stay tuned, updates will follow up very soon

Beautiful shot Thomas!! Welcome back!!

Hey Todd thanks for the welcome back. It was a nice holiday but too much whine and good food. I was afraid I will look like a marshmellowmen if I would stay a bit longer. Good to have the rationed food at home again

Okay we succeded in finishing the second railing too. It was a bit fiddly but the results are worth the sweat I believe. Because of the size of the boat my photo background is getting too small to show a plain background now, sorry for that















Of course, because of several "incidents" the Commander explicit pointed out again not to damage the new railings out of carelessness during work

Today we got one serious case of sabotage from the supplier of the ship´s propellers. Boy, Special Navy really messed up a lot on the kit and it will need a watchful officer to discover all faults.

They really wanted us to install these "speedboat-like" pitched screws. Surely we would sail with about +20 knots this way but, because of the massive cavity this way, the boat would be an easy prey for the english destroyers...


And if this wouldn´t be enough they also forgot to make two counter-rotating screws. Our launch would have ended in completely desaster already in the harbour . But our first engineer had the idea to convert the blades to a much more realistic pitch for this Boat and with counter rotating screws. See here the delivered screw (left) and the converted screw (right).



One extra Grog for the brass welders and a visit to the faulty supplier

ATTENTION!

Guten Tag Männer! We are making steady progress! Now we finished the front and aft hydroplanes, their upper protection guards at the ships hull and the corrected ship´s screws. The tensioner wire for the forward hydroplanes were made with 0,3 mm wire, the guard´s wiring with only 0,2 mm. Its almost fixing spider´s web with tweezers but it look very promising. But the handling getting even more dangerous (I touch the boat from now on like a raw egg)









I will enter now Build Step 15 out of 18. Not too much left to build but delicate parts now (netcutters and jumping wires. Wish me luck now

Nice work, brings back memories

Cheers/Jan

Thanks Jan, always a pleasure for me

Tonight just a small update: I´ve made all the welding seams around the boat. The Girl becomes more and more pretty

Looks superb, Thomas. Thanks for documenting all your trials and tribulations on this projects. It makes for a very inspiring blog.

Hello Michael,

thank you for your reply. I´m glad you and others do like my first U-Boot blog here and my building results so far. I will keep on building with high spirit

Ok here in Germany we say "alles hat ein Ende" which means literally "everything will end one time". Well our shipyard reached the final building stages *hip hip horray!"

After glueing Special Navy´s white metal wire supports at the conning towers´s sides and improve the cable guide out of another whine´s bottles leadfoil *gulp* we were able to marry the conning tower to the ship hull with superglue.

Then there was only the jumping wires with the supertiny photoetched cable tensioners and wire splitters and the netcutter left. The isolators were supplemented between the tensioners with Kristal Clear (will be better visible after priming the whole thing) and finally, under mobilization of the last sparse nerves left, fitting some 0,2 mm support wiring from the front and aft conning tower to the jumping wires.

Only the aft flagmast at the conning tower is missing. Here I plan to obtain a proper Seekriegsflagge from Peddinghaus Decals. After complete painting I will fix this in the very end.

The Flak gun on deck and the periscopes were left unglued for better handling during the following paint procedure. Ok I have to admit the periscopes broke off two times each and AFTER this the captain decided to leave them off until later...

But here ladies and gentlemen is the final result after finishing the building stage:















Thank you again for all your encouraging comments until now, I really appreciate them all and it keeps me hanging on this project.

Next will come opening the color buckets