First small intro. My name is Rade Marjanovic, astrophysicist from Novi Sad, Serbia. Hooked on ship modelling by my father, retired Yugoslav navy officer.
Todd MIchalak was nice to send me this kit for my first build log. I am rather new to modelling so if you think there is anything worth mentioning feel free to do it. Anyhow here it goes.
Flyhawk started producing ship models quite recently and was known to ship modelers before only as aftermarket (PE) company.
But, by venturing in the world of plastic they proved that ships can be produced with same precision as PE. The kit itself is highly detailed and not for those with faint heart
(check very nice review by Todd). Some parts are less than one millimeter in size.
Parts of the kit are very crisp with no flash whatsoever and very small if any ejector pin marks.
During the build of this particular kit I am going to use only parts that came in the box and Uschi's Rig that thing rigging thread of superfine size as only aftermarket.
The box contains a sheet of PE that I will also use (my first encounter with PE).
As one can see there are a lot of my firsts with this kit
. Hopefully all will turn out good.Firstly I glued the hull halves (upper and lower) and immediately stumbled upon a problem.
The lower half of the hull (underwater part) is bent a little on ends, probably by ejector pins, which resulted in poorer than expected fit with upper half (which can be seen on the images above). This had a consequence of slight misalignment along the whole length of the seams and the armor plating is the most obvious example of that.
However I plan to fix it with some light sanding and filling if necessary. Next thing i tried dry fitting the decks. They fitted perfectly, and this was the most dreaded part for me, as I don't want to loose any details by sanding.
As for the aftermarkets available there are metal barrels set, wooden deck and paint masks all by Flyhawk.
This is where I stopped for now. I am waiting for the magnifying glass with LED to arrive so I can continue with smaller parts. In the meanwhile, fixing the seams between hull halves and hull painting are to be done. Feel free to comment.
