Hi All,

A little while ago I started on my 1:350 KGV and I have been asked to make a build log of it, so here it is

I have not posted a lot on MSW since for many years I have been building armour, but since a few years I went back to my modelling roots: ships. Here are some pictures of my previous models:



Roma and Yamato



SMS Kronprinz



Indianapolis

Sorry for the bad pictures, these are made with my cellphone. In the future I will us a better camera.

For my KGV build I will of course use the Tamiya kit, as add on parts I will use the Pontos set, some additional doors that were missing from the kit and hopefully some WEM carley rafts.

Pontos wants you to remove 99% of all deck detail, then they want you to install the wooden deck, and then you can add their own detail to it. This is a combination of PE and resin vents. Good thing about it is that it makes painting a whole lot easier







Here comes the first challenge, Pontos provides the breakwater in 3 parts with a gap in between, both on on port and starboard side so sailors did not gave to climb over it. This is also shown on pictures of the actual ship, but Profile Morskie shows them as one big breakwater. So even the plans are not always correct it seems.



The other thing is that the plans show a lot more hose reels and also 2 winches on deck in front of the front turret. I need to check my photos to find out when those were placed. The plans were of KGV during the Bismarck engagement, but I am building KGV from an earlier part of 1941. Pictures of the ship at see in March show the winches and additional hose reels.

well, lot's of things to find out, that is what makes this hobby fun

Mat,

Off to a slow start, a lot of work to remove that detail.

The photos detail looks good what you need is more light. Great looking ships, looking forward to how you create this KG-V.

Mark

final update for this weekend, the breakwater has been finished, the boom storage was difficult, the Pontos instructions were unclear and had the part numbers switched, but the result looks nice



The aircraft catapult is beautiful, although again Pontos switched the part numbers



I am not sure about the deck winches. The Tamiya parts are kind of crude, but the Northstar sets are sold out everywhere and the Infini parts are terribly expensive to get shipped to here. I think I might do some updating of the Tamiya parts, paying 30 euros for 4 winches is a bit too much for me.

Hi Mat,

Nice start, the etch work is very tidy indeed. You will have to watch the instructions, I built Duke of York a few years back, and found the Pontos instructions very crowded and confusing.

Will be following along for the ride.

Cheers

Si

Ooo! My all time favorite ship!

Great to see you posting your build, Mat

PS. For aftermarket winches/cable reels, try , White Ensign Models as they sell dedicated sets

Hi All,

a small update before I start to paint the hull.

I fixed some sinkholes at the stern, added the degaussing cable and the rectangular portholes. I cut out a part of the plans and used them as template for the correct location.



I added the bottom part of the trash chutes, the top part and what looks like a wave deflector will follow after the deck has been installed. The plans show that these chutes went down till the waterline, but pictures show they only went until the armour belt



prop shafts replaced with Evergreen. Anyone know the correct colour of the shafts? Steel? Brass?



These are all the replacement vents. I will keep them on the casting block when painting, and only cut them off when placing them on deck



Lot's of fiddly bits to add on deck, they will be a nightmare to paint Pontos added 22 brass bollards (is that the correct term?) but only added 21 rings to put at the bottom. Luckily I found a spare part in my PE stash



I also did some superstructure work, those funnel caps are a work of art, Pontos designed them very nicely.



The same goes for the wind deflector, lot's of fiddly parts but they all fit very well.



So now it is time to paint, I will use colourcoats paint for this ship (formally known as WEM paints). I hope the hot and humid weather will not cause too much issues. I always thin them with white spirit to ensure a long drying time.

Thanks for watching and feel free to comment

Great work so far Mat! I have one answer and one question for you:

1) The propeller shafts were surely made out of hardened seawaterproof steel so painting it in a silver color should be fine

2) What is a trash chute? Never heard about it?!

Best Regards

Thomas

Mat,

Nice progress, you did a really fine job with the funnel cap.

Mark

prop shafts replaced with Evergreen. Anyone know the correct colour of the shafts? Steel? Brass?


Thanks for watching and feel free to comment [/quote]


Everything under the waterline, to include the propeller shafts and rudder, was Red Anti-Fouling. This was a medium to dark red lead paint. It was not as bright as the red used by the contemporary American nor as brownish as the color used by the Germans. Something in the red oxide range (but not too brown) will work. White Ensign Colourcoats NARN42 - Royal Navy WW2 Antifouling Red is an excellent match. The actual propellers/screws themselves were bronze, not brass, in color.

EJ

Gold paint makes nice substitute for Bronze paint if you want a brighter bronze look.

Mark

Hi Mat

nice progress so far.

Good to see you add the square port holes on the aft of the hull-most times these are overlooked.

Also to see the garbage chutes added...

I really like the look of the Pontos set, but when I was collecting AM for my build it was before Pontos had released their set...

As for the prop shafts, hull red would probably be correct, but for a bit of pomp and dazzle I made mine "steel"

To get the correct colour for the props, you might like to try priming them black and then overcoating with gold

Hi Mat!

Joining late but I'm in for your build - very nice start and good progress! With Russ and Si you should have very good and proficient counselors.

Great job so far, I'm looking forward to your updates!

Cheers
Jan

Hi All,

thanks for checking my build and the helpful comments

The hull is now complete, all painted with colourcoats except for the bootline, which is ordinairy tamiya X18. Everything received a coat of Tamiya clear which gives it a nice satin gloss but not too shiny. Despite the humid weather all paint went on without major issues. The Tamiya acrylics can sometimes be a problem, but since I learned to thin them with their lacquer thinner instead of their X20, grainy paint has become something of the past.



I painted the shafts in antifouling and followed Russell's advise for the propellers, gold leaf over flat black.

but then I had to put the deck on...I have used Pontos decks before and they all went on without problems, but this one made me the Pontos wooden decking manufacturing department. I think they set the engraving laser on "kill" when they made mine because it almost came from the backing foil as single planks.

In the end it all fit kind of okay, but this was a sticky puzzle to finish, I dryfitted the superstructure parts on it. The superstructure received exactly the same treatment as Russell gave it to make it look as it was in 1941 (I would never have noticed on the plans that the forward structure was actually 2 single structures, great catch Russell!)





the second funnel was also finished, this one also looks great thanks to good parts design by Pontos



In the meantime I received one of my MK1 door sets, one is still in backorder. I must say they look really nice, the waffle ones for sure can be used for another project (hints are welcome)



By the way, I am not sure about you guys, but I always had issues getting doors on straight. The technique I am using now is as follows: 1) drill a small hole on the place where you want to glue the door 2) glue the door on with plastic cement which allows you some time to move the door around and wait a few minutes 3) put a tiny drop of CA glue on the inside of the superstructure in the other end of the hole, now the door gets glued from the inside. It works the best for me since even thick CA dries too fast for me and I always seem to put on too much.

@ Thomas: the trash chutes were basically pipes on the sides on the hull that allowed you to throw stuff overboard without making the side of your hull dirty, you can see them on the drawing here placed on the hull at the location of the back of the second turret:



On the drawing you can see it goes all the way to the waterline, but pics have shown me they only go down to about the armour belt and they are cut off straight. Also they had some plate welded over them for what I think was protection against waves. I need to check my files for that picture...

thanks for watching, next week it will be PE cranes

Mat,

Nice progress, everything seems to be shaping up nicely.

Mark

Looking really good, Mat!

Nice recovery on the wooden deck...

Good attention to detail on the garbage chute-something I overlooked

Hi guys,

the update for this week is small since making the PE cranes was very challenging. My first mistake was to do yard work before doing PE work. Since my hands were tired, they were not that steady anymore. Stupid mistake to make but I can only blame myself.

this is the stuff that goes into 1 crane, no plastic parts from Tamiya are used (yay!)



Geting it together was challenging but doable, if only the Pontos instructions were clear.... Once again the IWM website came to the rescue to help me with the placement of certain parts, especially the top pulley structure required me to bend the lattice structure in a specific way which Pontos forgot to mention in the instructions, just as they indicate that part 69 needs to go somewhere on the crane, but then they do not tell you where The good thing is that I cannot find the part on the IWM site or my printed plans anyway. This is what 1 finished crane looks like





The second one I want to build in a raised position to show how it works. Two comments about the cranes: 1) they do not contain the parts that are inside the boom so I think I need to scratch that somehow and 2) there is no rigging so I need to scratch that as well. The thinnest copper wire I have is 0,25 mm which still looks way too thick. I can also use lycra wire but that will be a huge challenge to glue. Well, we'll see

I got confirmation from WEM that the carley rafts will not go into production, which is bad news. There are 3D printed ones available online but that would be very expensive. I settled for the resin ones from L'Arsenal which costs me about 15 euros for 40 pcs which is doable.

Talking about rafts, There were a second type attached to the superstructures of KGV, they look like a bunch of hoses/pipes strapped togther. Do these have an official name and more important, when were they installed (do not look at the red arrow on the pic, I mean the devices installed above the carley rafts)?



Thanks for watching

Mat,

Excellent job with the assembly on that crane, it looks amazing.

Mark

Nice progress Mat,

The crane dores look so much better than the kit part.

Cheers

Si

I'll check my references on these Mat, but I'm pretty sure they were used as a flotation device as well...

Hi guys,

not much progress this week. Somehow everything went kind of wrong, perhaps the carpet monster cursed me for not feeding it enough lately

searchlights, the PE is a major improvement over the Tamiya part. But to be honest they do not look as good as the Northstar sets. Some origami work:



5 sets went together nicely, number 6 became a CA Frankenstein, need to clean this one up:



furthermore some progress on the gun director platform, the PE adds a lot of detail, a comparison between Tamiya part and PE replacement



and the result:







some ladder work, the part was very delicate so I separated the platform from the actual ladder and then glued them back together. I added some styrene strip at the bottom to fix it securely to the superstructure



One of those little tricks I call a "Mike Ashey trick"

I wanted to show the directors as well, but I tried to build one but also destroyed one Even with my Etchmate these things are impossible to bend without breaking.

Better luck next week

Mat,

Nice PE work, those stairs always give me a problem.

Mark

Nice work Mat,

The PE on the forward high angle director tower looks very neat indeed.

Cheer

Si

Great work - these etch assemblies are miles ahead of the Tamiya parts!

This week more success, I decided to skip the gun directors for a while and started on the masts. The mast I had to build for the Yamato still gives me nightmares, but for KGV it was smooth sailing, a kind of This is where the Pontos set brings a lot of excellent detail. Despite the high amount of fiddly parts they were relatively easy to assemble. Only challenge was to get it all straight. Of course I made a mistake and added a wrong yardarm to the foremast, I only noted this when I had it finished and wanted to complete the main mast I had to burn it loose with a lighter, hence the charred look of the mast Thankfully the other tiny PE parts did not burn to ashes, they only came loose and required so re-glueing

Mat,

Great job with assembling the mast but I was wondering is the ladder supposed to be tilted like that? Seems to me it would be a lot harder to climb with it leaning out like that.

Mark