So when I take breaks from my cold war era submarine simulator me and my team are developing (
http://www.subsim.com/radioroom/show....php?p=2284391) /plug I work on scale models. I used to big into planes but now Naval models are my thing.
I had not built a model in over a year working on my games and programming and building up my online income to work from home, but recently a hobby shop went out of business so I went to go see what he had. Got some great documentation and reference books for the project but he had two Tamiya models way up on the tallest shelf (Tamiya is a company from Japan that builds the most amazingly accurate and detailed models). He had the New Jersey for 99 bucks and the Enterprise for 299. 50% off.
So since the doctor said I need to get away from screens and get back into a pass time if I'm going to keep sane working from home I prompty bought the New Jersey (and im gonna offer him 99 for the Enterprise if its still there on closing day).
Heres my progress so far. I take my time since rushing a model of this quality is a waste of time and money. 20$ revell models I might rush just to have fun. This is an art for me. I do airbrushing, custom brushing, custom styrene addons, kitbashing, use things like jewlers chain for anchor chains, copper filiment for wiring, 1/64 copper pipe with a homemade bender for piping etc.
Heres my progress so far, will update as I get along. This first post is in reverse chronological order sorry.
All the tiny parts needed for finishing step one. Had to use the macro funciton on my camera the turrents are about 3"x2" for comparison. You can just barley make out the amazing detail Tamiya puts into their castings if you look carefully. The ladders and even more carefully, the lines of rivets. Rivets are one of those things that you cant really add yourself to a scale model. It has to be cast in and thats a delicate process when they are only a few thousands of an inch wide and tall.
Nice straight lines for the red part of the hull. I put a little red flake and metalizer (basically a really, really fine mettalic additive to make things look like metal.
Checking out my masking job from the aft end after glueing the rudders and prop shaft supports into place.
Peeling off the masking looks pretty straight so far.
Getting there. If my camera was better you would see the flake/metalizer
Had to hand fabricate some supports because sitting on the shelf for 2 years; it had developed warping so that the deck wouldnt fit in the groove without glue and pressure. It was sitting perfectly when I sized it but after I glued it (I use solvent cement instead of model glue all the time unless theres some sort of gap that needs the glue for support, aka I weld plastic instead of glue) so when I glued it I didnt compensate for the couple thousands of an inch it would melt so it fits, but its quite tight. Originally the deck wouldnt fit at all though youd get one peice on and then it would snap flying up in the air. I'm considering adding one more beam in the middle upper you can see its still warping there. The beams are 1/8" square stock styrene. You'll see me use it alot in the finishing and modifying stage.
The drill bit I used to drill a hole through the beams so that the cement would flow inside them beams for extra support through capillery action.
First coat of paint, airbrushed. I use an aztek dual action and use gravity feed most of the time. I like aztek because instead of having a huge needle assembly you have to change out you just hand thread in/out nozzles with little needle mechanisms built into them. This way you never have to clean the inside of your airbrush at all, plus you can switch from 1/32" nozzle to 1" in a couple seconds, the downsize nozzles are 15 bucks so if you bend the needle or lose a spring you gotta get a new nozzle in that size. Cleaning the nozzles is easy too just throw them in a glass jar (I use 4oz Tamiya paint jars) filled with laquer thinner and give em a shake and then repeat in another jar filled with mineral spirits. If paint gets dried inside them you take them aprt and clean them with a q-tip which fits into teh nozzle housing perfectly.
Deciding if I should sand and put another coat down before removing the mask, but unfortunatly I mixed this color by hand so it would be layered.
The 0.020 inch holes I drilled into the hull to allow glue to flow into the backsize of the prop shaft supports, and if they want to break off in the future, then I can pin them in place with 1/64 or 1/32 stock styrene rod.
Masked, ready for the firsst coat. The warping isnt so obvious here. You get a sense of the size of this beast though.
When I first bought them, goodies. The 1/750 scale I-58 jap fleet sub model ended up being about 1/2 inch tall and 6 inches long.