Tower action

Important subassemblies

I glued the tower halves together and stepped out of the suggested construction order. My reason for this deviation was that as a couple of (very much) protruding pieces were to be glued into the sides, they would only be badly on the way while I would be twisting, rolling and turning this chunk around. They would also be in a grave danger of being knocked off or even broken, so I thought it'd be much better if I just glued them on a few iterations later.

Being a semi-obedient builder, I attached the UZO device supports to the inside front of the tower, but left the clear plastic binoculars off. That was to keep them both out of the way and protected during the airbrushing stage. Then I glued in the direction finder antenna loop and snorkel parts, on two different afternoons, so these mostly unsupported pieces would not interfere with each other while their gluings were being cured.

Details

As the last thing you can see in this set of photos I glued on the rungs of the ladders as well as the handle and the hinges of the hatch in the front. While they were curing I grabbed a good hold of the rest of the hull and filed/sanded the putty mess and the ugliest seams away.

My next step shall be to glue the tower onto the hull and whenever that has been set I guess I'll finish up with the antennae and last details of the conning tower. After that I'll resign myself to fighting the photoetch pieces, hoping I don't end up swearing like a drunken pirate.