Finished: Project VI/16

The captain was completed as soon as I had painted the Reichseagle onto the top front of the hat. I didn't go for the stubble after all. As a finishing touch I went over the whole guy with Vallejo's satin varnish and then, after a decent curing time I did the binocular lenses and some splash-like surfaces "beaming" from above with gloss varnish. The result was pretty neat.

Lastly I took a few silly photos of the cap'n on his command tower, observing the seas. The tallness of the edges managed to surprise, as you could see surprisingly little of the guy.

Finished: Project V/14

A German type XXIII submarine

My last assemblage, paintage and weatherage -related mumblings were taken care of the last time, with photos and all. The net is full of stuff about the fascinating engineering projects of the late-war Germans, still their navy has been (for a reason, I guess) mostly out of the limelight. And from that little the genial type XXI submarine has been the most popular one, at least over this type XXIII coastal sub (I cannot claim to understand how the Germans set up their types), so this build has been done with very little aid from online references.

As it seems to be the way of the Project Mumblings, the model was built OOB and without the decals. I didn't bother painting the U-numbers into the conning tower, and they were something of a super rarity in the pics I've seen anywhere. Funnily enough the kit provided the white lines on the tower, but using them sounded plain silly, so I just painted them on, as reported earlier.

Some parts and pieces were missing from the box, such as the torpedoes. And I got the model partially assembled already, so I didn't have much input on that, either, the hull is in the condition I received it in. The build was quite fun, but in all honesty I have to say that the immense size (99,1cm) of it provided some practical challenges to both assembly and painting.

Photos of the finished product

The english/german mix on the plaque is annoying me to no end

Some comparison shots

The insane size of this model is difficult to convey, if one doesn't see it in person. To aid in that I took a couple of silly photos with a bunch of tank models in the same scale. Just in case that didn't help, I also took a photo with the dvd box of the absolute best submarine movie in the history of all the multiverses. Everyone's seen a dvd box at least once in their lives, I assume, so this one should enlighten the non-modelers as well.

The land-vehicles are lined with the ends of the U-Boat

Off-topic

Now that I'm done with this sting and February is well on its way, I'll be doing something completely different for a week or two. Along with the (slow) finishing of the U-Boat I've been working on my pygame project for the last two weeks and a bit more. While I'm writing this that project is functionally better than before and looks much more elegant.
My next scale model is going to be one of the 1:72 scale A-10 planes. I'll be mumbling about that after a couple of weekly posts, in case someone was keeping tabs.

Under the weather

Weathering

My plan was to keep this boat relatively fresh-looking, without a ton of battle-scars or years of mistreatmeant under horrible conditions. Despite that the salty sea-water should've left some marks on the surface, espacially where the water might be pooling for longer times than on the smoothest surfaces.

A rusty wash

For this stage I dug out my Vallejo rust liquid (VMW 76506 Rust) and applied it pretty carefully here and there. I mostly concentrated on the conning tower and the numerous openings of the topmost hull. On those I typically dabbed a bit with the brush and pulled it down gently for a drip-like effect. The stronger ones I then smeared with my fingers to make them look a bit subtler.

Messing with pigments

I had thought I'd try out the fresh rust pigment (VP 73118 Fresh Rust). The point was still that the effect wouldn't be too strong, but as I'm a total amateur with them, the expected result wasn't guaranteed to be perfect.

Port

Starboard

The result

It didn't look too bad to me. Of course, differing opinions are welcome. I doubt that I'm going to modify this model anymore, but accept it as finished at this point. Then we get to the question I've been afraid of asking for a good while: "how on earth do I stage this monster up for the final photos?"

Rowing and texting

The dinghy

Gluing the three parts of the inflatable boat didn't take more than a moment. Of course at that point I noticed that the seam area's painting was imperfect. While I was tinkering around, I glued on the oars and then the rope pieces so that the impending reairbrushing would cover up the glue stains.

Of course I would have to remember to repaint the now messed up rope loops. On top of the german grey I applied gently the same terra tone I had used on it before. To bring out the rope-like texture I later washed them again with black.

The plaque

The results of my quick letter-painting last week wasn't adequate, especially at a close range. To improve on it I defied my neck-shoulder region and attacked the letters again. My goal was, of course, to get a much better looking coverage on them.

Looks like gently weathering the submarine itself is my next step in this lately very delayed project. A bit of rust-wash here and there, accompanied with a bit of light rush pigment, perhaps. At least that's what I've been thinking lately, I guess we'll all know better when I post next week.

Hans tests the inflatable boat

Easy does it again

We're on the second full work-week after my vacation and I still haven't gotten a hold of myself. The fact that I haven't got much done about any of my projects tells the woeful tale quite clearly. Maybe a part of the blame lies on the workday rhythm I've had for these two weeks: I have much less of that random time available. The next two weeks should be better from that point of view.

I had already painted the wooden pieces, so they didn't require that sort of attention. As the oars were going to be glued on to the bottom of the inflatable boat, they shouldn't be all painted with the same exact paints. For the similarity reasons I washed the bottom pieces with Citadel's Devlan Mud so that they'd be like the planks of the sub itself. The oars I washed with the same company's Badab Black.

While I was reading my rss feeds, I suddendly realized that the stand's plaque would maybe need some painting, too. Thanks to the FSM forums and all the handy things they talk about! I decided to paint the sunken letters with the aforementioned black liquid. Of course the first iteration did not provide me with a perfect result, there's going to be at least another painting round.
That said, I'm not going to paint the Bronco logo, as it's not important enough for me to suffer a whole long evening with a stiff neck -caused headache.

Like an inflatable rubber boat I'm bouncing to you

Returning from a vacation is always a slow process. For some reason I also seem to take a good while to get back to my projects. Nonetheless, I managed to kick myself up and working a bit on the inflatable raft.

The last sprue contained the three-piece boat itself, some small arcs I assume to be pieces of rope or something and a set of four oars. I primed the whole set in its sprue and then airbrushed the essential pieces with German Grey (VMA 71052).

Next I'll paint those inner bottom's wooden things just like I painted the planks on the sub itself: with an earthly colour (VMC 873 "US Field Drab" (though the Spanish "Tierra" tells a lot more, imo)). I'll do the same with the oars, as they're wooden and why change the effect that worked so nicely already?

I'm going to let them dry overnight before I continue further. For some reason I really don't feel like ruining anything at this point, I believe you can imagine.

The stand

The long-ignored stand had to be painted at some point. I had primed it at the same time with the u-boat itself, so all I had to do was to choose the paint. Another grey would fit in the theme and a darker shade of it would also not steal the attention from the model itself. Wheter or not that's a good thing will be left for the observer to decide.

From my happily-coloured collection I chose German Grey (VMA 71052) and applied it on the frame. After the paint had dried, I whiteglued the photoetch piece in its slot. Quick and easy, as they say.

Rigging

Deceiving looks

I had assumed that setting up the cables would be a quick, easy thing. The thread provided by the kit looked sturdy, even though the white colour confused me a bit, but I thought I'd stick to the OOB plan.

How wrong I was. The damn thread started undoing itself as soon as I touched it! First I thought that I had done something stupid myself and cut off the disintegrating end with a small safety margin and hoped that the thread wasn't measured for the kit millimeter-accurately. Nope, it wasn't my mistake, as the self-destruction kept going on just about immediately.

Despite all the traditional "get that thread through the needle's opening" tricks the thread didn't pass through the plastic poles. So I drilled them more open with the tip of my xacto knife. After that the thread went nicely through, finally. Then I repeated the process twice more with some swearing, as the thread kept getting worse and worse. I just didn't feel like cutting off more would do me much good.

Threading

Utilizing the power of tweezers and even more swearing I got the end of the thread knotted onto the bottom-most rung of the conning tower. Because I couldn't trust in the thread's cooperation, I applied some superglue to bind it shut. Then I twisted the thread around the cylinders in the other end of the setup, tied it up and superglued the bugger.

Quickly I measured if the thread would be enough to set up the second cable. It was going to be just fine, so I didn't have to start digging for a different piece of thread for this. I tied up the thread to the topmost rung this time, superglued it and pulled the end to the loop in the front of the boat.

I left a tail hanging, in case I felt like faking a better tying setup or something sailorlike. Or, as it most likely will be, I'll do nothing of the sort.

Subdetails

Tiny things

At this point I was pretty content with how the hull was painted, so I got to proceed with the rest of the painting. The propeller unit I painted over a couple of times, as my old gold (VMC 70878) didn't cover well enough with a single pass.

As I had finished painting the conning tower I finally remembered that I had left the transparent cylinders from the D sprue for later. It was later. Luckily I even had a couple of washes available (some positively ancient Citadel Blue Glaze and Yellow Glaze, that I had bought before 1998) in more or less appropriate colours. I painted the pieces in their sprue, let them dry and then whiteglued them into their places. Immediately afterwards I did the same for the cover-windows so that I wouldn't forget them.

The periscope, RDF antenna and the snorkel I painted as directed: main areas with steel (VMA 71065) and the top parts black, though I deviated a bit and used grey-black (VMA 71056) just because I think it looks a bit more natural than pitch-black. The "glass" of the 'scope I painted with steel as well. For a moment I thought if I should wash it blue (or green), but I didn't think it was necessary.

UZO

Then I also realized that I had left the binocular-like part of the UZO off. I glued the transparent piece into its place and after it had cured I painted that with the same grey-black. I thought I could give it a black drybrush, whenever I have the time. The lens-ends I left clear, of course, in hopes of that being noticeable from a certain point of view.

Planks

Once again, if I had thought of my work order, especially considering the ease of painting, I'd done several things differently. But then again, what would I write about week after week, if everything went perfectly every time?

It was clear: the walking planks had to be painted, they could not be left grey. The exact shade was a bigger question. After a bit of digging around I found some lightish brown (VMC 873 "US Field Drab") that I then proceeded to apply all over the wooden-to-be pieces.

Come next evening I applied an already thickening Citadel's Devlan Mud. I had thought of using a black wash instead, but that sounded a bit too dark in my mind. Most likely it would've worked just fine in the end, but this is what I went with.

You can see the results in the photos. I think it looks really good, or at least to me they look like wood. As usual, they look much better live than in the photos.

Redo, partially

Yeah. I tore off the masking setup with great excitement. It was generally ok, with some "patch this" areas around the waterline, but not much more. Then I took a look at it from a bit further away.

Do it yourself and save money

In a few places the thing that was supposed to be the waterline looked as if a drunkard had been freehanding with broad strokes. There was just one thing to do: redo. My in-common-law asked why didn't I use a piece of cardstock with a pencil to draw the waterline quickly and handily, that's what he does with his scratchbuilt ships. I hadn't even think of it, I'm not a boatbuilder...

A cereal box worked just fine

I took a cereal box, cut the openings for a pencil and functioned just fine, as far as I could tell. Then I masked the boat following the newly drawn line. Just like the last time I believed it was ok, but I hoped that my eyes didn't deceive me this time.
Quickly I painted the light areas and took these following pics. Those lonely flappy bits were protecting the tower's white lines from overspray, just in case.

Better

The end results of this attempt were much better. Next I'll get to work on the details, like the propeller, antennae, the periscope and the snorkel that's awaiting getting glued on again. At this rate this boat's going to be finished this year!