Transitioning to the painting phase

A session-long mishap

As expected, I started priming the diver-dinghy one Thursday afternoon with my trusty airbrush. I spent a good half an hour covering almost half of the model. The more I thought about it the stupider it felt, especially in this scale, with the coverage of the device. I had this brewing in my mind at work for almost five minutes and then I left for home, taking a short detour to Hobby Point and a rattle canful of Tamiya's white primer on my person.

Yes, I decided to pay for the convenience of priming the massive model quicker and with less stressing about the result. Who cares that the propellant smells unpleasant and that I'd have to be spraying in the chilly balkony.

The photo should show that the surface isn't perfect, but I didn't see it as a problem, as most of the model was already primed before the white layers. The target pattern is, according to the box art, a dark gray bottom and a lighter top part, without any shape-breaking patterns or anything fancy. Of course I've heard the suggestion "paint it yellow" more than a couple of times and I am the first to admit that a Dunkelgelb sub could be a hilarious idea. I believe I'm going to put that idea on the shelf and be boring and keep the gray wolf of the seas -theme.

Tape on, tape off

I spent a good amount of time applying tape masks on the boat. Luckily I had managed to set up my schedules so that I had about 40 minutes one afternoon. Applying the tapes (and all associated subtasks) took half an hour and I was left with 10 mins to paint a layer of grey (VMA 71050 Light Grey) and to clean things up. Rushing kills you and so on.

The result was pretty decent, I'd say. Of course I was left with some underpainted spots for a new session, but that happens. It could've been worse.

I had a bit less of time the following day and I could only prepare things for the next afternoon: I applied a good pile of cheap sticky notes (awful PostIt-note copies) to protect the upper hull and the conning tower from overspray. Maybe this would work.

The best of the dark waters

Out of two paint options at hand I chose Dark Sea Grey (VMA 71048). During my first painting session I started with the extreme ends, so that they'd be cured when I attacked the middle and especially the mid-bottom of the model. As said, I started from the nose all around, then did the tail end likewise and then proceeded to cover the center while leaving the lowest parts of the center area untouched so I could leave the model lying on its display stand.

For some reason the paint seemed to cover much better while it was wet. After a couple of hours I took a new look at my doings and saw that especially the center sides were much spottier than the ends. No matter, I was going to paint more in any case. The most important thing in my mental plan was to have the ends dry so that I could easily leave the center parts hanging in the air.

Perhaps I was too cautious but the second session ate an incredible amount of time, but I did think that the fine-looking result justified the extra time. Especially as I later compared this newly painted side to the unfixed flipside.

After the third darker painting round this section was finally done for the time being. Genially I had taken all the dark grey pics from the same side of the model. We (software) engineers are so very smart!

Tower action II

Railings for the crew

To keep my boat's crew from falling into the sea too easily, the vessel required some railings. One set was installed to the base of the conning tower, while another was installed to the top.

While I was working on these, I noticed that the tower's connection to the hull on the left side of the U-Boat wasn't as pretty as they were on the right side. Therefore I slapped unhealthy amounts of (Tamiya) putty to hopefully remedy the situation. The next afternoon I filed/sanded the excesses off with some success, I would like to believe. Maybe I have to return to some sections, if they didn't end up as fine as the engineers demanded.

A scale demo

My photos may not deliver the immense size of the U-Boat, not even with the help of an earlier comparison shot. So I hired Hans from the Deutsche Afrika Korps to pose a bit.

That may not be enough. So I decided to offer a helping hand for those interested:

Back to the business as usual

I wasn't missing much anymore so I proceeded on to the missing parts of the conning tower. With their support blocks I installed four antennae, one of which I actually lost for a few hours but found later before I got to make a new one out of streched sprue. After this I drilled three holes into the planks and attached the rope-holding rods into them.

Setting the cables is going to wreck my poor nerves

The photoetch subset

Apparently my sprues were missing the torpedo hulls, so I didn't get / have to work on the tiny propeller blades. One of those other pieces was to be bent a bit and glued to the rear of the ship. Another one had to be bent into an U-shape and glued onto the snorkel device. There was supposed to be another pe-setup, a cylinder wrapped around a plastic cylinder - but for some reason my kit missed the whole D sprue and therefore the aforementioned cylinder as well. I'll survive.

Waiting for the painting to begin

As I'm writing this the sub is waiting for me to start priming. My assumption is that in the best case that will be done in two sessions and hopefully no more than that. But that depends on if I have ample time and if I notice any missing spots while I'm working or not.

The real paintjob is going to take many more sessions, especially as the lower hull alone will require two, the upper hull may go in one, and the conning tower needs the white stripes as the first layer before the first light gray layer. And following the noblest of Project Mumblings traditions I'm not going to use those decal stripes provided by the kit.

I guess that the safest assumption is that getting the actual paintjob done is going to take a good work-weekful of hobby time. Maybe even more, but that depends on how much time I have available, as setting up the airbrush, painting even a tiny bit and then cleaning up is a much slower process than it sounds like.

Enjoying the profile

There was absolutely nothing special about setting up the conning tower. While I was at it, I prepared and glued on the front and rear planes that I had skipped before. Yes, it'll be a proper-looking u-boat one of these days.

Later on I took a couple of photos to see it from various angles, of which only one makes sense in the scope of this blog post. Sadly, it didn't occur to me earlier that I could've had Das Boot running on the background. Maybe I'll remember that idea when I'm finally taking the wrapping up photos?

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.

Up scope!

Small updates

For some reason I've really been low on hobby time lately. Therefore my advances haven't been mentionable, but I did get something done despite the challenges. Of course it's a bit amusing to see that the twenty-minute stint I did only resulted in a periscope and a couple of other tubes attached together.

I don't think anyone'll ever see this piece, either.

I really, really have to remember to clean up my puttyings before I go and slam the conning tower onto the hull. If I try to file & sand the seams afterwards, the result will be much more suboptimal and that's not beneficial to anyone.

The invisible interior space

For some curious reason the instructions suggested that I glue the transparent cylinders into the whateverboxes of the upper tower, but becaues the appendix said that they should be painted transparently (I assume that in the real world they're some sort of lights), I'm not going to glue them in to be only on the way of painting and making things more bothersome than things need to be.

Of course the fine details of the periscope and other such things will be somewhat pointless, as the sub can't be left open-hatched with this lack of interior detailing. Nonetheless I'll set up everything, such as the ladders and whatnot, because they do belong inside that tube inside the tower. I think I'm going to skip the "unnecessary" painting, though.

This week and maybe the next one are going to be more productive, I believe, as I think I can do (really) short stints in the afternoons after work. That's what I guess, at least. But as usual, we'll see what happens and how, as the calendar rolls on.

Catwalks

I know they aren't called catwalks but I just felt like it anyway. Maybe someone more seamanly than myself knows the exact, proper term for them? Anyway, as I was tinkering for a very short while yesterday evening, I glued in all four pieces of these planks. To accompany them I added some cylinders and a thing for hooking stuff on in the front of the U-Boat. And last but not least something that I assume to be completely covered by the conning tower later on (and what I did not recognize) was set up. But then I ran out of time (and my super eager assistant came to poke at everything) and could do no more. Maybe even today I get to advance a step or two.

Precautions

I have decided, that due to their potential fragileness I shall leave the planes off for the time being. That's because this model is enormous and I have to flip it around quite often, they would be in constant danger of being banged into something and maybe even being broken off violently. So, just in case.

Project V/14

Himmel!

I finally struck my eager claws onto the type XXIII U-Boat. The hull was pretty much all done when I got this, so there's a couple of pics of that. Myself I barely got some putty applied on the midhull, where a crack was gaping. Another reason why I didn't do more than that is that I hadn't remembered to print those instructions... And I really didn't want to start guessing and maybe getting something stupidly wrong and then being forced to fix things.
Sometimes I'm maybe a tiny bit too cautious.

Just about everything rotates, twists or moves otherwise. My favourite was the openable outer torpedo door. I'm slightly confused, but I believe this'll end up being something fun.

Project III/13 finished

Some finished pieces

Nobody told me that the other Gargoyle was a fresh piece and recently painted. So I ended up repainting that in vain. Oopsis.  I don't mind, though, as the result looks like an improvement.

Dire Wolf

The octopus pattern worked handily. I had set up the legs to the base in a bit of a funny angle, but it's still a playable piece without problems.

Turkina

I have to say that the Turkina is a 'Mech that may require some company in the 3rd Falcon Talon Cluster. But that's going to happen only with modified arms. Those default ones are a bit boring.

Gargoyle

This is a very ugly unit, but I guess I could get one or two more for fluff reasons. Now, years afterwards I noticed, that as it's ancient, I either didn't finish up cleaning it or didn't do it at all.

Executioner

No matter what the fluff says, I refuse to accept another Executioner to uglify my troops.

Group shot and effects comparison

That second photo shows clearly, what's the difference between a washed and a "clean" miniature. I think that the Cougar looks a bit too bright, which means that it (and all the other old minis) would benefit greatly from a tiny brown wash.

Löydä poikkeavuus

A future project

At this rate I'll get to return to the BattleTech world maybe late next year, but I'll write down here what I have decided. Washing all the old minis may be a pretty quick op after all. Despite that I skip that for now and proceed to the '40s and below the surface of the seas.

More washes and some insignia work

I applied a brown wash on the yet unwashed 'Mechs and then redid all the Jade trims so they'd stay nicely clear and visible. Then I attempted to paint a Clan insignia (Stonewall Grey, Jade Green, Steel, Black, Bad Moon Yellow) on the Dire Wolf, one of the Gargoyles and the Executioner. Clearly my skills in that have suffered over the long delay.

While tinkering around, I superglued the fallen Right Arm back on the Cougar B and thought that I really have to wash all the old tin cans, as they look so much better that way. The paintjob looks less bright and more "natural". That's going to be a project of its own, otherwise this'll be delayed until the following year.