The model club (Central Arkansas Scale Modelers) that I belong to here in Arkansas is doing a series of club group builds. This is the current one. Now, I am normally an Armor modeler with the occasional aircraft thrown in so doing a ship was way outside the box for me. The last boat I attempted was about 20 years ago when I was a little lad and I never finished it. SO, be gentle with me...
The AFV Club kit is superbly detailed. It only took a few hours over the course of a weekend to build. This kit is beautifully molded and includes a good fret of Photo Etched parts. The PE comes in handy because many of the parts are so fine that they are next to impossible to remove from the sprue without damaging them. I used a Logan matte cutting blade to remove the parts but I still broke a good many of them. The filler you see was to close up a fine gap between the upper and lower hull and around the parts to help secure the PE and give a more seamless mount. The only deviation from the kit was that I added rigging from .005 nylon mending thread rather than use the kit supplied photo etched ones.
And now for some pictures.. (it is taped to the supplied base for handling)
and for a size reference...
This thing was hard for me to work on being used to somewhat larger subjects.
And now for some paint..
Last night I got some color on this little pixy stix... I sprayed the whole thing in NATO black (Tamiya). Masked that off and sprayed the upper hull with a light gray made from Tamiya paints again. Using my new but as yet untested Badger Sotar 20/20 I free handed the camo which honestly was pretty simple. Once that dried I brush painted the deck with a slightly darker shade of gray. Painting the deck took longer than all the other processes combined. Now with the tape off i see a couple of spots I need to touch up and then it's on to some decals and weathering.
base plus upper colors
camo
Ta-da!
Actually, the hardest thing to do with a sub/ship is photograph it..
:x
Moving right along I guess.. I should start weathering it this evening.