Progress is slow and steady as she goes! I've mounted my homebrew fore and aft torpedo tubes, adding some plumbling as I went. It's solder of various thicknesses, with slices of heat-shrink tubing for the couplings. Here're the fo'ward tubes:
Since my last post I've sprayed these assemblies with Future and added washes of black, green and red-brown. Thinned red-brown was also sprayed here and there to soften the edges of the rusty bits, then the whole was dull-coated and dry-brushed with- what else?- deck tan to pop the details.
The rear tube is in place as well- you can really see all this hoo-ha through the vents. Take
that, skeptics!
I've been busy with the decks, routing them out from behind and laboriously opening up all those friggin' slots. Eduard's PE is in place.
The skid strips round the 88mm deck gun were particularly fun- I drew circles with a template to make this task easier.
Here's a shot of the underside of that section. I fixed my Dremel tool in it's drill press and locked it down at just the right height nd ground away with a burr, generarting the most wretched mess of sem-melted plastic crap. It was everywhere! The slats were opened up and cleaned with a variety of tools- scalpel, files, scribers- even supefine jeweler's saw blades! I rubbed the last of the fuzzies away by hand with the Dremel bass brush. Whew!