Looking good Mongoose, that is going to be a big fella.
Thanks everyone for your encouraging words. At the beginning and a couple times throughout, the PE was almost overwhelming, but now it is getting to be fun. I am not sure that it is fun because I can see some of the results; fun because it will be coming to an end; or fun because it is actually fun; Perhaps all three.....
Because of our weather I am waiting to paint just a little longer. So I began looking at what has not been prepped to paint and I found all the little boat, dingy, motor launch, or what ever you may call them need assembled. When looking at the larger 1/200 scale Arizona and seeing the detail in thier little boats I began wondering if I can get just a little of that on my 1/350 boats. So I have decided to start on the hardest ones of the set, the captains motor launches (there are four of them).
The model has you complete the captains launch with a hull and a top,..... that is it... done. Looking at the Eduard PE set it gives me some options to improve on the kit parts. Along with the PE, here is what I plan to do to these four launches: 
- add a teakwood inner floor to the boat
- remove the back half of the aft cabin and replace it with PE
- add the PE boat deck to the rear
- add PE boat deck hand rails to the bow and stern
- add PE hand rails to top of cabin
- add a PE vent over the fore cabin
- add PE port holes to cabins
- add rope and life rings fore and aft (scratch)
- add PE rudder
- add PE ships wheel (from spare parts)
- possible other items (lights, horn, slat drivers water deflector, etc. from scratch)
I am going to try to get something close to these images when I'm done.
The model parts have a lot of mold flash and ejection pin marks. The molds ejection pin marks have to be corrected if you want to lay an inner wood floor. Also the parts are held to the sprue by a connection 3-4 sizes thicker than the parts so great care is needed not to damage them when removing them from the sprue.
The Eduard instructions have you remove the back half of the rear cabin. The problem is the piece they want you to remove is many more times thicker than the piece you need to keep. When trying to remove the area with a knife on the first top piece, it ended up cutting clean through the back half of the top and sent the piece I wanted to keep into oblivian. The good thing is I did not loose a finger tip. The bad thing is I did loose that part, even after a 1 hour search party (me, wife, child, dog, cat) the black hole in my basement ate it. The Eduard instructions:
So, now I have four boat hulls and three tops. As I was looking at my options, I thought I could always buy a set of four boats from Shapeways or a like source. The problem with that is I would be giving up on the modeling of those boats. I also thought of seeing if I could try to get a replacement part. Since this kit has changed manufacturers three times, I do not even want to try. Then there is the option of making similar blobs using sheet plastic and then covering it with a tarp. But then I would have people asking me why it is covered with a tarp and I would have to go through this story every time. So instead I chose to scratch build another top to match the other three.
After cleaning up the kit parts and adding the wood inner floor I set out to finish the modification to the remaining three tops. As I mentioned earlier, the piece to remove is much, much thicker that the thin deck edge trim. So even if I tried to saw them, the remaining deck edge trim would be too marked up to use. My solution was to simply cut off the entire rear section of the boat top that was going to be replaced and reconstruct the deck edge trim with a similar thickness of plastic sheet. It was actually much easier that initially thought because the cutting was much cleaner and the decks level edges would be cleaner with the sheet plastic. I outlined the shape of the boat with a marker on the sheet plastic, measured the length needed for the rear, cut it off, removed the center area of the plastic (where the access and sitting areas would be), and glued it to the remaining front section. After a little filing and sanding, the part was close enough. Then it was easy to add the PE rear platform, however the rear cabin cover was another issue.
The rear cabin cover is a single piece of PE that makes up the top and the semi-circle side. Connecting them is a hair width stem of brass (see part 184 in photo below).
The problem is the top does not like it when you bend the side (rectangular part) into the crescent shape as it likes to pop off. What I found was it was much easier when the top was off to shape the side then reattach it. So much easier that I separated the top and sides on the remaining three and finished them.
Scratch building the fourth boat top took more time that I thought it would. First another outline of the boat was cut out of the sheet plastic. the holes for the fore and aft cabin space was removed and the plastic was glued to the top of the hull (the wood floor was previously installed). The bumps that represented the fore and aft cabins was made by gluing a stack of plastic sheet up, shaped it to match the other boats, measured, cut, and glued in place. After gluing the PE parts to it like I did the other three, I hope it will be difficult to tell once I paint them all.
And now a step backwards.... If you look closely at the photos and compare them with the Eduard instructions, the rounded PE piece should actually be on the front of the aft cabin and the opening to the rear (just the opposite of the Eduard instructions). I found this AFTER I did all the modifications. So now what to do? The only option I see is painting the very back of the rounded vertical black to make some kind of impression of an opening. Also, if you follow Eduard you will put 4 portholes on the front cabin and 2 on the side of the back cabin (neither are correct). When looking at the actual motor launch photo, there are three on the front, one on the backs side, and one facing forward on the back (with the rear open). I hope that by painting the porthole windows black they will blend with the rear black painted opening (that is my hope).
Now time to paint them before I continue with the smaller PE parts. After reading the many research documents, and based on the early 1941 paint scheme, I am going to paint the boats inside hull white, a wood floor, the top of the cabins will be white, while the decks will be tan / wood. The upper hull of the boats will be 5-D dark gray, and the fouline and below will be black.
Another step backwards... I tried to mask and paint them twice with the AK acrylic paints, but even the low tack hobby masking tape pulled the paint off the boat both times, surface prepped or not. So my next inclination is to paint them by hand. Wish me luck as my hands are not as steady as they used to be.
Base coats on the tops (still more detailing and wash to go):
Gray and black on the hull (semi-straight I think):
Sitting together on the PE boat cradles (four ducks in a row):
I am going to give this an extra day or two to fully cure, do some minor touch-ups, and then I will begin work on the small stuff.
Till next time
Ben