As for my part of the armada, I am making slow but steady progress. I have to admit that I was becoming a bit dismayed with my ship building efforts. It was not the process that was getting me down but, rather the kit itself. Assembling without any guide pins or holes was bumming me out. The extra time and effort needed to get parts lined up and positioned was taking the fun out of it. It was, for a time, an effort to generate any ambition to work on it. Yet, I've stayed with it and am beginning to get momentum going. Especially since I've finally got all of the 20mm Oerlikons cleaned up and assembled.
Here's some of the work and progress I've been at.
First was the cleaning up of the 20mm parts. The gun barrel attachment points were right in the shoulder braces. As such, I had to take the razor saw, xacto blade and small round file to them to look the part. Before is on the left and after some work on the right.
Then there was the pedestal/shield mounts. The front faces of each one had a sink mark on them. Or some were just a molded mess.
Fortunately, the kit comes with 2 sprues of the armament so I had plenty of them to work with. Taking some Mr. Surfacer 500 I filled the holes and sanded them up. Much better.
It took me a couple of days to glue the barrels to the pedestals on all 16 of them. It took a steady hand to get each one set in place. They're not all perfectly centered between the shields but, they look the part. Glad to be past that tedious endeavor.
In between sessions with the Oerlikons I've been deepening the portholes by drilling them a bit to give them some depth. Still a number of them to go.
Also, yesterday my Scale Color paints arrived that I'm going to try out on the Oakland. Although I have some colourcoat paints I've been wanting to try out Jeff Herne's paints. I'll be giving them some test runs here in the next couple of days and let you know how they are working.
Thank you all for having a look and thanks for all the inspiration and support.
Cheers, Joe