bobsyouruncle

Hey Alan, apologies for the poor quality due to the heat haze but you'll never guess what just cruised past here? First sighting behind the Buckie lifeboat going out on Thursday evening's training session. In front of landmark Morven

I love the little trees. That is going the extra distance but a really nice touch.

That windlass is a real wirk of art. Looks awesome.

Oh wow! It’s amazing what’s possible in detailing these days. Awesome work.

Interesting mix of exhaust stubs on the port side of ML407 in that photo. Great shots, thanks for posting.

Thanks for that Alan, much appreciated. One of the things I wondered was if the demacation line ran up over the saddle tanks along the bottom of the central drainage area vents or if it stayed on the horizontal to match the rest of the boat. It looked in the early days in my photos that the early ones had the darker coloured saddle tanks, whereas later ones have the horizontal line along the whole hull (although I've also seen a few exceptions). For my purposes on the U-281, as far as I can tell, the saddle tanks look no darker than the rest of the hull side so I'll go for the horizontal line along the whole hull length I think (unless anyone knows different?). Some more bits of progress here: I knew I'd have to go 'off-piste' and start making a schnorchel exhaust pipe that we mentioned were on all the viic's that were schnorchel equipped. This one runs above the deck on the starboard side of the tower and I did see that someone once made them 3d printed on shapeways (which'd be very handy if they still did them). I couldn't find anyone doing them despite searching online, so it was going to have to be scratched. My thoughts on tackling this job were to use bits of old sprue (in this case from the Airfix Lightning F6 kit in 48th). This is why I'm terrible at not throwing out the remnants of a kit that's been built for ages. I thought I'd risk it and bend them over a lit match (carefully!). Here are some sprue bits, which I started measuring up against what I wanted on the boat. These were then heated and teased into the shapes I wanted and joined at the junction. For the circular pipe joint faces, I turned to my current favourite for this sort of thing, which is the alloy foil collar off a 'Tempus Two' bottle of red wine. I like it as it's easy to cut, but strong enough to tolerate small holes being drilled close together in it (unlike plastic card). The wine's quite nice too! The small discs were sandwiched together and then drilled around the edges and had wire inserted through them and trimmed off (to represent the bolts - sorry I didn't use proper ones). The white 'bridge' near the joint was a 'T' section from plastic strip. Getting there. This is what I found myself with this morning. Then it was the moment of dread, having to cut out some of that lovely wooden deck and drill through the plastic deck beneath. Luckily, it wasn't half as bad as it could've been. Schnorchel exhaust pipe then inserted into it's position above the deck. I think for what I wanted, I've just about gotten away with it. I know I'd've been happy if someone had done this for me, so that was my criteria and I know it'll never be perfect. I tried sitting the tower on, next to it, loosely, to make sure there was room. I'm pretty happy with this, but I'll have to do a similar thing again for the air inlet pipe for the diesel from the schnorchel that runs along the port side of the tower later on (although at least I've sort of got a system of how to do it now, so it'll be less of a worry). For now I'll be onto adding a lot of the etched brass and steel bits onto the hull and deck next, I think. Cheers Bob.

Just fabulous work. Amazing.

Hi again, here's another fairly brief update on progress so far on this one. After constructing the schnorchel assembly, I was racking my brains to think what else I needed to do before I could close up the hull. What was needed was to try to make sure that I couldn't see things I wasn't supposed to see when looking through the vents. If you did have a look at the superb Simon Morris youtube videos, you'll see what should be beneath the deck inside the outer casing. I figured I might never finish if I went down that route, so opted for constructing 'blanks' or 'internal blinds' so you couldn't see from one side to the other (apart from the fore deck, where you should be able to see through and see the four 'five man' life raft containers beneath the deck. Something to represent these was constructed using tubular section of F-15E bombs and located below the respective container lids. I also figured I could make some 'blinds' out of plastic card, painted and located down the internals of the hull (which I did). In the meantime, I thought I'd better get the schnorchel given an initial paint job (may add to later) and get those antenna protected within it's deck space. Here's the schnorchel with a coat of paint (and some rust). I wasn't sure looking at photos how shiny to make the rods (which look like the hydraulic parts on diggers), considering how often they're submerged and with a coating of grease? I can make shinier if that's what's needed. This was then glued into the plastic centre deck section. It's a pretty snug fit, but I think I've just about got away with it? Next thing was to construct the 'blanks' in the hull and because I wasn't too fussed about seeing much below the decks, I very roughly brushed some paint on. I glued some sections of sprue in between these to add some strength to the structure. Another thing I wanted to do was to make sure I could attach the display pedestals through the hull bottom, before closing it up (more on this later). Anyway, I closed her up by adding the very neatly fitting Revell deck sections (which gave the whole thing a lot more strength). After a brief pause, due mainly to fear of messing the whole thing up. I decided it was time to add the self adhesive wooden deck that's part of the platinum edition. It looked flimsy in the sleeve in the box and I had visions of it sticking in all the wrong places and just breaking up. Anyway, after super gluing the steel section on at the bow, I went for it.... The fore deck section goes all the wal back to halfway along the tower and it had a few sections to remove first (such as the schnorchel bay area, mooring bollard areas, etc) and it was a very flimsy join between the deck outboard of the schnorchel bay and inboard (so much so, that I decided to separate them and place the smaller outboard part by itself first). Well it surprised me how well it stuck down. I did have to do some jigging to line it up, but then it stuck down with ease and it feels pretty permanent to me. I put a new blade in the knife before trying to remove the bits that needed removing from the wooden deck and had my tongue firmly wedged in the corner of my mouth cutting the bits out, (but they've all been pre-cut/scored and came out fairly easily) Phew!! Now it was time to peel off the backing, hope it stayed together and lay the big section down. To my amazement, it just behaved itself and lay down with no problems (another big Phew!!). The rear section went on pretty much the same, as did the rear steel section. After many sighs of relief, it was the happy task of adding small steel sections into the various cut-out sections in the deck, which was very satisfying as it all fit perfectly and was a real pleasure to do. Wooden deck in place. Going back to what I said earlier, you can see some display pedestals positioned below the hull here. They're a bit deeper than the Revell stand (which I'm using as a support for construction), so I had to glue milk bottle tops onto this to raise it up enough for clearance (is that cheap and shoddy? it works anyway). Bow section Stern section From these shots, it almost looks like a 'slotted' deck, but there are small depressed areas between the slots representing the gaps between planks (more obvious if you hold the boat like this):- So that's about it for now. Next will be adding all the rest of the hull parts and deck parts (I forgot to mention I also added the bow planes and rudders and props, etc) and then turning to the tower and the schnorchel piping. One thing I noticed in photos of late (end of war) photos of these U-boats, was that they didn't seem to have the obvious demarcation line between top and bottom colour? They do have waterline 'tide' marking and plenty of staining, but the side tanks look to be similar to the rest of the hull side to my eyes (which they weren't in the earlier stages of the war), so I'd be grateful to hear from anyone who knows about this and if they still had this demarcation at the end of the war (perhaps less obvious?). Thanks, Bob.

Hi Alan, sorry ti read that you’d been having a rough time. Hope that you’re finding this ship a bit of positive therapy. It’s a cool looking thing alright. We get odd cruise ships coming along the horizon here (at Buckie), on an evening mainly, going out from Invergordon and we’ve seen a few of these ‘Aida’ ships. Last night it was ‘Mein Schiff’ going past and earlier in the week it was the ‘Britannia’ (which looked huge). Looks like you’re enjoying this one and I love the little touch of a climbing wall.

Hi Alan, regarding that question I put in the maritime WWII section about the deck widening overhang design on the hull, (to allow for the turm IV tower), I only came across photos today showing that U-281 wasn’t alone in having that design with the ‘D’ shaped holes, as the much more famous U-552 also is seen with that in Danzig, 1944. Like you mentioned before, could be a feature from a particular yard when switching to turm iv? Thanks for the encouragement. I’m a bit prone to having small bits ‘ping’ into the ether from the tweezers so am wondering what I’m letting myself in for with this one. A lot of crawling on the carpet, I expect.

Wow! Some super finicky work you’re doing here. Awesome attention to details.

I was 'umming and arring' a while about whether to post a WIP for this for a while, but then I thought it'd be a good place to ask questions and see how others have overcome problems, pick up tips, etc. This is the familiar Revell VIIC/41 kit platinum edition which comes with some photo etched and turned extras. My first dilemma was trying to find a boat with minimal alterations that I could build from the kit? After a bit of research, I decided on the U-281 (which was a VIIC and not a VIIC/41 at all). Here's the kit box: I chose the U-281 because: There's a good close-up film sequence of her at the end of 'The Cruel Sea' where you can make out a lot of features. She has the Atlantic bow and planked deck She has the four 5-man inflatable liferaft containers on the foredeck She had the original Magnetic compass housing in front of the tower (which all match the kit) Things which would need to be altered were: She has the external schnorchel piping on the port side of the tower Vents have to be drilled out and filled to match a boat from the Bremer Vulkan Vegesack Werk (as close as feasible). I decided early on that I wasn't going to be able to match the incredible builds that I've seen on here and that I was going to have to compromise in many areas, but still try and do as good a job as able. So, on with the build so far: I started on the hull and that means drilling out a lot of vents and the central drainage areas on both sides. I also added some ribs structure to the inside of the central drainage area. I'm also going to add something that can represent structure withing the outer casing, such as the 5-man inflatable liferaft containers, tower and pipes (but only when looking through the vents on the outer casing). Here's the hull so far: I started on spraying some enamel on the interior of the hull to make it dark, but I think it's finally time I moved on from enamels? (brush kept clogging). Anyway I've got some Ammo acrylics now, so we'll see how we go with them? I needed to sort out the schnorchel bay area before putting the deck on top of the hull also, so that took up my attention. I think that a lot the kit schnorchel raising parts are based on the restored U-995 at Laboe and not as per the original boats, so used period photos and referred to Simon Morriss's excellent 3d renders (you can search for him on youtube and flickr). I also paid a lot of attention to Dougie Martindale's U-boat articles which are found on a google search. The U-995 and kit parts are rectangular in cross section and are representational rather than functional in appearance, so I looked at what I could try to do to improve them? Here I've replaced the 'piston' section and 'runners' and made a couple of 'rods' plus added some wire. ..and this is my interpretation of it with it fitted on the schnorchel bay base with kit parts. I'm hoping it just looks a bit more functional and busier than the original parts. I also added the connection for the schnorchel piping. This is it loose fitted into the deck. I also added something to represent the FuMB3 antenna (I've seen it called 'Bali' and also referred to as 'Naxos'. I'm not sure what's what here but know that the kit only had one in it (which sits on the rear of the attack periscope housing on U-281), but that it should have another atop the schnorchel mast (so I made one - or something like it). I hope it'll all look ok under some paint. I also looked at the tower, where I decided to change the outline shape of the Magnetic compass housing by adding some scrap plastic and filled in the 'oval' holes in the tower as my reference shots showed round ones? Be interested to hear if anyone knows if they should be round or oval on this one? I saw the thread on here about the anchor potentially fouling the bow plane fairings, but I decided it was a thing I could live with, so am just accepting that one (looks like mine'll clear it anyway). That's all for now. Enjoying it so far (apart from dropping bits into the carpet!). Bob.

Alan, thanks for confirming that you see vents too and it’s not just my eyes playing tricks. Yes I see what you mean about ‘C’ shaped now. That sort of figures to me, as I’ve seen that sort of thing on a larger scale around type IX U-534’s schnorchel fairings. I just hadn’t seen it on a VIIC. Yes I saw that a lot of later boats didn’t have anything there at all. Thanks.

Here's question please to any Type Viic / c/41 experts out there if I may: This is a crop of a still from the widely known ending of 'The Cruel Sea', showing (among others) U-281 which looks to be moored alongside others at loch Ryan, Scotland prior to being sunk in Operation deadlight. Can anyone please confirm what my eyes think they are seeing when looking at this lightened version (lessening the shadows) of the shot, where this area of overhanging hull side (to give crew more deck space negotiating the wider Tower) appears to have 'medium sized' drainage vents? It also looks deeper than others I've seen in photos, ending lower than the lowest row of adjacent drainage vents? I'm asking as I've not seen this feature on any other Type VIIC's in photos despite looking and wondered if it's unique or was seen on other boats at all? Thanks, Bob.

Thanks very much Little Timmy, no, it’s the above deck piping that Alan’s linked article refers too, but thank you for that. Alan, thanks for putting the links on. That second one is very interesting and goes a long way to explaining how the starboard side piping’s been left out of models (not been documented enough I guess). It also confirmed that this piping that goes just above deck height on the starboard side of the tower was on all type viics / viic/41s that were fitted with a schnorchel, although as you say, the port side pipe running around the tower halfway up was only on some boats, with others having it below deck that side (just a small protrusion through the hull casing at the schnorchel pivot point on the port side). Thanks again, will be an interesting ‘add-on’ to do.