Bandsaw Steve

I agree - perhaps Lufthansa should be proud of the fact that it has held onto the same insignia for 50 years. Perhaps that could be a useful corporate symbol of continuity and stability and tradition in a world where these things are sometimes sadly lacking. Perhaps the old symbol was a near unique asset they have just thrown away for no good reason. 🤔 Just saying!

Yes! It immediately reminded me of qantas. Change blue for red, Change crane for Kangaroo... hey presto!

Wow! That’s different! Not at all what I was expecting to see. Will watch with interest.🤔

Getting down to brass tacks... One of the reasons I chose to build a submarine was because I thought it would give me a chance to play about with some brass detailing. Finally I've got to that point. Just about every period photograph of these vessels shows that a cable was carried stretched along the casemate from a point near the anchor-locker to a point abeam the middle of the conning tower. I've annotated the photograph below with a red dashed line in order to show this cable that I'm talking about. My plan (at this stage) for modelling this, is to hang a length of lead wire off a series of hooks along the side the casemate. I'm going to make the hooks out of brass, it's a fairly simple job but here's how it goes... Get a sheet of brass of the correct thickness - here about 0.5mm, and trim off about a 7mm or so strip. Cut off as many bits as are needed - in this case 14. Cut a few spares 'just in case'. As I have use scissors for the cutting each little bit is all sort of curled up and needs flattening. I managed to pick-up a photo-etch folding device at a bargain price the other day. Here I have used it to flatten the little curly-wurly bits into nice flat plates and am folding each one into a hook shape. See... lots of little hooks with a flat bit for sticking onto the side of the submarine. Here's a photograph of a couple of them stuck on with two-part epoxy araldite. To attach the cable I will apply a dot of araldite to the inside of each hook, rest the cable on top of it and then fold / roll each hook's sticky-outy bit over the top of the cable. That's a fair while into the future though, it will only happen after the hull's painting is complete. The other fiddly bit that I have chosen to use brass to represent is this weird little thing... I do not know what this little duverlacky is but I rather suspect it's some sort of mass-balance used to stabilise or perhaps trim the forward hydroplanes. Here's how I made it. Take a length of fine, brass circular-section tubing and fold it over the back of a razor blade. Cut it to length and stick it on as shown below. Then take a small bit of milli-putt and roll it around between your fingers until it's a small streamlined shape as shown. I did that three times as I will need one on each side and a spare for when things go wrong and left them to dry / cure for 24 hours. I then sanded half of each little blob away - leaving a little streamlined blob of mill-putt... which can be glued into place as shown. I have also sanded as much of the permanent marker off as I could manage, this is to reduce the risk of the ink bleeding-through the final paint job - a risk I was previously unaware of until Hendie pointed it out above. Here is where we are up to now - the hull is very nearly finished and might be seeing some more primer, and then some paint, quite soon. Happy Modelling Everyone and thanks again for following along. Bandsaw Steve...

1/48 scale Churchill! ❤️😄😀✅👍👍👍 I’ve been hoping for Tamiya to do one of these for more than a decade! Happy, Happy, Happy!

OK. Good luck! 👍 I will watch with interest - have never even heard of this being done before.

Dare I suggest it would be easier to scratchbuild.

That winch is a wicked bit of scratchbuilding! 👍

Hmmmm... Hendie, Good Point about the permanent marker. I hadn’t thought of that. Like you say - pencil from now on! Longshanks, Good suggestion with regards to setting all of the rivet heads to the same height. Fortunately all of mine are still standing slightly too proud of the surface so I can still give your method a try. I Always appreciate everyone’s input and encouragement. 👍 Thanks again!

Hull details - including some more of the dreaded ovals! One of the things that I've noticed recently is that whoever draws submarine plans often show heaps of interior detail while almost completely ignoring the exterior. The photograph below shows a good example. The plans from the RAN historical website show a full cut-away of AE2 but almost nothing of the surface detail. I guess that the assumption is that there will be very little detail on the surface of a submarine and that to make the drawings 'worthwhile' they need to be cut-away. From my selfish point of view, as one building an exterior-only model this is a pain in the arthritis... in a way these drawings are 'too good' for my purposes - they contain too much information! So instead I have to view and interpret the photographs. Oh well - no real harm done... Worse things happen at sea! At least there are some quite good photographs on the public record. In this case to 'interpret' the surface detail all I've done is use a fine permanent marker to draft on anything that I want to reproduce on the hull. By the way, the little white strips on the 'step down' on the forward casement are just more PLA plastic, I stuck them on straight after the last post. There is clearly some linear texture in this area in period photos but I could not work out exactly what this feature is - my guess is that these are just wooden rungs placed there to stop people slipping. That's how I've represented them anyway. The hulls of these vessels were riveted - to my knowledge there was no welding in WW1 submarines. As I understand it structural hull welding was cutting-edge technology in World War 2, and was treated with great suspicion in submariner circles. Anyway some of these 'rivets' appear to be just great big structural bolts with heads sticking out onto the visible surface. Such things are easy to make a basic representation of, just stretch some sprue... Cut off a few mm, and stick it on with some superglue. Once the glue is firm, sand or snip away any excess. There were several more rivets on the casemate. Here are some more that I've stuck on - this time using fine evergreen plastic rods rather than stretched sprue. I then used some of these very high-quality shears to snip off the excess plastic. These snippers are specifically made for cutting parts from plastic kitset sprues. They cut plastic like a hot knife through butter. Leaving this. Dotted along the casemate at various intervals are these little oval-shaped openings. I'm not sure exactly what they are but they need to go on as they are quite visible. As Hendie says above, ovals can be a bit tricky - but these ones are pretty simple to get right. Just find a piece of evergreen tube that's the right size... boil some water... dunk the plastic tube into it while the water is still as hot as possible... and after about a minute, pull the tube out and stick it in a vice as shown. You can either leave it to cool gradually while in the vice or cool the plastic by plunging it into a cup of cold water. I chose the latter because it reminded me of how the Vikings used to quench newly cast swords by plunging the red hot blade into the body of a slave! I have not posted the photos as it might be too upsetting. Either way, you end up with an oval section tube as shown. This tube can then be cut into little slices - like cutting slices of bread off a loaf. After a bit of sanding to get them down to an appropriate thickness they can then be stuck onto the submarine in all of the right spots, or at least as close I can eyeball off the photos. And here's where we are up to now. Soon it will be time for a bit more paint on the hull but I think we still have one or two more posts to go first. Best Regards, Bandsaw Steve

This is going to be awesome! Love the little dremmel saw! might have to go shopping!

Oh yeah...like Longshanks says... start with something simple 😄

Here’s another thing! I sometimes think people (subliminally at least) think scratchbuilding is difficult because it would be really difficult to scratchbuild to the same standard that they might build a kit. Well it would be really difficult! If I had wanted the ‘best’ possible Mig15 model I would have built the Tamiya kit and added a heap of extra after-market gear. The outcome would have been heaps ‘better’ than my scratchbuilt model, but that’s not really a problem. I knew when I started the project that I wouldn’t reach ‘Tamiya standard’ so was not concerned by the various imperfections in the final product - I just say they add character! Truth be told I surprised myself with how well it turned out - which just goes back to the original point...I don’t think it’s quite as difficult as many people imagine. If you feel like having a crack at it then have a crack!

I think that would be a job for @mollythedog he likes teeny tiny little warships and aeroplanes and things.

My maths says it would be just over 12 cm long. 🔬

Looking good!

Fish get sea-sick?!?!😲 Wow - the things you learn! How can you tell? What do they do? Poor things - they can’t go for a walk and get some fresh air! 🤢

I think people generally think it’s more difficult than it is. In any case, if a piece doesn’t work out just throw it away and have another go! Truth be be told - on this project the original casemate ended up in the ‘spare bits of wood’ box. I concealed the worst of the debacle from my Britmodeller friends! 😬

Completely agree about how difficult it is to get dihedral right. On my return to scratchbuilding I specifically chose an aircraft with essentially no anhedral or dihedral (the Mig15) to avoid these difficulties. It looks like you have been a bit more daring than me but have still done OK in this case Fozzy Nice job👍

Hello Barside, Part of the reason I am posting all of this is to show people that there’s no real mystery or magic in basic scratchbuilding. I think nearly anyone with a few kit sets under their belt could build what I’m making. That’s why some of these posts are almost embarrassingly basic. 👍 RichO’s work on the other hand...well...that’s in another league! 😲

My fantasies generally focus more on who I am shipwrecked with rather than the shipwreck itself. 😍

Well, I can still it. But then I always could.

Hi Mollythedog, I apologise for my slow reply on this. I am really keen to try some of this stuff but am having difficulty obtaining any in Western Australia. I think I might have a supply lined up though and might be able to get my mitts on some in the next few months. I enjoy working with wood but will happily change over if the advantages are as great as most people maintain. Composite decking is another option that I am looking at.

Plating Unlike on most modern submarines, E-class hulls displayed some prominent plating. I'm guessing that these plates were either an artefact of the contemporary construction methods or were there to provide additional strength in some critical areas. In my view, this surface texture adds character to the vessel and will add interest to the model. It has to go on. On the top of each saddle tank, just on or above the surface-trim water-line there is a single elongated plate that I wish to recreate. On the photograph below I have added some crude red lines to indicate the bits that I'm talking about. Initially I was going to use my Nobel prize-winning half-lamination technique for this, but I decided that the resulting plate would look too prominent and too thick. Instead, I have turned to Tamiya's thinnest PLA plastic (0.14mm). I think that this stuff, as per MollytheDog's comment above, really is just super-thin plastic sheeting - nevertheless I can say that it really is super-thin and so for creating a streamlined surface detail like this one, it's very good. Here I've cut out a pattern for the shape and stuck it onto some PLA plastic with a bit of 'UHU Stic' glue - the same stuff kids use at school. I still haven't got any of that spray-on photo adhesive yet, but I'll get some one day... Anyway, obviously enough, once the paper pattern is stuck on I just cut it out with scissors. The PLA Plastic Paper really is like paper in this regard. Once cut to shape, I threw the whole lot into a sink with some luke warm sudsy water and the paper lifted off easily leaving nice clean plastic. Then the two plates got stuck on with a bit of super glue. Alongside each of these large long bits of plating there are four little ovalish plates. I really don't know what these are for but think that they might be removable access points for access to flood control valves or some such. Whatever they are they are quite visible (there's one at the tip of the burgundy pencil in the photo below) so they have to go on too. I knocked out eight small circles of PLA plastic using my little disk punching tool. Ideal! Then used a razor blade to trim them as shown. After a bit more rounding and trimming I ended up with this. Note that number 8 in the sequence below has had a bit too much knocked off it and had to be replaced. Carefully scale off the location of each of these little blobs - and glue them on. Leaving this... As you can see, there are also some carefully positioned new panels on the side of the casemate. Next posting there will be a myriad of minor details to go onto the hull. Slowly making progress on this one. Best Regards, Steve

Well done Fozzy. Admitting personal responsibility for your actions and failings is a necessary first step on the long road to full rehabilitation.🤔 Now let’s see that tail and those wings.👍