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U-991 1/72 Type VIIc U-Boat - Revell


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Late to this amazing show Tristan, but it's fascinating, inspiring stuff.

I think this is the first Revell U-Boat build I've seen which makes me throw my hands up and say, "nah, I can't do that!"

:worthy:

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Thank you Andrew!
Toby, there is a book called 'anatomy of a ship' by David Westwood http://www.amazon.com/Type-VII-U-Boat-Anatomy-Ship/dp/1591148863 That has lots of drawing of the boat, but a far better resource, is the fantastic work of Simon Morris, who has labored to produce detailed drawings of a late war type VII, he has a post here http://models.rokket.biz/index.php?topic=106.0 The AMP site is by far the best resource I found for info on these and other u-boats.
Thank you Alan! There are lots of truly amazing builds of this Revell model that have inspired me (to copy them), and besides I am 3D printing which is cheating.
Paint time
From everything I have seen, Late war uboats were mostly trying to hide from Allied air, were often painted very dark grey. That's a bit dull, and I have seen many boats with high contrast arctic schemes that are much more interesting to me. One of the reasons I picked U-991, is there are very few if any photos of it, so I can pretty much make it any colour I want. :)
It was also a training boat, had one long 73 day patrol in which to pick up lots of nice weathering, and was part of 'Operation Deadlight' http://uboat.net/fates/deadlight.htmUpon surrender, these boats would fly a black flag, I'm tempted to depict this event.
I bought both of the Lifecolor's Kreigsmarine sets and read up on the colours of U-boat. I now have many pots of grey paint.
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The base layer is Tamiya Flat black, and Hull red mixed 50/50, this is my rust base. it's almost black.

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Experimenting with the Lifecolor rust paint set.
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I'm going to do home hairspray chipping on the steel plating, but not on the pressure hull, so I'll paint that first.
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This blue is Tamiya Medium blue with a bit of german grey mixed in to dull it down.
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Bugger.
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Hairspray on the bow section. 2 coats, one coat seems to seal the matt paint underneath and the second coat (for me at least) makes it more chippable.
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Top coat on, mixed with water instead of X-20a. I think maybe the water makes the chipping kind of softer compared to x-20, it hard to tell there are a lot of variables.
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The grey here is tamiya sky grey, again mixed with water.
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I'm chipping the side in three sections, I'm scared the hairspray will not last long enough if I did it all in one go.
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here's where the bow section of the chipping joins the midships section (which has yet to be chipped)
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I've overdone it, I cannot restrain myself. there is also a mushy quality to the chipping that isn't what I wanted really.
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I'm also starting to weather the hull with airbush, using the thinned flat black/hull red mix I started with.
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AlanP, very nice! I don't think you overdid that beauty, the more rusty and battered the better in my book!

I'm starting to put the conning tower together. I will be attempting brass guardrails which is terrifying and the cause of conning tower procrastination. My laser cut wooden deck will repalce the plastic kit ones, and I'll need to figure out how to attach the rails to it.

There are various holes and vents to drill out too, and I have PE replacements for the various antennas.

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I'm going to install small magents into the AA guns, so they can be removed and swivel on their mounts.
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Looks Ok, but the barrel looks like it might sit to far forward. The guardrails are often modified with extra bars to prevent damage to the boat from gun angles that are too low.
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Here the lower wintergarten deck is placed on the kit part for comparison, you can see the little footings for the railing.
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The kit's conning tower handrails, a little on the chinky side, I'm going to trace over this photo in illustrator and laser engrave myself a guide.
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I can bend the brass into the guide a solder it up.
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Bits of flux and solder.
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Fits pretty well, the Eduard PE kit comes with little square brackets the will cover up the largish hole around the rod.
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A late war boat doesn't have the Gaint's toe magnetic compass housing. Instead it has the sleeker Askania housing.
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I replaced all the conning tower furniture with 3D printed stuff, not cheap but quite an upgrade.
You can find it here.
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This is the stuff under the conning tower, that dalek looking thing is the attack periscope housing, the Askania compass faring is the fin to the left.
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This is a collection of the trial and error of getting these parts correct.
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The Kit's persicope housing is on the left, apart from the lack of detail, it;s too short, the grey on next to it was a direct replacemant, adn the other two are taller ones that are the same height as the conning tower's side rail. The same is true for the Uzo binocular mount.
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This pipe is an early installation of the schnorkel, later versions ran this pipe under the deck, but where's the fun in that.
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Cheers!
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  • 2 weeks later...

railings. Terrified of messing up the railings I opted to make a buck to hold everything together as I solder. Really though, making a buck is effective procrastination from the soldering... The Each railing has it's own plate, and lots of unprights to hold it all together. The bottom plate is the same size as the wintergarten deck.

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Assembled the bucks look like this, the upper deck and the lower. The holes in the plates are so I can use wire to hold the brass when tape is insufficient.

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I got this wrong, the uprights stick out too far.
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Here you can see the deck piece is the same size as the lowest plate. I will wrap a brass strip round the base of this plate and solder the rails to it. Once done the brass strip will get glued onto the deck piece. At least, that is the plan.
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Here's a test I made. I realiased I went wrong. First I used 0.8mm rod for all of it, but worse it's going to be impossible to solder the middle rail in between those uprights and keep it curved, like it's one piece.
There are two cutouts for the ladders, so I will solder in those uprights, then fit the three middle rails in between these uprights, before adding the remaining uprights in two havles.
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I proves the concept though.
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I am concerned about gluing it to these deck pieces.
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I also realised that only the top rail is thicker, so I'm using the 0.8mm brass rod just for this, I'l like 0.7mm but I couldn't find any.
Everything else is 0.5mm Except the foot rail that is 0.3mm If I can be arsed.
The top rail goes on first secured with wire. Then the bottom banjo strip. The uprights are soldered in two parts, but you have to do it in a certain order so you don't unsolder stuff.
I bend the bottom of each upright where it meets the banjo strip (I don't know why I am calling it that).

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Taping a bit of wood to my finger help holding stuff in place without burns.
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This A frame part is the hardest. I made special effort to cut the angled bits to just the right length. after failing a few times, I found it best to cut it too long then file to the correct length.
here you can see that I have soldered the top 3 A-frame parts to the top rail first, then the lower 3 parts to the banjo strip, this holds everything together for the center rail solder.
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If I did the 3 topparts first, I would likely unsolder them when adding the bottom 3, if this makes sence. This way, I can solder the center rail all in one go and make sure it all lines up without tape getting in the way. But I am mostly there. It took me two weeks to do these. The main problem I had was a dirty solder tip. I think the wood was creating extra soot whenever it got scorched. I could only remove the soot when the tip was cold, which slowed doen the progress a lot. Now I have to work out how to attach them to the model.
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Hi, I've got the same Revell kit to build and I bought a photo etched kit to go with the model, so your pix are going to be a great help in my understanding how to do that.

Please excuse my stupidity, I obviously don't want to question a person who is obviously a master in the art, but I don't understand aspects of what you are trying to achieve and I would appreciate feedback from you - to explain what I don't understand.

Off the cuff - you used balsa or wood to make the partitions with your laser cutter, but it is just as easy to have the patterns printed on a photocopier and PVA glued to card, in 1/8 or 1/4 thickness and cut out by hand using a hobby knife, several cuts, don't force the blade through the card, let the knife do the cutting on a suitable cutting board - it is the procedure I use for my card warship models, pix which I have posted in this forum, under "Brooker".

Once the assembly has been constructed and assembled with PVA glue, interlocking the parts, it is easy enough to varnish the card parts, for say, your torpedo tubes construction, to get a really strong card structure, easily as strong as your wood one (bearing in mind that I can't afford a laser cutter like yours and I don't have that sort of motivation or determination).

I am also lost on why you are going to so much trouble internally, if your model is going to be a static model and not an R/C model, as all of the internal detail will be inside the plastic structure, once it is all glued together and it won't be seen anyway - excuse me for being stupid, but what am I missing here?

Brooker

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Fascinating cardboard ships Brooker, I had no idea how far you could go with card, I agree it would have been a been an easier route than wood....


I am no master! Just enthusiastic, as I am recently returned to the hobby, most of the stuff I am doing here is for the first time, I'm not giving any thought to efficiency.


The main reason I went with the laser cut basswood is because of the after-market laser cut deck I got. It was OK, but I wanted to see if I could do a better one.

I found the same wood in the hobby shop, I know my way round a computer, and was fortunate enough to have access to a laser cutter at work.

After some success with the deck, I thought I could use the same approach as a way to hold the torpedo tubes, ( since I ruined the front of the hull with brass grafting) One thing led to another, and I ended up making the whole interior structure using this method.


It's other purpose was to give enought support to build the pressure hull and saddle tanks, as the kit does not have any of this stuff. You can see parts of the pressure hull through various holes in the deck, especially if I start removing deck access panels etc. Is it over engineered? Yes it is! I probably wouldn't do it that way again, but I didn't know that at the start.


As far as all the 3D printed plumbing that is under the deck, I am hoping to have the deck removable, so it will be possible to see all that.

I hope this answers your questions?



Cheers!

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Hi TristanR,

Yes thanks for taking the time and excusing my rudeness in questioning what you were doing, I have the same kit here and I wanted some idea of how to go about building it, as I've lost the skills and time taken to build in card anymore - well ships that is - so I thought I'd build in plastic instead, because at least the parts are preformed and how hard can following a jigsaw puzzle of parts be in plastic - much harder than I thought, obviously !!

I'm 70 give or take a few months and as I've never built anything, except one try, where I left a 1/200 IJN Yamato model to close to a gas fire and that side melted like a candle, about 25 years ago - I decided now, that perhaps it was not too late to give plastic a go - I've got a big stash of plastic kits to build, but so far I lack the motivation - hopefully, sometime soon - I will begin.

Your wood deck is smashing, given that you are able to use a computerized laser cutter at work - half your luck and then some, I'd say, however, you probably realize that the gratings were the same colour as the rest of the model, which is a bit sad given the looks you have achieved, to remain authentic.

Needless to say, your sub model looks terrific and not the work of a beginner - pull the other leg mate (smile)

Brooker

Edited by brooker
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Amazing, fantastic, beautiful, stunning! I fear the English language hasn't enough adjectives to cover your build. Totally in awe of your talent.

Tell me, is this baby going to do battle with Warren's corvette when they're both done?

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Thank you very much for the comments folks, on with more paint!
Some weathering tests. I am doing the rust using Lifecolor's rust diorama set. Using the chipping as a guide, I flood a small area with water, them drop thinned paint into the water.
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the before.
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with rust.
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test fitting the wood.

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Time to weather the wood. These decks were coated in a black paint. A black pain that will wear off.
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First I am going to seal the deck, but I'm going to tint the sealer with some inks.
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Next the anti weather paint, a very dark grey. Before that, I pick out individual plamks with inks.
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blackness.
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Sanding away gets nice wooden results.
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Cheers!
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"I am no master! Just enthusiastic, as I am recently returned to the hobby, most of the stuff I am doing here is for the first time, I'm not giving any thought to efficiency."

You sell yourself short I think!

I don't do boats but have just read this from the start..absolutely amazing.Thank you for posting.

Can't wait to see her finished.

Richard
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  • 4 weeks later...
Thankyou for all the kind words, it's always nice to recieve them when you are gong through a total loss of motivation due to a problem.
In this case, I have been slowed right up with the problem of attaching these railings. I've done nothing for weeks because of this. The problem lies in the contamination of my solder joints from the basswood buck I thought I was so clever in making. The railing, especially this lower one, is very fragile, and I have had to put it back on the buck to repair it several time after it broke when dry fitting it to the conning tower.
Once I glue the railing onto the deck piece (which I pre-masked) it will no longer fit onto the buck for repairs. Also since I am using CA glue I have to get it right first time...
My plan is to create a perimeter of brass rod pushed into a foam base,
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Once placed, I slip the railings into the fence, then load up the deck with glue and shove it in.
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The tape base will hopefully stop the deck getting glued to the foam base.
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It was a patial sucess, there is a gap where the deck went in squint, but I reckon I can fill it, the best part is I can finally move forward. There was a few more railing so solder on, but it's together.
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Before it explodes, I will attempt to get some paint on it, with some of this new fangled black primer I found in the model shop.
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On top of that, my rust base of 50/50 hull red and flat black.
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Followed by some gentle hairspray chipping.
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I also rememberd these life raft containers
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Time to bust out some oids and try some oil weathering. everthing so far has been done with acrylics.
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That's all for now! Cheers!

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