Revell 1/72nd S-100 Schnellboot

[Bish]

This is my first 72nd scale ship build and the most detailed ship to date. As i am not to familiar with building ships, i am taking my time with this and i am intending follow the instruction sequence rather than jump around as i might do with armour or aircraft.

 

 

I don't usually get referance boks for subjects i only have one kit of, but i have made an exception with my larger ship kits.

 

 

The kit itself cost me nothing, being a gift from a good friend a few years back. But i made up for that with the AM. The Griffon premium set contains 14 PE frets, resin parts, metal barrels and torpedo's and a few other things. I got 2 Peddinghaus decal set as the boat i want to do, S-205, is not covered by one of them. Also an Artwox wood deck and some sea mines from CMK.

 

 

I started out with the mounts for the railings on the main deck piece. I didn't have much spare time Thurs night so didn't want to get into anything to intricate.

 

 

Then over the weekend i made a start on the bridge. Main piece i needed to work on was the RZA 5 torpedo sight. The kit piece lack detail and is totally wrong, and the PE only added a couple of bits. This is what it should look like, from the Squadron book.

 

 

And this is the kit part, this being the upper portion. Notice how it narrows at the top.

 

 

And the lower portion is part of the front of the bridge. On the real thing, it would extend lower down below the bridge floor.

 

 

That whole piece is replaced by PE. So i cut out the bit i needed and attached it to the upper portion. I also filled out the side with some styrene sheet and added a bit of PE.

 

 

I then finished it off with some PE and scratched some detail with styrene and PE scrap. The hand wheel on the rear is from the PE set, the one of the right is made from 2 spare wheels from one of my Luftwaffe ladder sets. I put 2 together to give it some thickness. I finished off with some wireing. This was one of those things when you have to know when enough is enough. I could have spent a whole day adding tiny details and it still would not have matched the real thing. I think this looks enough without going OTT. It was then fitted to the bridge floor.

 

 

 

 

I then got the front and sides of the bridge fitted out.

 

 

 

And then the armoured front to the bridge/wheel house.

 

 

 

So the bridge is now ready to be primed and painted on the inside. I'll do that and then put it all tofgether. There is some slight cleanup and a few parts to be added to the outside, but they can be done later.

Enjoying this so far, still a long way to go.

[Alan P]

Looks like a great project and a good start. looking forward to seeing this develop.

[Bish]

Thanks Alan, that makes 2 of us.

[Bish]

Its been a couple of weeks, so time for an update. A few people have said they have the same Griffon set, so i am going to start with a few issues i have found with it, mainly down to the instructions.

First one is on the main deck. You have to remove the raised area, greyed out in the instructions. And it clearly shows that the vertical sides are to be left.

 

 

Which leaves you with this.

 

 

But the 2 peices that go over the hole look like this underneath.

 

 

Clearly the cross piece with not allow it to fit with the sides of the kit in place. So, the sides had to be removed, here the rear has been done but not the front.

 

 

Next issue is the rear section of the torpedo tubes. Before adding AM, they should fit like this.

 

 

There is a PE piece for each side which going off the instructions fit like this.

 

 

Clearly thats not right, in the instructions, the top of the PE run along the plastic piece. Whjat they miss out is the the sides of the vertical plastic bulkhead have to be taken back.

 

 

This also means that the torpedo tubes won't fit and have to be cut back, again this is not mentioned.

 

Those isues caused me some head scratching, though really it should have been clear what to do. I only realised when i look at the Griffon models website and the page on this AM set had a lot of images which included this area without the bridge fitted.

 

Unfortunatly, the link to different products does not seem to be working at the moment, at least on my computer. The product is a little way down on the right side, BPN 72001.

 

http://www.griffonmodel.com/

 

So once those issues where dealt with, this is how the rear deck looked.

 

 

I waisted a couple of evenings trying to sort that out, but it got there. So i was able to fit the deck and put the hull together.

 

 

 

I then did some work on the raised front deck including around the forward gun mount and the hatch, this was then fitted. Towards the rear, there are 2 raised circles just behind the small raised deck section. There were 4 of these, the other 2 being on the outside edge. These are the bases for the smoke generators. The instructions tell you to remove the inner ones. But the pics of my boat clearly show the generators on these inner positions, so i removed the other ones.

 

 

 

The prop shafts were also fitted, i left out the rudders.

 

 

And i got one of the rear sections of the torpedo tubes donw. Lots of tricky PE on there. You can see the front has been cut back. I did a bit to much so had to add some styrene strip.

 

 

And finally, there is some question about the kit props being incorrect. In my seperate WiP thread it was mentioned that the pitch is completly wrong. Several reviews mention this as well. In the ship craft book there are a couple of pics of an S-38 prop which show them well. They also show that the centre prop attaches to the main rudder. The kit has this right, but i thought it must have been wrong when i saw the instructions, but what do i know about ships.

 

 

Over on FSM one of the guys mentioned that Shapeways has 3D printed props with the correct pitch. When i checked there site, they also have the correct shield for the rear gun of the boat i am doing. I was going to have to scratch that. I was not expecting them until the end of the month but they arrived yesterday, my first 3D printed parts.

 

More to follow.

[robgizlu]

Looking Very good indeed - i really like what you've done to the torpedo site.

I'll be interested to know what you think of the Shapeways parts - they've been sitting in my basket now for several months.

The props alone whilst looking very accurate are not cheap!

The Gunshield looks well done but after seeing the quality on the Micromaster.co.nz parts compared to the past shapeways offerings, I'm wondering if Shapeways ned to raise their game and improve the qulaity of their printing process.

Either way - this is looking great - I have 2 in the stash, I'll be watching and learning

Keep it coming

Rob

[Bish]

Thanks Rob. This was my first venture into 3D printed parts. And while your right, they are not cheap, i am not dissapointed, and given how much i had already spent on AM, it made sense to me to spend the extra to get this parts. One prop will need trimming, but i am still very pleased and the shield is really impressive. I will check out that site you posted, i had only heard of shapeways but i am een to see what else is out there.

[robgizlu]

Looking forward to seeing this come together

Rob

[Bish]

Thanks Rod, its slow progress but its getting there.

[Bish]

Well, its taken quite a bit longer than i expected, but i am finally able to get some paint on the S-Boat. But before i post some pics of the boat, i wanted to show the 3D parts i ordered from Shapeways.

The shield is a lovely piece. The device on the side is a rocket launcher. I had not come across this until i saw the part and so i did a little digging and indeed found it was fitted to the boat i am doing.

 

 

But there was a sligth problem. The boat i am doing, S 205, was one of 2 which sailed into Felixstowe in May 45, the other being S 204. The launcher is right for 204, but 205 had it on the other side. So i carefully cut it off and removed the launcer from the mount so it could face the right way.

 

 

I left the launcher off to fit after painting.

And these are the props, again really nice.

 

 

A big thank you to those who suggested checking out shapeways and for the advice on working with these.

And now the boat. there is not lt more here than in the last update, just the last few bits of PE.

 

 

And the bridge, with the inside painted, i finished off the rest and masked off with some tissue.

 

 

 

And then some primer and paint. I am useing colour coats German naval colours. I painted the lower hull red and then did the deck dark grey.

 

 

 

I will leave this another day or two before masking off and painting the white, along with the bridge.

[Bish]

Its been a while but i've been plugging away and the S-Boat is geting some where. While i was in the process of paiting the hull, i got the 3 guns put together, other than the torpedo's and racks, these were the last bits to assemble. These are the forward and centre 20mm guns, mainly kit parts with some PE additions. The centre gun, the one on the right, has a PE shieled and they all have metal barrels to replace the kit parts.

 

 

And this is the rear 37mm gun.Except for the round base, the kit gun is completly replaced though i did use the pastic hand wheels as the PE ones were just not right. There is a PE shield for this but i will be adding the 3D one. This alone took 3 nights to build.

 

 

 

 

And after a week or so of painting, waiting and masking, the hull was painted, all with colourcoats. This was followed by a couple of coats of future.

 

 

On the deck i used oils to lighten it in patches.

 

 

I started off weathering with the underside of the bridge and the torpedo tubes. Pics show these boats quite clean, so i just went with some light streaking and some scuffing and chipping.

 

 

 

The bridge was then fitted. This was a very tight fit, i had to do some clamping, which meant the ladders had to be removed.

 

 

 

And then this weekend, i finally got the decals on. I had bought 2 sets of Peddinghaus decals as one set had the individual boat marking and the otehr the Panther. But the panther they used was way to small, so that was a set i didn't need. So i used the Revell one, which has no detail on it, and painted that in with white and red Tamiya. Quite pleased with how they turned out. Today, it got 2 more coats of future to seal in the decals.

 

 

 

 

 

And on for some weathering and to get the deck fitted out.

[Bish]

Quick update, this should be the last one before i wrap this up. I got the sides weathered with a very light oil wash and then sealed with a flat coat. I forgot to take a proper pic of the side but its very subtle. I then started fitting it out with the wood deck, railings and a few other bits.

 

 

 

And this is whats left to be added. Every thing has been painted, weathered and mat coated before fitting.

 

 

And the last bits to be put together were the torpedo's, quite a bit of work on these. the propellers on each one had 8 small PE blades.

 

 

And the CMK mines.

 

 

Just got to get those painted up and primed and make up the dodgers for the side rails.

[Courageous]

looking very nice, especially love the torps.

 

Stuart

[stevehnz]

Coming along nicely & looking just brilliant. The extra detail is really making it.

Steve.

[robgizlu]

Alltogether very nice work.  I especially like the deck weathering

Rob

[Bish]

Thanks guys.

[Bish]

Got the S-Boat wrapped up last weekend and got the pics sorted today. At just over 3 months this is one of the longest builds i have done and was worth every minute. To finish it off i got the rest of the deck pieces fitted as well as the completed torpedo's and mines. The latter were a bit awkward as the trolleys were to wide for the raisl. I had to trim those down quite a bit but as the mines are on top of them you can't see the trolleys anyway.

I also added a rubber dinghy. This is not included in this kit but does come with the Flak 38 version. But the pics of this boat clearly show one. Fortunalty i have a set of Revell German assault engineer figures which come with a similar boat. So i dressed that up with some PE and fitted that.

I felt that the wood decks looked to clean. So after testing on some of the off cut wood, i used a light oil wash of raw umber and yellow orche mixed. Rather pleased with that. I added dodgers (i thinks thats the right term) with tissue soaked with white glue, and tied on with rigging thread. The final additions were the radio aerial cables, a fabric ensign from AMP and a ships bell. At 4mm its the smallest i could find, i think it rounds it off nicely.

I know there are some accuracy issues when compared to the real S-205. The torpedo rails were a simply wooded type, ammo lockers for the centre gun were bigger and some other differances but i can live with those. I do wish i had drilled out the underwater openings but it was to late by the time i realised. For my first 72nd boat, i am really chuffed with this. Now i am keen to start a 72nd U-Boat which i will be getting to later this year or early next. But for now i am looking forward to some aircraft and some heavy armour.

Now for the pics.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Thanks all for following along.

[Courageous]

Very pleasant to the eye.

 

Stuart

[Bish]

Thanks Stuart.

[Terry1954]

Very inspiring build indeed.

 

Terry

[Bish]

Thanks Terry