Landlubber Mike

Holy cow, that looks really nice!!

Wow Fran, Santa (or Kevin) came early for you this year. You must have been a good boy!

What a cool looking P-51! One alternative approach to the bolts that is sometimes used on the wooden ship modeling side is to drill all the way through, and then insert rod into them. Or, you can find appropriate sized pins, glue them, and then cut the heads off. You can get insect pins for pretty cheap which come in plenty of sizes. Not sure what is the easiest, but looking forward to seeing what you come up with!

I store them in my kits the best i can, otherwise have boxes marked for stuff that won't fit. I use the Notes feature on my iPhone to record every kit and piece of AM I have for it so I don't double buy.

Looks great John! Great paint and decal work!

Wow, that's really well done! And I thought I was going to go crazy working in 1/72 scale!

That camo is amazing! Are you using an airbrush for everything, or are you hand painting some things like the red portions?

Thanks Peter, really appreciate it. I rely heavily on an Optivisor for this kind of work!

Looks like a blast, have fun!

Looking really great Peter! Love that camo scheme!

Thanks very much Rob, really appreciate it! Getting me ready for the upcoming "in the water" group build 👍

Thank you Fran!

That's looking really great! Engine is fantastic. Hope you're feeling better.

Thanks guys, really appreciate it!

I have a 1/200 Bismarck in the stash, and I bought a bunch of Northstar figures for it. Lots of duplicates in the various sets, but they are fairly inexpensive if you can find them. One warning about Northstar - I've had bad experiences ordering from them. First time they told me they sent me "extras" as a gift. Turns out a bunch of the items I ordered they gave me the wrong item and substituted different figures. Then they apologized and said they would send me new ones, so I placed a second order (stupidly) and they never shipped it. So, I definitely wouldn't buy directly from them.

These I believe were from Ion Models - I bought them on eBay and from Freetime Hobbies. I also have figures from Tori Factory (bought from eBay - they came from Korea I believe) and Pro Studio (same thing). They are resin and pretty easy to detach from the plugs, and come in many different poses. I also have figures from Northstar - they stink! Much bigger than the figures from the other companies, and worse yet, they are printed way too close on the same plug so it's almost impossible to paint and remove them without busting them.

Thank you Gus, really appreciate the kind words

If you'd like, sure. I'm very flattered that you would ask, there are a lot of incredible modelers here!

Pics of the real thing and some of the construction:

Some detail pics:

Hey guys, seeing @KevinM's beautiful Chikuma build lit a fire under me to finish my first 1/350 ship. Base kit is from Hasegawa, supplemented by the amazing Infini upgrade kit and some other aftermarket. A really fun build and I'm glad I put it into a diorama setting.

Ugh, thanks for that info Ernie. I also have the HpH Me410 - is that any better?

I switched over to Swann Morton too. Much better blades, and the blade holder/handle is better as well.

I haven't participated in a GB before, but would try it out especially if it's a "it gets wet" build. I have a bunch of seaplanes in the stash, and just happened to score an HpH Walrus the other day. I'd probably start something easier than the HpH Walrus - I have the 1/48 Airfix Walrus with the Neomega catapult set) and a bunch others in 1/48 like the Goose, Catalina, Ju52 with floats, F1M2 Pete, etc. Anyway, whenever you guys want to start is cool with me. I sorta work on models and then get bored and move on, so this would cause me to be a little more focused on a single subject if others are progressing on their builds.

Looking amazing Sasha!!