Landlubber Mike

Merry Christmas everyone!

It works really well. I use it a lot to pre-form bends for planking wooden hulls, particularly at the bow. Wet the end of the wood, run it through the roller a few times, and you have a nice curve that makes pinning and clamping the plank to the hull a lot easier. It's a bit pricey on the Micromark site, but you can get it for a better deal when they offer sales and discounts.

I bend wood when building wooden ship models. There are a variety of ways I do it, but it depends on the wood, size, shape, etc. You can: soak in water and pin to a forming jig and let it dry soak and microwave (or soak in hot water) and shape it soak and use a hair dryer use a rolling tool to put a bend into it soak the wood and use a heating element to form the curve Given the size, I'd consider soaking the wood, then clamping it around a forming jig. Let it dry and hopefully it's in the shape you want. When I am trying to shape hull planks, I will soak the plank, then pin it to the hull. The next day it should be dry and in the shape I want. I can't necessary do this with certain dense woods like ebony, but instead found I need to use that heating element tool in the last picture to get a fixed curve in the wood. I'm assuming the pine you're using a wood will be much easier to bend. Just make sure to soak and then bend slowly. Sometimes it might take multiple tries to get it into the shape you want. Sometimes the wood will spring back a bit, so you might need to soak and clamp to a jig with a touch more curve than you want so that when it springs back, it's in the shape you need.

Hey Ben, thanks for the tip on using Xerox imaging plastic. Really appreciate it! This is the Bugatti version I have (there is one with the spare strapped to the side of the vehicle and then I think a yellow version): Opening the box the kit looked ok - will see how the parts fit when I start working on it. Along with this one and the Auto Union, I think I have six other kits that I managed to snag on deals on eBay (couple of Alfa Romeos, couple Ferraris, a Maserati, and a Mercedes-Benz). I think these racers are some of the coolest looking cars, and where Revival does an especially nice job, at least on the metal kits, is with the wire wheels. Plus, with the open hoods, you can add some neat little details to the engine compartment. I still need to get a little better at car modeling. In some ways they are simpler than ship and plane models, at least when it comes to construction. The paint job, however, to me seems much harder and critical to get right. At least with ships and planes you can hide things with weathering, washes, panel-liners, etc. A little harder to do that with cars. The other thing that I haven't quite figured out is what to do when it comes to the finish and weathering, adding depth, and different textures like leather. Folks usually don't add washes or depth to the body of the car. If they don't do that when it comes to the engine and interior, then to me it looks very plastic. If they do do that to the engine and interior, then there is a bit of a dichotomy because the body is usually a solid color with a gloss coat. I haven't done enough car models to figure that one out.

I think Revival has an eBay store - at least I think I remember seeing their store selling these kits a year or so ago. Not sure if they are still selling though. I need a replacement glass for my Auto Union Type C. These kits pop up from time to time on eBay. Usually they are listed in the $150+ range, but you can get lucky and win auctions for under $80. A month ago I snagged one of the metal Bugattis for $70. I'd probably stay away from the plastic ones, as I think they don't come with the wire wheels. The pre-made wire wheels in the metal kits are really really nice, and were a big seller to me.

Wow, this is really nice Ben!! Love it! The Kublewagen is really cool, but together with the figures and scenery really brings it to life.

Thanks Ben, really appreciate you taking the time to answer my questions!

Holy cow, seriously nice Kevin!

Looking good Peter - getting to the primer stage is a big step!

Incredible work as always. That engine is sublime, wow!

Really nice work. Love the colors!

Nicely done Drums! I'm working on putting a 1/350 IJN destroyer into a sea base much like yours, as well as a couple of 1/700 models. The sea diorama brings the ship to life!

Looking really good, nice job!

Beautiful PE work!

Very impressive build, wow!

Wow, fantastic! Seeing this kind of work makes me think I need to take up a different hobby sometimes

Really nice work! Very timely post as I was just looking at the ones in my stash this weekend thinking about putting one onto the workbench. I love these cars, and unfortunately, there aren't too many kits out there in the marketplace. The wire wheels in my opinion are really well done and make for an impressive model. If you don't mind me asking: 1. I got a little scared seeing other posts on these kits saying how difficult they were given very poor fit issues. One guy I think said he spent like 800-1000 hours on each of his 😳 Did you find the fit to be that bad or difficult to work through? Hopefully these didn't take you 1000 hours! I was thinking of building them mostly out of the box, but maybe add some detail work to the engines, etc. 2. I was thinking of stripping the factory paint, priming and re-painting mine. I have a feeling after taking off flash and re-shaping pieces to improve the fit, I'll have to do touch-ups anyway, so might as well just paint the whole thing. What did you use to strip the paint? I wasn't sure if these were die-cast metal or some other kind of metal, but I read somewhere that certain paint stripping solutions can absolutely destroy certain types of metal used in kits. 3. Did you find that you had to build the model first, and after all fit issues were resolved, then disassemble, paint, and re-assemble? I read that some builders took this approach. Thanks in advance, and thanks again for sharing! These are beauties! I also have a few of the old metal Hubley kits in the stash that one day I will work on.

Mike, your D.1 came out amazing, just like your other models. I just wanted to thank you for creating and posting your build logs, especially in PDF format (I usually save multiple pages of helpful build logs, but having a single PDF makes it so much easier).. They are incredibly helpful, and I can only imagine how much time it takes you to put them together. They are fantastic resources, and take a lot of the mystery out of building these cool subjects. So thank you very much! Looking forward to your upcoming subjects!

Ernie, just wanted to welcome you back and wish you and your mom all the best.

Looking forward to this one - have the Navy version in the stash

Just wanted to thank you Peter for taking the time and effort to not only run these tests, but share them with us. Really appreciate it!

Wow, that looks really fantastic! Also noted that they are re-releasing the Shinden and Horton Ho 229. I have to say, this type of honesty and candor from Z-M on the Shinden is really cool to see. Even though I haven't built a Z-M kit yet (waiting to get my skills up before tackling the ones in my stash), statements like this make me a real fan of the company. As a very early work from Zoukei-Mura, it still has some issues with roughness and difficult assembly. Nevertheless, it is a kit with an impressive form, and you will surely feel an indescribable sense of achievement when you conquer its assembly.

Quick question - anyone have any ideas on how to represent a WWII carrier's hangar deck flooring? I haven't found many pictures of what it would look like, aside from this colorized one of what I think might be a Wildcat: I can't really tell what the floor is made of - metal? How would I represent it? A dark steel color with scribed lines to represent what looks like big metal floor panels, with some oil and other spills? Since I have the model with panels off, etc., I was thinking about sitting it on a hangar deck in a diorama scene with a mechanic or two. I have this Verlinden set which could supply some of the figures, though with the hoods, I'm wondering if those mechanics would be more apt to be on the landing deck versus the hangar deck: Thanks in advance!

I'm just about at the end of this build. Everything is pretty much painted, decaled and put together (aside from the folded wings which will be attached at the end), and has a coat of gloss pre-weathering, etc. So far so good. I just purchased the Proxxon hot wire cutter so can start making bases for my models, including dioramas.

No kidding! Wow!