Thanks, Roman!
I used 67# weight card stock for printing out most of this model, and regular bond for the items I needed to roll. I prefer rolling with an extra tab to start the roll as I have not had much success in rolling the stock and get the joint flush and neat; guess I need a bit of a fudge factor to get things rolling, so to speak. :lol: I used a bit of 34 guage annealed wire for the barrels of the phalanx system and the radar dish details, and 28 guage for the electronic aerial on top of the mast, mast supports and the barrel for the forward gun. Other than that, and a bit of acrylic paint to touch up the seam joints and finish off the stacks, it's all from Yuki's great design.
It was a pretty fast little build, once I got started and past the hull construction. All told, this little fellow took all of five to six nights to put together, give or take a few hours and a day or two off somewhere in between.
I had a few false starts with the hull construction, mostly because I was not familiar with the construction method, but once the basic hull was done I built the deck houses pretty much over a three hour period in on sitting. The little details were then done over the rest of the three days, building a few things at the same time and waiting for the glue to dry. This proved to work out well because I was able to assemble the base for the phalanx gun and, while that glued, I rolled the radar dome for that gun and, while that was drying, I could put the gatling like barrel together. By the time I finished that, the base was dry, the barrels added and finally the dome added...it actually worked out pretty well and fast.
A few things I would/will do differently the next time, or with the other models from Yuki, is to add a few chipboard strips to help create a good gluing surface to join the base plate to the hull sides as well as the transom piece to the hull sides (I don't like the gap left in the transom to hull side joint, but that was my mistake in not getting the hull started correctly). The hull was the only part of this build that really gave me fits, but the clipper bow shape created a lot of the trouble I think. I know I did it wrong even on the second time around when there was a shortage to the hull sides...that threw off the fantail construction, which I fudged a bit as you can probably tell. I would also try to cut the house pieces rather than fold along the lines, ala Michael's Oregon tip, to make a cleaner joint...this would do a better job, I think, of showing the unique angular house design, and give me a bit more flexibility to make more accurate joints overall. I also for my own preference used a bit of PVA to smooth over the ridges created when rolling the phalanx radar domes and the radome on the mast.
Overall a nice, fun build that didn't take a lot of time to complete considering all the little bits Yuki has designed into her. I can see myself eventually building his other gems as well and would invite everyone to try them too. Thanks for watching!
Roman, is this what you wanted to know? If there is something about this build that I didn't mention and you would like to know, just let me know. This goes for anyone out there, of course.
Cheers!
Jim
