Yuki Yuji Arleigh Burke DDG 51 in 1-700 scale

J

Jim Krauzlis

Active Member
Sep 26, 2005
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Copiague, Long Island, New York
As a break from my Constitution build I decided to try building one of those outstanding little Yuki Yuji warships in 1:700 scale. I didn't want to get too involved in a second build, but I've got to admit these little gems are addictive! :D

I decided upon the Arleigh Burke, DDG51, because it seemed to be one of the easier builds than the others, particularly as I did not want to contend with at lattice work mast which the others had or the larger ships he offers...it was, after all, just a diversion.

I spent the good part of today, while the blizzard brewed outside, to work on her. I started one earlier, but I soon found I have no where near the skill or technique Yuki has for building these little hulls. I ended up using a bit of laminated card to the base and decks and took a good deal of time to try and get the hull plates to form, based Barry's earlier build on the O H Perry Frigate (I was inspired, in fact, from that beauty, Barry, but obviously your hull looks so much better than mine came out! Guess I'll just have to practice a bit more on the hull construction :wink: ).

I found the hardest part was the bow area, being a clipper type bow...I still believe I feel far short of what Yuki has done with his, but at least it doesn't have a gapping hope in the bow. :wink: I also discovered from the first attempt that the base was about 5 mm longer than it should be...it could just be the way I build the bow, I really don't know. :? So, after doing a bit of trimming in the middle, I put the hull sides on and then moved on to the main deck. The deck was also a tad long, but to alter this part would have required a major rework somewhere in the middle as there is an extension on the after end that would have to be contended with, and I did not want to get into that sort of thing on this build.

Anyway, I went on, installed the fantail deck and then the transom. Once that was done the building of the houses was fairly straight forward, once you get acquainted with Yuki's construction method of using no tabs, just but joints. Took a while but by the third part on the house I was pretty comfortable with this method.

Well, this is how far I got today...seeing what it took to get this far, I am just amazed at the way Yuki is able to build these little ladies so quickly in some many at once! But, if I do say so myself, this is a nice little model, nicely designed and the fit after the initial problem (again, most likely my not understanding how it went together) everything was right on! :D

I did a little enhancement of the forward gun and the gatling gun-like phalanx setup forward of the bridge. I don't know how Yuki manages to roll his barrels so small and tight at this scale, but I cheated and used a bit of wire.

This has been a blast so far, but I don't see this as a long term project, not while I have Constitution staring at me. :lol: But it is a great build to try and I wholeheartedly encourage anyone who is willing to experiment with this type of build to try one...they are very addictive once you get going! :lol:

I'll post more once I get further along, but it might be a while inbetween posts on this one. Hope you enjoy these photos! :D

Cheers!

Jim
 
Hi Jim

usual good write up and it makes up into a great little ship. You can always make internal tabs a bit of folded scrap card works wonders

A little fast build build every now and again makes you feel good mate

barry
 
These are great ships and builds. I have a few of the earlier Yuki offerings but I can't get the Nimitz downloaded, I keep get getting a yahoo message that I can't decipher. Anyways great build.
 
Thanks, Barry and Ted! :D

I figure I'll build this one again so I'll play around with the construction method a bit more, use some formers inside, but I think the way I shaped the bow is at least partially what caused the problem with the base length. It's a very sharp bow, has a little nib at the bottom, and I figured I glued the bottom using up too much of that little nib, taking up some of the length of the hull sides, so it possibly took away some of the length...but it was a whopping 5mm too long and so it probably wasn't all from that. When I fitted the sides to the base at the outset, before gluing the bow pieces, the extra length base was evident then. At least it wasn't too short. :lol: It was easier to trim than it would have been to add to the length, at least for me.

I also noticed the rear stack house was a bit oversized compared to the rear superstructure, by about 1.5mm. I didn't trim it, so there's a bit of overhang there, but next time I will trim that up a bit to account for the difference. I found I could build up the parts without the need for tabs (I don't like to use them in construction, they always seem to affect the joint) but on the next build I will probably use a little strip for the joints to give me a better gluing point on the larger parts...I found it's still fine working with the smaller pieces.

The one area that I anticipate a bit of difficulty are rolling the little tubes for various parts. I already scrapped the radar dome part for the Phalanx gun, opting to just roll normal bond paper in the normal fashion to create the tube, and then fairing off the rounded top using PVA. There are other parts, like the stacks, which I might try a similar approach simply because I always have a fit trying to roll the tube straight from the kit part, without any backing strip for the glue joint...I did one stack and it came out surprisingly well, but it was very difficult for me to hold the joint while the glue dried, and there is still a bit of the joint edge showing after all of that. :? Sure, I can paint it, but it did take a little more time than I expected for a simple joint, and I figure I was just lucky on this first one, so why tempt fate? :lol:

I should have a little time to add more to her today since we're snowed in...we got about 14" so far on Long Island... and it's still coming down! :shock:

Has anyone else built one of these Yuki ships? I saw Barry's Perry, but I don't recall seeing a photo of yours, Ted. Any fitting problems on your builds? I plan to build a few more of these little ladies and it would help to know what to expect on the other designs. They are fun, though! :D

Cheers!

Jim
 
Pretty sure Ajax built one a while back.

Pity you live in the US in the Uk 14" of snow would guarantee at least 3 days model building at home.

Still looking good mate

barry
 
Well, she's almost finished! :D
It was a very busy week, not much modeling time, and the weekend started the same way, with two birthday parties for my daughter's friends...on the same day! :roll: Ah, but Sunday was a respite...I was able to get quite a bit of the little things done, and now she's almost done.

I finished the stacks during the week, and moved on to the mast. I couldn't figure exactly how Yuki meant it to be built up, so luckily I have a few photos of the real ship and figured out as best I could what it should look like. This ship is an amazing design, using virtually no sharp edges for stealth, and the mast seems to follow that same design, being not round as normally seen, but a series of flat surfaces set at oblique angles. I hope I read the photos correctly, but it's what I figured out so it's gonna have to do.

The little life rafts were a good practice in rolling small cylinders, as were the harpoon launchers on the stern. This little model at the very small scale of 1/700 has a surprising amount of detail in it. I found it best to resort to normal paper for a lot of the rolled items, and decided, as with the forward phalanx gun, to make up the gattling-like barrel from thin wire bits. I also used CA glue soaked silk for the detail on the three radars, but I'm not sure it comes out very well in the photos. I was able to finish one of the life rafts, which seem to be zodiac type boats, complete with an outboard motor! :shock: That was a bear to cut out, so it's the best I could magine, even with a new blade. :oops: After all the life rafts (the little white striped thingies on the houses) I had enough rolling and built up the torpedo launchers from wire, but with a rolled paper base. The crane didn't come out as well as it probably could, but it will have to do for this scale.

All that's left is the other life raft/boat, the anchors and the deck bollards. The bollards will be another bear, particularly if I try to add the stems for the bollards, so we'll have to wait and see how crazy I feel when I get to that.

In the meantime, here are some photos of what she looks like so far. Really a lot of fun playing around with this little gal, and I learned quite a bit about Yuki's construction method, so hopefully the others I plan to build of his little fleet will come out a bit better...and hopefully do Yuki some justice for a superbly designed little model. I'm still shaking my head trying to figure out how he makes so many so quickly and so well! :shock:

Cheers!

Jim
 
And some final photos for the night. It's been a great diversion from Constitution and all those belaying pins I've been making for the pinrails. :roll: After I finish Arleigh Burke, I'll be getting back to Constitution and hopefully a bit refreshed to tackle those twenty some odd carronades that I have to put on her quarterdeck. :lol:

Cheers!

Jim
 
Arleigh

Great little model Jim the mast is a work of art. When you go to 1/200 you will be frightening I wonder where you would stop mate.
 
Thanks so much, Ted and Barry! :D

Barry, these little fellows are so chock full of little details as designed by Yuki you feel a bit compelled to try and enhance them; trouble is, at least at this scale, some of the added details just don't come out as one might intend, particuarly when you zoom in on them with a digital camera. :oops: Then, even the effect of different layers of paint, undetected bits of excess glue, show up oh so horribly well in the pictures. :shock: Best when viewed from a safe distance, actually, so I hope you'll all excuse me when you look at the close-up shots and see the poor workmanship. :roll:

One other thing I noticed, next time I will have to try and make use of Michael's great tip and paint over the outlines for the deck houses so when the parts are assembled the black line doesn't show through along the bottom edges...it's amazing what little things pop out up at you when you look at them under the unforgiving eyes of the digital camera! :(

Anyway, here's just two more photos to try and show some of the detail Yuki's design provides for the zodiac boat, which I should have done a better job on, and the after phalanx gun which, regretably, I still can not get a clear enough photo of to show the barrel I fashioned from wire bits. Oh, well, it really was fun working on this one! :D

Cheers!

Jim
 
Finished...sort of.... :lol:

I still need to build the helicopter to go on the stern, but the ship itself is now done. I added the final little things tonight, the anchors, the other life boat and the bollards.

Great model to build, I recommend this great kit to anyone. It's not too difficult, just small stuff to work with at times. If I get the helicopter done soon I'll post a final update, but in the meantime I hope you enjoy the photos. I used a water base from one of the JSC kits just to get away from the boring and distracting working pad. :roll:

Cheers!

Jim
 
Hi Jim

Great job Jim, you would not think that this is a 1/700 ship the way you have done it :shock:

The one bit I realy like is the radar directed gat on the bow!!

These free designs by Yuki are great, just whats needed for a brake from the big builds.

Well done Jim and Yuki 8)

Carrier next or what :lol: :lol:

Rob
 
Thanks, Rob (and you too, Barry, for the very nice comments in the Album post)! :D

I've been looking at the Sea King helicopter that Yuki has on the model sheet, and it's got a lot of nice print detail to it, I only hope I can do it justice...I better print out a few copies just in case I get the shakes at the wrong time and it ends up shredded. :lol: Not much room for error, as I see it. I have it printed on both 67# and regular 28# bond as I think some parts of this helicopter will need the sturdier stuff (like the fuselage and main rotors), yet others will need to be lighter and more flexible to form the part (like the side wheel wells or floats, whatever they are, and the itsy bitsy canopy parts :shock: ). It will be a good chance to compare the two different paper weights to see how they compare.

Depending on how this little guy works out, we'll have to see about that CVN, Rob 8) ...there are many, many, many little planes to be built as part of that model, with the same amount of superb print detail that he has on this helicopter. It will be a bit of an experiment to see what type of paper works best for building these little fellows, but I think I got a good start on the life raft/boats he has on this model...I used 67# weight card for both life boats and that weight seemed to work fine for the most part, although the underside of the rafts might have been easier to form using the lighter stuff. It was a balance between being able to form the curves on this little guy easier or have a sturdier structure when all is said and done, and I went with sturdy.

I recall Barry's build of OH Perry, and once he mentioned it I recalled the one built by Ajax, but has anyone else tried these little guys? They are fun to work on, and you get a lot of detail for this scale.

Jim
 
Alright folks, here are the final photos (I promise! :lol: ) of the Arleigh Burke, now with the Sea King helicopter on the fan tail. I know you are all getting real bored with this thread, so this is the final installment.

It wasn't as bad to build as I had imagined...just needed to be sure the knife was REAL sharp, and I took my time joining up the sides to the top and bottom, and use minimal glue. The main rotors weren't too bad, just close cutting, and they took a bit of a droop after I touched them up with some acrylic paint...but it surprisingly looks similar to what I have seen in photos...well, that's my story and I'm sticking to it. :lol:

So, she's done...I think this little helicopter adds something to the model, but you be the judge.

I hope you enjoyed this short thread. At the very least I hope you try one of Yuki's great little models; if so, then I'm happy. :D
If you do, don't forget to post some photos, okay? :wink:

Thanks for watching! :D

Cheers!

Jim
 
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