Thanks Alfred (@alfred), John (@johnb), George (@gblair), and Spiros (@fiveten).

I only got a small amount of work done on the ship the last two days. I had a bit of an issue with the kit and PE that I didn't notice until it was too late to do anything about it. Or at least I thought I did.

The gun splinter shields on the smokestack deck (there are six of them) are placed on the deck edges on each side (three to a side). I had used the wood veneer to trace out the shape so I could bend the PE shields to shape and then to place them in the correct position. I had three on one side done and one on the opposite side. I had just bent up the fifth one and was about to glue it down when I noticed that the gun stations and splinters were not symmetrical across the deck. By this, I mean the shape of the curve of the splinter shields.They have curved sides and the outboard sides have a long and a short side opposite of the center bend. When I noticed the lack of symmetry, I noticed that the long sides of a pair of splinter shields on opposite sides of the deck were not mirror images of each other

Hmmmm. At first, I thought perhaps I had drawn the shapes incorrectly and I compared what I had to the veneers. The veneers had the same asymmetry as my splinter shields. Odd...

I then looked at my photos of the parts and the pictures in the instructions and realized that Trumpeter had molded the original molded splinter shields the same way!

Really odd. At this point, I was rather bummed out, because I didn't think I could safely remove the shields already glued down without damaging them. But I thought it really odd that they should have been molded this way and the veneers were the same way. I was ready to accept them as is and mark it up to another lack of research or quality control on the part of Trumpeter.

Just for the heck of it, I looked at some photos I had of this area, and there was enough visibility on the splinter shields to see that they indeed were asymmetrical on opposite sides of the deck. I felt relieved that I was going to be okay, but I took another look, just to be sure. And guess what, they are asymmetrical, but in the opposite directions from those molded on the hull!

So, at this point, I am going to leave them and accept that I've been bitten by bad research. At least they are supposed to be asymmetrical, even if opposite to what I have.

So I got the remaining two shields glued down and then examined the kit instructions and PE instructions to see what else needed to be added in this area. There are some small posts, that I think might be ventilators. These are plastic and I glued them in place.There are some railings and stairs that need to be added in this area of the hangar and flight deck, but I began wondering about how I was going to paint all of this.

Not to drag this out, I had an epiphany that I can just paint the immediate area of the flight deck and hangar and then move on to other areas of the deck. It is going to be painted so that I can get the deck blue down and the Navy Blue vertical surfaces in this area and paint the PE stairs and railings. I made a task list of the order to do these next steps and that's what I'll be doing next. I'll have photos of that when I get it completed.

I too understand your frustration, my friend @clipper.

Looking at George's APD build thread, I noticed how he is starting to encounter the same issues I did. I thought I would show my initial thinking on getting the deck painted. The deck color on my ship is a different blue from the vertical sides of the hull and the superstructure, so there is masking involved when spraying.

There is also considerations of being able to spray into areas before they are made more difficult to spray by having things in the way. And with masking, it is important to consider the order of painting the blues and when to mask because some PE will make masking impossible and the order of painting will be more difficult to mask depending upon the area involved.

I've resigned myself to taking this deck painting and detailing in stages with multiple spray sessions.

So in the picture you can see from my annotations that I will be spraying the deck first in some areas and the vertical surfaces first in others. It's just a matter of coordinating the masking and painting so that I don't end up with ten thousand painting sessions! 🙂

Great painting plan, Carl (@clipper). I am toying with the idea of hand-painting the deck, but I need to get a better idea of what the area looks like. I think it is a good plan to build the model layer by layer, deck by deck. Are you also doing the overall Navy Blue scheme (Measure 21)? Your gun tubs look fantastic.

Seems like a complex process to me at this moment, Carl @clipper
Still making good progress.

Okay, I am in work on the painting plan for the hangar area and the smoke stack deck. There's quite a number of separate steps I wanted to take and it is taking a bit of time for some of these to be accomplished, so I am showing the work I have done so far.

The first order of business was to protect the rest of the ship from any over spray by masking it off.

Then Mr Surfacer 1500 was sprayed over the areas that will be painted. This unifies the underlying colors and materials and improves later paint adhesion on the PE parts.

Then the hangar deck and the horizontal surface for the building across from the hangar was painted with my interpretation of Deck Blue 20B. For now it is just a base coat. Later I will be doing some post shading. After the blue dried, I over coated it with Tamiya Gloss Clear. I did this to protect the paint during the masking process.

Next up was masking the hangar deck and the horizontal surface for that small building. These are the areas I just painted Deck Blue. I then over coated these areas with Tamiya Clear Gloss to protect the paint.

Before I painted the vertical surfaces with the Navy Blue 5B, I needed to add some PE stairs and railings to the hangar deck. Here is an example of some of the stairs. It was pretty cool bending these up. They are extremely fragile though.

In order to glue the PE stairs and railings to the hangar deck, I had to remove a small amount of masking at the glue contact points. This was carefully done using a scalpel with a new blade. Then the PE parts were CA glued into place using thin CA. Finally, in the areas I removed some of the masking, I added smaller strips of tape to reduce the unmasked areas. My plan is to touch up these unmasked areas later using a brush.

SO the next step, which I haven't done yet, is to paint those vertical surfaces of the hangar (only the wall facing the hangar deck), the vertical surfaces on the small building on the other side of the hangar deck, the PE parts, and the splinter shields on the smoke stack deck. I'll cover that next time I post.

Excellent job so far, my friend @clipper!

Hi Carl (@clipper): I also like the contrast between the two different colors. The ship looks very cool. I have a small part of the forward superstructure ready to go. I plan to use it as a test for my colors and masking. I am really not looking forward to the masking. Enjoy your T-Bolt time.