We are now two volumes away from finishing off the bow portion of the ship. The last hunk to be assembled is the module that hangs underneath, which I believe to be the auxiliary engine section. Naturally, it comes with lighting.
Subassemblies come first. The white fins are supposed to be glued in but they stay in position without it, and will be locked into place by surrounding parts. So I ain’t gluin’ nothin’.
Left: the subassemblies come together quickly and the entire module is almost there.
Right: there are two parts that form the sides, and they have a square pocket that inexplicably gets covered up by black panels. There is no purpose to this pocket other than to be covered up. Also, the two covers are flipside versions of each other. And here’s the problem…this volume was mispacked, so I got two copies of the same cover piece. It will only fit on one side.
Left: at the top you can see the one that fit. At the bottom you can see how I shaved down the duplicate to cover the other pocket. But it didn’t work. Not enough surface for glue to adhere.
Right: The two side pieces are now attached, and it really doesn’t matter that one pocket is exposed. It’s barely visible.
Left: from this angle, the two pockets are inside the upper black panels. And they’re practically invisible. So the mispacked piece isn’t going to compromise anything.
Right: Last step is to put together this power supply box…
…and install it in the bottom of the module. When you flip it over, you see what this actually is; the power coupling that will mate with the display stand and supply power to the entire ship. Or at least the front section.
Volume 12 is a big one; everything we need to wrap up the bow section. It includes a distributor box for the lights, so there’s going to be some capping and plugging of the fiber optics. That can get pretty hairy.
First, we finally get to insert the interior portion of the WMG. I didn’t think it was going to be easy, but it was. The thing is perfectly sized to slide into place from inside and then get secured with a single screw. Nice.
Left: Business in the front, exhaust in the back.
Right: Subassemblies for the bits still needed in the aux engine module. Some needed gluing. So while they dry…
…I slide the ventral fin into place. It’s just an insert/lock operation, so there’s no glue needed. When I flip the bow over, you can see where this design came from back in 1978; it was inspired by a rifle barrel. Mecha Designer Kazutaka Miyatake said that the original EDF Battleship was basically a gun flipped upside down.
The nacelles get attached in the module and LEDs go in to back them up. The module is now done.
Next, the module gets attached to the bow and all its fibers get pulled up to join the others.
Left: here you can see where all the white fins ended up. Not one of them needed glue after all.
Right: the only letdown here is that the “skin” segments didn’t meet there on the starboard side. I can press them together, but they don’t stay that way. Booooo.
Okay, last phase: install the distributor box, then collect and cap all of the fibers. It’s intricate, challenging work. As you collect them by their flag IDs, you have to make sure the set you’re assembling is free and clear of other fibers so they don’t bind or pull on each other. One by one, they fall into place.
And then one by one you plug the caps into their sockets. This also has to be done with extreme care. In some cases, you’ve got slack to work with. In others you most definitely don’t. So the order of plugging is also important. But when you’re finished, you feel invincible.
Right: leftovers. The piece at left is going somewhere else, as yet undisclosed. The piece at right is a leftover from Volume 3. I never saw where it was supposed to go until I went back and checked for the third or fourth time, then I got my answer: it was supposed to go inside a certain segment of the bridge tower. The instructions didn’t show that it had to be placed there. It was just pictured in place with a label. VERY easy to miss. I’d have to disassemble half the tower to put it in, but it doesn’t seem to be vital. I think it was a spacer to hold something else in place that went together okay without it. So I’m not going to lose sleep over it. On the other hand, I just wrote a very long paragraph about it, so……..
With Volume 13, we return to the shallow end of the pool and start working on the dangly bits that will be attached to the belly of the ship. First up, round dangly bits.
It’s really nice of Hachette to give us completed nosecones. In a standard model kit, they’d be in two halves to be glued together. And who needs that crap?
Volume 14 is weird lookin’ cuss. This is another ventral fin that will fit underneath the back half of the ship with a fin hanging down. And, of course, there will be a running light on it.
Left: this was one of the things I REALLY disliked about previous models. Any time there’s a light on a fin, the fiber has to go through the fin to provide it. And NO fiber wants to just sit there in its groove while you glue the other side of the fin over it. It fights you every step of the way. The only thing I can do here is dab some superglue into the channel and stick the fiber to it. Then the other side of the fin can go on.
Right: Meanwhile, more lights get installed in the two halves of the main part. Their brackets get glued down.
After everything dries, the fin gets pegged into one side and the two halves of the main part go together. I’m relieved when they SNAP together and don’t need more glue. Because that would just be dumb.
Volume 15 is the easiest one yet, something that looks like the third bridge if Hyuga has one.
There are fibers and vent covers to go inside, then the two halves glue together. The radar parts aren’t being attached yet, for the correct and forward-thinking reason that we don’t want them to break off during a later operation. So they’ll go on somewhere down the road.
Starting with Vol. 16, we’ll be working on the largest chunk of the ship so far, the lower aft section that sits below the interior hangar and contains the main engines. To start with, it has two halves.
The first step is easy, just attaching more fibers for lights. The second step is not so easy, even though the components are small. It’s a pair of triple-barrel cannons that attaches to the larger parts. They have lights in each barrel, which is fun, but the way they’re constructed makes them no fun to build. At right is the base part with three fibers strung through each one. The fibers are what makes this unpleasant.
You’re supposed to slide the cannon barrels down the fibers and glue them to the base. The issue is that the tension on the fibers is stronger than the glue until it sets, so they’ll pull the cannon barrels off-center. You deal with this by getting to a point where the glue is hardening, then tape them into their ideal positions to completely dry.
It doesn’t sound hard, but it shouldn’t be necessary. There are other ways to construct pieces like these that wouldn’t be complicated by how the fibers want to behave. And even if you cement the barrels into the right end position, the fibers inside the barrels are still off-center. So it ends up not looking right anyway.
Yamato‘s cannons didn’t have lights in them. Andromeda‘s cannons did. That’s where I learned (the hard way) that these things are no fun.
At right: finished cannons attached to the big pieces. Moving on.
Vol. 17 gives us the next segment of the big “under-chunk.” There are parts in here for another turret cannon. Uh-oh.
First we install some fibers and other bits. There are some weird angular things happening here.
Next, the turret. It’s larger, but it has only two barrels, so there’s not much you can do about positioning them and letting tape hold them in place. You’ve got to do each one by hand and hold it together with finger pressure before you can trust that they’ll stay. Then they glue down to the turret and it gets plugged from underneath. That took more time than any other part of this volume.
Left: turret attached to hull segment. Right: the opposite side. The turret is on the other side of that disc, and its two fibers have been pulled through.
This is where reading ahead in a Japanese modeler’s blog helped me avoid some torture. The instructions say to attach the ID flags to the fibers BEFORE pulling them through the disc. The modeler had a helluva time getting them through those holes, and said it would have been a much better idea to attach the flags afterward. So I did. Easy-peasy.
Left: final step is to attach the new segment to a previous one (from Vol. 16) and we’re done.
Right: this volume also included a metal brace to add to the bow section. It helps reinforce the hull and tamps down that snake pit of fibers. Good idea.
Vol. 18 is just the flipside version of Vol. 17, so no need for details. Now the two big segments are bigger.
Vol. 19 gives us a REALLY big part, and this turns out to be one of the easiest sessions so far.
First, we attach some fins and cover them up so they become intake vents.
Second, we flip it over and put four brackets on. You can see them on the sides. Now we’ll attach this really big part to the previous big parts.
And there we go. Now it’s EXTREMELY big. Last step, flip it over again and add two bulgy parts (from an earlier volume) to the outside. Done.
We’re up to Vol. 20. It looks simple, but it’s got a surprise inside.
These parts are “walls” that you add to the sides of the “underchunk.” They’re labeled L and R to make them easy to position. The L wall goes on fine. But then there’s a problem; when you put the R wall in place, you’ve got less room to work because the L wall creates a confined space. And this is trouble.
Left: here you see the two screwdrivers I’ve been using. The big one is GREAT. It has a magnetic tip and the length provides a lot of torque. But it’s too long to use in this newly-confined space. I tried the little one, but it’s got no torque at all, and we’re trying to drive screws into metal sockets. I can get them about halfway in, but that’s it. This is the wrong tool to finish the job.
I wrestled with this for a while and finally realized that if I just unbolted the entire right wall I could bolt it together and then put it back on with ease. I wish someone had given me that tip in advance. But I just gave it to you.
Right: Walls in place, Vol. 20 done.
Here’s where we are after Volumes 1-20. This is one quarter of the entire project. Lots of Hyuga still ahead.