Aichi Seiran, **BETA** build, 1:33, Gremir Models

[Golden Bear]

Finally I have tracked down the photos of this Beta build. This was one of the first downloadable models that I ever built (maybe the second one?) and you'll notice some "learnings" that I experienced during this... I sneezed and left some marking (I hadn't figured out yet to spray it, duh!) and I had not yet learned how to let my printer do the right thing to get the color... also, I printed parts on three different printers and learned just how different they could be!!! Oh well, planes weren't perfectly colored either.

This comes from Gremir with their peculiar but very useful download and printing system. With the supplied printing system it is very easy to scale to any size that a builder might want. Most of my builds are 1:33 so I stuck with that. It came on 12 sheets plus a template page and had 5 very nice sheets of assembly diagrams and two of plans. I had one tiny confusion but that would have been avoided if I hadn't been stoopid - I'll point it out later.

Mike likes his Japanese models and this is a nice one. For those who don't recall, the plane was designed to be flown off of massive submarines with the objective of attacking by stealth at U.S. installations. If I recall correctly they were actually sent off with the intent of attacking the Panama Canal locks but were called back. However, the fleet of submarines was not complete in any case and suffered from the end of war bombing of the Japanese mainland installations.

There seems to be one surviving example of this plane residing at the Smithsonian Institution. It has been undergoing restoration and is clearly the real life example for this kit. I'm a little dubious about the floats since the planes would have been launched by catapault from the submarines - the pilots were expected to parachute out upon return for recovery by the same vessels (Hah!). This was apparently a high performance plane with an in line engine modeled on the DBs.

We start with construction of the cockpit region with the standard technique of doubled cardstock framing. BTW, I use 100# Bristol paper, doubled with 3M spray adhesive, for 1mm framing tasks. The two sheets of Bristol plus the printed card sheet come out to be just short of 1mm and ultimately work perfectly for this task. I found the cockpit color to kind of peculiar but it seems historical - I chided Mike for this and he told me so and to shut up and build, so it must be OK. Also the SI example shows the color. BTW, the kit is not "weathered." Maybe John Griffin can do a new skin set for it.

Here's the start of the build and the cockpit:

[Golden Bear]

The cockpit is nicely done and detailed although not to the extreme of Halinski. Here are some in process shots showing the build up of the front and rear cockpits.

[Golden Bear]

The machine gun assembly in the back is particularly interesting and takes a little work. The barrel tucks in under the sheet metal behind the canopy from whence it would be pulled back and then up to be fired.

Next I moved on to skinning the cockpit region. I had some tight fitting there, but nothing that isn't typical for models with cardboard framing. As usual, fitting and refitting along with bits of sanding, is appropriate in order to achieve a nice fit.

The first picture shows the cockpit and nose assemblies with skin and the base wing strut... it's always good to make certain that this lines up correctly fairly early in the build.

The second picture shows the nose and cockpit put together from the top. The third shows the bottom. The fourth picture shows the bottom with ducting and attachments for a torpedo. There is a choice between bomb and torpedo for the weapon load. I chose the torpedo because I haven't done one before or since.

[CMDRTED]

Looks good brother bear! This will be another on the long list of builds to do!

[Lex]

Nice build! I actually like planes in the un-weathered condition.

[dansls1]

Another nice clean build. As far as weathering, you can always follow the lead of the European modellers and work out your own weathering with chalks and whatnot. Weathering is one of those things that I think looks good sometimes, but it's nice to see planes in pristine shape as well sometimes.

[cjwalas]

Looking good. I've always liked WWII floatplanes. Personally, I think the addition of weathering helps paper models. Of course, when a model is put together to the level you maintain, the result is always top notch!
More, please!
Chris

[Barry]

Excellent as always wish the undersides of my planes looked like that

[Golden Bear]

Oh, there's more to come. The build was over a year ago and I was still figuring out the new camera and Mike wanted super high density photos... so I've got to rescale them. Unfortunately they're somewhat fuzzier than I like after shrinking them from 3M to 180k. I know that I could link to Imageshack but I'm not fond of that option.

As to weathering, I don't believe that I made any statement saying that it was bad that the model was unweathered. I'm just trying to inform. Some models are weathered, some aren't. It's the artist's choice. This model looks fine the way it is... it is one of two that I have on a bookshelf by my bed. I did spend some time looking at photos of the surviving Seiran and it is extremely weathered and that makes quite a contrast in colors and whatnot. I'll get to work on the next set of pictures for sharing...



Carl

[B-Manic]

When I am reducing the size of photos, I sharpen them then reduce by by about 66% and repeat until they are they are size I require.