DKM Bismark 1/700

[Draco]

Hi again!

After finishing the 1/350 USS Archerfish, I started another 1/700 Battleship.

This one is the famous DKM Bismarck, as was when it was sunk.

The progress has been quick. resizing the plans, printing the pieces without color (I prefear to paint if myself, because this way the colors don't fade with the sunlight and the challenge is greater), cutting and gluing

Reading my information about the real ship, it surprised me that the Scharnhorst (here in some pictures too at 1/700 scale) has a better bow and more powerfull engines, even being smaller and having entered in service a year before.

The four ships in my 1/700 fleet are (top to bottom): BB-63 Missouri, DKM Bismarck, DKM Scharnhorst and HMS Onslow.

[peter taft]

The pictures don't do your builds any justice ! From what i can see, the builds look good.

[Draco]

Yes, Peter,that's my headache.

Continuing the ship, I started to install the sumerged hull. I like the small edge in the rear end of the pieces, it makes very easy the joining and it's a technique that I'm going to use from now on.

As a sugestion from my ¿girlfriend?¿fiancee?¿mate?.. she-who-must-be-made-happy, I'll be painting the ship like it was the days before it's sinking. So, in the last picture you can see a test with the main color and some of the portholes. This ones are opened with a pin, and reopened each time a layer of paint is applied.

I bought today the HMS Hood at the same scale, so it's posible that in the next pictures you will see the two main participants of the Battle of the Denmark Strait.

And... the next year, the HMS Prince of Wales will be joining the fleet, but in Far East paint.

[Draco]

The ship is moving fast! Today I finished the hull, painted the freeboards and the underwater hull.

The paint is resembling the one the real ship had the days before sinking. It's gray, but the previos broken one is still visible. In fact, the fake bow wave gave a lot of problems.

You can see the Scharnhorst (at the same scale) in the subset of pictures displaying the anchor drops. Once the "eyes" were glued, the remaining paper was cut with a knife.

[Don Boose]

Nicely done. I am impressed with the quality of your 1/700 ship models.

Don

[peter taft]

Originally Posted by Don Boose

Nicely done. I am impressed with the quality of your 1/700 ship models.

Don

Ditto Don !

[Draco]

Thanks, Don, Thanks, Peter.

This weekend I did the first deck of the main superstructure, including the semicircles were the front secondary guns goes.

I started with the deck painting, parts of the flags and the wooden deck.

I made too the four barbettes, the keels, the intakes of the external propelers. (Maybe I'm destroying a few nautical words, sorry) and the chain of the rear anchor.

Overall, the ship is advancing fast. By the way, in some of the pictures you can see the hull of the HMS Hood, in plastic, at the same scale.

I was surprised to see that the only adventage of the Bismarck over the Scharnhorst was the main guns caliber, the rest of the stats show the Scharnhorst way better even being smaller.

[Draco]

Working on the main guns and, unexpectly, with the rudders.

First, the guns. At 1/700 is imposible to do any gun with rolled paper. So, I used electric wire, and over it, rolled part of the original piece of paper. An improvement over the original paper model is the horizontal black tab instaled just behind the tubes. It gives support to the guns, gives more reality impresion because it's black, and, being flexible, let's move the tubes upside like the real ones. You can see both front turrets.

The rudders work was caused by a inexplicable mistake in the paper model over whom is based my own model. Let's call it OPM (Original Paper Model) The OPM has only one rudder. It seemed to me weird a WWII battleship with just one rudder, but I assembled like this. Then, this week, found information about the TWO rudders.

So I had to unglue, make a duplicate rudder, add an extension to compensate the hull curvature... and discovered that the shape of the hull in the OPM doesn't correspond with the real one. So I had to cut the section, build reinforcements, add small pieces of paper, let it dry, sand and paint to add, at last, the two rudders.

Another small work was the small bow anchor (just under the point) and the rear one, only in the port side.

I included, too, the chains of the anchors, painted the deck over the bow, glued the second breakwater over the deck and improved a little the rear swastika.

[Draco]

Changing the settings of my cellphone camera improved my pictures... well... a bit. I'll receive a new camera in January (I'm living in Venezuela, so buying anything is a surreal difficult experience) and as soon and I have it I'm going to publish some REALLY GOOD pictures of all my models. Meanwhile...

Building the "D" turret, painting the deck, adding the bridge wings. I replaced the original paper model handrails with acetate ones.

I'm on vacations now, so expect the ship to grow quickly

[Draco]

This two pictures are after having finished the main guns and part of the bridge.

Now I'll finish my 1/700 scale HMS Onslow before continuing this.

Happy New Year 2015!