Trumpeter 1/350 German Pocket Battleship Admiral Graf Spee

[wbill76]

Jul 1, 2017 20:05:03 GMT -5 TRM said:

Bonus round...adding the barrels! Fine work as usual Bill! Hows your mobility coming along? Slow and Steady?

Thanks T! The boot came off on Thursday and I did the first PT session yesterday...nothing too harsh, just the usual evaluation plus a little bit of TENS therapy. I'll go back on Monday for the full blown round. I'm able to put weight on the leg and walk with it but not at 100%. One of the side effects of the boot was some swelling/fluid build-up in the lower leg and all that has to get worked back out and the tendon readjusted to 'normal'. Just needs time!

[TRM]

Glad o hear the boot come off! Best of luck on the rehab! I'm sure Brenda has been patiently waiting for you to get back into the game!

[panzerjager2]

Really outstanding work on this one..... On a historical trivia note..... I never realized the GS had triple mounts in her turrets.... That is unusual for German war ships 
PJ2

[wbill76]

Jul 2, 2017 1:14:06 GMT -5 panzerjager2 said:

Really outstanding work on this one..... On a historical trivia note..... I never realized the GS had triple mounts in her turrets.... That is unusual for German war ships 
PJ2

Thanks PJ! It was something they did with the 11-inch gun system. The pocket battleships and later Scharnhorst and Gneisenau battle cruisers all had triple mount turrets as a result.

[panzerjager2]

Bill, here's the funny HA HA..... I just never noticed that before. Much like the funky anchor system, I guess if you're not looking for it, you just don't see it.......  PJ2 (that was another Captain Obvious moment)

[moramarth]

On a historical trivia note..... I never realized the GS had triple mounts in her turrets.... That is unusual for German war ships

One of those turrets is still in existence:
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Austratt_Fort
Note that as weight was no longer a consideration, it has had extra armour plates fitted.  A couple of Gneisenau's 15cm twin turrets are in Denmark.  There are other ex-warship turrets ashore as coastal defences in the Crimea, Turkey, and (I believe) Spain.  One of Mutsu's 41cm twin turrets was salvaged in the 1970s, has been restored as a memorial, and is on display at Etajima.

Cheers,

M

[wbill76]

Jul 2, 2017 14:20:29 GMT -5 moramarth said:

On a historical trivia note..... I never realized the GS had triple mounts in her turrets.... That is unusual for German war ships

One of those turrets is still in existence:
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Austratt_Fort
Note that as weight was no longer a consideration, it has had extra armour plates fitted.  A couple of Gneisenau's 15cm twin turrets are in Denmark.  There are other ex-warship turrets ashore as coastal defences in the Crimea, Turkey, and (I believe) Spain.  One of Mutsu's 41cm twin turrets was salvaged in the 1970s, has been restored as a memorial, and is on display at Etajima.

Cheers,

M

Would love to get the chance one day to tour the fort, who knows? The Germans were never one to waste heavy artillery, hence the great mix/variety of guns in the Atlantic Wall defenses. The 11-inch guns (280cm) were the same calibre as the railroad guns like Leopold, so that gives you a fair idea of their size!

[panzerjager2]

In fact Bandai is going to be releasing another "paper panzer". This one is the 1/20th scale Sdffz 600 the Panzer I with Graf Spee turret................ 
PJ2

[wbill76]

Jul 2, 2017 14:34:18 GMT -5 panzerjager2 said:

In fact Bandai is going to be releasing another "paper panzer". This one is the 1/20th scale Sdffz 600 the Panzer I with Graf Spee turret................ 
PJ2

You laugh, but the P1000 Ratte 'Landkreuzer' had a twin-28cm gun turret incorporated into its design. There's a 1/144 kit of it available from Takom. Hitler loved gigantic designs.

[moramarth]

The Germans were never one to waste heavy artillery, hence the great mix/variety of guns in the Atlantic Wall defenses.

It gets worse...  Guns were often a bottleneck when it came to building ships e.g. the 'toothless terrors', the "Dido" class cruisers "Scylla" and "Charybdis" completed with 4.5 inch mounts instead of the 5.25 inch mounts which were in short supply.  As "long lead time" items the Germans, with their usual efficiency, tended to get the orders for guns in long before the ships themselves were anywhere near completion.  So they produced the 40.6cm SK C/34 guns for the Bismark-successor H-39 class battleships which were suspended soon after having been laid down and were subsequently scrapped on the slipway.  Three guns went initially to Danzig, and then to Sangatte in France, as Batterie "Lindemann".  Eight were sent to Norway, but one was lost en route.  Three were mounted at Engeløya (Batterie "Dietl") and scrapped after the war.  The other four were emplaced at Trondenes Fort (Batterie "Theo") - and are still there...  One of these "Adolfkanone" is preserved in full working order!!! 
If you think that's weird, before WW1 the Brazilians ordered a battleship armed with the British 15inch gun from the U.K.  This wasn't built due to the outbreak of hostilities so after the war the guns were sold to Spain, along with some new-build items.  Before being placed in reserve the last of these was fired for a final time in -wait for it - 2008!!!

Cheers,

M

[wbill76]

More progress to report in the guns department. I finished up the main turrets and they are now fully assembled. I removed the molded-on access ladders from the turret sides and replaced them with Eduard PE ladders. The ladders themselves are delicate with bend lines to help conform to the angled turret surfaces. Once shaped, they were installed using liquid glue and gentle pressure with a wooden toothpick to ensure they remained straight until the glue had a chance to grab and hold them. The 11-inch guns remain movable which will come in very handy when it's time to paint and add the camo pattern.



Next up were the secondary battery of 6-inch guns. These are single gun mounts in individual turrets and the kit guns have solid barrels including the mount pins needed to install them to their turret bases. The first step was to surgically remove the barrels right at the mount pins and drill out the remaining area with a #70 finger drill so they could accept the brass barrel replacement. CA gel and patience got that particular job done then just rinse and repeat 7 more times.



Building up the 6-inch guns themselves is a bit more challenging since the two supports for the mount are separate parts that need to go into the turret base. They don't have enough friction on their own to support the mounts pins on the gun barrel and the added weight of the brass barrels compounds that issue. The simple solution was to use the main deck to help support the barrel until the glue had grabbed enough on the supports for them to remain stable.



Then it was a matter of applying some carefully placed liquid glue to the mount pins, sliding the turret top over the gun barrel and into position, then resting the turret on end so that the barrel pointed up to the sky. Careful adjustments with the barrel angle allowed gravity to do the rest until the glue had fully set. I worked out a process that allowed me to work on one turret at a time and then move to the next one whenever needed to allow time for glue to grab. Took about 3 hours in total to get all of the turrets together with matching gun elevations.



The turrets are only dry fit for now of course. This is just a handy way to place them for an in-progress shot since they have support pins on their undersides. Next up will be tackling the three 10.5cm twin-AA guns and getting them together along with their brass barrels to round out the armament suite of big guns.

[wing_nut]

I am behind as usual but at least i didn't moss the whole thing. Looking good there teach.

[panzerjager2]

Guns and turrets look awesome.... 
PJ2

[wouter]

Now that's coming along a treat Bill. Love those metal gun barrels. Looking good there!

Cheers

[Leon]

Nice progress on the gun barrels Bill! Looking good.

[wbill76]

Marc, definitely arriving at a good time! July's going to be a good month for working on it, shouldn't have any major distractions to keep me away from the bench (fingers crossed!).

PJ, Leon, and Wouts, thanks as well! Brass barrels really are a must on this build, the only kit barrels that had hollow muzzles were the main 11-inch guns and almost all of the barrels are a little on the thick side scale-wise, so worth the effort to get them looking slim and trim!

[dierk]

Nice work Bill!
I don't know if it would work in that scale, but I insert a tiny blob of Blu Tack into the gunmounts - usually stops any unwanted droop and still allows for movement.

[wbill76]

Jul 3, 2017 10:45:27 GMT -5 dierk said:

Nice work Bill!
I don't know if it would work in that scale, but I insert a tiny blob of Blu Tack into the gunmounts - usually stops any unwanted droop and still allows for movement.

I could see that working in some cases depending on the mount design Dierk. The 6-inch mounts would probably have to have it put under the pins to help prop up the barrel but that would still render them unmovable. Where the pins connect with the mount there's no room for anything else to go there and have the gun still fit through the turret opening correctly.

[wbill76]

I managed to get the rest of the guns squared away today and the Optivisor definitely got a full workout in the process. First up were the twin 10.5cm AA gun mounts. I replaced the kit parts' barrels with the Master brass items and this involved removing the plastic barrels from the breech portion, drilling out mount holes with a #74 finger drill, and installing the brass barrels with CA gel. As you can see, there's a huge difference between the brass barrels and the kit parts in terms of accuracy and scale thickness.



Once the barrels were replaced, the rest of the gun mount assembly was completed. The Eduard set includes some nice detail plates to create the breech block detail that's missing from the kit parts.




Since the 6-inch guns had a chance to set up nice and solid overnight, I returned to them to add their PE details. Each of the turrets is supposed to have a pair of blast doors but the Trumpeter turrets just have a molded in depression line to suggest their presence. The Eduard set addresses this with a pair of doors and a third part that creates the top frame bar across the rear opening.



Last but not least, I assembled the torpedo tube mounts that install on the stern to round out the Graf Spee's deadly weaponry complement. She definitely packed a punch!



Next up will be getting the deck plates ready for install and then a round with the airbrush will be in order before they can be added.

[Leon]

Those barrels look awesome and are a huge improvement Bill!

[wbill76]

Thanks Leon! Always a nice step in the build to get the barrels all taken care of.

[joelsmith]

Did the Graf Spee have "natural" wood decks like US battleships?

[wbill76]

Jul 3, 2017 19:41:12 GMT -5 joelsmith said:

Did the Graf Spee have "natural" wood decks like US battleships?

She did. I will be using a Pontos deck for that.

[joelsmith]

Cool, thanks for the quick reply. Need to put a kriegsmarine seaman on deck with a holystone sanding the deck!

[wbill76]

While not a huge update, sometimes it's the little things that take up the most time and attention. Such is the case with getting the deck plates ready for airbrushing before they get installed in the hull and the wood decks added.

First order of business involved removing the molded-on anchor chains since I will be using the Pontos-provided scale chain instead. These crossed over some of the hatch detail, so I used a combination of a #11 blade and a micro chisel to get it gone. The anchor chain ports in the deck were molded solid, so I drilled those out and shaped them with a round needle file to open them up before adding the Eduard PE screen covers.

The Pontos set includes a PE overlay for the bow area and it almost fits as a drop-in. I had to use the Dremel to carefully trim down a slight overhang edge in a couple of spots so it would fit correctly with the hull. Eduard PE vents were added forward of the main gun turret base to add a little extra detail there as well.

Last but not least, I assembled the superstructure element for the stern overhang between the main deck and the torpedo deck. This is a flat panel assembly of 5 different parts and the instructions are a little vague as to how to get them together along with the two deck plates that they join up with. I decided to attach them to the main deck plate since the Pontos wood deck might need a little flexibility when it comes time to install it and it will be much easier to trim it to fit if needed this way.



Next up will be an airbrush session to get the decks and the gun turrets all tidied up.

[Leon]

Nice work on the PE details Bill!

[wbill76]

THanks Leon, chugging away one bit at a time on this one.

[panzerjager2]

I am always AWESTRUCK  by the details ship builders put in... I mean this is 1/350, heck the boots on my Panzer Commander are bigger than some of the ancillary turrets.... Now the bad part for me is, NOW i have to do more detail work just to keep up LOL
Nice work  Bill 
PJ2

[Tojo72]

Like the look of the 6" guns

[dierk]

Sweet!
BTW Bill, where'd d'you upload your pics from? Buggered if I spend 400 bucks to some numpties who've discovered greed.