German U-boat Type VIIB Conning Tower Gun Deck

[Steve Zuleski]

Apr 25, 2018 12:03:26 GMT -5 dierk said:

Looks the canine's danglies Steve!

Lol, thx Bro.

[adt70hk]

Yet again some great work!

Looking very good.

ATB

Andrew

[Steve Zuleski]

Thx Andrew, greatly appreciated

[k1w1]

Wow ... Impressive work. 

[Steve Zuleski]

Thx K1W1!

[Steve Zuleski]

Sanding The Deck Gun And Mount

Ok, now that the deck has been completed and is ready for priming and painting it's time to fight the good fight and sand the deck gun and mount. The mount was not such a big deal, but this gun is one piece and it has some very delicate parts within the structure that are not easy to get to. As you can see, cutting up sand paper into long strips was a necessity and saved my sanity.







I ran into a fore mentioned issue with improperly mixed resin on this gun, so it's been a long process to bring it in to line. I am paying for my lack of attention to detail weeks ago, go figure. Ah, t'sall good!

I will say this, without my Yost miniature vise I would have gone battys by now. This vise was one of the best investments I've made for the model bunker in a long time. I was able to get a decent grip on this gun so I could get to those tight spots.

I recon any miniature vise will work, but I did do my research on vises and found that the Yost vise has the best design for my needs. It has already been upgraded to avoid the retaining washers from crimping and failing. Meaning, a common issue with these smaller vises is the retaining/tension ring/washer has a tendency to fail and you won't get your vise open. Now, that would not be any fun if I had this gun stuck in that vise, nuff said!

More to follow soon, if I ever get this gun sanded, HA!  Cheers, Ski.

[Leon]

Nice looking gun Ski! Id be afraid of breaking something trying to sand that.

[Steve Zuleski]

It is a pain and very time consuming Leon. Thx buddy!

[TRM]

Stunning work on this so far Steve! She is going to be a looker when it gets around to painting! Keep at it brother!

[Steve Zuleski]

Thx Mr. T.

It's taking a back seat right now Brotha, unfortunately. Just had the dozer up here the last two days, the building season is now in full swing:( Ah, the sooner I get all this stuff done the sooner I get back to the bunker.

More to follow as time allows. Cheers, Ski.

[Steve Zuleski]

Still More Sanding


I gave the gun and deck and gun a primer coat and then went back and started sanding the imperfections found in all the nooks and crannies. The primer coat really brought out areas that were hard to see otherwise.

The gun is proving to be the most time consuming, but that is the nature of the nylon 3D printing material. Even after using the XTC-3D and sanding the snot out of it I still had a lot of work to do to get rid of the "fuzzy hairs" and bumps. This will take several coats of primer in specific problem areas to remedy, all while ensuring I don't cover up any details.

Some of the areas were gently scraped with a sharp flat dental tool while other tight areas were accessed by using various types of files, such as sanding sticks, finger nails filers, standard models files and strips of sanding paper as shown before.

The gun may not look so good right now, i.e., the fuzz, but slowly I am making progress. I just keep the DVD player running with "Das Boot", "Gray Lady Down" or some other submariner movie and I barely notice the clock, HA!







The deck portion of this beast was not so bad. The XTC-3D worked really well on this section, but it still had the typical nylon print issues. Given it's a much flatter surface it was easier to clean up, but there is still a "boat load" of fuzz on the actual grid deck. Trust me, you won't see it when I'm done and I ain't gonna sweat the piddly stuff, not gonna do it, lol.

Also, there is some clean up around the tower bolts/rivets that were created when sanding and filing before the primer coat. I'll go back and add some putty to smooth out those surface areas. All these little details will scream at you in this scale, so don't neglect them, you'll pay for it in end if you do.

The minor blemishes on the starboard ladder section will be filled and filed. If you look closely you can see the geometry of the print still visible on the ventilation tube. I've sanded that till I'm blue in the face and it still wants to be part of the picture. I'm not sure how much further I can go down without distorting the details, but I may have to Dremel it a bit to square it up before I call it good.





One item that is not pictured here is the sights on the gun itself. The nylon print is super bulky and looks way out of proportion, so I'll scratch build another one out of thin wire and mount it. This would be a great place for some PE, but I'm not going to learn that process today, lol.

Ok, time permitting, I'll get the sanding closed out and get ready cables, ship's bell, minor details and painting, yehaaaaaaa!

Thx for watchin. Cheers, Ski.



P.S. It's building time again, here's what is hopefully one of the last 1:1 scale builds to take my bunker time. I should have done this years ago, but there you have it, lol.

[joelsmith]

Ski, if you need a "Speed Ring" type of sight, take a fan cover from a Leopard II PE Set and trim it to size. Works a champ!

[Steve Zuleski]

May 11, 2018 20:43:24 GMT -5 joelsmith said:

Ski, if you need a "Speed Ring" type of sight, take a fan cover from a Leopard II PE Set and trim it to size. Works a champ!

Bro, what a killer idea!!!!!!!!!! I have an extra PE set, as a matter of fact. I was going to do some kind of wire type set up with a thicker outer ring. Great tip Brotha, Thank you mucho!


Cheers, Ski.

[joelsmith]

I'll send you a bill at the end of the month! ;<)

[Steve Zuleski]

May 12, 2018 18:47:26 GMT -5 joelsmith said:

I'll send you a bill at the end of the month! ;<)

No worries, it's rubber check day anywho, HA!

[joelsmith]

Zats how you save money for modeling!

[Leon]

That is some really amazing work Ski! Rock and Roll buddy.

[Steve Zuleski]

Thx Leon.

[Steve Zuleski]

Ok Gents, the bunker has been cranked up to full power and we are in business once again, it's been a long summer.

In this section of the blog I'll be covering Alpine's 1/16th scale German U-Boat Watch Officer, kit #16036. Now, yall may remember I've already done this figure for Track-link, exclusive build. Well, I paid for this Watch Officer to go with Alpine's 1/16th scale German U-Boat Captain, kit # 16021, which I did not pay for. So, the Watch Officer in this blog and the Captain will appear in the final pics for this particular blog, the Gun Deck. Basically, since I paid for it, I post as I please, right? Right! The Captain will "not" be a feature in this blog except for the final pics. Clear as mud, I know, HA!

Here we have the motley crew all together.



Now, what you did not see, unless you visited my blog on TL, was the method used to paint the face specifically. I ran across a young lady's work on YT showing how she blends oils and starts from a basic grey background and produces some incredible work. So much so that I've used it to paint the Captain's face exclusively, with better than expected results. That partial head painted you see on the right was painted as a test run for this method. The pretty young lady's name is Daria Callie. She's very well known in the portrait community and she has several videos you can use to perfect your techniques. I had to go through the videos once again to get back into the swing of things, so to speak, after a long summer season.

A frontal view showing the flesh tones blended without a base tone. The pics are a bit glossy, but oils will dull after a few days. There's still plenty to work over on this head, but for right now, he's looking pretty good for starters. I painted this head in just over four hours, that's a first! I plan to nail this method down hard, it works too well to just let it get rusty in the ol cabesa.




The eyes will be worked a bit more, plus blending more tones/values into the surrounding upper cheek and below the eyes, etc.

After a few days I will go over the beard to get it dialed in. The lips will be worked a bit more too. As you can see, the gloss from the oils makes it difficult to really see all the detail, but they will become more apparent after the Dull Coat.



At any rate, it's been one heck of a long summer and I'm glad to be back in the bunker. The only thing stopping me now is plowing snow, and that ain't so bad, HA!

Thanks for watching, more to follow soon. Cheers, Ski.

[captfue]

impressive work

[Steve Zuleski]

Thx Captfue!

[Leon]

WOW....He is looking good Ski!

[Steve Zuleski]

Thx Leon. I'll be taking pics of the progress so far today, this time making sure the glare isn't so bad. Yall are not able to see much detail, my bad.

Thx for watchin, Ski.

[Steve Zuleski]

I realized I never did a "white balance" before taking the last set of pics, oops, my bad.

At any rate, I did some reworking of the eyes, cheeks and lips. While that was drying I used oils for the cap leather strap and worked the gold trim on the elements. In a few days the original layer of oils will be close to dried at which time I'll start adding layers of reddish tones where needed as well as defining the eye lids, etc.

There's still plenty to do, but we are making progress. Hopefully this head will be done in a few days and then it will be uniform time.

Remember "ol one eye"? This was a perfect head to practice on. As you can see this is just a rough draft, but it shows just how easy the techniques described above really works. A big thanks goes out to Steve Readdie of "Reedees Miniatures" for supplying several different heads.
www.reedeesminiatures.co.uk/the-quartermasters/1-9---200mm







More to follow and thanks for watchin. Cheers, Ski.

[Steve Zuleski]

A bit more progress has been accomplished. It should be noted here that I gave the head a shot of Dull Coat before starting any of the steps mentioned below so as not to disturb any prior work.

I spent about another four hours reworking the eyes, what a pain in the tuckus. I'm so use to the 200mm figures that just stepping down to 1/16th can be a bit challenging, especially after a long break from the paints. But, once in the groove it started to comply with my wishes, lol.

Ok, I was able to get the ever so slight glint in the eyes and definition around the pupils. I use acrylics for eye work because it dries faster and is easier to control in such a small area. I had to lighten the eye around the pupil a bit and redo the lower lid for definition as well. Touch up around the eyes will also be addressed, such as slight feathering of lighter tones under the eyes, crows feet, etc.

Next up I worked the cap using Ultra Marine Blue, Titanium White, and a touch of Paynes Gray. The recesses were feathered in before adding the highlights. Once the oils were in place I feathered them all together in the appropriate locations. So far so good.

I also added Paynes Gray, Titanium White, and a touch of Ivory Black to highlight the beard, which still has plenty of work needed. When the oils set in a day or so I'll make a filter pass with black and Dark Earth acrylics to work into the recesses of the beard, bring in more definition in that area.

Once these next few steps are completed and the head is in a satisfactory condition I'll move on to the uniforms of both figures. I'm really excited to finally be getting to the jackets and trousers.






More to follow soon and thanks for watchin. Cheers, Ski.

[adt70hk]

Simply stunning!! Very well done!!!

[Steve Zuleski]

Thanks, greatly appreciated.

[Steve Zuleski]

It's been a wonky winter, many I wasn't able to get into the bunker to get some brushes wet.  If it wasn't the plumbing it was plowing snow and what ever else decided to keep me occupied.  Alas, I was able to get this figure done.  Now I can continue with the Watch Officer as long as the snow hasn't melted, lol.  Summer is gonna be busy, so I hope I'll be able to continue, we'll see. 

Taesung Hamms has been so kind to send this U Boat figure for me to paint. The sculptor is Ju Won Jung. Floquil Gray Primer was brushed over the entire figure before using oils. I did not use an acrylic base this time, just oils blended throughout. This figure was painted for Track-Link.



Cheers, Ski.

[Tobi]

Just catching up, really impressive work.

[Steve Zuleski]

Thx Tobi, it's been awhile for this dio.

Cheers, Ski.