Thread: Building a Tamiya Missouri with Super-detailing

After a weekend trip to State College, PA to see Penn State play Nebraska, I got some time in the shop today. I also have another small consulting gig that's cutting into Missouri time.

I finished up the crane except for touch up paint and rigging. When I left it last week I had re-made the tripod stanchions, and opened the holes up so I could use some styrene rod to pin the hinge points more firmly. All of this worked!



There's no doubt that the scratch-built supports are clunkier than the wispy original ones, but they're not going to fall apart either. Once the crane is painted and rigged, it will be less noticeable. I had thought of ways to narrow their waists, such as gluing (or soldering) the thin pieces to some thicker stock, filing the waist and then de-bonding them, but thought that it was overkill and used them as is.

Refastening the boom went easily and the crane was back together. I then drilled a 0.047" hole in the bottom and glued in a styrene pin that would help center and stabilize it when glued in the hole in the aft deck, and hold it down to this board so I can airbrush it again.



I'm contemplating using stretched sprue to rig the ship, and will practice on the crane.

Now that this fun was over, it was time to attempt making ANOTHER catapult; this time using the new ones from Alliance Modelworks. While some of the continuing adventure purported to be easier than the Eduard version, as you all will see as we move along, that those miserable railings continue to be my undoing. I seriously think there is something fundamentally wrong with my modeling skills in that I continue to break these damn things off. Unfortunately (for me) Alliance also etches all of their bend lines which makes these railings almost unmanageable. I wish they didn't etch that bend. You don't need it. It's obvious where the rails need to bend and the etch reduces the thickness by half. That leaves about 0.005" and is it very fragile. I sound like a broken record here, but this is getting frustrating.

Here's a shot of the entire fret. Notice some differences with Eduard. Alliance makes the entire girder structure as a box with all four sides, but doesn't have any of the catwalks attached. It then adds another layer on top for the launch way that includes little launch dampers on the ends that fold up. The railings are attached to each catwalk and are to be folded upwards.



Folding the girder went well with CA applied to the edges of the bottom to secure it. This was much easier than fitting in and gluing the separate bottom on the Eduard piece. The center section has a foldup set of boxes that simulate the drive and control mechanisms and that too went well. The center section has a glue-on platform with railing. That railing kept getting bumped (by me) and after a couple of nudges, fell off.

The nightmare returns!!!

The catwalks butt glue to the girder assembly. To give more surface area for gluing and support I chose to add some little cross members on the bottom. This works, but meanwhile, another two railings fell off. That makes three rails off and two remaining so far. I think the mistake I made was attempting to bend the rails before gluing the platforms in place. This was just the first one. I have one more to screw up.



Next session I will finish up the first cat and then attempt to build number 2. I don't have those #80 carbide drills anymore. They're all broken. I will have to get more of them if I want to drill the catwalks like I tried on the Eduard units. No matter what, trying to get the railings back on is no fun and is next to impossible.