Wednesday, 2 July 2014

Alliance Model Works Steampunk Submarine Build Part 05

Time to get the tail section built. This is made up of the largest pieces of etched brass, and the parts are all fairly substantial. However thee are also some very thin and fragile brass grills which are quite fiddly to handle and take some care to position correctly.

Firstly I removed all of the for each piece from the etched sheet and cleaned up the edges.

Alliance Steampunk Sub 01

The larger pieces are etched into thicker brass, but three small vent pieces are from the thinner sheet. It proved really quite tricky to get the three vent pieces into place without bending, creasing, or in some other way damaging them.

Alliance Steampunk Sub 03

However, once I had them set in place the rest of the assembly was relatively easy. Due to the hlaf etching on some parts the location of each piece was fairly clear.

Alliance Steampunk Sub 04

A little cyanoacrylate and the job was done. About 30 minutes work for each one.

Alliance Steampunk Sub 05

Next I had to look at attaching the tail piece to the hull. This involved pushing the thinned down edge of the brass fin into a slot in the four resin “diamonds” at the rear of the hull.

Alliance Steampunk Sub 07

The “diamonds have a slit in them, but it is closed up. Using a needle file would have opened it up too much. Fortunately I remembered I had a set of Tamiya razor saws. These are thin engraved stainless steel saws that are used for putting panel lines onto plastic models. I bought them years ago but have never really needed them until now. Tying out a couple of different saws I found the one that best suited the job and then slowly opened up the slit in the resin.

Alliance Steampunk Sub 06

Once I had done this it was simply a matter of gluing the fins in place.

Alliance Steampunk Sub 08

The next post will probably conclude the construction of the submarine. Then I will be able to move on to the painting.

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