1/72 Revell Type VIIC/41

[dougie47]

Hello all,
 
Following the recent discussion on choosing late war boats on this thread I've written an article "Late War Type VIIC & VIIC/41 Configurations" which is available for download at -
 
http://amp.rokket.biz/lib_uboats.shtml
 
This covers some of the subjects discussed in this thread, including how the Atlantic bow appears to be on over 170 VIICs. The last section tries to help modellers choose an individual late war boat (not an easy task) and how to mix and match the Revell kits to depict certain boats. Included is a table listed all VIICs and VIIC/41 in order of launch date, which shows the year long overlap when both VIICs and VIIC/41s were being launched.
 
Cheers,
 
Dougie
 

[SG]

Just one word: Outstanding!
I think I am going to study tonight
A thousand thanks Dougie and.. Bravissimo!
 

[falo]

Hi Dougie,


I quite agree with SG. Read the leaflet last night and a lot of questions were answered.


Thanks for that work!


Regards
falo

[dougie47]

Thank you gentlemen.
 
Cheers,
 
Dougie

[OldNoob]

Amazing thoroughness! Makes my brain hurt

[TristanR]

Thankyou Dougie for that document.  Incredibly helpful and detailed information there,
One question about the atlantic bow. I had just assumed that Revell used the same (non-atlantic) hull mould for both Viic and the viic/41, as the bow really does not seem that flared to me on the kit I have.  Is this not the case?  It's hard to tell for photos.
Meanwhile,
I thought I'd take a break from the hull, and attempt the photoetch guns for the wintergarten.  Instead of glueing  them together I am going to try my hand at soldering.

I am following Paul Budzik'f excellent tutorial on soldering, So I have some acid flux, some 50/50 lead solder (supposed to flow better and be stronger than 60/40), a syringe to apply the flux, brass shaving to clean the iron tip and the iron itself.



Here you can see the gun shield in the top left, before I decided to display it folded postion. In the foreground, are the tiny hinges that hold the three parts of the shield together.  I built each half of the hinge around a 0.4mm rod, and then propped them the the 90 degree open position before putting a teeny blob of solder in there to fix them in this position.  After this, I cut the hinges off the rod and soldered them on to the sheild parts, holding then in the folded position. This was too fiddily to take pictures of .



here are some other shots of various different bits being taped to the basswood to hold whilst I solder them in place.

Here is a rod that a foot rest is attached to


I cut a notch in the wood to hold this box-with-wheel onto part of a rod.



I couldn't work out how to hold the barrel dead square with the gun body, so I used CA glue instead.  It fell off so I tried again.  I found a slot in a basswood offcut that held the barrel nicely, then surrounded the gun body in other bits of wood until I was sure it was straight.  It wasn't, but fortunatly I just heated up the solder and pulled it off and tried again.



It's not going anywhere now. (soz for blurry)


Eventually it's done. I don't think it's a tidy as it could be, we'll see when it's painted.

The worst part about soldering is when you don't get good heat trasfer, this happened a lot, and I still need to work out exaclty why.  I think it's a combination of dirty tip, and the tip being too small to get the heat over to the brass.  When it does work it is like magic though.
Also, if I used metal tweezers to hold the parts they would act as a heat sink and draw heat away for the brass.  In extreme cases I would accidentally de-solder other parts that were already in place, which was extremely lame.

I feel a bit more confident in soldering my own railings now but I still need a lot of practice.






Cheers!

[SG]

Jolly Good Work TristanR!
I like your choice of representing the gun with the shield folded: so intriguing, I remember I fell in love with this configuration when i first saw that picture of U 889 surrendering with the (double barreled) 3.7 cm rigged for diving. Two pros about this configuration: a) the  main structure of the gun is more visible and understandable; b) it's seldom seen, most of the modellers prefer the shields unfolded.
Congrats for the outstanding skills in soldering, if this is your first time trying this technique then double congratulations!


Tip: to avoid de-soldering the previously-soldered joints you might try to cover them with some wet tissue acting as a heat adsorber. Siara once suggested me this technique and it seems to work fine


Keep up the great work!
   
 

[TristanR]

Oh that's a good tip about the wet tissue paper, Thanks SG!
I very nearly went with shield deployed, but this picture convinced me otherwise, it's such a cool shot with all that mass of railing with the single barrel rising out of it.


Is this the image you were talking about?  I hadn't seen it until I searched just now. I like the shield at that canted angle, looks great!

[SG]

Yepp, that's exactly the one!
I like the other picture too! the boat has already been stripped off of one of her twin barrelled 2.0 cm guns. The port 2.0 cm seems to have only one barrel: in fact the other barrel is concealed by the wintergarten railing. Notice also:
- the "half-rings" (sorry i dont know the english term for them) on top of the saddle tanks
- the chipping of the watertight containers. If you are planning to represent a weary U-boat that's a good reference picture!

[dougie47]

Hello gents,
 
There is a difference between the bows on Revell's 5015 (VIIC) and 5045 (VIIC/41) kits. In the 5045 kit Revell have tried to emulate an Atlantic bow and the kit bow does bulge out a bit. But my suspicion is that the bow on Revell's 5045 VIIC/41 kit is not as pronounced as the real Atlantic bows.
 
If you look 40mm back from the very front of the VIIC/41 kit the bow does bulge out a little bit. But when I look at the photos of the real boats it looks like the bulge is more pronounced.
 
I would be interested to hear other opinions on this.
 
Cheers,
 
Dougie

[Rokket]

really nice solder work! looking goood!

[OldNoob]

really beautiful work. 

[TristanR]

UPdate![/size]The moulding on this checks the unsatisfactory box for this kit.  Look at these propellers, they are growing extra blades.

Cleaned up the rest of the er, running gear. All filled and sanded now.


The main event was glueing the halves together. 

Building the internal structure was supposed to hold everything in place perfectly. So that glueing together would be easy. Instead it was difficult.

Because I chose to replace the 2 internal kit bulkheads with laser cut wooden ones, I can't use tamiya cement.  So I opted for CA medium. I have a lot of experience with this glue.  After the bulkheads are sound, I will cement round the hull seam in sections afterwards. 



The hard part is that I must get the torpedo tubes seated correctly immediately. the two brass peices that make the door openings were qhite thick brass.  They they were not annealed so they are trying to spring back to flat, pulling the hull halves apart with them.  This allows the the wooden torpedo section that sits in here to drop into the gap made by the hull halves not meeting along the bottom.  So I will have to quickly clamp the front together and check this before the CA dries.

Once together, the two brass baffle plates the are the floor of the tube openings are not glued in. They rest in a slot but are free to slide, so that I can yank them forward and fill up all the space in the front to minimise the gap with the sidewalls. It's hard to explain but it worked out ok, as long as the doors them selves fit, I am ok with this.


meanwhile I failed to notice that my  forward internal bulkhead was not seated correctly and was forcing the keel apart.  I break it back open on one side and smash the bottom of the wood apart.  I force it back togeher, it's still not clamping, but this will have to do, there is no going back! I have filler,  I just hope the deck fitting isn't affected.



Forward there are no problems! It fits great all the way to the prow.



Back here not so much, but nothing a session with Mr Clamp can't solve.



Unfortunately things are not great on deck. the upper parts were spayed, the rear deck piece falls straight through.  So I brace it with styrene.  My brace was too long, it bows out from the deck a mm or so.  If I can get the deck to sit snugly enough I might get away with not having to glue it down.



So I cut my brace using a thickish saw, then I glue it back together making the brace a bit shorter, I might have to do this a few times to tune it.


Up top I can start building the pressure hull bits. I'm adding tans to the saddle tanks to support the styrene piece I made. This would have been loads easier before I stuck the halves together.


I'm shimming all over the place. I but a thin strip of styrene on the wooded edges with superglue, then I can stick shims on to that with normal cement.



My clever plan for the torpedo loading hatch failed, The hatch does not line up with the deck hole.

So I ground it off,


Made a plate with a new angled pipe. (should have done it like this in the first place)


And Now my hatch will line up. I will have to dremel the hole bigger  if I want the hatch open.


A bit of sanding on the saddle tank edges and it's starting to look somewhat solid. I added some hatches and welds, it's starting to get more fun now.



Cheers!

[OldNoob]

Looking awesome!

[TristanR]

Sort of finished with the 20mm twins, I left it so they can be elevated, but this is a fragile state of affairs. I might have to glue them in position.  Stowed, the barrels face horizontally aft, and a bar is extended from the deck floor to hold them still.   Having the barrels of them facing up at odd angles looks more appealing to me though.  I did fold in one of the shield plates so they are different.
No solder here, kit parts were required so back to horrible CA glue (actually, in a lot of ways CA glue is better than soldering, my soldering at least).
Still, nice to get these out of the way

Also there is some test weathering on the deck bits, I used acrylics and they warped the wood pretty badly, so I might have to use a proper wood sealer before I use any paints.







Now I have the hull together I can start looking into dive planes and rudders etc.  All seems to be going ok.



The next big job is re-attaching the casing strips that run along the top of the saddle tanks that I cut away earlier.

I have this PE strip that does a better job of the vent holes here, so I need to carefully drill out the holes on the plastic, and stick in the brass on top.


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Around the back I've tried to remove as much material as I dare without weakening this already flimsy piece. 



Here is the result, PE is not glued on yet, I'm not sure if it's best to do it later once it's all on the boat.  I can ponder while I do the other side.



Cheers!
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