Bismarck 1/200 Hachette rebuild

Uncle Davydd

Uncle Davydd

Joined
Mar 26, 2023
Messages
85
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Location
Sunshine Coast Queensland Australia
Hi everyone. I was inspired to start a build log on a rescue kit I found on Gumtree. It had been started and looked reasonable from the pictures but close inspection when it arrived revealed quite a few drastic flaws. It always amuses me on these partworks series that they are touted as "anyone can build this." Anyone who has tried knows there are plenty of places to go wrong, especially on a kit like this with enough PE to build a car. I have never done PE before so this is a slippery slope of learning and plenty of acetone and reapplication and repositioning and the discovery of CA gel and a grease pencil to ease the way. I started kits a long time ago and built plenty of plastic kits until I discovered girls and motorbikes so kit building evaporated along with any spare time. But I resurfaced on a Hachette Titanic when they first came out and it stalled after I pretty much finished the hull. So here is the Bismarck, starting as an unbuild, or at times something resembling a demolition, which will hopefully be transformed into a thing of beauty and grace.

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So, out came the box cutter and some dangerous and ill advised manoeuvers were performed sitting on my bed because I don't have a large enough work space to lay the whole thing out. Don't know how I didn't lose a leg but I did get a bad cut in my left thumb. Slow down a bit son I can hear my father cautioning.
 
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In the end, the only way I could line up the resin bow section was to chop right down into the plywood support platform. I never could figure out what the previous shipyard had done to get such a height mismatch but at least the trip hazard has been eliminated. No more witches hats and flashing lights required.
 
The stern is a real problem. My micrometer says it is 1.8mm too long..... When I was stripping the sides I could see that the all the small tabs from laser cutting were not sanded and nothing properly butted up together. In some places on the superstructure sections it was a real problem. More on that later. I will have to recontour the whole stern section

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wow - so much correction works necessary -
It is like the fable with the ugly dugling
I do not know if this is known or translated into english
 
Uwek said:
wow - so much correction works necessary -
It is like the fable with the ugly dugling
I do not know if this is known or translated into english
Click to expand...
Hi Uwek and thank you for all of your likes and comments. Yes an ugly duckling for sure this one. Part of me was at a point a while ago where I thought.... maybe I should junk it and just get a new one and start fresh but there was a lot more appeal in finishing something that someone else had started. I do know the story of the Ugly Duckling and thank you for the link. It isn't translated but it doesn't matter much:)
 
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