Jaureguiberry IV: Deck Surgery

Hello again and welcome back! This is just a small update as I haven't had much time to devote to the model this past week. Let's begin with a picture:

Eeeeek! What a mess! Furthermore, what have I done?? First off I pulled out the good old Dremel tool and ground away everything on the deck, followed by sanding it all smooth on heavy grit sandpaper glued to a wooden board. This destroyed the pronounced flair at the forecastle and actually sanded through the deck (an ever present problem with hollow hulls). Luckily it didn't really matter as we will see. I studied the Marine Nationale drawings as best I could and settled on two places where the kit needed to be cut apart at, corresponding with a pair of hull frame lines shown on the drawings. As previously mentioned the fore section is too long and misshapen so it had to go. Likewise the aft section was a bit too long and the shapes seemed a bit off as well. I figured seeing as I already had the saw out why not make another cut! These two pieces will be discarded. After this had been accomplished it was time to cut some holes in the deck for the staircases. This took a bit of trial and error to get them in the right place. They have to be as close as possible as several superstructure parts lay between them, any major error here would translate to a major error in the placement of later parts. The deck was then covered with Evergreen strips of 0.25mm x 1.0mm and 0.25mm x 1.5mm sizes. As you can see in the photo above the cutouts are a little rough but hopefully they will look more pristine and uniform once the actual decking is applied. The staircases themselves are formed by 0.25mm x 1.0mm strips layered together to look like steps, then sandwiched between strips of 0.5mm x 4.0mm styrene to form a box of sorts. One completed staircase is visible in the furthest forward cutout. That is about it for now, until next time!

Jaureguiberry III: Deck Issues

Hello and welcome back! Following on top of last night's description of the hull woes comes today's review of the deck. To begin the deck in the kit comes with some finely scribed wood planking detail as well as a thin and finely molded breakwater. There are also a few molded on structures including the bases of both bridges and stack sections. Unfortunately the detail is pretty void on all of these pieces, almost all entirely lacking any sort of hatch or scuttle detail. Here is a photo of the kit's hull. Please note that some preliminary sanding has already taken place on the sides of the hull to remove the molded on and shut porthole covers:
Now...what do the plans show? Naturally the deck detail is quite a bit off. Compare the kit's deck to the drawing shown below:
The structure at the base of the funnels is actually two parts rather than one and there are several skylights missing. The most obvious feature missing are all the staircases that led to lower decks. It doesn't appear like these staircases are covered by any sort of hatch. Hopefully they ended at a watertight door on the lower level! The drawing luckily shows as well the position of doors and hatches on the deck structures. The kit's breakwater, while thin and nicely molded, is the wrong shape. All the gun turrets may also be positioned slightly off and this will be fixed with the sole exception of the amidships 10.8" turrets, those will stay where they are! It looks like the entire deck will have to be swept clean and rebuilt! Until next time!

Jaureguiberry II: Hull Issues

Hello and welcome back! When this kit was first produced the plans that are currently available from the French archives had not yet been made available. I am not sure what plans the pattern maker used but (if the Marine Nationale plans are correct) to have been wrong in a few major areas. I am not meaning to bash or insult the pattern maker that created the kit in the first place, I really applaud his effort and thank him for even doing it, but it seems that the resources available to him at the time let him down. The hull is definately inaccurate and many of the deck details are wrong or missing entirely. Once again I highly doubt this is the fault of the master who created the kit but rather the fault of the lack of good drawings. Let's see what we have here.
Master Modeler Jim Baumann was kind enough to inform me that the length-over-all (LOA) of this vessel was, in 1/700 scale, around 156mm or 356' in real life. The Marine Nationale plans that I used were drawn in a variety of scales that looked to be around 1/100 for some and 1/200 or 1/196 for others. Reducing one particular sheet of plans to 1/700 from an original estimated to be 1/196 gave an overall length for the ship of 155.5mm...close enough for me. This measurement was taken from the furthest projection aft on the stern to the furthest projection forward on the bow, in this case being the tip of the ram. This is where the first major problem popped up. When overlaying the kit's hull on the drawings it looks as though the kit is too long. When measuring the waterline length the drawings show a measurement of approximately 153mm whereas the kit has a measurement of approximately 158mm. 5mm may not seem like much but it is definately noticeable when placed next to plans. In scale that would make the model 11' longer than it should be. Additionally, the hull appears to be badly misshapen on the waterline at the bow:
Luckily from the cutoff portion of this scan aft the hull matches the drawing well enough in terms of its shape. The builder has two choices, one easy and one not so easy. The easy choice is just to ignore the problem. 99% of people out there are not going to notice the error and even fewer will probably really care. The second choice is to try and fix it. At the moment I think I will opt for the latter and try and fix it. Until next time...

Jaureguiberry

Well as my first official post I would like to introduce my current project. This is the Yumematu 1/700 Jaureguiberry, a late 19th century/early 20th century French pre-dreadnought battleship. There are very few French pre-dreadnought kits currently in existence in any scale. Three of them, Jaureguiberry, Massena, and Carnot, and currently available in very limited runs from Yumematu, with a fourth, Henri IV, available from Combrig. Rumor has it that Combrig may release a Danton-class vessel in the near future. An even more slight and unsubstantiated rumor whispers about a possible 1/350 Bouvet from a as-of-yet un-named European manufacturer. Only the 1/700 pre-World War I United States Navy comes anywhere near as close to being as neglected as the French Navy of the period. Some basic information about the Jaureguiberry can be found here. Additional excellent photos of the ship as well as other French pre-dreadnoughts can be found at the Tsushima.org.ru website.
I was fortunate enough to receive a copy of Jaureguiberry from a United States naval officer living in Japan with the help of Bob Cicconi here in the States. Currently only Pacific Front Hobbies lists any of the Yumematu kits, Carnot, with the comment that it is now permanently out of production. Massena and Jaureguiberry appear to be gone. Resin kits are almost always limited production pieces and the Jaureguiberry kit certainly fits the stereotype. The kit consists of approximately 40 or so resin parts of average quality along with a length of fine brass rod and two lengths of plastic rod. Uncommon for a 1/700 scale this kit includes an optional lower hull and associated parts for if the modeler chooses to build a full hull model. It is very rare to see a built 1/700 model in any fashion other than waterline and I find it curious that the lower hull was even included. Doubly curious is the fact that the upper hull casting is actually hollow. In keeping with the theme of the ship represented this is quite a bizarre little model kit! Photos of the kit parts can be found here. To see what the kit looks like built almost straight-from-the-box please see Bob Cicconi's wonderful build at SteelNavy.
My primary references for this kit are the previously mentioned Tsushima website photos as well as the online French Naval Archives which took the very impressive move this past year of digitizing and making available for free download several hundred sets of large scale French ship plans. The plans for Jaureguiberry can be found here. Unfortunately the plans are both a blessing and a curse. While they do show in a high degree of detail almost every aspect of the ship they also show that the kit has a few problems here and there. Coupled with the fact that the kit is a bit light on detail you have a recipe for a not-so-quick-and-easy build (then again, mine never are...no wonder I never seem to finish anything!). I will deal with the accuracy issues at a later date once I actually get to fixing them. At the moment the major foreseeable events will be the replacement of the deck, replacement of the deck houses, creation of new military masts, fighting tops, and bridge levels, new small caliber weapons, replacement of the main battery guns with turned brass barrels scrounged from the parts box, a new skin for the hull sides, and the opening of all the square port holes. Just about every media available in naval modeling will probably find it's way in here. While I cannot guarantee this will be worked on continously or even finished in the near future I do hope that some of the information I pass along will help you, the reader, in some way.

Greetings!

Welcome to my first posting of my first blog. As the title of this blog suggests I am a scale modeler. My interests are quite varied and I have dabbled in just about every genre other than car modeling. I don't get a lot of time for my projects as I am a senior at the University of Arizona as well as a part time worker at, and I am not ashamed to say it, the best hobby shop in Tucson. My goal on this blog is to do what many modelers I deeply admire have done, that is, to keep a journal of sorts of my work and share my knowledge with others. Stay tuned!