The Final Stretch…
Decaling…
I felt that it would be best to decal the beast before proceeding further as it would be all the fiddly bits that get knocked off so easily. Decals are restricted to conning tower and bow ID numbers for 6 submarines. Plus the depth gauge numbers for bow and stern and a name plate for the big stand…………well it would need to be wouldn’t it!
The decals are ok but despite a coat of Johnsons Kleer still silvered a tad. I resolved this, mostly, with another coat of Kleer then three coats of Xtracolor Matt. As you can see the first look is yuk but in the second shot of the conning tower you can see it turns out ok. I recommend that the individual numbers are cut out and placed on separately; this would take care of the problem.
Fencing and rigging…
Revell provide some coated black thread for rails and rigging and for once it’s really first class, so I used it. First up were the rails on the conning tower which fitted perfectly and the ‘thread’ worked exceptionally well and looked realistic and to scale. The rail for the deck is made up of 12 separate stanchions each side, which needed to have a little flash in each whole removed with a drill. This actually may have been residual paint as this needs doing before they are fixed. Because I used brass I had to trim the base of each stanchion to fit but this, whilst tedious, again went to plan. Then it’s just a matter of “threading the needle” type work and securing at either end with a dab of cyano and accelerator…………….job done as they say and as you can see it looks quite good.
Final Assembly…
Now as I said at the start, I have as planned three major assemblies: Hull complete with rails, conning tower with decals on and with rails fitted and finally the masts and towers. It was a matter of putting the three bits together and voila one GATO Class sub! With this done I rigged the bow and stern masts with the same black thread……it looked quite good and could be seen so enhanced the look of the sub. And I also placed the paper flags at bow and stern ensign masts. I folded the flags to make them look limp as the subs rigged for port
Finally I added the navigation lights and the project was over……………..phew!