SPA Modeler

http://www.hasegawausa.com/index.html

I opened the box and unpacked the continence.
There was 1 bag of sprue trees, 1 instruction sheet, 1 water slide decal sheet and 1 extensive PE sheet.
The instructions look very detailed and are comparable to other Hasegawa instructions, clear and concise.
The instruction sheet breaks the PE assembly's separately into "Groups" which aid with construction and placement. The painting guide is clear and calls out Mr Color paints. If using Mr color, the hull and deck color, which are the same, are recommended to to be a mixture of 90% Gray FS36320 and 10% flat black





The parts bag contains 9 sprue trees of various sizes. When the bag was opened 3 parts fell out, detached from the trees so be careful not to pay attention and not loose any parts.


The decal sheet contains the water slide decals for DDG 174 along with deck markings, helo markings and flags. The extensive PE set contains the main mast, radars, doors, stack vents, ladders, helo blades and railings. The railings are made for specific areas. I have seen less PE on a 1/350 scale ship.


This promises to be an enjoyable kit and my guess is it will take considerably longer than the usual 1/700 ship.

That will be quite the project with all that PE!!! Good luck!

Looks pretty amazing...amazing number of parts, amazingly small, etc. Should be fun to watch.

1/700 ships = my eyes is a total no go for me...

I lift my hat for all of you who are able to work with 1/700 scale ships!

Following with big interest!

- Kari

Stick, Lyle, Kari thank you.
I'm just polishing up some other builds then I'll hit this with earnest. I'm in the planning research/stage. The PE is pretty small but I have the tools that can accommodate them.
I plan on putting her in one of my water bases.


Steve

I officially started putting glue to styrene. I jumped ahead just a little and completed step 4 so I could simultaneously work on the water base.
The parts fit beautifully but there was just a little flash on the deck. This was easily cleaned and glued to the hull.


Steve

- Kari

Thanks Kari,

I started the water base. For those who have seen this before bare with me.
I use hard Styrofoam, cutout the ship's silhouette, cut out wakes and such then use a lighter to create swells. I usually make water for 1/350 so I have to scale down the effects.
Once this is accomplished, I add strips of wet paper using med acrylic gel you can get for HL or other craft stores. This paper and gel combo soothes out the texture of the Styrofoam and creates smaller waves.





Steve

Good stuff!!!

I'm halfway through step one working on the aft stack structure. I filled the seams with Mr Dissolved Putty and smoothed them out with denatured alcohol. I replaced the kits HF whip antennas with stretched sprue because while the kits parts looked nice, they were just a tad out of scale. There is another set on the fore stack that I'll have to replace later as well. The next steps in step one involves the start of the PE.
The base is coming along. here the hull in it's future place, after a light sanding the water will be ready for paint.