The Ship Model Forum

Hello

This is the first thing I have posted here. After viewing Joe Simon's IJN Yahagi 1/350 1945 build, I decided to try my hand at building a model ship again. Years ago I built some Tamiya 1/700 waterline ships oob with no after market parts. But this time I am gone to try doing some PE and rigging. I have decided to build the Hasegawa 1/350 IJN DD Shimakaze Late Type with Infini detail up set.
But as a new builder I have some questions I would like to ask before I start this build. First does anyone know of some books that have photos of the Shimakaze in them that I can use as reference. The I can only fund 2 photos of the Shimakaze, one is of the ship running at high speed and to other is an aerial photo of the ship being attacked jest before it sank. so any help would be great.

Next when working with PE do you need to sand off the molded detail like the watertight doors
and the molded support of the linoleum joints on the deck
I know I will be asking more questions as I work on this build so please bear with me because I want to make this build the best I can so I will be asking a lot of questions.

Its gone to be a lest 6 weeks before I start building the ship as I stall need to get some tools and paint and glue. And I am also finishing up my last semester for my bachelor's degree and this model is me reward to myself for completing it. so look for more updates on this build in late July or early August.

Thank for any advice you can give me.
Jim

After several weeks of looking, I found a site that stated that there is only 1 know photo of the Shimakaze, so I guess there are no reference guides for working on the Shimakaze. So I will be using photos of other Japanese destroyers to see how things looked of this type of ship. Just 2 more weeks till I can actually start work on the model

A good project and one which I will follow with interest. Yes, there is only that one clear photo of her running trials. Everything else is distant and blurry. So, using other IJN DDs as a guide is an excellent idea. Shimakaze is basically an enlarged Yugumo, which, in turn, was an improved Kagero type. So those are the two classes you can focus on.

Removing molded on door, hatches, and linoleum tie-downs is a "your option as the modeler" choice. If you want to use the Infini set in its entirety, then those details have to be removed. It may be worthy considering whether or not the potential upgrade in detail is worth it. Some of the kit detailing, like the hatches, is pretty good for injection molding. My review of this kit may, or may not, be of some help: http://www.modelwarships.com/reviews/sh ... /index.htm

Thank you Dan for the information on the Yugumo, and the Kagero being close to the Shimakaze. That should give me some reference that should help a lot. The reason I chose to build this model was because of you review of it. It showed the kit was very will detailed and would not be to hard to put together and produce a good looking model. And since its been 10 years since built my last ship model this kit is just what I needed. So thanks for the in depth review, and I hope I can do the kit justice with my build of it.

Those molded-on hatches look pretty good. The only reasons I would replace molded-on hatches are: 1) they are so crappy and devoid of detail that they have to be replaced; 2) there are missing hatches elsewhere on the model and to have consistent detail replace all of them with PE. (Unless your PE hatches look enough like the existing molded-on ones).

Will I finally have started building the Shimakaze. And right of the bat I missed up. When I glued the hull together I got some glue on the surface.

And when I went to sand it off I took some of the detail off with it

Now I am gone to have to use seam putty to add it back in.
When I do this I will also full the seams where I glued the stern of the model on.

I will also need to full some places on the seam where the hull joins to get a smooth joint


So far I'm liking this kit but I wish Hasegawa had molded the upper hull as one pace and had the same detail on the hull as they do and the spare pieces. By this I mean this is the detail of a watertight door on a spare pieces

and this is a watertight door on the hull

so in order to have all the doors look the same I am gone to have to sand off the molded doors and replace them with PE.

Wish me luck with replacing the detail I sanded off

This is going to be very good!