Many thanks guys!
Good to see you back at the bench too Jim!
Yes, I'm looking forward to the painting too. That's were the magic happens indeed, and this a a most suitable subject for some delicious painting challenges!

Many thanks Mike!
I really don't know what this is. My best guess is part of the structure under the flight deck? On this photo, it looks a bit too big for that, but on the video it look dimensionally possible. It might also be part of the elevator system? Or indeed a piece of camouflage? There were fake house structures on Amagi when she was bombed, so it might be a remnant of these indeed? It seemed metal to me indeed of bamboo, but I can be wrong in this.
You're very right that it is too regular looking. But I'm afraid that's one of those compromises Jim and me are talking about... The entire thing measures only 7mm across…
I aimed to manufacture the main structure (3 beams with 9 rods perpendicular to them), but there seems to be some finer strands of something behind this too. Maybe I'll still have a go at it…
And some progress!
Slowly moving further forward:



The lower walkway and horizontal part of the mast platform were taken from the Lionroar PE set. The support structure of the latter was mostly scratch built however, to better resemble the photo's of the real thing. As the AA platforms normally have the shielded guns, there were no PE pieces for it in the Lionroar set. It adapted some perforated gussets and thread plate from port side platforms however, and scratchbuilt the rest. Railings are another Lionroar set (the one in the Unryu set are fine, but these are just a bit finer), WEM superfine, and some thin copper wire.
An overview of how far I got so far:


And the real thing:



And now on to the battle damaged structures on the inside of this area…
Cheers!
Marijn