Revell 1/125 U-47 with interior

Here's all the sprues. Lots of tidying up to do on these parts: flash, mould lines & ejector pin marks galore. No real surprise there as the kit is almost 50 years old! 

The bulkheads are covered with ejector pin marks, some sunken, some raised, just to keep things interesting. They needed multiple treatments with liquid putty. 

Each of the bulkhead doors has two deep holes in it which need filling, plus planty of flash & mould lines to deal with. There's going to be a LOT of cleanup on this one! Note the bad moulding on the second doors handle. 

See what I mean? These are the hinges for the bulkhead doors, somewhere in among all the excess plastic! 

There's some lovely "extra" detail on some of the parts! 

This is the first day of build. Not even two parts assembled yet. Just hours of puttying and filling and sanding. It's not over yet, either. I spent most of the afternoon correcting the mould mismatch on the torpedoes. 

The engine halves are together, but the filling etc is more a case of rebuilding along the joints than a minor correction. There was also an ejector pin mark on the inside of one half that was deeper than the width of the part. Nearly broke the cutters on that one! The gaps on top need a bit of correction too. Luckily, they're just about the thickness of my file. The finished result will be about 75% plastic/25% putty at this rate. 

On part 7, the wall mounted torpedo rack, there appears to be some flash where there should be two pegs for mounting the torpedoes. Don't remove the flash! What seems to have happened is that there's been a short shot in the casting of these pegs. If you remove the flash, you'll lose what there is of the mounting pegs. 

The cylinder heads were still higher on one side than the other, so a second application of putty was required. Otherwise, I'm still getting rid of ejector pin marks. Why there needs to be eight on one bulkhead alone is beyond me! 

The second coat of putty has dried overnight, but after a quick sanding, you can see that there are still problems around the joints on the cylinder heads, almost as if chunks have been carved out of them. Oh well, here goes application no. 3! 

Mould damage: check
Ejector pin marks: check
Sink marks: check
Mould misalignment: check
Flash: Ah Ah! Er, I mean check.
Thank goodness this is just the stand. 

There's a lot of work to do on this one before you reach for the cement bottle. It's been a busy week! 

I've tried to simulate wear on the deck by using a fine sanding stick. It doesn't really show up well in photos. 

Even the torpedoes need quite a bit of work. They're just about done now. 

Bulkheads and instruments panels. If you're wondering where the instruments are... 

...they're here! This could take a while. Note that the red dots down the RHS are decal no. 10, not no.1 as it says on the sheet. Edit: So far, I've placed 8 of the red dots and I've had enough for one night! The decals take an age to release from the backing and then flatly refuse to adhere to the model even with the use of Microscale products. Absolutely the worst decals I've ever seen, except for some MPC ones which disintegrated as soon as they were placed in water. 

Let's see if gloss varnish will do the trick. 

So far, so good. I've been using just Micro Sol this time around. Next, I'll seal them with a dab of gloss varnish. 

So, decal #9 fits on that cylinder to the left, does it? Well played, Revell, well played. 

After several nostalgic hours spent digging in my old scrap parts box, I've found something that fits the bill. I'll open up the hole to make a collar that fits over the existing cylinder. That will ensure the right location. I'm going to have to use two of these collars to get the height of the cylinder, so I'll stick them together & sort the joint and height before adding to the side wall. I think I'll paint it black before fitting. It keeps things simple and relieves the monotony of the grey. 

It only took one of the collars to get the thickness required. By luck, one was just shy of the right thickness. A dab of liquid putty around the edge should do the trick. You really can see how far out the original diameter was in comparison to the others. The top left dial decal fell off during the process. The gloss varnish has been deployed again. 

That should do it. A quick few passes of the sanding stick and a coat of black paint later. I'll give it a layer of gloss varnish before putting the decal on. Then i can get back to the job at hand. 

That's better, it fits now. I'm getting into a routine with the decals. Apply a few, Micro Sol them, wait a bit, then seal them with gloss varnish. Wait then repeat. So far, it seems to be working. 

Progress so far. Still a long way to go, though. 

The largest part is now done. It's taken almost a week. I can still smell Micro Sol. That stops after a while, doesn't it? 

Decals done and part mounted in hull. Glad to see the back of that job! 

The side wall of the rear torpedo room is ready too. The two white dials at top right have the plastic too small a diameter for the decals, so I had to build that up too. 

Test fit of the hull and main interior. 

The rear torpedo room assembled. Note that two instrument decals have gone missing. You can find one to the right on the adjacent dial. 

Dry fit of rear torpedo room with main & forward torpedo rooms in place. 

The engine room is fixed at one end, using the rear torpedo room for positioning. Also note the ejector pin marks on the decking. No reason they couldn't be on the other side of the part. 

Front torpedo room 

Control room. The two control stations had to be reduced in height in order to fit below the wall mounted controls. 

Engine room. Fitting the engines is fun. The mounting points are vague to say the least. 

Rear torpedo room. The instructions call out colour P for the semi-cylindrical protrusions on the back wall. The colour chart goes up to colour N. 

Test fitting the hull halves. The last bulkhead and the bunks have been added. 

Parts 42 & 43 which together make a cylinder. Allegedly. 

Funny, but I always thought cylinders were circular. These are 6 x 7mm. Brass tube on order. 

Thought I'd try a bit of test fitting up top. The tower locates by two semi-circular pegs and one semi-circular hole. Yeah, you read that right. Not even a hint of the second hole. 

With the deck loosely in place, I offered up the hoist in the rear torpedo room. It won't fit in the locating holes on the underside of the deck without shortening one end a mm or two. It clashes with the bulkhead. (There is a decent locating point for the deck, so it's not that that is out of position). 

Finally! Brass tubes in place on the underside of the deck. I invested in a plumber's pipe cutting tool as it easily cuts 3-22mm pipes with a good square cut. It does leave a slight taper, so include for this in your measurement. This taper is easily removed with a file. 

WIP of painting the crew figures. One of them went AWOL from the tweezers last night, resulting in a huge manhunt. I eventually found him hiding behind the epoxy putty box. 

Two more painting sessions later and they're looking a bit better. 

Hair, hats, boots & belts are added. 

There are a few mistakes to correct (as ever!). The one on the bottom left is the one who went missing. I'll be watching you, Fritz! 

I can't see a U-boat captain without thinking of one particular TV programme from the past. Who knows the correct response to the question "What's your name?" 

The basic painting of the crew is done. I'm debating whether to try any kind of washing or shading on figures this small, especially since they're going to be inside the hull. 

The deck is now fitted out with the brass tubes and forward & aft torpedo hoists. The locating pegs were in the wrong place, so I have not had to modify the rear torpedo hoist, just remove the locating pegs. I think I will fit the deck by attaching just the tubes first, to get the location correct, then affix the deck to the hull one compartment at a time. 

Those brass tubes were definitely worth the wait, I think. 

The crew are now stuck in place with thin CA. 

They're smaller than I thought and look a bit lost in there! 

The crouching ones surely would have been seated, but there are no seats in the kit. Next to the map tables, they look like children. I think there may be a relative scale issue here... 

One off for a kip, one tending to the engines. 

The tail end charlies. 

Probably more flash on one part than in the whole of some kits and the biggest ejector pin marks I've ever seen! At least I can now continue. There was no point even trying when it was 33 degrees in my workroom! 

The hull halves are assembled now. This process took several days. I began by clamping the keel halves together and getting cement into the join. Then I let that dry overnight. Then I did the same fore & aft of the keel and basically glued the two halves together bit by bit. Once I'd reached the ends and the whole of the inderside was glued, I proceeded along the top join in even smaller increments. This was due to the fact that I found it impossible to clamp the bits correctly and so I had to hold the parts together by hand until the glue had set. You can only do so much of that in a day! The tower is dry fitted. I'm working on components for that at the moment. 

The fit at the aft end is abysmal. The rear torpedo tube had a large ejector pin on the concave surface just in front of the door. I had to carefully carve that off and resurface the part with Mr Surfacer & Mr Colour Levelling Thinners. Something about this picture makes me think of using Sage & Onion stuffing as a filler... 

There's going to be a lot of filling & sanding to do. 

At least the prow is a bit better. But not much. 

The joint between the sides & the deck are hit & miss. It isn't as easy as you may think to get this right as the deck is not entirely flat. 

After a week of gradually building up a good layer of Mr Surfacer 500 along the seam, I've finally bitten the bullet and started sanding it back. I'll do the rear torpedo hatch area & stern last. 

It's not done yet as there are one or two (dozen) spots that need a dab to fill a hollow. 

Realistically, it doesn't need to be perfect as the stand hides most of the keel, which sits only a few mm above the shelf anyway. 

Once you get off the keel and onto the forward section of the hull, getting the profile right is more difficult. Whether I've come close or not is yet to be seen! 

The prow is a little easier to get right. I did manage to crack open the joint along the top deck and open side. No doubt when I get a coat pf primer on it I'll be back doing this all over again. It's not helping that the old tendonitis is back again. 

Having cracked open the joint between side & deck whist sanding, (sigh), I've had to repair & leave it to set with a clamp on. In the meantime, here's the progress so far on the tower... 

...and the partly built periscopes... 

...and the deck gun. 

The rebuilt keel. Still got to do the topside. 

I've had to pretty much reconstruct the rear torpedo tube & stern. Still not there yet. The original construction would have had an emerging torpedo deflecting downwards from the boats own stern! 

Test fit of the tower. I'm still working on the hull/deck joint filling & sanding. 

There will clearly be a gap at the base of the tower which I'll try to minimise as much as possible before fixing it in place.