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Jul 25, 2012

Battleship Fuso of the Imperial Japanese Navy

The IJN battleship Fuso (1:1800) was my second scratchbuild project, finished in November 2011 and just in time to enter the 2011 Forumini Golden Battleship competition; winning 1st prize.

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You can check out the building process after clicking:


The original War at Sea model:
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It suffered from a bad superstructure (especially at the back), and silly turrets, so I rebuilt her as she was after her 1944 refit.

I was contemplating rebuilding this model completely from scratch, but after I took the measurements I noticed that the hull is exactly as it should be, so no point building a new hull when I can use the old.
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Stage one is done now, cleared the 2 front barbettes, relocated both center turrets and moved the rear turrets slightly to match the original better.

Raised the hull for a bit so the model won't 'drown' in the water effects later and which gives the ship a little more 'umph'.

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Pagoda mast!! I already noticed some small things (radar is a bit crooked, fixed that later) I'm also going to add the rangefinders, searchlights and other small stuff later when I'm a bit further down the line...

Guns and turrets; later on in the project I’ve replaced the styrene gun barrels with barrels made from brass tubing, giving a way better effect.
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Turrets mounted and midcastle partly done now, I still need to put the searchlights on the platforms, but that will come later...
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Still not quite finished on the details though, boat coverings incoming, just as some more deck clutter.

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Only some minor adjustments to be done before she is ready to paint, of course a floatplane will be added, but I needed to search for some thinner plasticcard to make it.

Almost finished painting...
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Here you can see all 4 types of armament on the Fuso, the 14", the 6" and the double and triple mount AA...
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Thanks to Reacher from the Aamini forum for providing the base for the model!

Finished!
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