MikroMir Foxtrot Class - B-59

The contents of the box. I really had not envisaged how TINY everything would be 

... or quite how flashy. Lots of this stuff to clean off 

The hull comes together. Not so much in the way of locating pins 

The Sail parts. Once again, no locating pins to speak of 

A spot of rescribing required after they come together 

And then it's straight on to the raised section of the hull. No guids here so you'll have to eyeball it and fill any mistakes 🙂 

At this point I decided to add the PE deck. In hindsight, probably not the best move 

And then on to the fiddly bits. Each screw is made up of 2 parts ...  

... that need to be bent and then glued together. 

Success!! Up until this point, I had ben ready to ditch the model completely. I was rather unimpressed. 

After the success with the screws I decided to get adventurous. There's not proper shaft shaft to attach them too so ... A couple of holes ... 

... and a couple of 0.5mm brass tubes later ... 

And we have prop shafts 🙂 

And now I was starting to have fun 

While I had the brass tubing out, I decided to replace most of the antenna ... 

... sensors ... 

... and periscopes with brass 

Coming together nicely 

A couple more bits and bobs to add ... 

... and some filler in spots ... 

... and I figured it was time to start playing with paint, First a flat black primer ... 

... and a base coat of Dark Sea Grey ... 

... With the shiny bits touched up in Gold 

And then the part that was alien to me. I wanted to weather with washes but I'd never done a ship before. First was the black wash to give definition with some rust added for streaking 

 

 

For the streaking, I first added a spot of wash to the desired location ... 

... and then, with a clean, dry brush, I draged down over the wet wash, starting from above the wash location. Varyuing the speed and strength of the drag will give differing streaks 

The anchor was painted with Dark Iron buffable metaliser ... 

... buffed and then attached 

I used white was to try and create some salt streaks on the upper surfaces 

My references showed that the subs usually have white borders around the sensors on the hull and sail. I certainly didn't feel up to painting these so I hauled out some spare invasion stripe decals and cut them into strips. 

I think the strips for the bow sensor are a little too wide ... 

... but the ones on the sail worked fairly well 

While I had the Sol and Set out, I decided to add the kit decals. And here I made my greatest error. I did NOT add a gloss coat before applying them. They went straight onto a 'flat' paint and, off course, silvered like hell 

The one side , at least, did not look too bad after a flat coat 

The deck was then spraysed with more Mr Metal Dark Iron metaliser.  

Seriously, this has got to be one of the greatest metalic paints out there. Even the new AK stuff can't come close to the metallic effects you can get with this stuff 

Other than the decal issue (rather obvious here) I was actuallr rather pleased with the progress, the 'sticky uppy' bits also got a spot of Steel metaliser with flat black tops 

Then I got adventurous and decided to add a flag and flagpole complete with halyard. The pole is 0.5mm brass tube. The flag is the kit decal on some lightweight foil and the halyard is 2 strands of fine wire braided together 

Looks quite nice attached 🙂 

The final construction step was to add the forward dive planes. I'd left them till last simply because I couldn't decide on whether to havce them stowed or deployed. In the end I opted for deployed. 

You may nitice the grey patch over the identification number. Saved by history. On the cruise to Cuba, they painted over the numbers so I was able to hide that awful decal 🙂 

A spot of dark grey wash was added to the sections of the hull that would have been underwater, to make the upper surfaces appear bleached 

And the final step. A line of white wash was uses as salt encrustation at the waterline. 

And then she was done ...