1/72 scale German light cruiser Munich

Good morning Horatio,

You seem to be getting hold of things now. Remember one thing, the hull is full of details, which you will have to include when considering that massive scale. Details like seacock openings, engine water cooling inlet and outlets, ssacrificial anodes, additional stiffner plating, etc. Believe me, without these the hull would look like an ordinary toy boat.
I like the method you are using for the hull. I use the same technik for the small boats, especially the ship's boats. the the ship have any portholes in the ship side? if so, do not use the normal brass ones, found in the local markets. Remember, The German portholes had no flanges. Follow my article, you have everything explained in detail - so you cannot go wrong.

Come on my friend, you are on the right track.

TY again Paul. I always value your advise. I am considering wether or not to actually use this peice as the actual model or use it to make a mold, to use for shaping hulls for styrofoam and platic, steel and so on. I think this will be a master, which Im debating how much to detail at first depending on what I'm going to mold first. I want to make the styrafoam ships as more of a toy and am not to concerned about making them highly detailed. I plan to sell them on Ebay to help fund the Model/toy-Hobby/job. So Im thinking about geting the hull shape right then using
the peice for a mold then detailing it further and using it for a more detailed mold and finally puting it all toether and detailing it to museum quality detail, like your Ship, or using the second mold to shape steel into the super detailed ship for display. If I did the later I could keep the masters in 3 peices for further molds. There is a man who lives here in my city who has made RC ships for years as a hobby, and they look good. They however lack any serious model detail, but he has always made a wood hull shape, and pounded sheet metal around it, then soldered the hull together, used body filler and painted it. built a wood deck, and wood superstructure. they are in HO train scale wich is like 1/93 or somthing like that. I have always admired his work. I have just never cared for the scale, and the lack of detail. I won't criticize it though as they are his art and mot mine. I have taken serious note to the hull detail that you and others have put on your models and I agree that I will follow suite or like You pointed out they will just look like a toy instead of a replica. On my plans I do not have locations for port holes, so I have been looking at pictures of the other KMS light and heavy cruisers for posible logical paterns and looking at the room and deck layout on the plans I do have to establish where I think they would have placed them on the ship. They ussually ran them on the 2 decks below the weather deck, and of course you would have them not where a bulkhead would be right behind them, and there is also the hope i can get further plans to the ship that might indicate where they planed on puting them. Anyway I dont mean to ramble, I have bought a small Dremal lathe to play with, but its like a mini wood lathe, for wood or plastic, and I have bided on an old craftsman 109 on ebay so cros your fingers, it would be good enough for brass and alluminium barrols. Sorry about getting long winded, just had a mouthfull to say, I'll post more pics, oh and ps Im waiting on a copy of the light cruiser book on the list you gave me, so maybee it might have line drawings of the port hole thing LOL.

Out for now, will build more and chat. Haratio.

I didn't feel like Bondo dust tonight so I started working on the fantail.

Note the closeness of the barbettes, so that the guns could have shared the magizine. These ships would have been good comerce raiders but may have found themselves in difficulties against the british cruisers as one good round may have knocked out half of their main armermant. And as large as they were, they didn't have the armor thickness like most other nations due to the treaty weight. They would have been being finished in 1940/41 though so perhapse they could have been upgraded with thicker armor and more AA guns over the original layout. I would think that it wouldn't be very hard to ad a couple single 5.9 inch mounts on the sides of the ship like on the CL Edmund, although I dont believe that the Germans would have done this.

It would have been interesting if the Japanese would have shared the Long Lance Torpedo design with the Germans. It could have been Implemented on ships like these and add a bit more kick to the armerment. The Long Lance were a 25 inch torpedo with about a 1500 longer meter range than the 21 inch design in almost every other navy. The japanese used them to great effect, especialy in night engagements. They were beter used from multiple ships though in calm seas. They would be good n the Mediteranian, and Indian Ocean.

Good morning Horatio,

Progress is getting on well. From what I gather you are working on the plans that you have downloaded from the site www.drearnoughtproject.org, and yes you are right, no portholes are shown in the drawings. This is due to the fact that the ship was still in the initial phases of design, so no real shop drawings in reality exist. As to where the port holes are can be very speculative. In my humble opinion, if you have downloaded the deck plas of the ship, you can clearly dedect where the living quarters where sited. So yes there you can plan and plot the centre lines for the portholes. as for the main deck, please consider the fact, that like other German WW2 Naval ships, the canteen was always situated at the rear side of the ship. Si there you can follow my project and plan the cutouts for the windows. With regards to the hull details,just have some patience. I shall soon continue the works on the Scharnhorst hull, and you can follow my progress.

Come on mate - get the ship ready, and lets go commerce raiding.

I did get this from A site called Cruiser M history, they have a breif description of the Kreigsmarine, and the Z plan. all the ship pics on there are a simple side outline like this but they list the armement and basic engineering specs and ship histories, so its not a bad information source. Anyway The porthole patern on it is probably someones good guess but it does look fairly logical, except above the Torpedo launchers as that area was more of a cut out from the deckline below and the overhead area was the next deckline up. From what I can tell in the line plans it is covered over but there is not enough room to have a crawl space so there would be no portholes there. Again I am going to look at the internal rooms to plot the locations and the linehight from other ships for the horizontal placement but this outline is interesting as it was probably borrowed from Admiral Hipper in concept and imposed onto the side of the plan to look feasable.

I am trying to add the Kreigsmarine website. WWW.German-Nave.de

bought a few more clamps and this allows me to glue a few more peices at a time. I am going to try more wood in the back do to the complex shape of the center screw shaft and beveling. should be interesting, I thought about making it a seperate peice but I could always shave it off if I don't like the outcome and do this. I have been looking at the line prints with the Deck plans and I need to blow a few more plans up to scale, and I believe I can make a logical Porthole pattern to the plans, and Paul You are right the Canteen, IE mess is in the rear of the ship on the starboard side, for the enlisted. Im sure they have a small officers mess, probably in the super structure. anyway I thought it was interesting how large the windows in the lower superstructure of Sharnhorst was and how they still put that many port holes on the ships at these dates, as they were inviting disaster from straffing planes. let alone small artillery from other ships. allbeit where the portholes are located is not in the armored raft area so with the all or nothing princible in place they probably didnt view the portholes as a potential problem.

I may have to taper the ribs a bit more, I will see how they look on the ship, as I can always error on the side or to thick and taper it down.

Gluing the aft keel spar, The Bow weighs about 50 lbs now so its good for pressing it down.

coming out good, now I need to start ribing it out and shaping the center screw support shaft.

Good morning Horatio,

Work is coming up fine. Just one question. How do you intend to match the two hull sections?

I would suggest a flat and sound surface with a straight datum line, to use a a bearing and follower. draw the outline of the deck, site both sections in place; and with the use of set squares - correct any mis-alighnment, in order to get a good and straight looking hull.

Horatio, do not try to cast two separate pieces of the hull and then try to put them in place, because you will never be able to get a correct hull.

Come on mate keep it up - let's see the cruiser ready.

Ty Paul, that is kind of what I planed on the sections of the hull, except I am acctually going to build the center in between the bow and stern where the torpedo's are located on the stern deck level. and when casting the Molds I planned to cast the whole hull in a center split 2 peice arangement. I can use that kind of mold to cast styrafoam and or shape sheet metal in the halves and mig weld from the inside on a half then put the molds together and finish welding the center together down the middle keel line. The peices Im working on now will be the Master static model though. I wish I could afford it, or lived close enough to you. You could cast your hull in silicone and we could make styrafoam hulls from yours. When I finish this ship I am planning on the next one being the Japanese Light Cruiser Yahagi. This is the ship that I am using the hull in 1/350 with the 15cm German gun turrets on in the begining of the thread. Well for the time being the Z class is keeping me occupied. Between the Wife and Daughter and other family things I dont get to work on it as much as I would like, LOL You know how that goes, otherwise we would have these projects done in a month. Maybe thats why it takes so long to build the real ones, because the wives and other obligations get in the workers way LOL. I'll post more tonight. I finally got a day off from work so I can do some more on the ship. Good Hunting. Haratio.

Adding in more body filler to keep shaping.

adding more ribs to the stern. I think I'm going a bit tall on this set so i have to figure out where the center shaft support shape blends into the hull so I can cauculate a more accurate sloap. I'll start at the back of the stern and work my way forward to achieve this and cut down the ribs as needed, and as I've said before Id rather have it a bit big than small as it is easier to grind it down than to have to fill in a big area. I'm thinking of using Marglass first this time and then the filler and see if that is quicker. It would definatly be lighter that way.

Hello Horatio,

I fully agree with what you have said. The slope towards the stern must be planned very carefully. Generally the slope begins from the middle of the hull. Remember, the Germans had very nice streamlined ship hulls, especially designed to gain speed during sea faring.
So be very carfull as how to create the slops towards the sterm.
As for the rest, you seem to be doing a good job.

Awesome project you have here Horatio.....keep them coming....
In nannu

Laying it out to get it mesured for attachment.

Checking out where the mid hull will fit in. Note the stern deck is one deck lower than the bow.

The fore bulkhead for the Torpedo launcher cut outs on the lower deck.

I started reshaping the ribs on the stern to get a sloap going, I'll see how it looks and ajust it as I go along.