They were then attached to the upper deck, at an angle, as per reference photos of U995.

The outer struts were then made and attached using the same technique for the inner struts.

Upper deck step ladders and struts completed.

The attached photo shows the port earthing bracket fitted to the upper deck. The starboard bracket was also fitted at this time.

Hi Phil,
Another amazing update. Your attention to the smallest detail is so inspiring
Kind regards,
Garth

Hi Phil more stunning work. love watching what you come up with next on this build.

look forward to seeing what you do with them Phil. And congrats on your member of the year

Good evening from 'The Dockyard'.

I have a word that describes a pointless venture; 'faffing' or 'faffing about'.

That's how I would summarise last week and hence no post.

The next part of this build was to scratch build the water-tight ammunition containers of which there are three on the lower deck of the conning tower and two on the upper.

They have a distinctive domed profile and I really wanted to capture that look rather than a flat top, so I ordered four plastic domed caps of one size and three of a slightly smaller size. These domed caps are used to cover screw heads on things like furniture.

They arrived. They had a nice domed profile. I was happy.

The problems started when I tried to separate the domed head from its shaft. The plastic was more rubbery than I would of liked and so cutting them meant I was left with a really ragged edge. Filing couldn't remedy this and thus i was left with a rather scruffy looking set of domes.

I then began to fix them to small, 3mm lengths of 12mm diameter plastic tubing that i had ordered as a 1 meter length. The domed caps didn't like super glue. Things started to get messy and very sticky, especially where fingers were involved!

I then painted the domed caps, which were black, in the light grey I intend to use for the conning tower to see if that would make them look more appealing. The domed caps didn't like the paint. Once dry you could easily wipe it off with your finger.

All of this meant two evenings of 'faffing about'!

The next idea I tried to achieve a domed edge was to glue a 1.5mm half round, profiled plastic strip around the edge of the 3mm lengths of plastic tube. After much bending to get the half round strips to fit, I then applied some super glue to the plastic tube. The plastic tube didn't like super glue and the half round strips did not stick!

Another evening spent 'faffing about'!

By this time it was too late to write an update and that weeks modelling time was done! Hurrumph!

My last plan fortunately worked. I cut out circles of 0.25mm thick plastic sheet with a compass cutter and glued one of these to each end of the plastic tube with PVA to make a cylinder shape. Success!

Using 3.0mm diameter plastic rod cut to 1.0mm thick, i made three and glued each one to the centre of the cylinders, applied liberal amounts of Polyfilla to the top of each cylinder and when dry, carefully filed it so it tapered up to the centre of each cylinder. The locking clamps were made of 1.0mm square strip and the locking handles were made from 0.5mm diameter brass rod.

There has been no 'faffing about' this week!

See attached photo of the three water-tight ammunition containers for the lower deck.

I have also been busy ordering after market parts, namely brass barrels for the guns that adorn the conning tower.

One of these orders arrived this week from Master Models in Poland; the 3.7cm flak 18 gun barrel. There are two in the packet, but i will only require one of them.

The flak 18 was an older style, surpassed by the flak 37, which was lighter, had a greater range and used on the Type VIIC U-boats. Fortunately, the flak 37 barrel is the same as the flak 18, which is just as well because I couldn't find any in 1/48 scale!

The attached photo shows a close up of the packaging.