Holes in a sunken ship...

Drilling the portholes, neatening up those holes, sanding down the insides and cleaning the flash from the mouldings took all of three evenings to complete. When held against a light source the effect the interior lighting will have on the model was apparent straight away.

Certainly a boring task in every sense but in the end worth every drop of tea consumed in order to keep my sanity. The two halves would now need to be joined together. On the model this is helped by a couple of locating lugs molded into the hull, these will be invisible once the two halves are paired together. What I have to say though is that I was not very impressed with the way the keel of the ship looked. Trying to avoid any puns but more holes than Swiss cheese comes to mind. 

It took about two hours to clean the edges of the hull in order that it could fit together nicely without too many gaps. Some bending of the structure with it being plastic is inevitable as the mould cools and the plastic naturally contracts. With such large sections this becomes even more of an issue. 

I found the worst section to be over the large curved stern of the ship where it seemed as though this was almost moulded out of scale with the rest of it. In the end I resorted to using a sheet of fine wet n dry sand paper to file this down, test fitting all the time.

*Top tip* when removing extra plastic remember to remove just a little at a time, test fitting between sanding. Its much easier to remove another small section than to have to add a lump of filler to fill the gap after.

Eventually it fitted together nicely, I have decided that I may go over the keel again with some filler later if it still doesn't look quite right. The model will be displayed on its stand and as with anything that has interior lighting, it is just crying out to be viewed at close quarters.

I hope the pictures above give a good idea of the size of the model. At almost 26 inches in length its anything but small. I would also like to point out that the pink hair bands are not my own and were donated by my daughter to help hold it together while the glue dried. I left it like this for 24 hours, much longer than the recommended 2 because this is what everything else will eventually be resting on and it needs to be one of the strongest components.

It was at this point I realised I had missed a section of portholes on the starboard side and had to drill these out. Knowing what I do about the history of the vessel and seeing the hull in an almost completed state it did feel almost surreal making holes in the sides...