Revell 1/144th Type XXI U-Boat with Interior detail - Part One

Ok, so I know its not really wargaming related, but I thought it was worth posting anyway 😊.

For my birthday (way back in July!) my wife bought me the Revell 1/144th Type XXI U-Boat kit that has interior detail.

This is a relatively straight forward kit with sufficient detail to pass muster and I had in mind to try and build it with interior LED lighting to show off the work inside.

To do this I had what I considered a brain-wave! I bought a cheap set of battery operated LED Christmas Lights from Wilko's which I planned to cut down to suit. To cover the large outer surface area quickly and simply, I bought a cheap can of Grey Primer from Poundland, which I tried on some sprue to check first if it was plastic friendly....which it was 😁

There is some moulded detail on the inside surfaces of the hull halves too. Both inner faces were sprayed white primer.

Assembly is broken down into 30+ steps. Starting with the interior from the torpedo tubes working back to the engine room.The walls of the various subsections all have a lot of finely moulded details of gauges, pipes etc.  The model includes neatly printed decals to attach to these, but I opted to hand paint these as they decals look a little 2D when applied.

Interior parts were also sprayed white to start off with.

The decal sheet and hand painted bulk heads mirroring the decal colour scheme

Close up of interior bulkheads

The interior parts were all sprayed white on the sprue and shaded using the new Apothecary White Contrast Paint before these details were added.

Close up of some hand painted interior detail

Finally when all the interior is finished, you encase it within the two hull halves and add the conning tower.

Conning tower interior

Coning tower itself

This is where I've got to. The outer hull is complete and has now to be painted. Really the model needs hand rails adding from wire /stretched sprue along the hull edges, but I haven't the time or inclination, so I think I will leave this.

As each section of interior is finished it is added to the rest of the sections, building up and entire section of U-Boat interior.

Hopefully in the next few days I will finally finish the model and post some more pictures.

The two hull parts are difficult to fit together and needed to be held over-night to dry

Here you can see the LEDs switched on!

Completed U-Boat just awaiting outer hull finishing.

Further progress can be seen here:- https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=8202950016349004277#editor/target=post;postID=6295294259676548422;onPublishedMenu=allposts;onClosedMenu=allposts;postNum=0;src=postname