Next I moved on to the construction of Zuiho's heavy weapons: the dual 5" gun mounts. Printing out re-scaled drawings from AOTS Yamato helped immensely and the guns were completed in short order. Certain details were left off until I was nearly completed the kit. I didn't want to add the fine details so early and have something snap off. The smoke shield covered 5" gun was more of a challenge, but I think it turned out pretty good.

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I then cut out sheets from the 4' x 8' roll of styrene I purchased and attached them to the wood hull with a bio epoxy (a standard epoxy would have melted the styrene). This part was tricky as I had never worked with epoxy on wood and styrene. I got lucky and didn't need to pull apart any parts of it. You only get one chance to attach them. This layer of styrene covered the sides and the bottom of the hull, but was too thick to be bent around the entire hull in the rounded edges. Once the thicker styrene set with the epoxy, I affixed thinner sheets (.05") of styrene around the entire hull, effectively encasing it in styrene. As you will see in the forthcoming step 5 I then added strips of .01" styrene to recreate the strakes that the actual ship had. So, by the time the ship was completed, she had three layers on styrene over the majority of the hull. To scale she has more belt and side armor than the actual ship! Once again the automotive filler and the sandpaper fixed any blemishes. You can see the first layer of styrene afixed to the hull sides in the two images below. She was officially a white elephant.

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