PT-109 Patrol Torpedo Boat by Revell in 1/72 Scale. Part 1, Kit Construction

[Music] well hello and welcome to the channel i'm glad you could join me for uh this uh first part of the series on our pt109 patrol torpedo boat this model kit is by revell and it is in 172 scale and i hope you enjoy the video so let's go ahead and take a look at what we need to get done all right so we're going to flip through here and find step one there we go so on step one it is the assembly of the hull so we got two whole halves and a bulkhead uh the bow plate and of course putting our stand together we're going to need that for our boat so we're going to need some pieces of tape here so when we start gluing up the whole halves we got something to keep it from moving on us so it's always good to be prepared before you commit the glue so i decided to go ahead and align the very front edge here of the bow we're going to start gluing it up right there there is an alignment pin on this portion so you don't have to worry about not getting the parts matched correctly so what we're going to do is just put some to me extra thin on it here and we're actually going to let that set uh that way that edge will be nice and firm so i'm gonna take that opportunity right there while it's setting to go ahead and cut out our uh bulkhead here that is a stiffener that goes inside of our hole and i always leave these sprue gates nice and long as long as i can when i cut them away from the sprues that way i can get real close and trim them off later and then we can just come in and sand it uh here i'm using a 180 stick to kind of get it done quickly this part doesn't it's not going to be seen but i do come back in and sand it with a 400 stick so once we square up these edges and that's important to remember on this kit that you need to square up uh all your edges so now we're going to go back to the hull of our boat here and we're going to tape that bow section that is set up nicely for us and and has tacked up to we don't have to worry about it pulling apart here and we're just going to go down the keel of the boat i'm learning nautical terms thank you very much which is pretty good and quite challenging uh for for a tank guy but uh we're gonna get it uh and as you can see here the method that i'm using here just to assemble the hull is to do it in sections and you just put the to me extra thin on there and allow it to set off so it's not tacky and then put the tape on it and now we can put our bulkhead in place and it does just snap right in and it is a really good fit so with that snapped in we can go ahead and put a little bit extra thin on that to make sure that it doesn't go anywhere now i want to make sure that it's fully seated because i don't want it to interfere with the the deck of the craft [Music] so now we're ready for our stern section here and we're just going to cut that out from our sprue tree and once again as with all the parts if i can when i cut them free i do leave these sprue gates long so this is going to require some fitting uh so if there's any uh trying to think uh mold seam lines there we go mold seam lines we need to make sure we clean stuff like that up also where the stern section here joins to the lower hull it's not square so do need to do a little bit of sanding on it there and like the instructions says at the very beginning to test fit uh i highly recommend it you need to test fit everything on this kit um and there are some gaps but that's not that big of a deal i know we would like to be able to build a model without any gaps but you know that's that's modeling so once the glue sets off a little bit i go ahead and put the tape on i don't tape it before gluing because i don't want the glue to follow the tape to me extra thin will do that and then you'll have something that you're gonna have to sand off later and fix so with test fitting in mind we're gonna go ahead and test fit uh the deck to the uh the whole section here and we just want to make sure that it fits well as you can see it it bows up in the center which is better than it blowing up on the ends so that's a good thing and it fits really good so once our stern section has dried uh or is firm enough anyway i go ahead and put some testers model putty on it and uh i'll let that dry and then i come back and sand it down so we sand and polish it down uh nice and uh flat and there we have our bow plate in place it's not a great fit you have to fit that part quite a bit and now we can put our stand together so this stand actually pretty much just snaps together of course we want it to be nice and solid we don't want it to come apart on us [Music] so all we need to do is take and put a little bit of to me extra thin on it and that'll secure it and it'll be ready for our boat and now we'll have some place to set the boat as we're building it so now we can move on to our next steps we have this cabin area here that is uh needs to be done and then the little floor area for our chart room and also we need to decide what version that we're going to build so we'll know what holes to drill in the in the deck here as you can see here it's the 51 and 52 are referring to the paint schemes in the back of the instructions so depending upon which uh version you decide to build uh you need to drill those appropriate holes and we're gonna have to remove some sprues there and then of course we're going to test fit those areas complete this page [Music] so here we're going to go ahead and assemble this cabin area here it's got two benches i guess you'll call them or couches and some cabinet detail so well i'm just going to start with uh this one on one side here and let it tack up then we go ahead and put the floor in place now it's important to make sure that you go ahead and sand these pieces and square these edges off from the molding process they've got a little taper on them and that can affect how well that they actually go together and set flush now this is a really soft plastic that ravel has used here in this kit so it's a little bit different than what i'm kind of used to if you put too much glue it will melt on you and you'll get a lot of plastic push out in your seam lines so here we're going to go ahead and drill these holes so i've decided the version i want to build is going to be the gray version and not the green version which is the last version the green version was uh and the reason why i want to go with the gray one is because well i built a lot of tanks and i've got a lot of green so if you are a uh a ship guy maybe you want a little bit of color and you want a little bit of green so once i drill these out when whenever you drill through polystyrene you're gonna have a little bit of uh a burr that pushes up so in order to clean that up i use an oversized drill bit and just center it up on the hole and very lightly i don't want it to really dig in but very lightly spin that drill bit right over the hole and that will just clean it right up nice and smooth it looks good so now what we want to do is test fit and make sure that our cabin area here fits and also for our chart room i think it's called the chart room uh make sure that that seated section fits so we actually need to go through and look at our instructions now we've completed those two steps right there uh for our cabin area in our chart room and we've test fitted them now we haven't glued these in yet so we're just going to flip through here and look uh on how ravel wants us to build up these sections and it kind of looks like uh they want us to glue these sections onto the main deck but i'm thinking uh we can go ahead and actually build these uh super structures up without actually attaching them to the main deck and then we can paint the interiors white you know and put the windows in and stuff like that and then put them on the main deck so i just want to make sure that i i believe that i can do that now there are parts that we're gonna have to uh make up and have ready yes but we can do uh the rear section here i think it's over the engine compartment engineering space hey that's a nautical term engineering space rear deck we can put on so yeah here's some little bitty bits and pieces that we may have to wait on but you get the idea there so if we can i i guess they're called superstructure parts more or less well that's what we're going to call them on our boat we're going to try to build these units up into pieces that we can [Music] fully assemble and paint the interiors on and then we can attach them later to the main deck as you can see here ravel wants you to put these pieces on one at a time onto the deck and it would be impossible to paint it as a hole like that so i'm going to deviate from the instructions that's a big surprise there i know but uh i just feel that it's so much easier to go ahead and build this stuff up instead of attaching it piece at a time i don't want to do piece meal on these uh superstructure areas so let's go ahead and see if we can do that so the first thing we need to do is go ahead and get these uh small pieces here that the chart room area needs to be attached to the underside of the deck so i'm just going to use this to me a mask to do that with that way when we go to fit our parts uh we'll be able to uh have something for them to sit on especially with the rear deck or the uh not the deck area but the uh cabin area i am having a hard time aren't i guys so this cabin area needs to be uh secured to the underside of the deck there now we're not gonna glue this it'll be easier to paint later if we don't glue it and then we need to go ahead and test fit these uh other panels that's going to go on to the deck this very rare one here with my thumbs on it it does not fit very well at all so it's going to need some fitting and but that one we can go ahead and attach we can glue that down it's non-critical so we want to make sure that the uh the deck is sitting exactly how it's going to be when it is glued to the hole so i do tape that up and i just want to make sure that it's nice and secure because these um we'll call them superstructure parts that goes on to the main deck we want to make sure that their contact angles are correct is that making sense to you so first cabin that we're going to work on here is going to be i guess we're going to say midships so um we're going to go ahead and put this uh section together right here just kind of snap it together and that's where one of the 50 caliber firing cupolas gunner positions is and there are slots in our deck that these parts kind of fit into now we don't want to glue these parts in we just want to make up the deck or the the cabin area here and as you can see the front bulkhead for that is in the bottom section of that cabin so that's the reason why we had to actually tape that into place and we'll put the rear section in and it it fits it does it goes together uh as long as you straighten up and square up your edges uh you're not going to have any issues uh with this portion now there are some items that we are going to have to fit and that's just the nature of the game so we just want to make sure that everything is fit and set into place [Music] and once we get everything in there nice and uh aligned we can go ahead and secure it and for that i'm just going to use that to me a mask to go ahead and do it i think this is 10 millimeter wide mask just in case you're curious that's what i'm using so now we're going to start working on the forward superstructure area and it's all the same concept a little bit of tape we're going to just tape these sections together because if we don't we're just going to be knocking them off left and right so we're going to secure them and then [Music] put these parts into place on the deck right where it needs to go that way we can check the fit of the rest of the parts and see what we got going on with it remember test fit test fit test fit so there are some areas here in our ford superstructure that needs our attention uh one you can see that this doesn't fit really all that well to figure out what we don't we do not want that great big gap there so we're going to have to do some modification there and also this little piece right here on the cabin area it sticks up kind of proud which means it's above where it actually should seat so we're gonna have to thin it out there on the edge so we can glue that up also uh in the rear section here we've got this big gap and let's take care of that now on this panel uh that goes right behind where the captain is uh navigating the vessel there are little issues there there are oh here you can see i've already glued up this portion of it and fitted [Music] uh it doesn't really give you any real issues other than the front panel where the where the ship's wheel goes [Music] also here i missed a couple of ejector pin marks you see down in there those two are going to be visible that one and the one down low so i need to go ahead and fill those sand those off nice and smooth now when it comes to this piece here i really don't know what it's called it's a divider or some kind uh it does have like these two little bench areas on it or they could be standing platforms um but they're they weren't square to the part [Music] uh as you can see right there so what i did was i squared them off and then i built it up a little bit thin polystyrene sheet and then i'm going to come back in and i will just sand those down nice and flat and square to the piece so it needs to be at a 90 degree angle there that way it'll fit really good to the the rest of the superstructure so we have a few areas here where we actually need to use some filler little holes and cracks and spaces um so we're just going to fill that and sand and smooth that stuff out you can see here those are joining panels there that needs to be filled too now when it comes to that cabin area that is in the center of the vessel i guess that would be a midships maybe correct me if i'm wrong um we do need to fit the section uh of the the rear section of the roof area as you can see it just doesn't really fit um and i think most of the trouble is up around where the uh the gunner position is right there that that nice arched area so i'm going to file some of that out and see if we can get that to fit in the way it should so after a little bit of work here uh it will fit and it slides into place and we can go ahead and glue that up it's going to require a little bit of filler but that's okay so over our engineering spaces uh we have this deck section here that will go on so it's got the ships boxes on it and i don't know what that center protrusion is but also these uh these vents need to go on it as well as uh this uh it's it's a railing that's there to keep the gunner from shooting into the uh into the boat area and all your machine guns and stuff have these so we need to affix that and we can put that in as a as a unit so this is a patrol torpedo boat so the most important armament that's on our boat is our torpedoes [Music] they don't necessarily fit really well they kind of bow out a little bit and there is a little bit of flash that you need to clean off of the mating surfaces which is unusual but once you do that uh i just use clothes pins here to keep the assembly aligned and we just start uh at the end of it and just go back towards the rear of the tube torpedo tube gluing it up section at a time and it does fit together um it's just kind of weird how it works uh and then we can put the uh the loading door or breech for the tube on [Music] and this is really soft plastic so um once you hit it with the to be extra thin everything really kind of melts together really quickly so once that sets up all we need to do now is to take care of the uh the mold seam i mean not the mulching but the adjoining scene where we joined the two halves and i do use a soft flexible sanding stick for this that way we don't end up with a flat spot on a curved surface we don't want to sand in a a flat spot that would be really noticeable and since this is a torpedo bow we want the torpedoes to look really good and then i have a small thin sanding stick to take care of these little bitty areas where the big ones won't get into so next we can go ahead and attach the mounts where it's attached to the deck um and glue those into place now there's a lot of cleanup on these uh and they are kind of delicate so you do have to take a lot of time with those but they do look really good we're just going to put a little bit to me extra thin on them make sure that they're pressed into place nicely and it shouldn't be any issues and there we have our first torpedo tube ready to go and all we got to do is reproduce that three more times so now we can turn our attention to the gunner positions here for our twin fifties and there are these rails that need to go into place on the forward one now the rails are made into the rear uh cupola area but here you can see that the base section um kind of sticks proud and so we need to take and thin that out now while i've been building this i've got in this perfect putty here perfect plastic putty uh it's by deluxe international i think and it is a water-based uh paste type putty water-based paste type putty boy try to say that ten times fast um so i am putting it on the glossy side of a piece of scrap cardboard here and that will help keep it from uh soaking up all the water out of the uh the putty i don't want it to dry too fast and then we're just going to go ahead and apply it on these little areas right here where those railings are attached now i do fill the top section here which after putting the cupolas in place you can't you can't see it but i guess it makes me feel better to do that and just on the corners on the sides is really all you need to concentrate on right there and we'll sand that down nice and smooth later so the cupolas aren't an issue other than cleaning the parts up but uh when it comes to the rear deck gun here this is an anti-aircraft gun um there are a couple of issues with it so what we're going to do is we're going to start off by gluing this pedestal together [Music] and it goes together like you would expect there's a couple alignment pins and a little bit of to be extra thin [Music] so here's one of the issues you can see right on the bottom here where the molding has been kind of cut it's so uneven so we have to actually file this down and if you ask me this is kind of a critical mounting area you know because you want this pedestal to be straight and since it is tapered when it's assembled that you know that's kind of a they should have paid more attention to it it's kind of disappointing there but it is a keyed piece um and we just put it on its mouth and you can see it it looks alright but we have the same issue here with the top of the pedestal see how uneven it is it's just a bad molding or a bad cutting of the of the molds so once we get that um sorted through we'll just go ahead and glue this up uh you would think for a kit as new as this this is a 2018 for first tooling uh that you wouldn't have these kind of issues so i am a little disappointed there so next up we have on the stern of the vessel there is a tank that needs to go there and this tank is for the smoke generators from my understanding i could be wrong so we're just going to clean up the sprue gates on it here and there are some seams that need to be taken care of uh we need to take and flatten the base of the of the tank here and just sand that down nice and flat now the cap that's on the end of it here should be rounded um so we want to make sure and the the sprue gate is so large on this uh basically we're just kind of reshaping the end of it [Music] now there are six mufflers on our patrol torpedo boat and i've decided to go ahead and drill out the exhaust exits on these um i can't tell you really what size drill bit this is i just kind of match it up to one that's going to work well for it and as you can see there that's going to look pretty good that's a nice little small detail i also drill out the horn so i'll let you know that so we've got all of the main fitting issues taken care of and the super structures glued up but not glued to the deck so we can go ahead and install the propeller shafts now these are kind of fragile parts so i kind of saved that towards the end here we don't want to be knocking off and breaking these while we're building the rest of the model so the center one is actually symmetrically square i guess is what i'm looking for but on the uh the ones on the outboard ones uh they are at 90 degrees to the bottom of the hall so kind of need to pay attention to that also we're going to go in and glue in our rudders now we will not put the propellers on yet because we're going to paint them up separately and it's just easier to do that and attach that separately later on and these rudders actually are the opposite of most of the other parts they fit really really loose so i just put a little bit of tea extra thin on them there and we just want to make sure that the alignment is good on these um we don't want one of our rudders you know going left the other one going right or i should say port and starboard right yeah so we do need to get that uh lined up so here we are uh this is as far as we're going to go with assembly at this point because a lot of this stuff needs to be painted separately here the interior the cabin the propellers the ladder the exhausts the rest of the boat though is dry fitted we do have the superstructure areas are just dry fitted in place as long along with the cupolas and the weapons uh the torpedo tubes are just dry fit and set in place along with the the raft that goes on the front of the vessel as well and that'll just make it so much easier to paint we can get the interior and then the guns and everything painted up so that's going to wrap this video up guys it's been fun i've really enjoyed working on this kit it does have a few challenges but nothing that a modeler that has a few kits under his belt couldn't deal with so as always i wanted to thank all my subscribers you guys are great it's because of you that i keep putting out these little videos for you to watch and see how these kits go together for me and of course you don't have to do what i do so now if you're new to the channel and you like this kind of content and you enjoy watching um let me go through these kits uh go ahead and subscribe uh if you're not already a subscriber and hit that notification bell because you're not gonna want to miss the next in this series which is where we're going to start spreading some paint and that ought to be a lot of fun see what we can come up with there try to make our vessel look like a actual boat so i will see you in the next video

Channel: Hillbilly Modeling

Views: 12,311

Keywords: PT109, PT-109, PT Boat, WWII, Revell, 1/72 Scale

Id: mh_VqLPHUbk

Length: 33min 34sec (2014 seconds)

Published: Fri Aug 12 2022