Edmund Fitzgerald

I've been fascinated by the lore of the Fitz ever since I read that Gordon Lightfoot was compelled to write the ballad when he saw the local newspaper "Couldn't even have the courtesy to spell the name of the ship correctly."  From there I saw as many of the documentaries as I could, read as many of the books as I good to get a feeling for what really happened.  The I saw this ad for Iron Shipwrights. There I saw the 1/700 Edmund Fitzgerald. 

 

I started cleaning up the resin, and ran across one of the reasons why I dislike when companies try to clean things up for the buyer. After a while the get sloppy and thats when accidents happen. Here we have them using the grinder to take off the pour stub and oops whoever hit the side of the hull3 times with the edge of the grinder.

 So that will have to be fixed. A few layers of Tamiya putty did the trick. While that was drying I was feeling especially ambitious, and check to the accuracy of the portholes on the hull. The other thing was that after cutting the decks from the stub, they started to warp. I needed the very hot water treatment for that. Thankfully the decks were thin and straightened out just from the hot water dip.

The next step was painting the ship. Looking at the real ship we're looking at mostly 2 colors~ white and Hull Red.

 

So that's where I started.

 And that where we're leaving it for now. Check back...

Edmund Fitzgerald

This is another kit out of the depths of my stash. The Fitz was done my Iron Shipwright Models, and in looking for the url, I see they are still around being bought by Commander Models. 

The ship is 1/700 scale working out to about 12" .  Being an older kit, the smaller pieces have a bit of flash on them and will take some time to clean. It looks like they took off the pour plug on the bottom of the hull with a grinder. The bottom is a bit rough, but if you are going to sit it "in water" that won't be a problem. The one big problem is that while the grinder was still spinning, it accidentally hit the side of the hull. That needs to be fixed!

The image from the website indicates they redid the molds and things are better arranged. 

 Since mine will be in water, I'm not worrying about the bottom, so the first think to tackle is the gouges on the side. I started out fill them with Tamiya putty, but didn't like the look and redid it with some Aves. The next thing is to tackle the decks. I guess they were in the box so long that each one had some type of warpage. A quick dunk it super hot water fixed that.

The gouge and the warp

 I decided that I would clean the fiddly bits as I needed them, so next is a coat of primer, and when dry, the base colors. The ship is basically two colors - white and Hull Red. 

 That's where we are going to leave it for this session. Check back for more.