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An LCM3 Adventure

Next I moved on to the top and loading area of the hull. This might look like a lot of work but its actually only about 5 large pieces glued together, and then a few of the smaller details added.

This is one area where Italeri amazed me. When I saw these large pieces I thought I’d have to do huge amounts of seam filling and sanding, but amazingly there was almost none. As long as you go slowly the pieces all line up perfectly and I think I had to fill a total of maybe half an inch worth of seam. I was truly shocked. Well done Italeri!

After the main pieces of the deck were dry, I began detailing them. The brass candy-cane shaped fuel tank vents were made simply by bending brass rod to replace the molded on ones. These are actually an interesting source of variation amongst LCM3s. On the Italeri kit there are two on the left side and one on the right side. On most LCM3s this is the pattern for them, but I have images showing two on the right side as well, an addition to some showing additional vents further forward.

You can also see the four large funnel vents spaced around the upper area of the deck. Italeri provides them in two halves. This means the outside seam is very easy to remove, but the inner one is a complex three dimensional curve inside the vent which you can see on the finished model because of the size of the vent openings. Also the vents themselves were made from thin sheet metal and often seen dented or damaged in images, which means the Italeri ones are very overly thick. I don’t blame Italeri for this, as this is likely the best their molding machines could do, but it still leaves an overly thick, seam-filled part.

I spent about 6 hours cleaning and thinning a single one down to my satisfaction. I then realized what I’d done, said ‘screw this’ and resin cast the remaining three! I may never use this mold again, but at least it saved me several days worth of work.

Also as a side note, the vents are not standard on all LCM3s. These vents are smooth in the kit and in the LCM3 Loading image I have, but on several other LCM3 I’ve seen these vents square, rectangular, or round and segmented. If you’re doing a generic LCM3 then the kit ones will be fine, but if you want to build a specific one be sure to check what style that particular ship used.

Once the evergreen strips had set on the hull, I added a coat of Tamiya Basic putty over them and left this to dry for a week. This technique was detailed in Tamiya Model Magazine issue 102. I also tried the technique they used in issue 109, which was to just tape over the strips instead, but found this produced ribs which were too pronounced for my liking, and the edges of the tape were nearly impossible to hide entirely. Frankly, unless you’re in a huge rush I don’t recommend the tape method.

There is a trick to applying the Tamiya putty to get a good result though. If you want very moderate ribbing then feel free to coat the outer hull entirely with the putty, let it dry and sand it smooth. The shrinkage of the putty will likely be enough to see the ribs a bit. But for most of us, myself included, we want the ribs more visible and pronounced. For this, when applying the putty, concentrate on applying it over the ribs, and make sure that it covers the ribs but is very shallow to non-existent in the center of each of the squares. If you do this right, and sand it focusing on the center of the depression and just smoothing the putty over the ribs, you get a wonderful pattern that IMHO looks very realistic. If your putty starts to harden before you can get it smooth, simply apply some Tamiya Lacquer thinner to it and it will become workable again.