Reboot Redux

OK, so I got off to a halting start with the Mavis. As the anniversary of my first date with my wife approached, I got to thinking of this kit by AMT/ERTL, "Yellow Submarine" (1999 issue) that I had promised to build for her ages ago. I scored the kit on eBay some time ago and decided to do this first, especially since the Mavis will involve a lot of detail work to rescribe everything and add desired extra details. I needed an easier reboot into the hobby.

First up was checking out the parts: turns out there are more parts than needed--apparently these funny flowery-shaped thingies

are supposed to be used to create a stand for a cardboard poster of the four Beatles as indicated by the newest reissue (2012) of the kit by Round2 models.

The kit was intended to roll across the floor via a wind up rubber band and to have doors that opened to reveal "'Old' Fred" and "Jeremy, The Nowhere Man." I decided to delete these functions and fill the resulting gaps. This turned out to be a challenge.

The doors didn't quite curve right to fit flush with the body. Rather than shim it up and then file and sand it to the right curvature, I elected to deeply score the inside of the doors so I could flex the plastic to the proper curvature.

Then I had to mount the doors into place. I found a use for those flowery-thingies:

The left side of the sub had a warp in the bottom such that it wouldn't flush up with its mate when the halves were joined. So I fashioned a prop to spread the base out a bit to get a better flush surface.

Once I got the doors in place and relatively flush with the hull, I had to fill the gaps. I used Evergreen styrene strips and gap-filling superglue. An interesting technique I came across in the Mavis issue of the ModelArt magazine used Scotch tape laid over the superglue to create a smoother surface requiring "less" sanding. 

I tried it out and it really worked nicely... except that a gummy residue was left behind (the tape adhesive). I had to scrub the surface and use a tape adhesive remover to get rid of the gumminess but the end result was pretty nice:

Next: assembling the conning tower scopes and hull halves.