After the strips had dried they were trimmed and sanded to give an acceptable result.
Then it's back to the superstructure.
The front of the superstructure was filled with styrene and filler.
To add strength to the joint, some styrene tube was glued into place. The joint at the rear of this section needed a little filling, with styrene filler, and gentle sanding.
The area under the fore deck is open, and you can see all the way into the ship. You probably won't notice it much, but I decided to fill it. It just needs a bulkhead running across, as you won't see any detail under there anyway.
To form the bulkhead, I extended the floor with styrene strip. This ran a length of 7mm strip across the deck forming the bulkhead. Triangles of styrene added strength to the bulkhead, and held it vertical. When this was dry, The cut outs on the deck were filled with styrene, and filler used to make sure there wasn't any gaps. Sanding completed the job. I'll paint the inside of the hull in dark grey or black, so any small gap with the side of the hull will appear as a shadow line.
Near the rear of the md deck, there is a director tower, probably for the AA guns. This is made of three parts, not including the director itself, which will be added later. It goes together alright, but there are some gaps which need filling and sanding.
In front of the director tower, is the aft funnel base. This is made of a superstructure section, which a director platform and two part funnel. The funnel cap needs painting black, so will be added after painting.
In front of the funnel base, are two things, I'm not sure what they are, but could be fire hose systems.
They just glue in.
The director platform glues in alright, but the funnel needs some filling and sanding. Some styrene filler has been run up the join, and when set, it will be sanding back.
While waiting for various bits to dry, I decided to move on to the main turrets. Each turret is made of four parts. The first and forth turret have rangefinders on the roof, which I will fit after any sanding is complete.
The 8inch guns are alright, but I have the armament set from Master Models which replace the 8inch and 100mm (3.9inch) guns.
The plastic barrels are cut off the mounts and 1mm holes drills. I drilled the holes to 1.1mm to allow a little wiggle room if needed. A little superglue holds the barrels in place.
The base of the metal barrels are slightly thicker than the plastic ones, so a little trimming of the turret front is required. When together, there is a seam round the base of the turret and for the wing pieces which need filling. The undersides of the wings are also hollow, which I don't think should be, so these will be filled too.
A quick look on the fore deck.
I've run some filler round the base of the turret. When the filler dries, there and on the other parts, I'll sand everything smooth and these see what I need to do next.