I stated in a post elsewhere that this kit abides by Murphy's Law. It seems that at every step a challenge is created thanks to some kind of unexpected mishap. Today, a part of a yard of the forward tower top deck snapped off when I attempted to remove a support piece, a byproduct of the 3D printing process used, attached to it.
Then there's this little tale; A few days ago, a sudden twitch of my fingers when attempting to adjust a searchlight I had put in place resulted in that searchlight and a nearby one flying off. I managed to find one of the pair by sweeping the floor with my hands and reattached it. Then I dug up a substitute searchlight, painted it, and attached it. The next day, I spotted a small grey particle on my kitchen floor. Picking it up and inspecting it, I saw that I had located the other searchlight. I was pleased at my turn of good fortune.
But first I had remove the substitute part. Since it was attached with white glue (the kind known as "bondo" here in Japan) I was able to remove it by applying water to the glue joint with a paint brush. That softened the glue enough to allow me to gently rock the piece and get it detached. I was giving the searchlight base a quick scraping with a hobby knife to ensure that it would fit in its locator hole...when the top broke off. So I attached the base to the model and then glued on the top of the searchlight. It wasn't perfect but it was good enough.
This photo shows the state of the model a few days ago. Unfortunately, because of its size, the iPhone camera didn't quite find its focus on the centre of the ship.
At that point I had finished attaching the ship's boats and cutters in the centre section of the ship.
Next I proceeded to build the midship secondary armament turrets. After those were in place I moved along to the boat handling cranes...and saw that one wasn't exactly straight. The bend wasn't too noticeable so I let it be.
It's not beautiful but it isn't that bad looking, eh?
A while back I had snapped the hangar shutter door into two parts whilst filing it. I lost one half but discovered it in a sweep, literally, when searching for another piece. Today, I made some adjustments with a hobby knife, reattached the two halves, let the assembly sit for a bit, and then did some filing to the top edge of the door. Then I jitterly glued it into place. It doesn't fit in snuggly but I'm not in the mood to make any more adjustments.
The last bit of work for today was to assemble the rear secondary armament turrets, paint the lower portion of them, and attach them to the ship.
My next step is to get the remaining ship's boats and cutters onboard. That will be challenging as half a dozen of them must be attached to carriages which are meant to sit on rails on the ship's deck.
