The Buoy was cut out as per the instruction from the vac-form sheet, the two pieces were measured and checked for a good fit. I decided from the start that i wanted a flashing warning light fitted to the top of the buoy, first hough i had to work out the best way to have the buoy come apart so as to fit a battery. I cut out the circular area on the upper dome, making sure that i kept the cut as cleanly as possible to help hide the removable battery hatch. I added strips of styrene on the inner side to give the hatch something to rest on and to hopefully put back some of the strength from the now weakend part. Once i had this done and i was happy with the fit, I then glued the upper and lower body sections of the Buoy together with styrene glue. The next stage was to add the detail parts that are printed on the styrene sheet, each part was cut and sanded to shape and glued in position on the Buoy. I decided to add resin rivets around the two circular sections (I think these might have something to do with ballasting on the real thing?). I then went back to add some styrene strips to the removable hatch, I didn't want to use screws to keep it attached, so in the in i went for brass pins as this should keep everything in scale!
Once everything was dry I then sprayed the whole thing with Halfords Red Oxide Primer. I gave this a while to dry before i masked off the bottom and airbrushed the upper section with Phoenix Pre-War Green Gloss, A final coat of satin will be applied when all the painting is finished. Next on the list was to weather the under side of the Buoy to simulate barnacles and other ocean matter. I mixed up some MIG earth powders with MIG resin, Then with an old brush and i applied it in a random pattern (keeping it close to the reference picture i obtained from the net). Further weathering will be add to the textured surface by dry brushing several colours later on in the build. Everything now needs 24hrs to fully cure, so i went on and started to build the complex section which will be added later.
More to follow.....