Type VII U-Boat
Type IX U-Boat
Aug. 14, 2025
The last units of my USN German naval recognition style set are complete! It’s kind of funny really, after my year plus slog with the Charles Martel build, I felt the need to work on smaller projects that wouldn’t suck up so much of my time. So what did I do? Committed myself to designing and printing 14 small models that make up one uber project, that… yeah, took me over a year to complete.
That said these two subs were a joy! The models are again, over detailed for such a set but I love that the Saturn could pack as much detail into these tiny 1/500 scale miniatures as it did. Honestly the only hard part was removing the print supports without ruining the tiny structures they supported. There was no assembly required as they are one piece 100% resin prints.
I did make one big gamble with these two models. I believed that the best way to print them would be near vertically and with resin printing vertical alignment means loooong print times, in this case just over 9 hrs, I wanted to get the most out of that time. When printed vertically, these subs have a very small build plate footprint, so I decided to printed 8 each in one go and let it rip overnight. I was a tad anxious to see what would greet me on the build plate this morning, or worse, what would be stuck to the bottom of the resin vat…
But am relieved to show the results below.
While they all look perfect from a distance, I made compromises in the print supports that caused approximately 30% to have tiny missing or warped bits. A few supports to the deck guns or AA barrels failed and a few of the Type VIIs periscopes got warped (I may reduce their height a bit). Most issues are fixable, if I feel like it. Not 100% sure yet but I think I got at least 5 of each without print problems. I’ll no doubt wreck one or two removing the print supports and handling them during cleaning & sanding. Guessing I’ll get at least 4 or 5 usable of each type. At least the printer resin vat is clean 🙂
Now – Time to make a case!