I have taken six month's hiatus from modeling for a variety of reasons, and am now back in position to get back into it. My 1:72 U-boat is well over 90% built. I have to scratch-build details on the deck gun, built the wintergarten, paint the tower, and deck gun and machine gun sub-assemblies, instal these and the railings, thread and its done.
However the same thing that stalled my project before is doing so again. That being scratch-building the Wintergarten. I have tried several approaches. The first approach involved constructing a three-dimension jig, where you bend the rod to fit the circular jig. I had trouble getting the middle side bars to stay uniform, so I scrapped this. The second approach involved bending the plastic piece flat, making a contour in soft wood, laying the cut pieces of brass into place. This is not working either. The problem I am having involves getting the solder to flow into a double joint that exists in the middle of each stanchion. It flows in each one or the other, and when it does go in both, the amount of trouble it takes invariably causes some shifting of the cut pieces of brass rod.
Incidentally, I am not finding blue tac at all workable--perhaps I am using poor quality stuff, but I find it leaves a sticky reside on the brass, and that a lot of stuff is required to realy secure the bits of brass to stay put.
I really need help. The piece provided in the kit is not at all acceptable, but it seems that this endeavor is presently beyond my abilities.

EW