OK, the keel is laid and the sound of riveting hammers fills the room......
Off to a decent start, already dipping into the incomplete Trumpeter kit for a little extra detail here and there.
As usual with the Tamiya Waterline, you get a steel bar to add some weight. Love them or hate them? I actually quite like them, gives a bit of grunt to the small kits. Make sure they are really well glued in though, you don't want that thing rattling around in the hull when the ba plate has been glued on!
Next stage that has to be done prior to baseplate is the little grommet things for the swivelling main guns. Again, it's a love hate thing but they do make it easy for placing them to see how they look during the build. The grommets are sealed under the grey plastic caps
All the deck comes as one piece except for the for deck section which actually joins at the breakwaters so a very good place to hide the join. As usual at this scale, the anchor chains are moulded on so a bit of work with a micro chisel and they are gone. Inevitably at 1:700, even the finest chain will be out of scale but I do think real chain looks better.
The central raised deck fits OK, there is a slight gap at the front edge but this will be easy to deal with, probably a drop of PVA will do. I will not be glueing this in place until after painting to enable me to paint under the overhanging sections.
These are the components for the lower section of the main bridge, they go together very nicely once I worked out that I was trying to build it upside down
This is not the sort of place you want (or should expect) pin marks.... out with the micro chisel again. I could not really fill them as there is no room to sand so I just scraped away until they were gone.
Out with the 'Hold & Fold' already to bend and fit the brass intake grills around the funnel bases. Although very little of this is glued up, she is starting to take shape.
I decided to go with the Trumpeter funnels as they are better detailed. Even so, I still cut out the grill on the cap to use the Photo Etch.
On the right is the Trumpeter cap, centre modified with PE, still a bit of cleaning up to do, and left, the slightly better Tamiya cap.
And here it is as we stand. The Trumpeter funnels are much better, a bit fatter too. Again, I build in layers to facilitate painting so a lot of this is just dry fitted, I will cement it all up when painted.
Not too bad for the first day, things will slow down now as I have to go to work tomorrow lol
I for one am looking forward to seeing how a modern kit goes together! 
