It was one of my old wishes to once build IJNS Tone in her 1942 appearance – however I could only aquire the 1/700 Fujimi kit of this ship. The kit is catastrophically to say the least. I only kept the bridge, the trunked funnels and the large ventilation openings. All the other parts were replaced with Tamiya and scratchbuilt ones. I also used the PE sets from WEM (25 mm guns) and GMM (IJN heavy cruisers). Information and drawings came from Slawomir Brzezinski’s Tone monography and I used J. Ed Low’s 3D drawings.

I used Tony van Vyk’s Minekaze (1/350) Tone pictures which I set as a target for detailing level, but in 1/700 sclae.
The 8” and 5” mountings are from the retooled Tamiya Mogami kit and I replaced the barrels with injection needles (0.6 and 0.3 mm respectively). I also scratch-built the railing all around the guns and on the turrets. The boats are also from Tamiya; however I upgraded these as well (mainly the captain's motorboat (railing, masts, lifebelts, rudder, props etc. added). The floatplanes also came from the Mogami kit. Here the propellers are from GMM, the canopy is made from plexi glass (CD case). The tiny Dave required the most work: I tried to depict the wing and float wiring. Both masts ont he ship are scratch, made from 0.4 mm copper wire, according to drawings.

I had to polish all the decks at the stern because of the turn-tables. I relined the linoleum parting lines and made all the equipment there. Torpedo tubes came from Pit-Road weapon sets and were upgraded. 
The most work on the bridge was with the supports of the signal-bridge. Naturally I removed the windows and replaced them.
The toughest part of the kit was the stylish japanese funnel. I had to polish everything and remake them: railing, steam-piping, funnel-cap grilles, the huge ventilation trunks. Nearly everything was made from copper-wire. The fully assembled funnel contains 365 parts alone!

The search-lights and ther stands are self-made as well as the spare-float storage. The ramp for the planes on the stern was a great challenge as it was molded like a filled out triangle onto the hull. The rigging was made from 0.1 and 0.07 mm copper-wire. The rear-admiral flag is self made, the IJN flag came from the GMM set  BTW the GMM set has one major flaw. The body of the airplane derrick was given with holed plating, although this isn't realistic as on many archive photo's it can be seen that these were fully enclosed. I had to make these parts from thin steel-plates. I tried to upgrade the cats ,too.
All in all it took me 1 year to complete this kit.