I finished up the flight deck and here is a photo of it sitting around while the glue sets. There’ll be no coffee till it’s dry!
I'll just have to go with
for a while.
I used Aleene’s craft glue to attach it, so I could wipe up any messes. It’s usually strong enough to hold a flight deck, if it isn’t warped.
The letter “Z” was CV-38’s code letter, apparently. Some photos show the letter on the vertical stabilizers of the airgroup’s Helldivers. I didn’t find any photos of the stern, so I’m only guessing that the letter was repeated there.
I used Bare Metal’s white inkjet decal paper to make the letter, and found it frustrating to use. It took about three attempts, cuz the decal kept folding back over itself and defied any efforts to untangle it. Then, I’d have to go back and recut another one. At least it finally worked.
Below is a photo of the platform for mounting the SK-2 radar dish. By 1945, it was located on the starboard side of the funnel. It’s another piece from the Gold Medal sheet of PE. There needs to be a styrene rod run through the hole in the platform; then the dish sits on top of that.
It was necessary to do some scratch-building to create some of the features CV-38 had, which weren’t addressed in the kit.
The first were the tubs for the Mk 51 gun directors at the bow. These were a significant part of the ship, and couldn’t be left off. They were a headache. I finally was able to do them by soaking some plastic strip (2mm wide) in boiling water, bending them around a drill bit, then plunging them into cold water. That made them hold their shape. Then I glued them on a small piece of sheet styrene for the floor, and sanded the whole thing smooth. It must have taken more than a dozen attempts before I came up with two I was satisfied using.
Then there were the gun tubs for the aft 20mm. I used the same process, and made them the same size as the kit's platform on the aft port side, which also housed two 20mm Oerlikons.
I decided that to make painting easier, I would paint first then attach them with white glue. This was a mistake, as it turned out. They would be knocked off and re-attached multiple times during various stages of construction. If I had it to do over, I’d have used Tamiya’s liquid glue to begin with and really fixed them in place.
Next was the mast with the YE radar on top. There was nothing in the kit that remotely resembled the one on Shangri-la, so I scratched it from styrene rod.
I couldn’t locate any PE platforms on any after-market product, so I made the platform for the SG radar from an old retaining hub, salvaged from the parts box. It started out with Hasegawa’s B-17 kit, to hold the propellers in place. It’s obviously too thick, but it was the best I could come up with. The ladder is PE from the Gold Medal set.
This is the end of all the construction photos I took. The rest of the build consists of attaching the assembled pieces, and that would be bland and uninteresting to look at. I hope to have finished photos by or before the end of the weekend.
Thanks!