1/400 SS United States...Merry Christmas to me

There are various ways to strip enamel paint (which is probably what you're talking about) from styrene.  My own old favorite is automotive brake fluid, which I've been using for the purpose for about thirty years.  Other modelers say they've had better luck with oven cleaner.

I don't recommend laquer thinner.  It's a solvent for most types of styrene.

I imagine the kit in question is the one originally produced by the Ideal Toy Company (ITC) in the early fifties - when the ship herself was the very latest in high-tech ocean liner design.  Revell also produced a model of her at about the same time, but the Revell kit was considerably smaller (1/602, according to Dr. Graham's book Remembering Revell Model Kits).  There may have been others, but if so I haven't heard of them.

The ITC kit was reissued by a company called Glencoe fairly recently; if your father bought your kit ten years ago, it's probably the Glencoe version.  It's taken quite a bit of criticism in the modeling press.  A couple of points need to be born in mind when looking at such kits.  One - the early fifties were in many ways a "golden age" of plastic kits, but the standards of precision and accuracy we take for granted today hadn't been established yet.  Two - The United States was built under a big federal government subsidy, with the provision that she would be available to the Navy in wartime for use as a high-speed troop transport.  Many of her high-tech, state-of-the-art features were classified for many years.  I suspect, in fact, that the model companies weren't able to get access to any genuine, authentic plans of her, and based their kits almost entirely on photographs.  (Her underwater hull lines remained classified for many years.  I've often wondered whether that's the explanation for the odd design of the Revell kit - with the hull sliced off just below the waterline.

I had the opportunity to go on board the United States one afternoon back in the early eighties.  At that time she was berthed at Norfolk, Virginia, and her then-current owners were talking about converting her to a Caribbean cruise ship; the museum where I was working was hoping to acquire some interesting artifacts before the conversion started.  We did get some good stuff out of her, but of course the conversion plans didn't fructify.  I saw her briefly from I-95 when my wife and I were passing through Philadelphia a couple of summers ago.  She's a terribly sad sight.  I do hope her story has a happy ending, but it's tough to be optimistic.

Anyway, best of luck with your project.  I agree:  for the sake of both your dad and the memory of the ship, it would be best to represent her in her glory days.

I too would recommend using brake fluid, I've used it for years. Just soak the parts overnight. modelbob#hotmail.com

 

Thankyou for your advice, it is the glencoe kit, and after looking at the instructions and test fitting this model is going to be a nightmare.  Nothing seems to fit together properly, my dad lost one of the underlying support structures, none of the sprues are numbered, the instructions are literally one page long for a model with over 200 peices. This is going to be a head scratcher from the beginning.  But I honestly believe when I am finished my modeling skills will be much farther advanced than I am today. 

So how does this brake fluid process work, the hull is rather large, so would i just some how soak it in brake fluid over night and then wipe off the paint the next day with an old rag or something, or should I wash it in the sink?  

One thing I know for sure, I am not in my armor comfort zone any longer. 

Stripping paint with brake fluid does create a bit of a mess.  My favorite way to do it is to buy a cheap, aluminum foil pan from the grocery, put that in the sink, fill the pan with brake fluid, and soak the plastic parts for a couple of hours.  The amount of time it takes for the stuff to work actually varies from minutes to hours, depending (I guess) on the type of paint, how long it's been on there, and various other variables.  The majority of it can be rinsed off with water; more stubborn spots may require a little work with an old toothbrush.

I've never tried that trick on as large a part as the hull halves you're confronting.  Maybe you could line a plastic tray of some sort with aluminum foil.

One other thought (that was brought forcibly to my attention the last time this subject came up in the Forum):  used brake fluid is environmentally nasty stuff.  If possible, it's a good idea to collect it and take it to a gas station, or some other place that has a means of disposing of it properly.

Good luck.

I never tried the brake fluid method, but the oven cleaner works pretty well. Just put it out in the yard somewhere that it won't kill the grass, spray it all over and let it sit for a while. Then run it under hot water and scrub with a toothbrush. Repeat if necessary. Wear rubber gloves.

The hull in front was just like the finished model in the rear before the oven cleaner treatment.

Fred

Can somebody please help me find photo etched parts for this kit, I know they are out there but I am having a hell of a time trying to find them.  I would really appreciate any help people can give me. 

I don't think any of the aftermarket companies makes any parts specifically for this kit.  Gold Medal Models does offer several sets of generic 1/400 and 1/450 parts - railings, ladders, etc. - that probably would help a lot.  Here's a link:  http://www.goldmm.com/ships/gms4ordr.htm .

thanks alot!!  now if only I could figure out what color to paint the deck, every other model i have seen has it painted either a green or a blue grey color. 

Green seems to be the consensus. This is the one of the best renderings of the ship I've seen. It's the 1/600 Revell kit, by Patrick Camilleri.

http://www.modelshipgallery.com/gallery/service/liners/us-600-pc/us-index.html

thank you for that.  He must have did a lot of scratch building and hand painted those tennis courts.  I will do my best to replicate that, but i dont know if my skills quite match that.

Here's another choice for stripping the paint. Back when I was deep into model railroading a lot of people used brake flluid but some types of plastic seemed to react badly. The peeps who make Floquil model railroad paint and also Testors Model Master also make an item called ELO (Easy Lift Off) its intended to remove decals from plastic models but will also lift model paints. The ScaleCoat Model Railroad paint line also has a paint remover. You will have to check your LHS and look in the Walther's model railroad catalog. I've also been told that some folks have gotten good results by soaking in Formula 409. I would be very, very careful of using stuff like oven cleaner etc. as these items can be pretty caustic. Worth looking into..Good luck on your project.

Yea, I just sprayed the over cleaner on about 5 minutes ago.  I have no idea how long I should wait, this is going to be a trial and error test.

Mr. Martin's point about oven cleaner is well taken.

Some years ago my wife and I were given the job of cleaning the vent hood over my mother's electric range.  A quick look established that, not having been cleaned in at least twenty years, it was a greasy, slimy mess.  So I unscrewed it from its its mounting over the stove and (fortunately) took it outside, where my wife and I began working on it with a scrub brush, a hose, and a spray can of oven cleaner.  (I don't remember the brand.)

Half an hour or so later, as we were starting to make visible progress on the thing, I became aware of a burning sensation in the area of my left shoulder blade.  I asked my wife if anything was visible there.  She took one look and said, "Good God, take your shirt off - quick."  A blob of grease and oven cleaner somehow had gotten stuck to my t-shirt, eaten right through it, and started to eat into my skin.  There's no scar, but the burn took a couple of weeks to heal completely.  (The t-shirt got thrown out; there was a 3"-diameter hole in it.)

Since then, no oven cleaner for me - except for cleaning ovens, with the proper protective clothing.  For stripping paint from models, I'll stick with brake fluid - or one of the aforementioned chemicals designed specifically for stripping paint from styrene.  (For heaven's sake don't use old-fashioned, traditional paint remover.  It's about the fastest-acting styrene solvent on the planet.)

well I let the cleaner sit for about 25 minutes and attempted to scrub it with a toothbruth to no real result, the red turned a little pink, thats about it, so I am going to try it again and see what happens, i will let it sit for about 2 hours this time around, see if I get any better result.

NEVER EVER use laquer thinner to remove paint from plastic, unless you want a gooey mass of plastic!!!

 

NEVER EVER use laquer thinner to remove paint from plastic, unless you want a gooey mass of plastic!!!

 I won't.

 In other news I tried the Oven Cleaner method and i was greatly unimpressed.  It didn't seem to work all that well, it would have taken me 4 days. So what i did was sand the son of a b*tch so all of the  brush strokes were gone from the flat red hull.  It is all smooth and even to the touch.  I am just going to say screw it, throw some primer on there and fire up the airbrush and have this hull painted but tomorrow so I can throw some pictures up here for you fine people so you know what I will be working with.  I am just waiting for my putty to get here because the girl is going to need a lot of it.  

 Until next time. 

I read an extensive article about building this kit in the now defunct "Model Ship Builder" magazine which is now part of another mag whose name now goes by "Seaways' Ships in Scale." I built the kit from the article and they said that the lifeboat davits were completely wrong and that Bluejacket Shipcrafters (part # FO696) makes the proper gravity type davits that are the proper type. I think that if you contact Seaways, you can possibly order the article or the back issue that contains the article from them. It was a major help to me and I hope you can find the article helpful. I built a dio with the United States and the Titanic (the academy 1/400 kit) as a "what if" scenario with a dock between them. Titanic looks less so next to the United States.

Good luck with your build. Please post pics. I have none of the dio because I gave it as a gift a good 10 years ago.

Merry Christmas

Paul

In other news I tried the Oven Cleaner method and i was greatly unimpressed.  It didn't seem to work all that well, it would have taken me 4 days. So what i did was sand the son of a b*tch so all of the  brush strokes were gone from the flat red hull.  It is all smooth and even to the touch.

Shudda used the brake fluid! Could have saved yourself a lot of sanding! Doesn't eat your skin up either.
If you can't find a pan to dip the longer models in, use at least two layers of heavy duty aluminum foil and fold your own. Just keep in mind that the sides will not be very strong and some type of support is well advised so things won't spill.

I have never had any success with oven cleaner either. It just made a bigger mess of things.

Some people on other forums have suggested using different brand names of something called "super clean".  I have tried that too without much success. Be very aware, if you use your bare hands while washing this stuff over your model, it WILL take every last drop of oil out of your skin and it takes days to recover!!!

One thing that I have found that removes at least lacquer or enamel from models is Desolve-it or Goo Be Gone. I suspect both are very similar in their formulation. Neither is harmful to skin.

 

 

Sincerely

 

Michael Lacey