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Want to build a "large" scale Sumner class destroyer

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  • Member since
    June 2004
  • From: Camas, WA
Want to build a "large" scale Sumner class destroyer
Posted by jamnett on Tuesday, September 1, 2009 1:41 PM

I thought I'd run this idea up the flagpole and see if anybody salutes it.  How about using the Revell 1/144 Fletcher in semi-scratch building the James C. Owens, Sumner class destroyer.  My late father served on her in '45-'46.  My mother sent me his burial flag, dogtags, and ribbons a few days ago.  That rekindled my interest in building a model of his old ship, but in a scale larger than the available 1/700 or 1/350. 

A Fletcher hull would not be exactly correct in width, but in a very large scale I believe we are talking about an error of less than a tenth of an inch.  There are a couple of alternatives.  BaD ship models offers a WWII Sumner.  It's a plank-on-frame wood kit.  I'm not sure about the accuracy and detail of wood parts for a modern warship.  There are fiberglass hulls and a few fittings available but we are talking about big money to go that route.  Then there's the Lindberg Fletcher kit but that would mean major work just to get the hull right as a starting point. 

Regardless of the choice, I'm aware it means scratch building most everything from the deck up.  I have plenty of time because the place where I work shut down due to the economy, and I've retired "early".  

Any thoughts, opinions, advice would be most welcome.  

  • Member since
    August 2005
  • From: EG48
Posted by Tracy White on Tuesday, September 1, 2009 2:38 PM
You'll need a second rudder at least under the waterline...

Tracy White Researcher@Large

  • Member since
    August 2005
  • From: Mansfield, TX
Posted by EdGrune on Tuesday, September 1, 2009 2:41 PM

 

See SUMRALL's book on the Sumner-Gearing-Class Destroyers. Their designs, weapons and Equipment.   IIRC, the length of the Sumner's hull was the same as the Fletcher.  The breadth was something on the order of 11 inches.   The decision was made to keep the hull that same (or nearly so) as the Fletcher as to not impact tooling for war production.  Twin rudders as opposed to singles

Next check the Floating Drydock's plan eBook on the Sumner/Gearing.  It will give you the plans for the new decks & bulkheads you will need to build.  

http://floatingdrydock.com/books.html

You're right -- you'll have to scratchbuild everything above the decks.   There are no real good quality aftermarket items for a Sumner in that scale (twin 5"/38, quad 40s, twin 20s, bulkhead gack).  You'll have to resort to scratchbuilding.   The Floating Drydock's plan eBook can give you a n idea of the order of magnitude of your undertaking 

  • Member since
    August 2008
Posted by tankerbuilder on Tuesday, September 1, 2009 4:05 PM
 jamnett----Hi. The idea of building a large scale SUMNER class is not so far fetched. I do have to say though,depending on your budget, the LINDBERG ship is not as far off as you think. I,ve created four GEARINGS and one SUMNER using this hull. The 11 inch difference in width is easily compensated for on the LINDBERG hull.You would need to flatten the roundness of the stern a trifle and put a slight bulge below the waterline at the bow . Then,scratchbuild EVERYTHING above deck. What I do with the bulkheads is cut everything off that can be used to detail the ship later. This saves money and time.You can build every little detail, but, it would turn it into the ship from hades instead of a pleasurable experience. My first one I was scared to death, of all the work ahead.Now I look forward to these kind of builds. Each one tests our inventiveness and skill. They all(special projects) make better modelers of us, if we let them. Good luck and if you need any advice,feel free to ask. you can reach me thru the mag e-mail site . TANKERBUILDER      P.S. Make sure you have PLENTY of EVERGREEN on hand.
  • Member since
    August 2010
Posted by Caledonianreb on Saturday, August 28, 2010 12:53 AM

I took the Lindberg 1/125 hull, cut it in half and added 1 1/4 inches amidships then rebuilt her from the weather deck up.  Allot more work than expected, but she is looking like my old tin can the USS Lloyd Thomas DD 764.  She was a Gearing DDE, converted to FRAM II.  She looked more like a long hulled Sumner with a hedge hog mount in place of mount 52 and with two mk 25 21 knch topedo tubes admidships and no ASROC.

Need to finish her railings and make some more vents and ducts.  The 60s and 70s had a lot more vents for AC and electronics than the WW II version.  I's like to make her remote control but need to insure she will not be too too heavy.  Going to use 144 scale cruiser anchors and the haze and deck grays for post war USN.

Found some non skid for 144 to 96 scale and had decals made in 125 scale.

Any suggestion or pictures.  re-worked her single 5 " guns into the twin mounts.

VR

 

Jim USN Retired

 

 

  • Member since
    January 2005
  • From: Tampa, Florida, USA
Posted by steves on Saturday, August 28, 2010 12:11 PM

It is a very feasible conversion and I am well into doing one.  Some in-progress photos of where I am with it are attached:

 

 

 

I am building the Sumner as constructed, with the early British-style bridge which I have always liked the look of.  The references cited by Ed Grune are the ones that I am using.  Be aware that the Floating Drydock plan books do not contain full sets of plans.  They show partial plans of each part of the ship, but do not contain a full sets of overall plans.  You could probably print out the partial plans and paste them together to create an overall plan, but it is much easier to also buy a set of their USS Walke plans and then have them reduced to 1/144.

 

As others have stated the Fletcher and Sumner hulls were the some length and basic shape, but the Sumner was 14” wider.  This works out to less than 1/10” in scale or 1/20” per side.  You could probably add 1/20” wide strips of plastic to the deck edges, gradually taper them to nothing towards bow and stern and easily squeeze the deck into the hull, but I am not sure the small increase in width would be noticeable enough to make it worthwhile.  The twin rudders are not hard to make and the shafts and propellers can be used as-is, although I believe that, at some point, Sumners and Gearings received four-bladed props.

 

The deck needs to be scraped and sanded clean, if you are careful you can cut or chisel off the deck hatches and reuse them.  Almost everything above deck will need to be scratchbuilt.  Major kit items that can be used are the funnels (with some minor modifications, depth charge racks and throwers, torpedo tubes and the gun director.  I would recommend ordering 1/144 twin 40mm mounts from WEM.  (They have mentioned that they might make quad mounts also, but combining two twin mounts to make a quad is a fairly easy job.)  I have constructed the superstructure and gun houses using sheet plastic.  The forms are basically rectangular and angular, and are pretty easy to fabricate.  Due to the way the Revell kit is engineered you get six 5” guns, so I have used them in my scratchbuilt gun houses.

 

Unfortunately, 1/144 USN fittings are not plentiful.   Two of the items you will need to make are shown below. 

 

 

The kit provides the early style round ended life rafts and the Sumners, for the most part, were equipped with the later style rectangular type.  The firehoses are molded onto the Revell kit superstructure parts.  They are molded too shallow to be cut off and used and there are not enough of them anyway.  I am making my own by wrapping very thin strips of plastic around a form, lightly gluing them together with liquid cement, and then cutting off the ends of the loops. These will be hung from scratchbuilt brackets with valves and nozzles to be added.  The Floating Drydock planbook is full of details that can be added to the kit.

Hope this helps.  Good luck with your build if you decide to attempt it.

Steve Sobieralski, Tampa Bay Ship Model Society

  • Member since
    August 2008
Posted by tankerbuilder on Saturday, August 28, 2010 9:08 PM

Hi,now you know why I recommended the LINDBERG ship.I bought one at a yard sale that had seen better days as a half cooked R.C. version.The LINDBERG moldings(bulkhead details etc.) are deep enough to shave off carefully and reuse. I have done this so many with LINDBERG ships I actually have a group of parts drawers full of those shaved off parts.They come in handy for so many other projects!!      tankerbuilder

  • Member since
    January 2007
  • From: Richmond, Va.
Posted by Pavlvs on Tuesday, August 31, 2010 4:14 AM

I have the BaD kit of the sumner.  My father was on the Douglas H. Fox, DD779.  The kit is not nearly as BaD as you might think.Whistling  It will require a great deal of filler to make balsa look like steel.  I plan on glassing the hull to make it R/C so that and a lot of sanding will do the trick.  There are plenty of aftermarket fittings in 1/96 so many of the details can be purchased and they do not break the bank. (more like a hairline fracture)Embarrassed  The hull is sheeted so building it is not all that tedious.  It is available in WWII or post FRAM versions.  Think about it.2 centsCaptain

Deus in minutiae est. Fr. Pavlvs

On the Bench: 1:200 Titanic; 1:16 CSA Parrott rifle and Limber

On Deck: 1/200 Arizona.

Recently Completed: 1/72 Gato (as USS Silversides)

  • Member since
    April 2004
  • From: Windy city, US
Posted by keilau on Tuesday, August 31, 2010 9:18 PM

Pavlvs

I have the BaD kit of the sumner.  My father was on the Douglas H. Fox, DD779.  The kit is not nearly as BaD as you might think.Whistling  It will require a great deal of filler to make balsa look like steel.  I plan on glassing the hull to make it R/C so that and a lot of sanding will do the trick.  There are plenty of aftermarket fittings in 1/96 so many of the details can be purchased and they do not break the bank. (more like a hairline fracture)Embarrassed  The hull is sheeted so building it is not all that tedious.  It is available in WWII or post FRAM versions.  Think about it.2 centsCaptain

Have you seen any independent review or build article of the BaD kits? They really sound interesting, but I don't think that it is for the faint of heart.

  • Member since
    August 2008
Posted by tankerbuilder on Saturday, September 11, 2010 4:28 PM

Hey, jamnett! I happen to know that if you go the BaD ship model route you will get what you want! The medium doesn,t matter as long as your work is up to snuff! I have the unusual pleasure of having a client who got his cruiser from there. WOW, whatta ship! Check them out!  I did a GEARING - F.R.A.M. out of the LINDBERG vessel and it,s NOT as hard as you would think.I cut the hull lengthwise and added .030 into the middle. Then I cut her in half,just aft of the fairwater and added 1 1/2 inches to the length.Then I used as much of the LINDBERG molded pieces as I could on the deckhouses.Everything else was scratchbuilt.It,s still one of the biggest model conversions I,ve ever done. The nice part about going tht way is there,s a lot that is molded well you won,t have to make! You can skip that work.I chose to cut ALL the details off and re mount some of it after dressing it up and then the handrails on the bulkheads were replaced with .010 rod  for the rail and .020 for the mounting legs.The firefighting gear was all scratch built using the LINDBERG parts as patterns.The only 100% scratch built things were the hangardeck,hangar and the bridge as well as the dual 5" 38 mounts on the original bases cut off the LINDBERG DECK. Oh,and the ASROC launcher and its control shack.   good luck   tankerbuilder

  • Member since
    November 2009
  • From: Twin Cities of Minnesota
Posted by Don Stauffer on Sunday, September 12, 2010 10:34 AM

I find ship modelers more willing to scratch build than other genres.  As a result there is more aftermarket stuff.  And, good news for you,  much of the aftermarket fittings are larger scale.  However, 1:192 and 1:96 scale seem to be more popular for scratch ship modelers than 1:144, so you may find more fittings available in these.  Check first.  Good sources of fittings are Bluejacket and Model Expo.

Don Stauffer in Minnesota

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