search for USS Texas

That's the only game in town right now, hopefully someone will get an plastic version out there before I die. I lived in Mighty T's shadow once when I was a kid and always wanted to build it. The resin ships are a little out of my budget though.

Derek Brown's scratchbuilt 1/350 scale Texas is featured in the Jan. 2003 FSM (p. 36). It's a beauty but was a tremendous amount of work to build. Still, Derek explains pretty clearly how he did it, and he cast the hull in resin from an RTV mold. Now, if he still has the mold, I wonder if he'd be receptive to casting a copy of the hull for hire, so to speak.........

QUOTE: Originally posted by Lawrence Hansen Derek Brown's scratchbuilt 1/350 scale Texas is featured in the Jan. 2003 FSM (p. 36). It's a beauty but was a tremendous amount of work to build. Still, Derek explains pretty clearly how he did it, and he cast the hull in resin from an RTV mold. Now, if he still has the mold, I wonder if he'd be receptive to casting a copy of the hull for hire, so to speak.........

I still have the USS TEXAS hull mold. At one time I was thinking about making hull copies for sale through Buffiesbest.com (my alter-ego venture). I did not think there would be the interest in providing only a hull for people but if there is - you never know. I could also make more copies of the torpedo blisters (vacuforms) that I used for the sides of the hull.

There are only a couple drawbacks - I previously used a resin called Perfect Tool, which is designed for makinging one-off machine-part masters. This stuff is so hard you could use it to plow the sidewalk. I'm sure there are other resins that would work just fine and be a lot less expensive. I also had used a borrowed vacuum chamber (a BIG one) to ensure that there would be no bubbles in either the mold (which used DOW rubber and came out perfect) or the cast hull part, and because of the size of the torpedo blisters (about 14 " long) I paid a commercial vacuform company to draw those.

BUT - if anyone is in Denver with enough resin, a vacuum chamber, and a large enough vacuform machine, I would be happy to help cast the hulls for free.



Derek



dont mind making copies of the hull for people. In fact, if your in Denver and have a pile of resin

(contemplating a move to Denver)