Grafting a Revell USS Forrestal lower hull to the 1/547 USS Midway

Casting off, headed into the fairway.

I'm generally following an old Mike Ashey article back in 2002 that was in FSM.

The second plastic ship kit Revell ever marketed was the 1/540 scale CV-42 U.S.S. Franklin D. Roosevelt, second ship of the Midway Class. That ship was to be named Coral Sea, but when the President passed away that was changed. CV-43 became the Coral Sea.

The model is very good, the mold maker was one of the best in his time. It stands up well today. I've had this kit for a very long time but was put off by the flat bottom hull.

Not long ago Bill Morrison pointed out the article to me. Mike Ashey took the FDR, and grafted the below waterline hull of a Revell Forrestal to it. As the kits are the same scale, and although a little longer and a little wider, the Forrestal hull is the next class after the Midways and is very similar. I won't summarize the article, and I hesitate to post the link, but it's in the July 2002 issue of FSM.

I bought an old Saratoga glue bomb on eBay for shipping. Here are the two hulls side-by-side.

I cut each one at the waterline after checking to see that each was correct in terms of Sara's draft and Rosie's freeboard.

Before cutting the bottom out of the Midway class ship I installed cross braces to maintain the planform so that the deck will fit. 

That's it for today. I've ordered Star Fighter CV-41 Midway decals, and probably will get some better 40mms. The kit has those funny 20mms molded to the decks that look like a "Y", ala the Iowas models that came before. I'll be using some 1/700 ones I have- those things are always grossy overscale.

Monday night I finally had a chance to sit down at the bench.

Top: the first of two back-to-back angles glued to the underside of the flight deck. Aircraft carrier models can get crooked if the flight deck is securely clamped down on the hangar deck sidewalls, as those are never all level. I prefer to make the flight deck rigid, attach it, and fill in any visible gaps.

Middle: in similar fashion, the upper hull and hangar walls are all assembled, braced and made square.

Bottom: the lower hull is three parts. The rear two thirds actually fit well to the upper hull. I try not to do too much spreading or compressing as the stress will lead to warping later. Mike Ashey suggested that he caused himself problems by not dry fitting the sections without any force.  I'll glue the several sections together with the splines as shown, clamped flat to the bench so that the keel is straight and level. Then I'll attached the rigid assembly to the upper hull.

Bill

The heavy lifting for Frankenship is complete. The Forrestal lower hull worked well, esp. in the middle sections. I did build up a new stern, and had to splice styrene into some of the bigger gaps.

A trick I've learned for filling gaps with styrene. Let's say you have a gap that's more or less 0.020". Rather than try to fish a 0.020" strip into it, take a scrap of 0.020" sheet styrene and force it in edgewise. Do it an inch or so at a time. Flood with solvent cement. When dry, trim off the extra and sand it down to be flush.

Bill

In between coats of primer curing, I started work on topside details.

The 5" guns at first seemed to be detailed and look "busy", but closer examination shows that in typical 1960's model fashion; Revell added a lot of made up detail, like those rivets on the roof.

Also the weird draft shapes on the sides and the casting block under the barrel.

Basically I just cleaned it all off. The things look kind of simple now, but they should.

I also clipped off and reattached the barrels at an upward angle, as they normally would be.

Captain Morrison requesting permission to come on the flag bridge.

The work on Midway's hull conversion is finally over.

I'm quite happy with the outcome. It probably doesn't much match the Midway's finer lines at the stern, but using the successor class Forrestal's hull lower parts made sense. Thanks again to Mike Ashey for the information and to Bill Morrison for the incentive to make a full hull Midway.

I have smoothed the many seams, and put enough putty and time into it to call it finished.

At the stern, I've added the skegs/ keelsons for the inboard props, modified and used several of the shafts that came with the Forrestal class kit for the outer two. Typing this I realize I still need to add a brace at the end bearing of each of those last two.

I want to say thanks to the members on another thread here who suggested thinning Tamiya Gray putty with Tamiya Extra Thin cement. It's kind of a miracle material. Generous use.

Bruce sent me the following marvelous photo which allowed me to build new rudder assemblies.

I then reduced it to scale, and made a pattern for building new ones. The kit parts are also shown here. They are the same half draft depth as the original kit hull.

And the new parts.

I spent a couple of hours setting up the boot stripe on Midway. At the risk of boring those who know, I offer this mini toot.

Ignore the tape because I staged this after I marked the hull, but set a pencil where you want to draw a line for the boot topping. You will do this twice. Once at the top and once at the bottom.

A boot topping or stripe is not a constant width, if you will. It has a top line and a bottom line that are parallel in vertical axis.

Very impressive, GM!  You are a great asset to this forum.

A lot of great work there GM!

Jim  

Outstanding work, GM!  Paying close attention to make sure I learn some things.

been following this...you used Bondo? As in auto body Bondo?

I am very impressed with your work GM and how this is coming together.

Scott

Finished!

you didn't correct Sara's bow error as is missing the bulb bow that the Midway class has.

http://www.modelerjoe.net/shipmodellist.html#RevellForrestal

https://www.midwaysailor.com/midwaymemorabilia/memory85b.jpg

It wasn't that important to me. 

But it could be done. I have the drawing I need and a good photo of the bow of FDR is on navsource.

Maybe I'll make two and save one for Forrestal.

the 2nd link above i posted shows that in the drawing.

Bill,

I'm really glad that you had resurrected this and finished her. You did an outstanding job as usual!  She looks great!

Bill

Thank you, Bill. I was hoping you would see this, as the instigator of the project. 

I think I've come up with a pretty straight forward approach to adding the prow bulge.

It's sort of an odd one as it Widens the bottom of the ship a little but does not protrude forward. So the model will remain the same in side profile.

ourtesy navsource and this was the FDR, but it will do.

how are you going to do the bow & with what? on my Arizona kitbash thread, i widened the bottom of the bows upto the waterline on both the Tennessee & Colorado classes using only plastic not putty nor bondo. marked where the widest point was both vertically & horizontal then proceeded to carve & sand to shaped. doing the samething on a Lindberg 1/500 scale tanker i'm slowly working on.

I don't want to take the model off the base, so it will be tricky.

I've measured the area involved. From the bottom of the bootstripe to the bottom of the hull is 1.60 inches. The overall width of the bulb, from the drawing we both have, is 0.25 inches. Currently the width of the very front of the kit hull below the waterline is 0.08 inches. I don't know how far back it needs to go, but I would guess about an inch at the most.

Step 1 I need to make sure I still have that color of paint! 

Step 2 will be to mask off and sand clean the area, both sides.

Step 3 I will make a whole series of lifts, layers, what have you; cut from thin styrene and layer them on. Try to draw them up ahead of time to get as close to the final shape as I can. Subtract 0.08 from 0.25; 0,17 or 0.085 each side. Four layers of 0.02 inch styrene each side should do it. 

Step 4 minimal putty and sand. I don't see any way around that.

Step 5 paint.

Note for a future build. The F9F-5s are a little out of date with the model. Earlier straight wing Panthers would be right, but I didn't think the AM ones I could find looked good, and no desire to spend $ 50 on them either. I think the Cougars "look" good. I replaced all of ther landing gear.

go back from the tip of the bow til you hit the "B" section as per the drawing, whatever that distance is. i usually print the drawing out on "legal size" paper on my printer, measure the length of the drawing & the model then divide the drawing length into the model length to get the scale number used to multiply that number against the distance from bow to to the "b" mark. transfer the resulting measurement onto the hull & that is how far back you have to go to build up with plastic. i use .040" to buildup that area as less glue to cure therefore more solid. i would cut the bottom of the hull off from the bow tip to the "b" mark then layer it horizontally from the bow tip to the "b" mark with each layer the width at the "b" mark. once all built up, leave alone for a day or so for the glue to fully cure. square it up, mark the center line of the bow vertically & the widest point horizontally then start carving, grinding(dremel tool if you have) & sanding to shape. you probably find you'll not need any putty at all as i don't using this method.

why not cut the wings off your Panthers & make & glue new straight wings?

The bow is a separate piece. I don't remember if I reinforced the joint, but I did take photos.

The Panther has straight across horizontal stabs as well..

The only real difference in the Cougar deployment is that Midway had her bow enclosed  then years before the angle deck conversion. That might almost be the easiest thing to do.

Nice carrier.

All the custom work you did is way above my pay grade and I don't even understand most of it, but the end result sure looks good.

Very nice G!

GMorrison

Note for a future build. The F9F-5s are a little out of date with the model. Earlier straight wing Panthers would be right, but I didn't think the AM ones I could find looked good, and no desire to spend $ 50 on them either. I think the Cougars "look" good. I replaced all of ther landing gear.

  

Actually, they are nice little F9F-6 or 7 Cougars. The F9F-5 Panthers are the early straight wing aircraft. The biggest difference between the -6 and 7 variants and the -8 variant is that in the  the trailing wing fillet extended to the end of the exhaust.

The F9F-6 went into production in 1952. Wether they should be -5 or -6/7 variants, you did a great job on your build. Thanks for sharing.

For your info the difference between a -6 and a -7; the P&W engine was temporally replaced with an Allison engine!

Shipwreck

 

GMorrison

Note for a future build. The F9F-5s are a little out of date with the model. Earlier straight wing Panthers would be right, but I didn't think the AM ones I could find looked good, and no desire to spend $ 50 on them either. I think the Cougars "look" good. I replaced all of ther landing gear.

  

 

 

 

 

Actually, they are nice little F9F-6 or 7 Cougars. The F9F-5 Panthers are the early straight wing aircraft. The biggest difference between the -6 and 7 variants is that in the -8 variant, the trailing wing fillet extended to the end of the exhaust.

The F9F-6 went into production in 1952. Wether they should be -5 or -6/7 variants, you did a great job on your build. Thanks for sharing.

For your info the difference between a -6 and a -7; the P&W engine was temporally replaced with an Allison engine!

 

They turned out really good. I really had to do a lot of carving and filling on the old Renwall ones I used on my CV16 and they still looked funky.  I wish I went further like you did with the landing gear.