Trumpeter's USS Lexington

QUOTE: Originally posted by jackmclaughlin Edited version. Has anyone else had problems with Trumpeter's Lexington, fitting the hull to the full keel. I like the full ship version. I am having problems with fitting the top to the bottom. It is about 1/32 of an inch off. Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated.

Yes, I had a lot of problems with this fit. As used spreaders on the lower hull, after consulting a friend of mine who is building the kit as well. That helped east the fit problems, but I used a good deal of putty to get the joint smooth.

Below is a (old) picture of the two Lexington kits I've got going. One is going to be the Lex at Coral Sea, the second (closest to the camera) is going to be a pre-war Saratoga (yes, the island is wrong - it's not what is going on the finished model). These kits have given me even more gray hairs than I already had!

That being said, with some work (and lots of putty), you can still have a decent looking model.

HTH

Currently building both the Essex and Liberty ship (Trumpeter 1/350) I have had no end of trouble with the fit of the lower and upper hulls on both kits. With the Essex I used one full tube of putty to get the problems sorted out....not to mention the hours upon hours of sanding and resanding. By far the greatest amount of time has been in the hull work.

QUOTE: Originally posted by Jeff Herne Hi Jack, Although it's not the Lexington, I had a similar problem with my Trumpeter North Carolina. Here's the solution. The Trumpeter kits have plastic stiffeners at the waterline of the hull. This is to obviously add some additional strength to the hull if you display the ship waterline. Simply cut those stiffeners out...in my case, I just took my Dremel and zipped a section from the middle. This allows the upper hull to flex, and you can glue it to the lower hull without any troubles.

One of the guys on the ship sites had the same problem and added spreaders to the lower hull. With the Lex kit's boat bay flex problem this might be the better solution. In either case I'd add spreaders of 1/4" square Evergreen inside to both upper and ower to prevent flexing later on and cracking the joint. I'd also run a very heavy bead of epoxy inside all along the joint for added strength.

I don't understand why plastic kit companies feel like they have to reinvent the wheel. About twenty years ago two companies figured out two different, completely workable ways to offer the "waterlne" and "full-hull" options in the same kit.

Italeri's 1/700 Deutschland- class German pocket battleships have underwater hulls connected to the upper hulls by thin plastic gates, which the modeler slices away. The result is a guaranteed perfect fit. The tooling to mold a hull like that (upper and lower parts in once piece, with countersunk portholes on each side) probably is extremely expensive. But Airfix, in its last efforts before giving up on warships, came up with a beautifully simple solution to the problem: mold a groove at waterline level on the inside of each hull half. For a full-hull model, the modeler leaves the parts as-is. For a waterline model, he runs an X-acto blade along the groove and snaps off the underwater portion. That takes less than five minutes.

Trumpeter, Tamiya, ICM, et al - are you listening?

Thank you for responding. I think I will give your suggestions a try. I am by no means a master modeler, but I usually have fun trying.

Jack

With my Trumpeter 1/350 sovremenny, there was about the same distance on both sides of the bottom hull because the outline of the lower hull had a smaller width than the outline of the upper hull. I ended up leaving it that way because the black boot stripe along the upper edge of the lower hull seemed to blend the shadow that was cast from the misfit. It is hardly noticable unless you look really close.

Hi Jack,

Although it's not the Lexington, I had a similar problem with my Trumpeter North Carolina. Here's the solution. The Trumpeter kits have plastic stiffeners at the waterline of the hull. This is to obviously add some additional strength to the hull if you display the ship waterline. Simply cut those stiffeners out...in my case, I just took my Dremel and zipped a section from the middle. This allows the upper hull to flex, and you can glue it to the lower hull without any troubles.

Best,

Jeff

PS: Let us know how it works.