Jeremiah O'Brien

I think you've answered your own Q,lol

There is so much cleaning up of parts, that I find it better to remove/prep/ then paint in batches of colour. I'm doing the 1/100th heller victory that has over 2100 parts so I feel your pain

No short cuts, no easy way I'm afraid, get stuck in and enjoy it, the sprues soon start to dissapear.

I think it depends on the scale. That's a 1/350 kit, right? So at least you can see most of the parts. With the 1/700 ships I build, I tend to keep the smaller parts on the sprues, clean up as best I can, paint and then remove them one at a time for final cleanup and gluing. And with ships, large groups of parts will be all one color, so I do try to get all the ones that will be haze gray, for instance, cleaned up so I can spray paint them all at once.

With the 1/72 airplane I'm currently building, though, I found it a lot easier to cut off all the parts, clean off the flash and paint them in groups of like colors. Only a few tiny bits were painted on the sprues.

The O'Brian is easy to paint because it's just about all one color. The only major parts that aren't grey are the hatch covers and the lower hull if you are doing a full hull model. The dark grey decks shown on the instructions are bogus. When I did mine I chose Model Masters light Gull Grey paint which so closely matches the color of the plastic, if you miss a few tiny spots with the paint nobody can tell. So, for the most part I didn't paint most small parts until they were in place on the model and then I sprayed the whole thing. Some sub assemblies can be sprayed separately, like the mast houses, stack etc. The hatch covers ( green tarp ) can be brushed separately and put on at the end.

Onyxman: I didn't realize there where green tarps on the ship nor does the plans call that out, butt I think you have an idea. If I painted the tarps green it would at least give it some color!

I have sent for the CD from Tom's Modelworks so I might add PE parts to the kit, but if you (or anyone else) have ideas I could add please let me know. WW11 ships I haven't completed before. Cheers, Bill

I have a more extreme view of the painting of a Liberty ship.  Assemble it completely (as a waterline model), and then spray the whole thing light matt grey.  Pick out a few details such as the tarps mentioned and follow this with lots of rust-coloured washes and other dirtying-down methods.  Finally I'm going to fit it out with all the vehicles and aircraft from Tom's.

If you have a look a this site  http://www.armed-guard.com/calen3.html  especially the second and second to last photos you can see it's pretty well wide open.  The Trumpeter painting instructions have no basis in fact that I have been able to establish.  Even the black boot-topping is wrong.

Michael

There is an extensive thread here from last summer with good info on the inacuracies of the Trumpter kit and instructions. To be accurate in wartime configuration they only had anti fouling paint to the 10 ft draft mark (up from the keel) and no black boot topping at all. MJH's idea of doing the waterline version will save probably half the labor on the kit. I did mine full hull and spent a lot of time sanding and filling the seam. I also used the Tom's deck cargo. With the whole ship being grey, a full load of deck cargo adds  color and complexity. Here are some more vintage pics. Note the flagstaff forward of the aft house, and the small mast forward of the stack on the port side. The last pic shows a lightly laden ship and you can't see any boot topping.

http://www.armed-guard.com/lsip613.jpg

http://www.armed-guard.com/lsip790.jpg

http://www.armed-guard.com/la040c.jpg

http://www.armed-guard.com/lsip472.jpg

and here is mine

onxyman is correct, Chris Freidenbach (sp?) a crewman on the real Jeremiah O'Brien, gave an exhaustive rundown earlier this year of all the little things you have to do to make a truly accurate model. You MIGHT be able to find it by doing a search.

When I was building my 1/700 resin Victory ship I had another consultant, my Dad, who served on several during the war. He said that while the ships were usually a gull or haze gray shade, the decks were sometimes a darker gray, like modern US Navy ships, but sometimes the entire ship was the same color - it just depended how much paint and what colors they had on hand when they started painting. And you know how they paint a deck in the merchant marine? Easy! Get a 5-gallon can of paint, kick it over, and go at it like dervishes before any runs into the scuppers and down the sides of the hull!

As for the canvas hatch covers, they do provide some color. Dad remembered them as being a rusty or dirty brown, but I opted for a newer look by using a green, based on what Christ Freidenbach said. I went through a ton of greens at the hobby shop, and finally settled on Model Master RAF Interior Green, #2062, as looking the most like newer canvas circa WWII.

 There are other "spots" of color - the firehoses will be off-white with a brass nozzle on the end, and a flat red curved holder; fire hydrants were commonly red; life rings could be either white or gray, depending on who was doing the painting that day; the ship's name board would be flat black with white block lettering; the various running and navigation lights would provide points of red, green and white; deck cargo crates can be many different shades of tan and brown; you get the idea. When I modeled the LaCrosse Victory that my Dad served on, I included a deck cargo of Sherman tanks that he remembered from one trip, along with cargo crates and oil drums in various shades of black and green. Add a few crewmen in their dark blue dungarees, blue workshirts and white hats, and it's more than enough to break up the mass of gray ship.

mfsob: Thanks for your input. I wwil make a concerted effort to add the features you have mentioned. Cheers, Bill

Just remember, Bill, it's YOUR model. The only person you have to please is yourself ... and sometimes I think we are harder on ourselves than any reasonable observer would EVER be!

because we know better & most others don't.

mfsob: Where could I purchase "deck cargo" and oil drums in 1/700 scale? Thanks, Cheers, Bill

1:700 scale vehicles are available from Loose Cannon

or you might try the old PitRoad green box set of Vehicles on  the Beachead for some Shermans, Dodge command cars and duece and a halfs

Aircraft deck cargo are also available from some of the PitRoad aircraft sets

Make sure you get the cribbing right.

As far as oil drums - are you sure you want to do them?   IIRC a 55 gallon drum is between 18 and 24 inches in diameter.   In 1:700 scale that works out to be about 0.025 to 0.035 inches.  Get yourself some Evergreen rod and a Chopper and make as many as you want

bill - I got the resin deck cargo, which included oil drums on pallets, boxes of various sizes on pallets, and loads of pipe, from Loose Cannon Productions, same place I got my excellent Victory ship model. Drop Dave a line at the link below, I think it was $10, more than enough to cover most of the hatches!

http://home.earthlink.net/~loosecannonproductions/David.html    

The vehicles I used came from White Ensign Models in England. Another fine company.

 

 

mfsob wrote:

Drop Dave a line at the link below, I think it was $10, more than enough to cover most of the hatches!

Don't contact Dave Angelo.  He has been deployed and will be gone for most of a year.  Contact his business partner Hugh Letterly

http://home.earthlink.net/~loosecannonproductions/Hugh.html

You're kidding! I just talked with him via e-mail about a week ago. Hope he stays safe wherever he ends up.

He posted on SteelNavy that he was being deployed and that he was wrapping up his end of the business - and letting Hugh run it until he returned