I bought a model kit of the USS George Washington a while back (Academy, 1:720), wanting a model of the ship I served on (2010-2016). Well, when I finally openned up the box after moving back to America, I didn't see anything wrong at first - until I started on the island. I noticed it was wrong. It was also about this time I noticed there were no CIWS included, and too many Sea Sparrow launchers. Doing a bit more research, it turns out what I got were parts for the USS George H.W. Bush. Decals were the right ones, pictures were right, but parts and instructions are not.
I've got some of the parts to make it the right one, as it looks like they included some spare pieces to convert it into the USS Nimitz as well, and one of the spare-part radar masts actually matches that of the GW, vice the Bush or Nimitz, which is what really confuses me.
So, I'd really like to try to modify this thing. I'm an extreme amateur and don't really have any special tools, and I don't really want to pour too much money into this thing. There are a few things I have to work with - Most of one set of island pieces has the right parts, and the other set has one right bridge-piece that I'd have to slice it off entirely, and I don't have the skills or tools to really fix any mistakes or odd-looking sections.
Any suggestions on how to make parts out of flash (or odds and ends) , or how to bend others as necessary without potentially breaking them, or fix areas that had hunks sliced off of them?
The missing CIWS won't be too hard; some of the pieces of flash I have are actually close enough to scale that I can cut them appropriately and easily. It won't look pretty, but that doesn' matter as much to me as completing this thing. I'm still an amateur, anyway.