Battle of the Coral Sea Group Build 4 May, 2017 - 8 May, 2018

That's looking good, GM.  Makes for a nice patio display, too.

Worth a thousand words--each! 

stikpusher

Pictures... or it didn't happen

 

Pictures... or it didn't happen

Congratulations on the progress, GM.  Looking forward to more photos when you can.

Lots to report but no art.

Finished painting the hull. One can of Tamiya red hull color, two bottles of MM 5-N, one of 20-N.

Got the deck assembled, gaps sealed. The trick is that each deck section has interlocking keys which of course were designed to create a step. I cut them off entirely and butt joint glued the deck sections together face down on a glass table.

Aded reinforcement tabs afterwards on the underside.

Painted with two bottles of 20-N.

Wierd... it showed up perfectly fine earlier... now the gray no entry sign...

Scott:  the picture is not coming through for me?! 

I'm seeing a minus sign in a circle; and even if I click on it, nothing shows up.

Looks real good Scott!

Testing a photo posting of the latest Lex pic.   Hope it works!

I wanted to inform you all that I have re-posted the GB badges and finished builds back on the front page, after the photobucket cataclysm.  

Hope none of you have suffered too much.

For all of us having trouble with photobucket, I just signed up for an account with Postimage, and it looks like it's working well.  Not hard to use, and you can set up separate "galleries" to organize.

Here's the link again it you want to try it.

https://postimage.io/

Hope it works for ya.

Hmmm.  It's strange, but some of the photos I posted here--the Devastator wings and cockpit--are still showing; but some from the RAF GB are gone.

Don't know what's going on.  

scottrc

Hey Checkmate,

Hate to say this, but I think you just been PB punked   Your pics now have the same message and mine.

 

Hey Checkmate,

Hate to say this, but I think you just been PB punked   Your pics now have the same message and mine.

checkmateking02

Scott:  it looks like photobucket is giving you some trouble.  Photos you previously posted have also disappeared.  Hope you can get it sorted.  Seems photobucket creates problems at times.

 

 

I just got an email from PB. Pay money or you can not post images hosted on their site Onto sites like this... time to fins a new image hosting site asap.

stik:  thanks for the info; didn't know about the interior deck color; a good option to differentiate builds, and avoid monotonous similarities; a got the idea for repainted cockpits from here (and maybe another source I can't recall now):

http://www.ipmsstockholm.org/magazine/2004/05/stuff_eng_interior_colours_us_part3.htm

doesn't specifically address TBD's, but if Douglas and the Navy did it with SBD's, then maybe they did it with TBD's too; hard to say

mc:  jewelers' files worked on the previous TBD I built a couple years ago; the "teeth" on them (or whatever it is) are pretty fine, probably to accomodate work on metal jewelry; but just because it worked before, doesn't mean it'll work again; ya almost always have to paint them to see what they turn out like

I'm not sure if jewelers' files are the same as needle files, just using a different name?

GM:  by the looks of them, Trumpeter's 1/700 Wildcats are the -4 version; they're small enough to ignore the folding-wing scribing; might not be possible in 1/350, but I'm sure your's will look fine

as far as the nets, if memory serves, canvas was supposed to be dyed to match adjacent paint--so maybe it might be the same for nets; if there are no photos or other documentation, who can say you're wrong?

Scott:  I haven't had photobucket pull that stunt on me yet, but it seems chintzy and not at all "nice" to expect you to pay for a service that comes with the free version others of us can use; I hope you can get it all sorted, cuz I enjoy looking at your builds

stikpusher

The wingfold seams are nothing some mr surfacer cant cure if you do care...

 

Just got another shipment of paint. These big CA models take at least a bottle each of hull red, vertical color and deck color.

The Lex has fairly substantial deck edge nets. They are in frames sticking out from the edge at about a 15 deg. Upward angle. Can't find any color pics. Imaging the frames are 5-N. The inner half or so is webbing, the out parts look to be strips. I have no idea what colors. I think the webbing is described as "synthetic", the straps look to be canvas. I could leave them overall blue, or paint webbing and straps black, or...?

Any thoughts?

Well, looks like no pictures from me for a while, PB sent me an email saying I must upgrade in order to do 3rd party hosting.  They pulled this crap before.

Thanks Stik,

I really don't have many pictures, and PB say my BW is at 32% and only 8% of my storage is full, so its screwy.   I also have a hard time having to navigate the billions of adds its throwing up.  I once paid for their premium service but the quality never improved.  

Until I find an easier solution to post here, I guess I can only write.

The wingfold seams are nothing some mr surfacer cant cure if you do care...

I'm going to build my little TBDs with the wings folded.

The Wildcats only come as -4s in 1/350. Imagine that...

I need 9 -3s on deck the morning of the 8th. Glued the wings together and have seams that pretty much look just like that. Have not figured out if I care.

I used needle files to clean up the wing seams on my TBD build. But mine was 1/48. In 1/72 that would be tiny!!!

As far as cockpit colors for the TBD goes, early production ones were aluminum lacquer, while later production ones were interior green. I don't know if the cockpits of early build ones were repainted into interior green when they were painted into camo colors in 1940 and 1941. But, some early ones that were repainted had their upper cockpit decking painted in the upper surface Blue Gray color. 

checkmateking02

Again, something I didn't know.  Haven't ever had a problem with it so far.  Thanks, stik.

 

you're quite welcome...

and you're also quite lucky to have not had any problems with Photobucket...

Again, something I didn't know.  Haven't ever had a problem with it so far.  Thanks, stik.

Photobucket does that when the account goes over its' monthly bandwidth limit. If one has lots of pictures on multiple forums and threads, the bandwidth gets eaten up a lot quicker.

Yeah, it happened to me.

Scott:  it looks like photobucket is giving you some trouble.  Photos you previously posted have also disappeared.  Hope you can get it sorted.  Seems photobucket creates problems at times.

I haven't really done much for this GB, while concentrating on Bish's RAF GB, but I wanted to see if photobucket would give me problems.

After I added some strip styrene to strengthen the wing assembly, I glued the upper wing halves together, taping them down to keep them in place while everything set up.

Then I did the painting on the landing gear/wheel wells.

Spent a lot of time trying to clean up the upper and lower wings where those corrugations are.  I found the most useful method was to use jewelers files from Michaels, then finish up with small sanding sticks made out of toothpick.  Hopefully, managed to eliminate the seam lines.

Installed the horizontal stabilizers and painted the inside of the cockpits and crew positions with MM interior green.  Some sources say that Devastators were painted with an aluminum color, and then repainted green after the war started.  Figured this might have been done by Coral Sea.

Also managed to get the cockpit parts painted. . .

. . .and then one of the cats chewed a hole in my airbrush hose, so everything came to a halt.  Ordered a new hose from Amazon, which is supposed to be delivered today.

Looks like the photos posted, so it appears photobucket isn't giving everyone fits again.