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.