Nice work getting the paint off, Galatians! I haven't tried to do it for years, and it wasn't much of a success. Looks like you are going to pull it off!
Is your dog a Rottweiler? I knew people years ago that had two, and they were just big babies. My kids were small, around nine or ten--and the dogs had no trouble playing with them.
As for the classics, no, I never read Jane Eyre. Wishbone never did a TV show on that book. But I did read Jane Austen's Pride and Prejudice and Northanger Abbey. I enjoyed both of them.
Do you remember the episode where Wishbone played David, as in David and Goliath? I found it on youtube yesterday and watched it again. It's titled "Little Big Dog." I've seen worse versions with human actors.
The book that gave me most trouble was Don Quixote. That was a bit much to plow through! Wishbone's version was much, much easier.
I was cleaning out a closet just two days ago, and found the box where I stored all of the books, so when I get some time, I going to start reading through them again.
Anyway, back to the plastic.
I went through all the pieces that were lying in heaps in the storage box, and separated them for each individual ship. I was surprised that a couple of them weren't as badly damaged as I first thought.
Lexington only had the flag staff knocked loose. Unfortunately, when I tried to re-seat it, I broke the whole thing off, so I made matters worse. I managed to fix it without further damage, so that's one done.
Alabama lost her flag, both her float planes, and a few of her 20mm guns, so that's not going to be too difficult.
Wisconsin had more damage, including part of the forward superstructure, a 5inch gun, a number of the 20mm's and her flag. All three of her Kingfishers fell off and fell apart. The pieces are shown below. Worst is the photo-etch Mk 37 gun-directing radar, visible just above the Kingfisher on the right, with the base over to the left of the superstructure. It not only got knocked off, but it was smushed all out of shape. I hope to be able to straighten it out and replace it, instead of having to build a new one. It will have to be repainted since some of the paint chipped.
Hardest hit was Saratoga. She has a lot of gun platforms protruding from around the flight deck, and a number of them were knocked off completely; one had only come loose, but kind of flops around. Photo shows a few of the gun decks below.
A couple of her 40mm's came off, along with about a dozen of the 20mm's.
One thing I learned after building my first ship (which was the Lexington) is that white glue holds these kinds of parts as well (or better in certain circumstances) than super-glue, so all these pieces were attached originally with white glue of some kind--either Elmer's or craft glue; so it shouldn't be too difficult to soak off the old glue with water and replace the parts with fresh glue.
Maybe I'm being too optimistic, but I'm hoping to finish them over this weekend, and set them out to sea. I've got each ship glued to it's base already, so I don't have to touch the ship while I work on repairs.
And that's the story, Wishbone!