My new 1/350 Indianapolis & 1/144 Snowberry Corvette both unfinished

I have the 1/144 kit. It's not a copy of the Matchbox kit. The wood deck is correctly only the very foward part of the ship, from just forward of the anchor windlass, back to the centerline of the 4" gun. Everything else is steel plate.

The current fit of the Sackville, as far as the deck break, looks pretty much like the model in both scales, at least to me. I'd like to see what you've come up with.

I'm going to build mine as the fictitious K49 HMS Compass Rose.

Don, there are a whole bunch of pictures of the Sackville on the net. Just look under Sackville Corvette. Ther must have been 20 or more pics of it. Look at those pics of the build by the Brit modeler. He did a super job & the thread is from start to finish. He made a lot of changes.

  I have tried a buunch of things with the rails. I wish I had some fast set ACC. Mine got old. I used to keep it in the refrig. on new bottles until I used them. I had some for 2 years & they still worked. My last rails around the stack turned out good, I used .020 brass wire for the posts & .020 plastic rod for the top rail, & .011 brass for the lower rail. The plastic glues easier. I should have gone for the PE rails as this is slow going. I put a little bubble of white CR356 glue on the top of the posts as the real posts had a little ball ove the rails. 

  Iuse the white canopy glue to glue a lot of parts to a painted surface as it holds way better than ACC, & doesn't hurt the painted parts. I don't think you will find metal posts that small. That's why I used brass wire. Itried to drill the kit posts with a #77 drill & it is real hard to do & does weaken the posts. 

   I did look at Toms site & no 1/144 2 bar rails. 3 but no 2. You can get the Eduard rail set for $39 shipped from Engalnd. 

Gene,

That's a beautiful job so far on your Indy cruiser. I can't imagine making your own railings in 1/350 scale as I am having a hard time with even installing the PE railings on my 1.350 CL-81 light Cruiser Houston.  

BTW if you need any parts for the Indy , I would be glad to send them to you. I have pretty much a whole kit of the Trumpeter that I had to canniblize a few parts from for my Houston.  I also have a ton of extra resin parts for Cruisers that I'm not going to use if you want them. That goes for any body reading this post as well.

gene1

GM, I want to see your & Don's build's as you go. I know they will be more accurate than mine. What colors will you both use?

   I had intended to use plastic posts & drill 2 cable holes in each one & thread .011 wire in them, but the posts are awfully small. I could have cut .025 Efergreen rod maybe, or even .030. They would still be small & the wire would be small too. Too late. I could have drilled a hole in the bottom of each post & put .016 wire in each one to give a solid attachment with ACC. I love brass wire for everything.

 

I have been wrestling with this problem too.  I am going to be looking for metal cast stanchions of the right height, but I fear they will be too pricey to replace all the cable stanchions.  I hope with fine enough thread, and painting the knot on the post, it will look okay.  I know I cannot drill those posts accurately enough to retain their strength.

BTW, I will not be starting my build before November.  And, a new issue has come up.  I am going to do the Sackville, and notice that the hull and bulwark transition at the foredeck does not match the kit sides.  The real ship has a much longer transition.  The aft deckhouse goes further forward. I didn't realize this, and neglected to photograph that area when I was aboard.  The bulkhead that the model places right at the the point where the forecastle ends is actually much further forward than that, but I don't know how far, and it is too late to shoot one now, as I am back in Minnesota :-(  Anyone have a photo of that area?  I couldn't locate one with a google image search.

GM, I want to see your & Don's build's as you go. I know they will be more accurate than mine. What colors will you both use?

   I had intended to use plastic posts & drill 2 cable holes in each one & thread .011 wire in them, but the posts are awfully small. I could have cut .025 Efergreen rod maybe, or even .030. They would still be small & the wire would be small too. Too late. I could have drilled a hole in the bottom of each post & put .016 wire in each one to give a solid attachment with ACC. I love brass wire for everything.

So I just picked up the kit and a couple of books.

I found an interesting problem with the railings around the main gun platform.  The kit has hard pipe railings around that gun, versus the cable elsewhere.  When I visited the Sackville in Halifax, I found the main gun had two railings.  The first, outer railing, was a cable type like the rest of the railings.  But there was a second railing, concentric with the first, on the forward part of the area, inside the outer one, that was a solid railing. I finally found a picture of the ship in service, and it does show the two railings, though the shape may be a bit different than that on the ship now.  However, it may just be a perspective problem since this photo was quite oblique.  If there is interest, I could post a picture of the main gun area I took on my visit.

The holes provided in the kit coincide with the cable type railing. I intend to drill a new set of holes, behind the existing ones, and build up the solid railing, as shown in the kit instructions.

Tank, I went to Tom's home page & in 1/144 he only had 3 bar rails with just one piece of 2 bar. I most always look at Toms before I buy. Fresh glue that sets fast is a big help. I think that ACC that i used to use would be best for brass to brass glueing. It was a fast set thin that I had little fine spouts for. I used it on PE on my ship models for railings & everything.  There are enough bigger kits than 1/350 that I want to build & they are a lot easier with my shaky right hand.

Gene that's a swell boat, the corvette. Beautiful battleship too.

Don will have pics, I think the railing on the forecastle deck is wire lifelines strung through solid stanchions. The pipe around the various deckhouse roofs is right.

It would be nice if they'd do the earlier version, with the short forecastle, well deck and mast all in front of the bridge. Then we could model the Compass Rose. She would have been pre-war.

I just started the Snowberry today as a matter of fact. My first level 5 kit so will be taking my time with this one.

Danny

Nice work so far on all 3 of them.  Hope to see them as finished works in the near future.

Making mental note for the 1/144 railings for my Gato, and upscaling them for the 1/72 version.

as always , your doing a beautiful job gene . love looking ay your work .

steve

PJ, That is the way I felt about it. I would change the railings a little. I would use .016 for the posts & .012 for the rails. I would also glue both rails on the side instead of the top one on top. The lighter wire glues way easier than the heavier .016 on top. 

  I cut all the posts a little long & put ACC on the bottom of each one & put them in pre drilled holes. after they were dry & hardened & used a plastic height guage & clipped them to the correct ht. I straightened each one & glued the rails on. The lower rail went to the outside with a ht. guage You have to be careful not to drill to deep & go thru the hull. I do think the .012 would glue way easier to the top if you wanted . 

  Photo etch does get thin looking on larger scale rails.

Hi,

Your models look great.  The wire for railing looks really good and may actually be a bit better than PE because at this scale PE can sometimes look "too flat" for things like pipes and stanchions.

Tank, Thanks, I looked at Toms, but couldn't find any, but I didn.t look at 1/144 rails only. I will look again, because I could use them on 1/144 subs. I have built a lot of them. The Corvette builds nice, but a lot of the details are heavy. 

   I have 4 things going right now & I never do that. I sort of got caught up on them as I had the Imai Pirate ship going & found out the mast & rail trees were missing, so I stopped & started the Indy & the I-58 sub together. Then the Snowberry reared it's pretty head & I was caught. I lucked out & got a second Pirate ship on ebay the other day so now I will do that when I finish the others.

 Don & Tank, I forgot to add that Brit Modeler has a beautiful build of the 1/144 Corvette. He has used all the extras & then some. He takes it from start to finish in the one long post. Took him 6 months. Worth looking at.

Gene ;

 Oh Man ! are you ever doing good . I would do this though . Buy TOM'S Modelworks Generic P.E.Rails and ladders for your stash . It's a good move and that way you will have what you need . Without Eduard's higher price .

Thanks a lot for the offer Don, but I am building mine just out of the box except for my wire rails. They are better than the kits anyway & cheaper.I haven't forgotten the marmon Wasp & am still looking.

Hey Don !

 Would you send the whole bunch of shots to me ? I have built three of the big ones and I want the small one to be more accurate ! The Big ones were all R.C d for myself and friends .

They're looking great, Gene.  I am about to start on my Flower Class Corvette after recently visiting the Sackville in Halifax.  I took quite a few pictures there and will share if you need details shots.