USS Essex 1:350 Trumpeter Build

Right Oh!

Nothing like a weekend to clear your head. First of all I was having trouble visualizing how the PE folded on the SK radar backing frame. GMM's instructions didn't help. On one of the other fourms that I post this tread (three total), one of the guys said he scans the PE fret, and then in the computer enlarges it about 300%, prints it out and then experiments folding the paper before screwing up any PE. Great idea! I did it and it really helped figure it out.

The my genius #1 grandson, who always has great suggestions, solved my problem of the getting the rim on the Tri-mast platform. He suggested soldering the ring together first and then fitting it on the platform. He's a very clever kit, doing great in school and loved solving technical problems. He heading to engineering school and is in mid-11th grade.

I soldered the ring using 60/40 solder so it was a higher melting point than the TIX lo-temp solder with which I will tie the ring to the platform.

It took a bitt of fiddling to get the ring onto the platform, but once in place, getting it soldered went relatively uneventful. I later filled the little gap in the rear with some J-B Weld epoxy which I describe in more detail further down this post.

I did a few other odds and ends today. The GMM PE attachment points are very fine and fragile and some are breaking loose just handling the fret. I needed to fold and deal with some of these now. Two of the long-range radio towers fell off and stood the risk of deformation, so I folded them and then soldered the mating edge ensuring that they wouldn't unfold.

Behind them you can see the lattice platform PE assembly. This not only came un-glued from its nesting place between the legs, but it also fell apart with the two side pieces separating from each other at the corner. Luckily, the inner platforms were still attached: the lower one to one side and the upper to the other side. This helped in getting them back together AND instead of CA, I epoxied these parts back together. I believe this will really stabilize the situation.

On the top of the tri-mast platform rear is the YE radar and its tower. I made the tower out of 3/64 brass, turned and drilled an aluminum ring for a platform, and attempted to solder the GMM YE screen to the top of the brass column. Didn't work so well. The little tab on the screen just couldn't handlie any handling at all, and it broke off. I then drilled the top of the column for a piece of 0.021" brass wire and soldered this in. I then epoxied the screen to this pin. Tomorrow we'll see if it's secure enough. I believe it will be okay.

I also had to attach the backing frame on the SK radar front. This backing is some really fine PE stuff and using my paper trial, folded it so the various contact pieces contacted the flat screen. Took some fiddling... lots of fiddling, and then I glued it in place with J-B Weld. For the uninitiated, J-B Weld is a 2-part dense epoxy that has steel powder infused in the mix. It dries dark gray and is very stable. I glued the antenna and guy wires on the Missouri with this and it's worked well.

In the background of the above you see a folded and somewhat mangled long-range antenna hinge cage that had separated from the fret and was loose in the GMM mailing envelope. The screening is so fragile that it got torn up when I was putting the other fret back in the envelop not realizing that this piece was floating around inside. I folded it and will use it, but I'm not happy about it.

Lastly, I needed to install a railing on top of the tri-mast platform. GMM doesn't include a rail for this location. I first tried using the left over Eduard railing, but was having trouble forming it without deforming it. I went to my grandson's idea and measured the circumference, cut it to overlap at the end, and then soldered the rail. I made the rail to sit on top of the platform, not wrap around it. And again, I used J-B Weld to hold it on. And again, we'll see how it worked out tomorrow. J-B Weld is a slow cure and needs overnight to set up hard. It can be drilled and tapped and can fix stuff that might not appear to be fixable.

This railing was early GMM which is a bit more crudely designed then their current variety, but I purposefully wanted something with a little more body so I could form it without wrecking it.

There's a radar that goes on the front of this platform while the YE radar goes into the hole in the rear. This front radar is another very delicated assembly job, and again I will turn the brass base for it on the lathe and J-B Weld the screen onto the base and base onto platform.

Gussets under bridge decks etc. are B***. I hate those things too.

Chin up, lad.

Just in case any of my thread followers ever get the idea that I'm the "World's Greatest Modeler" or something akin to that, today will dispell that thought forever. That complex tripod mast that you all saw in yesterday's post is no more. Instead, I fought valiantly as I regressed through layers of work as things kept getting more and more desperate. We're not through yet, but it was not a very fun day. It was a tag-team wrestling match where the opponent had 3x more folks on his team than mine.

It all started when I wanted to add gussets under the mast top. These went on sort of okay.  As I was manhandling the mast to put all these pieces in place, previously glued stuff started to unglue. I don't trust CA and this was a prime example. The front brackets were little brass triangles that I made and CA'd. The rear ones was some very small sytrene strip since working the brass at this size started getting ridiculous. You can see in this pic how awful the yardarm was looking.

The yardarm was the first part to break loose. First the joint on one side broke followed by the other. I dissected it from the mast, cutting the stays that were still captivating it. I didn't like how it kept deforming more and more. I took a #11 blade and separated the three layers. I'm going to do what I did with the Missouri; make a solid brass yard out of small brass square stock tapered to shape on the belt sander. 

Here's the "debris" of the yardarm. I'm sure that when I make the solid one, the rather wiggly piece with all the detail will work out okay. Luckily, the GMM PE seems to be pretty tough and none of the tiny weather stations and antenna posts have broken off...yet.

I wanted to install a piece across the front as it is on the photo. This piece wasn't easy to install, and the CA wasn't working. Then the bigger brackets started letting go. During all of this, one of the leg's solder joint let go. Nuts! In the process of soldering that back in place, the CA in most of the brackets let go due to the heating. And to make matters worse, the delicate mast platforms broke loose. I got that out with doing more damage and will reinstall it after other things are done.

I decided that the flimsy PE brackets now had to go since they were a mess and made a set of some heavier gauge brass. You don't see these parts from their edge so thicker material would work. I traced the existing parts and made two new ones.

Instead of gluing these in, I soldered them using the TIX ultra low-temp solder. I had to re-solder that leg two more times until it was finally structurally sound. I also made a new front piece and soldered the new brackets to it which they overlapped.

The mast was now very solid and I wanted to add a band around the edge to thicken it a bit. This turned out to be almost an hour of utter frustration. It ended without completion. The problem appeared to be caused by several factors. First, I'm using the side pieces of PE frets as my brass stock. They typically use half-hard (or harder) brass for this since it has to maintain its shape in very fine cross-sections. As a result, the banding was very springy and didn't want to stay put. I thought about annealing it, but this requires heating it too red heat and letting it cool. This oxidizes the surface badly and would have to be abraded to give solderable brass and that would deform the heck out of it.

The other is how TIX solder seems to behave. If you get a good joint the first time, it seems okay. But if the joint breaks loose, re-soldering it seems to get worse and worse and it just doesn't want to make a strong joint. It was also a bear to hold in place while I was heating it. I tried pliers of all different shapes, but ended with the thing completely detached. I'm going to try again on Monday when my head clears and my nerves recover.

It was one step forward and three steps back all day. You get days like that. Like I've always said, I'm not patient, but I am persistant! I may put the railing on without that band around the edge. Again, I'm the only one who would notice.

First up today was trying out the new pedestals that will support the ship when it's finished. I got these from TotalNavy.com which I found when I googled, "Model Ship Pedestals". They're turned brass and look good. For the Missouri's pedestal I bought a lamp finial at a lamp shop. It worked good except that it's an unusual thread and I had to get different hardware to hold it all together. This one's going to have big bolts going through. I'm going to reinforce the ship hull's bottom with some thicker plywood and epoxy the nuts in place to facilitate gettng it all together. 

Then I got down to business of making and soldering the three legs of the tripod mast. Using the kit's tripod legs I cut pieces of solid 1/16" brass. The back legs are a slightly different length than the vertical middle leg. I needed to solder them at the proper angles. While there could be some minor adjustments, major shifts would break the solder joints.

To figure out how to do all this, I first glued the kit's styrene parts together and temporarily glued them to the ship with white glue so I could measure the geometry. I measured the spacing of the lets at the mast top and laid out my soldered piece to locate these holes. Although the legs go backwards at an angle I drilled the holes straight on the drill press since drilling angular holes is a pain. Instead, I shaped the ends of the 1/16" brass legs do they set at the proper angle.

I then soldered them with 60/40 rosin core solder which melted at a lower temp than the silver-bearing solder that I used yesterday to layer the mast top. After soldering the vertical, center leg, I used hemostats to act as heat sinks to prevent the previously soldered legs from unsoldering. Even with the RSU, when soldering to thick stuff, enough heat would soak to the others to remelt them.

After all three legs were in place I test fit the tower to the model and made minor adjustments to get the spacing dead on. One of the biggest tests of this geometry would be how well the PE lattice platform part would nestle into the tripod. So I decided it was time to dive into this very delicate PE work. 

The lattice platforms consist of three parts: the outside frame which gets folded twice sicne the middle bend is actuall a flat spot with two folds, the bottom platform with back rail and the top platform with its back rail. I use a large "hold-and-fold" from the Small Tool Shop, an essential tool if you're seriously going to do any PE work.

I thought about soldering this, but frankly, it's too delicate to get any kind of soldering tool anywhere near this assembly so I used CA. At the Scale Reproductions Inc, on Tuesday, I asked Brian Bunger (one heckuva model builder in his own right) about how he handles PE so it doesn't stick to his tweezers more than the work. His secret... he uses thick CA since it cures much more slowly, allows more working time, has more innate tackiness, and won't glue to the tools as easily. I tried it, AND IT WORKS!.

Here's the lattice platform waiting for the next step. The platforms had to wedge into the "V" created by the outside lattice. So far, I'm very happy with GMM's PE. It's etched on 0.006" stock which is a bit thicker than AM-Works. And it's not breaking at the bend lines. That's critical to keeping one's modeling mental health.

Then I had to fit this into the crotch of the tripod mast. It took a bit of fittings, adjusting the legs, more fitting until finally the legs contacted the lattice platforms evenly. I had to break on leg loose and resolder it to a slightly wider stance after I reached it elastic limit.

The wedge-shape reinforcing brackets that go under the mast top, were located on the standard set of GMM PE. I bought both sets: standard Essex and Special Essex. The lattice platforms were in the special set, but the top brackets were in the standard set. I glued them on, and then decided to ACTUALLY read the instructions. There was a tiny gap cut in the upper edge of the bracket which I wondered what it was for. It was to drop on top of the main yards stays which is all part of a single PE part. So I had to rip them off. Now Murphy's Law works in reverse sometimes. You can have a terrible time getting PE to stick when you want it to. And then you have a terrible time getting PE off when you've put it on incorrectly. In this case I darn near mangled one of the brackets trying to break it loose. I was able to reasonably re-shape it after removing it.

The yard arm is an annoying, very delicate PE assembly consisting of the center piece with all the details, and two very slim PE pieces that you apply to the front and back to triple-up the yard proper and make it stronger and look better. It was very had for me to get together neatly and it continued to break loose as I was handling it. I thought about soldering it, but decided to keep wrestling with the CA.

I filed some flats on the back tripod legs so there was more glue surface to install the yard. The very fine stay glues underneath the mast top.

I then went back and re-fit the brackets and CA'd them into place. They also wrap around the legs a bit which helped provide more gluing area. After taking this picture, I realized that the bracket was not positioned properly, I broke it loose and then re-fit it so the notch actually grabbed the yard stay. I'm going to add another piece of brass to the front of the legs that fully encases them and you can see in the photos.

According to the photos, the ship's bell hangs underneath the upper lattice platfrom. The kit does not include the bell, but my old Missouri had two of them and I was able to scavenge one for this more. I filed the bell's top flat and CA'd it to the underside of the top platform.

Tried on on one more time on the ship to admire it. Of course I almost had a catastrophe when I grabbed it improperly, bent the yard and separated those three parts on one end and had to sweat a bit as I got it to glue it together again. For the up-scale Missouri, I shaped my own main yard out of solid brass bar and may yet do the same here if it continues to be trouble.

There's still more work to be done on this very complex assembly: I want to put some angle brackets underneath, it gets a thick edge for part of the perimeter and then railing. Lastly there's the radar mast that goes on in back. I may solder the railing and definately solder the radar mast in place (or epoxy...no CA). All of this stuff is what makes looking at these models some compelling. As Gary Kohs of Fine Art Models described, "A fine scale model's detail, keeps you looking deeper and deeper and still finding new things of interest." I want this model to do that.

Due to the incredible delicacy of this piece I'm not installing it on the island yet. There's a lot of other stuff to go on the island including vertical and inclined ladders and lots of railing pieces plus a myriad of additional radar/radio antenna. I'm going to build each of these as a subassembly, maybe even paint them as such and then finally attach them to the island, maybe after the island goes on the flight deck.

I really thought this tripod mast project was the most challenging of the boat which is why I wanted to get it out of the way. I think that was the right decision.

The day started with adding some filler at the various joints. After sanding it, I shot it with a bit of Tamiya gray primer to highlight any troubles and then sanding it again.

I then added the gallery edge solid rails. I used solvent cement first and then touched it up with CA to ensure that it wouldn't break away. It came out okay so I added some 0.020" X 0.020" square styrene to simulate the underneath supporting ribs. In the prototype picture it shows the ends of the ribs and they appear as squares (to me). I originally was cutting them to length and then gluing them in, but realized that I could cut them long and clip them off with the flush cut cutters.

And here's what it looks like finished and waiting for PE and Paint.

I put this aside and then bit another bullet: building the brass main mast tripod/platform and radar supports.

I traced the kit's mast top and cut it out of fairly thin brass stock using a jeweler's saw with a very fine tooth blade. I hand filed the edges to even them out. I drilled the main mast hole 1/16" and then the smaller radar mast with a #56 drill. The kit's legs are almost exactly 1/16" and the top mast is about 0.045" so I'm using a piece of 3/64" brass rod. Both rods will match the kit's closely.

I then laid out the bottom ribbing to add substance to the assembly and, more importantly, provide a place where the back two angular posts are going to tie into the mast top. I cut the underpiece out of the same thinner stock, but thought it needed some more meat so I traced that piece and again using the jeweler's saw, cut this out. It's not pretty, but will be almost invisible since there's more PE trim/railings/support beams.

These two pieces were soldered together using the RSU using some silver bearing solder. I clipped a small piece and then flattened it with small hammer on a v-block. I used TIX flux and heated until it melted. I used the highest temp solder I have so this joint wouldn't re-melt when I solder more stuff on. I have three other heat range solders that I'll use ending with TIX to do any PE soldering on the assembly. It's sitting on a ceramic soldering pad from MicroMark. It's nice since it's very soft and you can use pushpins to hold parts in place while soldering.

So here's where we are now. I have to locate and drill the angular holes for the angle poles, make a jig to hold all the legs at the proper attitude while gluing. The GMM instructios for the lattice PE that goes in the middle has 1:1 drawings of the triangles making up the two platforms. I will be able to make a pyramidal wood block that will hold the legs properly for good soldering.

There's a lip that goes around the after portion of the top that I make using the brass on the PE frets. It makes good stock for scratch-building small stuff out of brass.

I can also make those little triangular gussets and solder them also... or not, or use CA. I have options. Thinking about building this stuff is worse than actually getting down and doing it.

One correction, yesterday's line drawing was of the Intrepid's modified flag bridge. The image below it is of the Essex. There are some minor differences. Since I'm doing an Essex, I'm relying on the photograph for most of the guidance.

Had a couple of hours today and got back into the island mods. I was at the LHS and got some more styrene needed for this model. I made the extended flag gallery which replaces the kit's gallery. I used an old ellipse template to give me the nicely shaped front edge. I used the precision sander to square the edge. 

I measured this part with the flag cabin in its final resting place to get the size and placement of the galleries and where the cabin will glue to the platform. The Sharpie line shows where the cabin ends.

I then stared at the photo and realized that the platform in front of the pilot house also had to be extended AND the director tub that used to be on the pilot house roof, is now relocated cantilevered over the front of the pilot house windows. I cut off the existing gallery and created a shaped piece that's butt-glued to the new pilot house edge. I used solvent cement and then reinforced with some CA.

It was time to glue the main pieces together. I added some connecting strips to reinforce the mating edges. The joint came out pretty good, but a little sunken on the starboard side.

Instead of slathering on a bunch of Tamiya filler, I added some sheet styrene to build up the sunken portion and then attacked it with flat-pointed riffle file. If you not familiar with these, it's a file with curved ends allowing you to file a specific place without filling what's in front or behind.

Tomorrow, I add the filler to bring those surfaces together. The port side joint was much better and a little filler with fix it all up.

I made a small rooflet for the pilot house to cover that large hole left over from moving the director tub. I'll trim the curved edges tomorrow.

Here's the structural work completed. The gallery rails will be 0.015" X .125 styrene strip which scales out to a little over 40" high which is just about right. It's thin enough so it will bend around all those contours. It will probably look better than the kit's molded rails.

It's going to all look okay once it filled and primed. I removed the door on the flag cabin to facilitate sanding all those joints and will replace it with a PE piece before the railings go on. Incidentally, 1 scale inch in 1:350 scale is a tad less than 0.003" (a sheet of paper), so even .005" PE is over an inch and half thick in scale, which is heavy steel plate (armor).

Spent the weekend poring over the GMM frets. Some of the parts will be very challenging. Also working with some other naval mavens, we came to the conclusion about what additional mods are needed to make this a late-war Essex. In addition to the extra sponson 40s on the port fore hangar cat sponsor, there seems to be no other added sponsons that other in the series got. Many of the Essex-Class carriers had their bow and stern 40 tubs doubled, had an additional two 40 gun tubs hung off the flight deck in the aft third of the port side, and an additional three sponsons irregularly spaced under the island on the starboard side. Intrepid got these. Essex didn't get any of them.

But the Essex did have one of the 40 tubs removed from the fore end of the island and the flag pilot space pushed out so it coincided with the island body below. At first I thought that since I had already glued it all together, I couldn't make this change, but after studying the images and then the island I said, "what the heck! It's styrene. I can fix it."

In order to cut out the flag pilot cabin to move it forward, I needed to cut the island below so the saw could reach it. I didn't want to destroy the flag pilot front due to the porthole detail. I also had to remove all the galleries and platforms surrounding this area since all of this is changed and actually simplified.

Saw cuts, even using thin razor saws do leave a kerf and remove material. They are also not perfectly sqaure. So I had to true up the edges and remove any underdeck bracing castings since these will be replaced new with the new galleries. 

Notice the stiffening rib I installed in the island body and also in the chunk I took off. I needed this to keep the geometry intact now that the structural integrity has been disturbed.

Here's the other side. I glued a piece of 0.010" styrene sheet to raise the top surface to replace what was chewed off by the saw. I trued up the flag pilot front and it's just sitting aligned where it will sit. There is a gallery platform that I've started to shape out of 0.020" styrene. The shape of the new gallery is a half-circle in front of the flag pilot. The gun director on the kit is actually too far back and will be moved during the mod. I'm actually doing what they did to the ship in the 1994 shopping.

The countersink bit was being used as a temporary support when fitting up, and it shows clearly how small all this is.

Here's an image of the Essex's modified island front.

Here's a photo of the same.

So... wish me luck as I continue to mangle this kit. 

News Bulletin: The order from Total Navy came today! And the new GMM PE is much finer than the old stuff I just put on the bow and is custom fit, so I'm going to rip off that on Monday and replace it.

With just over an hour in the shop I put on the bow 40mm gun tub and started installing the bow railing (an old GMM piece. I figured that being a dark blue color, you won't really be able to tell the older GMM from the new stuff that's coming next week. Besides I wanted to do some railing work.

For long railings a trick is to tape it to the hull where you want it before adding CA. Otherwise, you're wrestling with some very flimsy brass that will not cooperate. CA is applied from the back. You'll have to go back and touch up the paint to hide the shiny adhesive. I'm using Tamiya Tape which isn't too tacky. You don't want a tape that will pull the railing back off when you try to de-tape.

I located where the chocks were and removed a bottom horizontal rail at each location.

So that's one more rail down and lots more to go. When I was a kid building many, many box-scale Revell ship kits, I longed for the ability to add "real" railings to them. To me, railings make the model. Only one, the USS Buckley Destroyer Escort, was a large enough scale that it had stanchions where you used thread to create the rail. I loved that model.

On monday work will continue. When the rest of the PE comes, I'll get back to the island. I'm thinking about how to build the tripod mast out of bras.

That makes total sense. Just got the word that my GMM stuff is on the way, and just in time too.

Built the island as far as I'm willing to go before having the PE and the instructions in my hand. For example, I'm thinking about building all the masting in brass (as I did in the Missouri) to ensure they stay together and so I can solder the PE antennas to them when warranted. I did decide to chisel off all the molded-on ladders and will put PE ladders on.

The island needed a little filling here and there and I had to sand/file all the overhanging deck edges to remove the mold lines as I did with the platforms on the hull itself.

I installed the funnel and filled its joints too, but stopped putting on the funnel cap since I know there's PE going on top and may want to install that with the cap off the funnel.

With the island on hold I went back to working on the bow. I brush painted the decking Deck Blue and the anchor chain and chafing plating semi-gloss black. 

The wildcats aren't painted yet since they're Navy Blue 5N, which I did next. In this case I wanted to airbrush it. I thought I had none left of the Life Color 5N, and decided to attempt to mix my own and got very, very close. I wanted to use Tamiya color for my mix, and used Nato Black, White, Flat Blue and Red. First I tried using a darkened Field Blue, but it's a bit on the green side. Here's the swatch test I used in getting the mix.

The center color is Life Color Navy Blue 5N

After staring at test number five and the sample, I thought I caught a tiny bit of purple so I added a tiny amount of red and got it very close. #7 is my last trial and it's very, very close. So I went to find one of my mixing bottles (that have the same threads as my Badger bottle adapter) and what did I find? A 1/3 full bottle of Life Color 5N that was still okay and just needed a little thinning. So I used that to air brush the front bulkhead and the flight deck supports. I did the latter while still on the sprue so I could spray the backsides. l then glued these to the deck with med CA. I tried the front part of the flight deck onto the hull and you certainly can't see much of my fancy anchor chain and painting. But I know it's there.

Builder 2010

I thought about doing this on the brass barrels, but it wouldn't work.

Well, if it's any relief, USN puts a tompion (& muzzle cover) on any rifle with a bore 3" or larger.

So, to sacle, you'd not see a hole, unless General Quarters had been called away

Which would want a hundred teeny tiny figures or more

Built all the twin and single fives today. All the PE you see in this image is left over from the second Eduard Missouri PE set. I especially like those little hatches that are on the trainer's/pointer's/checker's telescope hoods. I lost one of the kit's 5" guns which I needed to provide the mantlet to which to mount the new gun. Luckily, the kit mantlet is 0.040" and that's a nice Evergreen styrene thickness of which I have some. So I made another little mantlet and drilled it like the others for the new barrel.

Notice the white t-shirt that's now covering my pull-out belly board. I don't know why I didn't think about this five years ago. Not only did I not lose a single piece of very small PE, the t-shirt cotton traps and holds the PE and it stands out very clearly, especially for those ladders and the hatch covers. The excess t-shirt was bunched over the edge and further blocked that channel to the workshop floor.

Does anyone know why PE will stick to my tweezers/fingers in deference to sticking to the model where it belongs. I'm constantly cleaning the tips becuase even a microscopic bit of wet CA will hold the PE. It gets very exasperating.

I did drill out the bores on the plastic 5" single open mounts. It's not hard. The key is getting the first pin *** as close to dead center as possible, then drilling slowing and checking in both directions to ensure you're going in parallel to the bore. You don't need to go in far, just far enough to show black. I thought about doing this on the brass barrels, but it wouldn't work. I found Master Model brass barrels that are drilled for a little over $12 plus shipping, but I'm glad I did my own. They also made 40mm barrels which are also drilled. They're really nice, but I coldn't figure out how they'd work with the plastic receivers. Something to think about on my next big 1:350 boat project.

Incidentally, that hole is the correct size for the scale using a #80 (0.014") drill. The plastic barrels are too thick.

So all the fives are now done and these singles are waiting for the GMM PE to arrive. I'm sure there are added railings that will enhance these. Master Model also makes a stunning resin/brass open 5" mount. Again... next time... maybe.

I started building the island late in the afternoon. Fit was so-so and it needed a little cleanup. I found a box of spring clips upstairs in the computer room desk and put them to use today holding these parts during gluing. I drilled out the portholes, but couldn't open any WTDs since I don't have any more left over from the Missouri. I like how the open doors look, and am thinking about any other ways to show them. Unfortunately, the backsides of these doors does not look like the front side, So I just can't make a hole next to the door.

Tomorrow I'll continue adding plastic to the island. This too is directly impacted by waiting for the GMM PE. I don't know if replacing the molded on ladders is necessary. They're in pretty good relief. I have ladder stock to use if I go that route.

I awoke today thinking about making my own brass 5" Mark 38 guns to replace the plastic ones. I know there are commercial parts available, but I wanted to give it a try before shelling out more $$$. First I needed to figure out just how big these things are in 1:350. I found some good imagery on the web showing some major dimensions. I printed it out and measured the actual dimension on paper and divided that into the dimension noted on the drawing. The one I chose was the distance from the center of each bore to the centerline of the mount. It was 42". I doubled this to 84" which is the center-to-center distance between the guns. The scaling factor came out to 37.5. I measured the barrel's o.d. at the muzzle and where the recoil slide begins, and found that a piece of 0.032" brass rod is the right size for the larger diameter. The diameter at the muzzle is 0.024" in 1:350.

I chucked the brass rod in my Dremel flexi-shaft held in my Panavise. The vise was held with some quick clamps to keep it from moving around.

First I thought (incorrectly) that I would have to machine the metal off to make the taper so I chucked a small diamond-coated burr into my second Dremel tool and worked the two spinning tools together. This proved to be overkill. I quickly ground right through the piece. So I scraped that idea and went to Plan B, using a small file and sanding stick to reduce the diameter while the flex-shaft was running at medium speed. A light touch up with 600 grit emery finished it off.

The results were promising. I set my digital caliper to the 0.024" muzzle diameter and checked the size as it reduced. 

I removed the old barrels from an old Missouri 5" mount and carefully leveled the stub remaining. I pin pricked the center, drilled a pilot hole with a #80 drill and then opened up the hole with a 0.032" drill. Then I tried my barrels on. 

Results were very acceptable. So I finished up another 7 to give me 9 guns (I need 8 for the four twin mounts). Glad I did, because I promptly launched one out the needle nosed pliers. 

The only thing I haven't done is drill the 0.014" bore hole. I've thought about it, and if it was styrene wouldn't hesitate in doing it, but in brass, it's a totally different animal. Carbide drills tend to grab in brass. When they grab, they break and you have a hole with a chunk of difficult-to-remove carbide in it.

These barrels look so nice I may make them for the four open 5" since mounts. It only takes a minute of so to make a gun now that I have the routine down.

Tomorrow I'll build the remaining 5" mounts with the new guns installed. Then I'll start the single mounts, but I'm may be stymied since I'm waiting for that Total Navy GMM order, and I thing there's some PE details in there for these open mounts.

Thanks Bill. I too have been thinking about gluing the flight decks together and reinforcing the joints. I think this could be necessary since I will have a ton of PE to add with the GMM regular and extra sets with catwalks and galleries hanging under the flight decks.

I finished all the 40mms, but will have to go back and replace gun barrels when the extra set from AW-Works arrives. I suspect Alliance Model Works is a Chinese company since I can't find a mailing address anywhere on their website AND the fellow who corresponded had a Chinese name and English was not his native language. I ran out of AMW guns, my scaped ones from the old Missouri and resorted to making the kit's guns work on the last mount. That last mount will have a barrel change along with the others that have any broken guns.

I duplicate this post on the WorldAffairsBoard.com Modeler's corner and one of the readers suggested a way to handle that very flimsy rail that just sticks out to nothing. He suggested bending the side rail towards the free rail and tacking them together using Future Floor Wax. I chose to use the nuclear option and actually solder that tiny joint. I did it successfully two times and made two more AMW 40mm mounts, then I went back to using the remaining Eduard PE left over from the Missouri project.

Here's the part held in a spring tweezers and then in my Panavise showing the single rail in position to be soldered. The part is so frail that it's almost always deformed. I bend it every time I touch it.

Instead of using the RSU I chose to use my Weller soldering iron. I also violated my own soldering rules by, after fluxing the joint, to move a tiny quantity of solder from the iron's tip directly to the junction. The RSU's tweezers are just too clumsy to get neat that tiny joint.

Here's the joint actually soldered. It doesn't hold and better than any adhesive given the cross-sectional area.

Here's the entire base soldered and put back in reasonable form. It got distorted many times more as I glued it into place. The shield was not soldered in this case since it's connected to a resin casting, not a PE piece like Eduard uses.

Remember me talking about one of the trunions hitting the floor and disappearing into the quantum rift? Well... in this case, it disappeared under the wheel of my desk chair. Road Kill! It's not the first time this has happened, nor will it be the last. And it's certainly not the worst. The worst was when the Missouris SK main radar antenna (completely finished) got rolled over and turned to a flat mess. I had the extra set of Eduard and made another, but it did not turn out as good as the first one.

With that, I'm done with 40s for a while. I started working on the 5inch dual Mark 38 turrets. Trumpeter's aren't bad, but I had a ton of PE enhancements from the Missouri build and wanted to add them to these units. The enhancements include PE back hatch doors, ladders, commanders flash shield on the roof, and optical range finder outer doors. I scraped off the molded on back doors to accept the PE versions.

I then tried to do a silly thing... drill out a scale gun bore. It scales out to 0.014" and I have that drill size. Of course, I did one correctly, and then broke the next one, not when drilling, but when attempting to remove the sprue nubs. Then I lost another barrel to the rift, so right now I'm short one full set for one of the four turrets. I have all the Mark 38s from the old Missouri. I like the Tamiya barrels better since they're not so clunky. I don't want two different kinds of turrets even though they're very similar, the barrel thickness will be noticeable (to me at least). I'll build the three with the Trumpeter turrets and make a decision. I'm also toying with the idea of substituting brass barrels for the lot of them.

This is very nice work. I've got two going- the Lex and the Hornet. They've gone together in very different ways, however it can't be stressed how much extra care is needed to assemble all of the hangar deck elements. If it isn't done with real accuracy, the problems on the flight deck and up from there are multipliers. 

I glued together the flight deck sections on both before attaching the one, the Lex, to the hull. I almost wonder if it might have been easier to add them one at a time. 

This is a really interesting WIP. You've gone the extra distance to document it, and thank you for that. I'm not saying it should be the plan, but it would be interesting to see a model with aviewable hangar deck with extra aircraft in the overhead.

Correct about Morrison's Third Law.

Bill

I worked two hours to produce one very distressed 40 mount. Almost everything that could go wrong did, but I persisted and created one more 40. The side railings fell off on one side and I had to solder on a small brass bracket made out of the extra fret material. After soldering on the one side, I realize that this was more secure method of fastening on the shield and did it for the other side. During all this handling the back railing fell off. I had a fret of 40mm back railings that I got from GMM in the mid 1980s. The problem here is it was even too small a surface area to solder so I resorted to CA. It took at least 10 minutes to finally get it to stick enough that I could go back and add more to reinforce the joint. I finally got the guns on and had to go and take my grandson to tennis practice.

I also had one of the gun trunions fall off the workbench proper and hit the sliding belly tray I built to catch errant PE parts from disappearing. And of course this part disappeared. It just dropped 3 inches, but that's all it takes to go into the quantum rift. You'd think when something crosses the inter-dimensional barrier you see a flash or a puff of smoke as it disappears, like in a Harry Potter movie. But no... this part just silently vanishes. I swept the whole area for at least 10 sq ft, but nothing. I'm critically short of this particular Eduard PE part, and this doesn't help. 

I'm optimistic that I will come back on Monday and it will be sitting in the center of the belly tray. I've had that happen before. They disappear inter-dimensionally and then reappear a day later right in front of my eyes. 

So here're three 40mm mounts all different. The one in front is Eduard plus Tamiya guns, the middle is all Alliance Model Works, and the back is Eduard mostly, Alliance guns and GMM back railing. It's all mix and match. Lucky for me, enclosed in a plexiglass case, you won't be able to put a magnifying glass up to it to really see the difference. They'll all be painted and detailed and that will be that.

One more thing. I think I figured out why AM-Works PE is so difficult to process. The brass is only 0.004" thick. That's basically a piece of paper. Then they etch the bend lines, which makes them probably 0.002". Metal that thin unless dead soft is so fragile as to be unworkable. No wonder the brass breaks when it's still on the fret. I hope GMM is a bit more robust. By comparison, Eduard is 0.010" thick and 0.005 at the etched bends and it was very fragile also, but mostly workable.

The Iowas were amazing vessels. I still think they're the handsomest battleships ever created. They had balance, the extra 200+ feet to give them speed also gave them a greyhound look. They sat low in the water and looked liked they were moving when standing still. 

I'm still working on building 40mm mounts. I'm getting better at this, but it's still a challenge. Believe it or not, the most challenging aspect is not the PE. It's the AM-Works very brittle 40mm guns. They're breaking faster than I can replace them. I've written them this morning and they're sending me more guns. I hope it will be enough.

Sometimes I know when I break them. Then there are those, like this one, that broke and I didn't know when. You can't fix them. You have to break out the old gun and replace it. I find the old Tamiya styrene ones, while lacking the detail of the flash hider and recoil spring, are softer and will bend before breaking. I only have a few more old Tamiya barrels left. With the new ones from AM-Works, I may be able to finish the 12 sets needed for the Essex.

I tried another approach to holding the shield still while I soldered it to the mount. I stuck the little brass tails into the surface of my soldering block. It worked... but...

It placeed the shield too low on the mount. I used this one, but had to cut the tails off so it would sit on the deck correctly. I then resorted to holding the piece in my hand as I clamped on the RSU. I was able to solder it so quickly that I didn't even burn my fingers. Perhaps a little more about my American Beauty Resistance Soldering System may be of some value.

Mine is a hobby unit, about 250 watts. I have both a Tweezer hand piece and a single electrode with ground clamp. I've only used the single electrode piece once since it's large and I'm always doing pretty small work.

The power unit is a transformer that turns 110 VAC down to 3 VAC. As we know about transforming electricity, when the voltage goes down, the current goes up and vice versa, so the system generates about 50 or more amps. When you pass high current through a less-than-perfect conducting metal, you get heat... lots of heat... and quickly. Since the heat occurs between the tweezer points it is highly localized. If you get the current knob adjusted to the right amount for the size of the material you're soldering, the joint can be made in a few seconds.

The tweezer electrodes are copper-jacketed stainless steel. I just found that out today. I thought they were carbon. The single electrode hand piece is carbon. You can bend the tips somewhat to get them to grip correctly, but they can side slip which makes holding the parts very difficult. My electrode set screws were camming out (the phillips head slots were disappearing) and due to the repeated heating and cooling, the screws work loose and you start having trouble getting a circuit. I wrote them today and they're sending me new screws and new electrodes. They're a nice to work with and it's made in the USA.

All of this is controlled by a foot switch. You clamp the joint, step on the switch, watch the solder melt, and release the switch still holding the clamp until it cools. 

My RSU is one of my most expensive tool purchases. The other is my Taig Lathe. It has enabled me to do solder joints that are difficult or impossible usng an iron, and it's ready instantly. It doesn't have to warm up and you don't need to tin the tips. You do have to occassionally hit the tips to remove any char that develops. This one is a hobby version and is about $500. They go up into the low thousands for industrial kilowatt units for doing production work. You can even do brazing with one of the units since it generates enough heat. If you ever have the desire to work in metals to build models, an RSU is pretty much a necessary tool.

I've got five more 40mm guns sets to produce. I may put them aside when I run out of gun barrels and wait for the AM-Works replenishment to come. I'm still waiting for the GMM order.

My friend in Albuquerque is producing a nice routed-edge oak display board for me and I made contact today with a local company that can cut the acrylic sheet for the showcase. I did my own cutting for the Missouri's case and it wasn't pretty. I used the score-a-line- about-half-the-thickness-and-snap method. Sometimes it snapped and sometimes it cracked. Like I said, not pretty. I want the pieces professionally cut and edge finished and I'll glue it all together.

Builder 2010

the turrets themselves

The turets on USS Texas are about 1400 tons each.

The Iowa class turrets are 2500, about the same weight as a Fletcher class DD.  Each.

Boggles the mind even coping with the scale of things.

Plan B is now in effect. Plan B is to use Eduards gun mounts, base and shield, AM-Works guns, and solder as much of this together as possible.

While the Eduard bases have their own problems—seats, foot pedals and front railing-type-thingy—falling off before or during handling, the metal thickness is more capable of being handled and since it's all brass, the possibility of soldering it together.

When I built the Missouri's 40s 6 years ago, I didn't have the Resistance Soldering Unit (RSU), so when I tried to attach the mounts to the base, when I would try to solder the second mount, the first one would de-solder. And then when I tried to solder on the shield the heat would de-solder both gun mounts. This occurred with such frequency it would drive me to distraction.

Now, here's the process.

First I scrap off the primer in the places that I want solder. I then put a small drop of TIX liquid flux with a small artist's brush to further promote solder adhesion. I using a very small diameter rosin-core solder. I changed the RSU's tweezer points to get nice sharp points. I put the two points down on the base right in the little cleaned brass area, hit the foot pedal and wiggle them slightly to get a connection, and add a tiny amoung of solder as fast as I can. Repeat this for the other pad area.

I do the same for the as-yet folded gun mounts. On the Missouri, I also soldered the folder mount since I went overboard and line-drilled the trunions, and the Tamiya gun barrels and put a pin through them to hold it all together since I was having CA troubles. In order to stand up to the drilling I had to solder all the mounts so they were stable.

In this model I'm not doing that (yet) since I think it will work just with CA.

After attempting to CA the gun shield to the gun base with very little success (very little surface area for glue to adhere) I decided to try and solder them. I then had to clean and tin the parts of the base that would be in the joint. This is on the reverse side of the base. First I tried to tin the parts when they were all flat, but the solder was interfering in the fold line and results were dubious, so I changed routine and soldered the big pad for the mount when flat, then fold, and finally tin the areas on the side rails which would be involved in the shield joint.

To solder the mounts and base together—and this is where the RSU really earns its keep—I carefully place the mount over the solder pad, and then hold it down with the RSU tweezers. Since some of the area around this part is still painted, it took a bit of coaxing to get a connection. The RSU makes a very audible 60 hertz hum when the current is flowing through the joint. If you don't hear the hum, it's not conducting and you're not getting any heating. The Tweezers are putting pressure on the mount to both hold it in place and get a connection. Once the solder beneath the mount flows, I release the foot switch, but keep holding the tweezers in place until the joint cools. This all happens so fast that when I do the second mount, the first one doesn't de-solder at all.

The joints are very secure. It's not as easy as it looks since holding the tweezers steady with the right amount of pressure throughout the entire until it cools is challenging. I spent a lot of time positioning and re-positioning the mounts before hitting the foot switch.

As I said, CA'ing the shields wasn't working well so I decided to solder that too. Again I had to clean off the primer and add some solder.

I had trouble keeping my folds on the correct side on the base. I actually folded two on the wrong side and had to scrap one of them since when trying to re-fold it properly I generally screwed it up. You don't get a lot of second chances with PE.

Again, the most difficult part of soldering the shields to the mount was positioning and holding it steady enough with the tweezers so it could be soldered. Lots of time was spent doing this. 

I now have four mounts finished: one AM-Works mostly resin, and three Eduard-based units.

All of the units are hybrids with Eduard mounts, and either AM-Works or Tamiya guns. I don't have enough good AM-Works guns to do all 12 mounts. I've broken four AM guns already and have some left over from the scrap Tamiya Missouri. The AM guns are nicer, but they are ridiculously fragile and break if you look at them the wrong way. I don't know why they use a resin that's so brittle for these micro-parts.

Here's a Eduard/AM hybrid.

And here's a Eduard/Tamiya hybrid. Without magnification, you won't be able to tell the difference when in the case.

All of these mounts will be airbrushed Navy Blue and the guns picked out for some different colors, so all the heat discoloration will be no longer visible.

So... only 8 more to go. I'm getting 2 to 3 done per work session, but getting faster so I'll have these finished by early next week. Meanwhile, the GMM materials from Total Navy should get here by then.

Happy Tuesday! Got in the shop, but have very little to show for it. I plunged right into attempting to build those teeny tiny AM-Works 40mm Quad Bofors Mounts with Shield. My worst fears are coming true. Just because you can actually etch something, doesn't actually mean mortals can build it. AM has the same problem that Eduard, they etch the bend lines. This makes brass that's so thin as to break down before you can separate the parts from the fret. Here's an example:

Those tiny hair-like pieces still sticking to the fret were supposed to be part of the base plate with railings. These were supposed to fold back upon itself to...what?...reinforce the very fragile railing. But instead, they simply separated from the part while I was carefully making the separating cuts. 

Futhermore, those rear railings are supposed to engage with a very fragile square-shaped side rail. Only problem is the side rail is supposed to attach at the corner in a butt-joint to effectively a brass hair. There's simply no surface area to apply any kind of adhesive. Without a corner connection, both the side and rear rails deform at the slightest touch, bump, breadth, etc.

Next there's the guns. Beautiful resin castings, but oh so fragile. I attempted to glue the gunner's seats on, and got one... sort of, and the other went into the PE ether. So the first one I built was an abomination. The real rail is a mess, there's one barrel missing, no gun sites or seats. Oh and the rail on the right side is missing entirely since I had to amputate since it got so out of whack.

I am nothing if not persistant and tried again. This time I thought (wrongly) to add the gear sector on the gun's bottom as shown in the instructions. Unfortunately, with the sector glued on the gun no longer can go on the mount. So I attempted, carefully, to cut relief slices into the center of the mount so the sector would slide into position. This worked until it didn't when the resin base casting broke and had to be CA'd back together. So the sectors aren't going on either.

I got the second mount done as far as the cartridge ramps and the rear platform. I was in the process of bending the front shield and ran out of time. I'll continue tomorrow. I'm not sure I'm going to get any satisfaction out of the this exercise and may just substitute those beautiful gun barrels on the GMM brass 40mm fittings. I'm assuming the GMM brass is a little more robust and hope they don't etch the folds.

The barrels have beautifully rendered flash hiders and recoil springs. And they're very delicate.

Here's that second mount. At least the full rear railings are intack (so far) and I got it on upside down since the out-of-scale diamond plate is now on the wrong side. Maybe folding it backwards kept it from falling apart so fast. You can see the slots I cut for the sectors that aren't being used.

modelcrazy

 

 

Builder 2010

What is Morrison's 3rd Law of Modelling?

 

 

That no matter the size of your workbench you will only have 2 sq ft of work space.

I think I got it right.

 

Love it!  I keep adding to my workbench and find the same thing!

I thought of making my bench U-shaped.  But I have drawers in my bench, and I am afraid I would not be able to have drawers (that actually open) in a U-shaped bench :-(

Right. When one thinks about the density of metal in a Battleship it's amazing that they float at all. Thank you Archimedes. Just one gun without the breech block is over 250,000 pounts. I believe it's 275,000# with the breech per gun and there's 3 of them. 750,000 pounds not counting trunions, elevating mechanisms and then there's the turrets themselves. One turret weighs more than the entire island structure on an Essex. Whew!

Didn't work today, but my Alliance 40mm Bofors quad gun emplacements came with shields. 

These packages are tiny and the stuff inside is tinier still. They will be a challenge to build, but the PE looks cleanly done and with good cross sections. Sometimes PE gets so thin that it's completely unmanageable.

couldn't have put that better myself mike .

Images you just posted are clear and well photographed.

You folks who build carriers are completely insane! So much work involved in so many different areas. Of course those who build the large military sailing ships are nuts as well with all the cannons and rigging. This is why I like this site so much ... so many crazy people building fantastic scale models. Since I am given to fantasy and day dreaming (Walter Mitty style) this is the place for me .

The overall, or more accurately, the waterline lengths are similar due to the dimensions of the Panama Canal locks.  Which is why later carriers have significant overhangs fore and aft.

The horsepower thing is related to the displacement, water moves aside at only so great a rate, and compresses very poorly.  What's slightly interesting is that both the Iowas and Exxex were designed to cruise (most fuel efficient speed) of 15 knots.  Which will beggard the imagination of landsmen, to think of 17 mph as "fast."  But, one of the major post-war design issues was how to get the Amphibious Forces up to a cruising speed of 12 knots up from 8-10.

All of your photos in the last post are sharp and clear.

Since I'm receiving no, "I can't see the pics" comments, I am assuming that PostImage actually works consistently. It's also fast, has no miserable ads popping up all the time, and seems very stable. Good suggestion!

I knew I had one more fret of Eduard Missouri PE that had some long railings on it, and finally found it. I was able to hack it up to get some very convincing longer rails to wrap around the fantial. The gun/director tubs break the rail in two. Eduard has opened the rails when they're opposed to deck chocks so I found chunks that did this for the Trumpeter kit. I had primed these rails a long time ago after dipping them in a vinegar bath to provide some "tooth" for good paint adhesion. I brush painted the Navy Blue after they were fixed to the deck. I also added a little chunk of rail on that stair well projection that sticks out of the starboard side. That may be a docking platform since this is the dock-side of the ship.

Notice how fine the Eduard etching is. It's one of their strengths. Here's the fantail basically completed except for the guns themselves. They will go on near the end. Because I have use more 40mms than included in the kit, I think I'm going to spring for the Alliance 40 mm kits. There are 6 per set and the model, I believe has 10 quad 40s including the two that I added on the sponson. This is a picture of the mount from Alliance. It's a terrific and very small model. 

Added a few other details (a port side aft 40mm tub and the platform that holds the ships boat) and then started paying attention to the bow. Since I filled the hull/deck gap in the stern, I was now compelled to do the same for the bow. The framing structure under the bow seems to be unaffected by the GMM PE, so I'll be able to glue all that in and air brush it, once I mix my own version of Navy Blue.

Lots of scraping and sanding to get the filler so it was decent. I wanted to add real anchor chain since this model does not have any molded on chain detail. I found two sizes in my ship modeling parts box. They scale out to 35" links and 25" links. 25" is more close to the real size (I think) so I went with it.

I chemically blackened the chain a bit and then drill a couple of holes where the chain disappears into the chain lockers at the base of the foc'stle. The trunks that feed the chain down are rather complicated based on drawings in my Intrepid book.

Now all of this is rather silly since you will be able to see practically nothing of what's going on on the foredeck since there's major structure around it, and then it's covered by the flight deck.

Having both a Iowa-class battleship and and Essex-class carrier at hand led me to compare their architecture. The carrier is basically an empty box, almost like a big Winnebego, whereas the battle ship is crammed with very heavy stuff. As result, the two ships are almost exactly the same length: Essex=880', Iowa=887', but their displacements are very different: Essex=25,000t, Iowa=45,000t. Their drafts are very different too reflecting this displacement difference:Essex=22ft, Iowa=33ft. And their speeds and this one is really interesting: Essex-30knots, Iowa=33knots, but the power to get them there also varies: Essex=150,000 hp with four turbines driving four, 4-bladed props, Iowa=212,000hp with four turbines driving four props (5-bladed inboard, 4-bladed outboard). The Iowa's had the highest horsepower powerplant of any ship in WW2.

I drew a plan for the base plate and have asked some friends with a wood shop if they'll cobble it together for me. I can do my own plexiglass work, but if I can find a shop in town that cut the plexi for me, I'd really appreciate that, since scoring and cracking plexi, for me, is hit and miss.

Drew this up with a combination of SketchUp and CorelDRAW.

I'm game. So let's try Postimage. I found that Photobucket was unreliable and their ads were boardering on manic and very difficult to work around. Please let me ASAP if the pictures fail to materialize.

I worked on more hull related things. I've gotten into a groove putting in the better, more scale-sized Eduard doors. While I have a ton of full doors left, I'm quickly running out of the nice open door etchings. 

I started putting on the remaining gun tubs on the sponsons, but before doing do, scraped off the molded-on WTDs and installed my own. It's a four-step process and goes something like this. I use a dividers to figure out a hole spacing for the extremes of the future door opening and mark this location. I drill the two holes with a 0.032" carbide drill in a pin vice. I then mark an intermediate hole and drill that leaving three small holes.

I found that a #44 drill is the next size that opens the hole, but not too big so it gives me some stock to carefully remove to bring it to size. Sometimes the drill skitters off the center hole, but that's not a big problem.

With a sharp #11 I carefully trim out the interior of the hole to conform to the shape of the door frame. I occassionally hold up the PE to the hole just to get a final size.

If you're careful you can also remove some small amounts when the door is glued in.

I took the above picture with a piece of black paper behind to make in dark inside. Most of these doors are in blind spaces so nothing will be seen inside. In the real ship, whenever a door opened into the hanger deck itself which was well lit, there is a light labyrinth to trap light from getting outside when running dark. I'll build those for the model also.

I had to filled the edges where the gun tubs fit their respective sponsons. Again, early Trumpeter's require a lot of craft if you want to make a respectable model (by my standards anyway).

I added the single 40mm gun tub and its associated director on the fantail. This part actually fit very nicely. I hand painted this also. In comparing deck blue and navy blue, the colors are almost identical with deck blue being just a tad darker than navy blue. I've read that the Modelflex colors aren't very authentic, I don't like Vallejo for airbrushing, and I can't seem to find Life Color in individual bottles (only in sets) and since I only need two of the colors and set doesn't work well for me. So I'm going to try and mix my own shade with Tamiya paints. I really like Tamiya best for airbrushing. I'm not color blind at all and do okay when mixing colors. I'll try with a very small amount to get the proportions and then enlarge the batch to the quantity I need. Navy Blue 5N is basically a very dark blue-gray. I start with medium gray, add the blue and darken it with black and see what happens.

In looking at the above C.U. I will have to do a better job on the deck blue painting.

Last thing I did was add the two 40 mm tubs on the startboard aft deck. The tubs were a no-brainer. I got one of the directors assembled and installed without drama. They're just a silly little two-part assembly. Then while removing the sprue nubs on the other director, it hit the floor, but I actually was able to see it land and try to get away.

I actually voiced "Aha! I've got you." (I often talk to myself when working). Then I was handling this director and it's little tub trying to get it perfectly centered and the darn thing hit the floor again, but this time it entered the quantum rift. GONE! Thought I saw it's trajectory, swept the area with a dust brush, crawled around on my knees in an ever-expanding search grid, but it was gone.

So I went back to my trusty old Missouri and popped one of the two similar director tubs that were on its fantail. An boy! Did it pop! It was very difficult to pry loose unlike other old glued parts. When it finally let go, I heard it hit the light fixture over my work bench then heard it ricochet onto my mobile work bench where I do a lot of the work. And sure enough, there it was right in the middle with a bunch of stuff around it. Whew! So I have one Trumpeter director and one Tamiya on that back deck. That Missouri is really starting to look like a ship that could be used for target practice.

I was looking today to buy enhanced 40mm, 5" single and double emplacement kits from Alliance Model Works. There are only four doubles and four single 5" guns and 8 - 40mms so it wouldn't break the bank to do it, but the Trumpeter guns aren't bad and the GMM PE set includes a lot of goodies to enhance them. Missing are the commanders' hoods for the top of the twin 5s, but I have them left over from the Eduard Missouri set. So I'm going to see how they build up and then decide if it would be worth the $$$ to upgrade. Also, looking at the kits, there's some very small finicky parts to deal with.

Just in case you're wondering or have forgotten how it is that I have all this excess Eduard PE after building a full-workup Missouri, it's becasue I had so much trouble with the Eduard parts breaking that they sent me another full set of four frets to use. As it was I did use quite a bit from that second set, but not all.

Eduard, like some other PE makers, etches the places where you're supposed to bend. The normal stock is 0.010", but it's half that at the bends. Being half-hard material, if it's bent more than once it can fracture. Some of these even broke before I got them off the frets. In some cases, more complicated bends fell apart in three or more pieces. There was some tricky railings on the Mo's superstructure that almost drove me crazy. Instead of being a single, nicely-bent piece, I was fumbling with sticking all these pieces on the model and trying to align the ends with stanchions with the three skinny pieces of brass sticking out where stanchions used to be. As a result, I like those companies that don't do this etching, but leave it up to me to measure and bend appropriately. It may take a little bit longer, but it doesn't break and therefore, takes much shorter.

You can anneal the brass to prevent the breakage (heat with a torch till it glows red and letting it air cool), BUT, and it's a big but, you now have a material that's so soft that it can't sustain its shape and this opens another hornet's nest of annoyance. (talking from experience here).

About the photo posting:

When Photobucket dropped their free service, one of the hosting sites I tried was Google photo.  I found only about half the readers of my forum posts could see the images.  So I tried Postimage instead.  I like that service and have stayed with it.  I have not heard from anyone yet who could not see the images in my posts now.

Builder 2010

. I'm not doing anything differently in loading the pictures from Google Photo and yet one day you get them, then you don't, then you get them again, and then you don't again. Seems like the trouble may be on your end.

I can only see the middle third of the photos.

When I use Google Photo, I always use Copy Image Location (right click the single image)
which generally looks like this:

(not mine, part of a diorama from Norfolk, VA.)
That image infor goes into the Source edit box of the Insert/Edit Image icon.

Mike, I'm perplexed. I'm not doing anything differently in loading the pictures from Google Photo and yet one day you get them, then you don't, then you get them again, and then you don't again. Seems like the trouble may be on your end.

Again and day of jumping around between areas of effort. It started with filing and sanding the gun tub/sponson mod to give it a reasonable contour. In looking the print, the rail needs a dip in the center of each curve. I measured the pin on the Missouri's 40mms, set off the distance where the center should be, and then drilled with a #44 drill (after using smaller pilots). After the initial sanding, I slathered on some Tamiya Filler and after drying, sanded it again. When I was satisfied I used solvent cement and medium CA to glue the sponson in position.

You'll also notice that I drilled out all the portholes with an apropriately sized drill. First I tried it with a pin vise and then chucked the drill in the flexishaft and went at it.

While the filler was drying I went back to work on the fantail. Much of the middle deck was so obscued with overhanging decks, etc., that I realized that railings, ladders and painting would have to be done now. I don't have the new GMM PE yet, but had some railing stock from the 1986 when I built a Tamiya USS Enterprise with my first PE addition ever. Those old rails are clearly less delicate (or prototypical) than GMM's current production, but buried way under the flightdeck tail, it will serve the purpose, and, more importantly, it let me keep building while waiting for supplies to arrive.

I had a little Life Color Navy Blue and Deck Blue left from the Missouri build. I'm concerned that the Navy blue is not blue enough and, in fact, looks suspiciously like the deck blue. I used it, but don't know if I'm going to have to repaint when I get the ModelFlex Navy Blue. 

My first decision was what color to paint the undersides of exposed decking. I've read that white is used in some of the camoflage schemes, but I'm not sure what is used on Measure 21 (all Navy Blue on vertical surfaces). I had to brush paint this part which is the 3rd deck and nestles deeply under the flight deck.

I also had some Eduard inclined ladders left over so I was able to bend them up and install them on the two deck ladderway. Unfortunately, the distance to from the middle deck to the upper is longer than the distance from the lower to the middle and my Eduard ladders were a couple of rungs too short. I also had some very old GMM ladder stock (at least I think it was ladder stock) which I folded and use in the starboard side upper ladder. It looks different and much less elegant than Eduard's, but it's in a difficult to see space and will work okay. If I post the pic in the FSM Reader's Gallery, I'll be sure to photograph it away from this errant ladder.

These close up always show up places that need touching up. I'll do that tomorrow. There are many more parts that can be assembled prior to getting all that PE. I've looked at GMM's PE instructions to see what interactions there are and what I can and can't do yet if I don't want to paint myself into a corner, so to speak. One more word. Brush painting sucks! I thought about air brushing this tail end, but had so little Navy Bluie that it wouldn't work. All the defects I see are a result of not air brushing. I will rectify this going forward.