Whilst this is a well-known kit, there don’t seem to be many photos of built models out there on the web (in fact I haven’t found any so far) so I thought I’d post some pictures of my build.
So far the hull and deck are assembled (the forecastle is not fitted yet) and painted, including basic weathering and drybrushing. Some minor retouching to the stripes is also needed. With large ship models I usually paint the hull before assembling the rest of the model - otherwise you usually end up damaging the rigging/fittings whilst painting.
Not really much to see at the minute but I will post more photos in this thread as the build progresses.
I am building the kit more or less OOB, representing the Kearsarge in 1880s configuration, with a few additional details such as bulwark interior ribs, glazed portholes + windows, etc.
Despite the flash, mould lines and sink marks, I’m very impressed with this kit. After building the Revell/Matchbox 1/72 Flower-class corvette (which needs much of the fine detail to be scratchbuilt) and recently starting the Lindberg 1/125 Fletcher-class destroyer (which needs virtually ALL the fine detail, and a lot of the larger components, to be scratchbuilt or heavily modified if you want a detailed + accurate finished model) it’s a refreshing change to build a kit which is as comprehensively detailed as this “out of the box” - especially considering that it’s more or less a contemporary of the above 2 kits.
It looks like you’re off to a good start. I’m just about to start work on the Alabama (the kit has been sitting on the shelf for 20 years, so it’s time). You’ve done a great job in eliminating the seams between the three pieces of the deck, which has always seemed to be the weakest point of these kits. Do you have any suggestions / tips that you could pass along - they would be very gratefully received.
If you can find a copy of “How To Build Plastic Ship Models” By Les Wilkens.He has a page of pictures of the Kearsarge he build.Its been out of print for several years.On he’s model he laid a wood deck and used typewriter paper to make his gun tracks.
The seams in the deck are actually more visible in real life than in the photos, though hopefully once the armament and deck fittings are installed they won’t be too bad. I filled them in with gap-filler CA, but unfortunately there is still a noticeable line there.
Replacing the deck with real wood is the best option (as with the Constitution) but I didn’t really want to go that far, especially since it would cover up both the gun rails and the location points for the fittings and superstructure.
The weathered effect on the deck was made by first painting overall with Revell Earth Brown (acrylic) and then dry-brushing very heavily in the direction of the grain with Revell Stone Grey. (this is actually a pale cream colour). I then added an overall wash of heavily thinned burnt umber oil paint, with irregular patches of black wash, and finally added a lighter drybrush of Stone Grey over the top.
I think I might have overdone it a bit - then again my model represents the ship 25+ years after it was built - unless the deck planking had been replaced, it’d be looking fairly worn by then.
Anyway, I’ve nearly finished the fittings in the area under the forecastle now (this needs to be done before installing the foc’sle deck, as it’s almost completely inaccessible afterwards) and will post a photo once it’s done.
A good source for that scale is Warship Models Underway. Their forums are at http://www.wmunderway.8m.com/cgi/yabb/YaBB.cgi I too am building a 1/96th scale ship. Mine is the USS North Carolina.
Four more photos - apologies for the poor quality of some of them!
Fittings under the forecastle, painted + weathered (as they will be virtually inaccessible once the foc’sle deck is installed). Anyone know what the tank (with the brass tap) was used for? Fuel oil for the stove?
Forecastle deck fitted + weathered. Not sure whether the interior of the forecastle bulwarks should be painted white or black?
Cabin and engine house installed (the glazing in the cabin windows is just about visible).
Overall view of the hull.
Since these photos were taken I’ve added a few more deck fittings (bollards, fife rails etc.) and started work on assembling the gun barrels, funnel, and lower masts.
An odd thing I’ve noticed is that there appears to be a spare 9" Dahlgren gun included in the kit; is this a leftover from the Alabama kit? The Kearsarge only has 5 9" guns, two each side and one as a bow chaser.
Actually Kearsarge did have two 11" pivot guns and 4 9" broadside guns, at least in her later fit (which is what the kit more or less shows). So you should have two larger bottle-shaped guns on pivot carriages and four smaller ones on simple carriarges.
Kearsarge did have a smaller bow gun during the war, though, but that was done away with probably already in 1865 or 1866.
Nice build by the way; I particularly like the way you did the weathering on the forecastle fittings.
Sorry, should have worded my post more clearly - the kit has 6 9-inch Dahlgren guns, in addition to the two pivot-mounted 11-inch guns, therefore there’s one left over (or two, if you don’t fit the bow chaser gun)
If nothing else, the extra guns will be useful for future scratchbuilding/kitbashing projects!
According to Wikipedia, the ship also had a 32-pounder Parrott rifle; not sure if this was in its Civil War configuration, or later.
Another source I’ve read states that the 11" Dahlgrens were later replaced with 8" rifled guns. The kit guns are obviously Dahlgrens, so it’s not strictly accurate to have these fitted at the same time as the 9" broadside guns, but as I have no references as to what the 8" guns looked like, I’ll just use the kit parts.
The fittings (and most of the rest of the model) are weathered using acrylic craft paint. Cast-iron fittings like the stove are drybrushed with “granite” paint which gives a subtle dull metallic effect.
Good news is that you’re OK with the 11" Dahlgrens in both the Civil War and post-war fits. The 8" rifles were 11" Dahlgrens that had a rifled sleeve inserted into the barrel. The main difference is in the gun carriages, the converted 11" guns were mounted in iron carriages.
Canney (The Old Steam Navy, Vol 1: Frigates, Sloops, and Guboats, 1815-1885, U.S. Naval Institute Press) has a plan and elevation of the Kearsarge in her 1880’s fit with both poop and foc’sl decks, a bridge between the stack and the forward pivot gun, as well as what appears to be a 20 or 30 pdr rifle on the foc’sl even though in the text he notes that “Her armament in the later years was two converted 8” rifles and four nine inchers on iron carriages in broadside."
Depending on your penchant for accuracy you might not want to put a 9" Dahlgren on the focs’l (although it looks naked to my eye without the gun). I believe that the Kearsrage kit came out before the Alabama so who knows why there’s an extra 9" gun - it may have just been a mistake in the tooling or pre-planning for later conversion of the tooling to produce the Alabama.
A few more photos. Note that these are very much work-in-progress pictures and the model looks fairly “rough” at the minute - many parts are unpainted or partly painted, or are in need of retouching and/or weathering.
Starting to look like a ship now! Most deck fittings, lower masts and tops, and bowsprit are now installed.
Armament, completed + painted but not rigged yet. The “cast iron” effect on the barrels was created by very lightly and irregularly drybrushing with “granite” craft acrylic paint. Not strictly realistic (guns of these types were usually painted gloss black) but looks very effective IMHO.
Amidships deck area including engine house and cabin. I lengthened the funnel by adding the spare section, and also angled it slightly more, to match the reference photographs I have.
“Anyone know what the tank (with the brass tap) was used for? Fuel oil for the stove?”
First of all, great work on the Kearsarge! It is really looking good. I hope you continue to post pictures as you complete it.
I got the chance this summer to crew for a day aboard the USS Niagara in Erie, PA. If the wooden tank next to the stove on the Kearsarge was used the same way as the one on the Niagara, then it was used to hold pottable water for cooking. At least that was what they were using it for on Niagara.
Close to completion now - needs rigging, shrouds, stanchions + railings, boats, anchors, crew figures, and various other small bits, as well as some retouching + extra weathering on the hull paintwork, but it definitely looks like the Kearsarge now:
Since the lower yards are attached to the masts only by a small plastic peg, which would be very vulnerable to breaking, I decided to reinforce the joint by tying thread around it. Not sure how historically accurate this is, here is a photo:
but I decided that, inaccurate or not, it would be better than the model having lower yards which snap off at the slightest touch!
I’m probably going to simplify the rigging layout a bit (leaving out most or all of the blocks, for example), but will try and make as good a job of it as I can. However, I’m definitely going to rig the shrouds + ratlines by hand (I’ve already drilled out all the deadeyes); they look a lot better this way and are not much harder than struggling with the plastic-coated thread lines supplied in the kit, and a great deal easier and quicker than using the Heller/Airfix loom contraption (IMHO at least).
One question: What diameter (approximately) should the threads for the shrouds be? Of the 2 types of black thread supplied with the kit, the reel of thicker thread seems too thick, whilst the thread on the orange plastic “star” appears to be too thin.
I’ll post some “detail closeups” when the model is completed.
EP, I must say that is a superb job on the Kearsarge. I will soon start mine and hope to get the deck to look like real weathered wood, as you have managed to do. My 1971 attempt looks less satisfactory the more I look at it because I left the deck unpainted; it was molded in a reasonably good tan, and the boats were molded in white. Also, there were only two stack sections whereas in the re-release there are three. Thanks for the description of the deck paint, it is a tremendous help.
The model is now virtually finished other than the lifeboats (haven’t added these yet, as ideally I want to make them removable but can’t work out how!), so I’ll post some photos of the completed ship soon.
I don’t think I’d ever leave a part of a model unpainted (other than non-visible interior areas obviously!) as IMHO plastic still looks like plastic even if it is the correct colour, and unpainted styrene is also much more vulnerable to discolouration and degradation caused by sunlight.
The model is really a nice one - I find the idea of changing the angle of the funnel very interesting, as it, to a certain extent, gives the ship a Civil War look (only that before the 1870s this was due to the sheer of the hull).
I changed the angle of the funnel and added the extra section (included in the kit but not mentioned in the instructions) to match the photos I’ve seen of the ship in the 1880s.
There are quite a few bits left over after completing the kit which aren’t indicated in the instructions, including a pair of small anchors (for the boats?) and an extra 9" Dahlgren gun and carriage.
Anyway, the model is now complete, so I’ll post some photos as soon as I’ve taken them! (in a few days hopefully).
Do you still have time to add some wire at the top of the yards for the jack stays? If so, they will make the yards look all the better. You can look in my Cutty Sark pictures you’ll see what I’m speaking of…
Back from holiday/vacation today so I should hopefully be able to take some photos of the Kearsarge and other recently built ship models over the next week or so.
The ship was unrigged when I took the previous lot of photos, it looks a lot better now! I haven’t added the lines along the tops of the yards, but there’s no reason I can’t go back and add them some time in the future when I’ve gained more experience.
