Bill,
I’m really glad that you had resurrected this and finished her. You did an outstanding job as usual! She looks great!
Bill
Thank you, Bill. I was hoping you would see this, as the instigator of the project.
I think I’ve come up with a pretty straight forward approach to adding the prow bulge.
It’s sort of an odd one as it Widens the bottom of the ship a little but does not protrude forward. So the model will remain the same in side profile.
ourtesy navsource and this was the FDR, but it will do.
how are you going to do the bow & with what? on my Arizona kitbash thread, i widened the bottom of the bows upto the waterline on both the Tennessee & Colorado classes using only plastic not putty nor bondo. marked where the widest point was both vertically & horizontal then proceeded to carve & sand to shaped. doing the samething on a Lindberg 1/500 scale tanker i’m slowly working on.
I don’t want to take the model off the base, so it will be tricky.
I’ve measured the area involved. From the bottom of the bootstripe to the bottom of the hull is 1.60 inches. The overall width of the bulb, from the drawing we both have, is 0.25 inches. Currently the width of the very front of the kit hull below the waterline is 0.08 inches. I don’t know how far back it needs to go, but I would guess about an inch at the most.
Step 1 I need to make sure I still have that color of paint!
Step 2 will be to mask off and sand clean the area, both sides.
Step 3 I will make a whole series of lifts, layers, what have you; cut from thin styrene and layer them on. Try to draw them up ahead of time to get as close to the final shape as I can. Subtract 0.08 from 0.25; 0,17 or 0.085 each side. Four layers of 0.02 inch styrene each side should do it.
Step 4 minimal putty and sand. I don’t see any way around that.
Step 5 paint.
Note for a future build. The F9F-5s are a little out of date with the model. Earlier straight wing Panthers would be right, but I didn’t think the AM ones I could find looked good, and no desire to spend $ 50 on them either. I think the Cougars “look” good. I replaced all of ther landing gear.
go back from the tip of the bow til you hit the “B” section as per the drawing, whatever that distance is. i usually print the drawing out on “legal size” paper on my printer, measure the length of the drawing & the model then divide the drawing length into the model length to get the scale number used to multiply that number against the distance from bow to to the “b” mark. transfer the resulting measurement onto the hull & that is how far back you have to go to build up with plastic. i use .040" to buildup that area as less glue to cure therefore more solid. i would cut the bottom of the hull off from the bow tip to the “b” mark then layer it horizontally from the bow tip to the “b” mark with each layer the width at the “b” mark. once all built up, leave alone for a day or so for the glue to fully cure. square it up, mark the center line of the bow vertically & the widest point horizontally then start carving, grinding(dremel tool if you have) & sanding to shape. you probably find you’ll not need any putty at all as i don’t using this method.
why not cut the wings off your Panthers & make & glue new straight wings?
The bow is a separate piece. I don’t remember if I reinforced the joint, but I did take photos.
The Panther has straight across horizontal stabs as well…
The only real difference in the Cougar deployment is that Midway had her bow enclosed then years before the angle deck conversion. That might almost be the easiest thing to do.
Nice carrier.
All the custom work you did is way above my pay grade and I don’t even understand most of it, but the end result sure looks good. [Y]
Very nice G!
Actually, they are nice little F9F-6 or 7 Cougars. The F9F-5 Panthers are the early straight wing aircraft. The biggest difference between the -6 and 7 variants and the -8 variant is that in the the trailing wing fillet extended to the end of the exhaust.
The F9F-6 went into production in 1952. Wether they should be -5 or -6/7 variants, you did a great job on your build. Thanks for sharing.
For your info the difference between a -6 and a -7; the P&W engine was temporally replaced with an Allison engine!
They turned out really good. I really had to do a lot of carving and filling on the old Renwall ones I used on my CV16 and they still looked funky. I wish I went further like you did with the landing gear.
You’re a madman Bill but I have to say, very beautiful work there sir!
Steve
Thank you.
The cougars were decent, I could have spent more time on the leading edges. I used BMF, which has a way of showing all the flaws.
The gear were little pegs. I have a big set of 1/700 Trumpeter F4F’s, of which I used six on the Bogue. Their gear were totally incorrct- wing mounted like an F6F. If I ever build up more, I’d make fuselage mounted ones.
So the extras worked well for the Cougars front gear.
As for the wing mounted ones, I glued little square doors to the outsides of the (trimmed down) pegs, and half round discs below. Sounds harder that it actually was.
I build a bunch of Mk 51 (I think) radar gun directors- Revell had little square pegs. Again, the punch set makes a great tool.
3" guns, new main mast.
Fantastic work! I have the Ranger to build from the old Revell kit. Good to know that below the waterline at least is acceptable!
except for the missing bulb bow & bilge keels.
Very nice Bill. Tks for sharing and for the tips!
Impressive work,all of that surgery,something I wouldn’t even think of doing.
I’ll show how I fixed the bulb when I’m done
Wow, that came out great.
Great looking model. Would it be possible for you to take a few photos with a quarter or dime in the picture? It’s difficult to judge the size of your model.
rr
It went well. The bulge is really a widening of the keel and needed careful planning to add.
I did a 3 view sketch over enlarged plans from the www and built up a minimum set of layers onto which I would putty the curves.
