I recently started work on my newest project - the USS Juneau. I had a little trouble gluing the upper hull to the lower one. As a matter of fact once glued (one finger to one side), it suffered from a sever case of overbite on one side and underbite on the other. So bad in fact that I had to break the hills apart to try again. Once sanded again, I did not want to make the same mistake, so I glued some small plugs along the sides of the lower hull as a guide for the upper hull. The plugs over lapped a little so that the upper hill would fit snuggly onto the lower one. It worked like a charm!
Has anyone else had this problem? What did you do to align the hulls together? Thanks. Mike
Please forgive my spelling - I have fat fingers. Guess that is why I am always super gluing them to my projects. Mike
I’m guessing your kit was a Yankee Modelworks/Blue Water Navy. Iron Shipwright also makes an Atlanta-class cruiser, but ISW kits are typically whole hull.
YMW kits often have a mismatch between the upper and lower hulls. This is most often due to the differential shrinkage of the thinner hull bottom and the thicker upper hull & superstructure.
I’ve had some success in attaching lower hulls to YMW kits by using epoxy as opposed to superglue. The epoxy allows you several moments of free-time to position the parts before it sets.
Mike Ashey in his Kalmbach book “The Basics of Ship Modeling” has a more drastic approach. He cuts a mismatched lower hull apart - jigsaw fashion. Then cements the individual parts together. He fills the gaps with poured resin.
Essentially it is something you need to try and see what works best for you.