USS Essex 1:350 Trumpeter Build

Modeling Subjects Ships
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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).

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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.

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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.

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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 [;)][:D].

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couldn’t have put that better myself mike .[dto:]

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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.

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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 :frowning:

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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

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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.

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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.

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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 prick 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.

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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 [:)]

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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.

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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.

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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.