wglasford
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Everything posted by wglasford
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I decided to go with the Pontos fire hoses on the walls. I found it easiest to paint them before cutting them loose and to start with the red stripe, then paint the white on either side. I think I will stick with the life rings that are already there. Will probably go back and touch up the orange, should have done the white first. Same with the red stripes on the bottles.
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The kit tanks are a bit too large. I really like these which I got from Model Monkey. Some of the tanks have the end bit broken off, but I got 4 of these sets so there should be plenty of tanks. They need a base plate so I used some styrene for that. These tanks are definitely 3D printed using a resin printer. I went ahead and ordered one of these printers. This kind of printer is indispensable for printing smaller parts. As soon as I get it up and running I will re-slice and print the spare float for the plane. A resin printer should be a great compliment to the filament printer.
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When it comes to painting the fire hoses hanging on the walls I'm not yet satisfied with the results. They are really small and the strap holding them in place is so small I used the smallest brush I have, a 000 size and that seems HUGE compared to what needs to be painted. Fortunately I can paint it over with the light grey and start over. I may take and older brush and snip off all but a few bristles and up the magnification.
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For the larger reels I used the Pontos parts, 5 of them. The center spool is an original kit part. With the two end spools glued onto the kit part, I next wound some black thread on to simulate the hose, then added the stand and outer spool parts.
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The fire reels are small. I can't even imagine trying to create these for a 1/350 scale model. I have three choices, the original kit part, the Pontos parts and the Edwards parts. The original part is a bit clunky and I can't even imagine painting them. The Pontos reel has 3 parts and the Edwards part is a single part so I went with Edwards on this one. To make painting simple I airbrushed the parts before cutting them out. Both of these options do not have a center spool and need one. I looked around and realized the easy solution is to use a bit of 3D PLA black filament. It cost me essentially nothing and doesn't need painting.
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Pontos is the go-to detail set but for some reason they did not include vent covers. For those I got the one Edwards set that has the vent covers. First I painted the vents black, then air brushed the covers before cutting them out, then glued them in. They are definitely worth the effort.
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Thanks. There are thousands of parts and it will take a while. Just starting on the ladder rungs. These little rungs are so small it is time to sharpen the tweezers and get higher magnification glasses. The lighted magnifying glass along with reading glasses really helps. The drill guides provided with the Pontos kit really help. The #80 drill is really small, 0.0135" or 0.35mm. I have decided not to shave off the doors and fire hoses. There is a fair amount of detail on the existing ones. For the doors that don't have sufficient detail I will use some of the Pontos doors. I will also selectively have some of the doors open. For the doors that have wheels to open them, I add the Edwards parts. I purchased one of the Edwards part sets, the sheets that contain the vent screens. The added vent screens should look good with the background painted black to give them some depth.
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While waiting for the garage to get warm enough to paint and looking ahead... There is a spare float plane float stored on the 1st superstructure deck, starboard side, from about 120' to 129'. Note that all the drawings have a scale in feet from the bow tip. The kits don't include this float so I 3D printed one. It would be much better with a resin printer and I really need to get me one of those. In the mean time I printed with my FDM printer. I will sand the top and paint the appropriate colors, blue on top and light blue on bottom.
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After a few years of diverging off into 3D printing/modeling I am back to finish this model. Most of the equipment on the main deck is installed. For now I have left off the fragile stuff like the guns, railings, crane and such. This brought up the first paint color dilemma. What color should you paint the inside walls of the gun tubs? There are two main colors; the light gray for all the vertical surfaces and a deck blue for all the horizontal surfaces. Looking at historical pictures they are about evenly split between these two colors the inside walls. It almost looks like these walls may be the light grey and there is a darker colored tarp placed over the ammunition when not in use. One of the products I am using is the Floating Drydock's USS Missouri BB63 Plan Book which documents the ship as it was at the surrender ceremony. In addition to historical photos, this book documents a 1/48 scale model built by the designer of the IOWA class battleships, Gibbs and Cox. I figure this would be the tie breaker. This model, which was also modeled as the ship was in September 1945, shows these gun tub walls as dark, so dark it is. The darker color will also help the bofors pop out and not blend into the background.
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I ran up against the first parts of the model that don't fit correctly, the anchors. I had to open up the holes in the deck a bit with a drill and carve out the hole from below to get the the shaft to fit. The anchors were modified a bit to get more angle to them. Note that the one in front was the extent of the angle with the one in back has been modified.
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Got some blue paints today and mixed up a few possibilities. I ended up with XF-50:2 XF-8:2 XF-2:1 which gives a dark grey blue, but not so dark the black line is lost. I now need to paint the upper part of the bow a light grey and start some weathering.
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I have started painting the hull. The band above the waterline is supposed to be a dark navy blue for the WWII era version of this ship. The blue is so blue it gets lost with the black band. I have found 3 builds on-line that all came to the same conclusion. One guy painted this part a light grey, good for the modern version, but not the 1940s era ship. Another was medium grey and another was a darker blue, but much lighter than navy blue. Now waiting for 3 more blue paint jars to arrive... I was able to paint below the water line and added some subtle panel lines.
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There are always those decisions as to what order you add parts to the model. I base my decisions on how delicate the part is and how accessible the area will be later on. In the case of the stern ladder it is a no brainer given the size of those little rungs and how accessible the stern will be later on. I will add this detail much later in the build.
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As I am waiting for paint to arrive I have been looking forward, planning the next steps. I see where Pontos and Trumpeter disagree on the placement of the forward bollards. Sure enough, I need to remove plastic from the deck to get them to fit.
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I found this idea on another site, you don't have to glue the main guns to the deck. You can get them to swivel by gluing a magnet to the bottom of the gun and glue a fender washer under the deck. I did this before the decks were glued on. BTW, the decks fit perfectly. No trimming or Bondo needed.
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I added the hull plates using leftover styrene strips. You can see I used .010" x .188" strips cut down to about 2mm wide. The longer ones are 7mm long and the shorter ones are half that. First I drew pencil lines every 35mm along the hull, using those lines to position the long ones. I then made a jig to place on the long ones and the top deck edge to draw an angle positioning mark for the smaller ones. Each side took about an hour to complete.
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After gluing together the hull I oil canned the sides. With a model this large you want some realism and not large smooth sides. I included pictures of the original oil canning bow and stern. To accomplish this I drew grid lines on the model with a pencil and then used a large curved Exacto blade just like a cabinet scrapper, adding a burr to the blade. I like the effect with the lines sanded off. Once I start layering up the paint it will be a subtle detail.
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I chose this model because I built the USS Constitution, what I consider to be one of the first US battleships and this is the last US battleship. I strive for museum quality construction so I needed a model with plenty of add-on kits and large enough to show the fine detail of the ship. In addition to purchasing the kit itself I purchased the following: 1) Pontos 23002F1 - which includes the wooden deck. 2) Pontos 21002F1 - which includes the bofor detail. 3) Eduards Part 7 - which I got specifically for the air intake grills.
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