rvchima

Superstructure

I've added a lot of detail parts to the superstructure - extensions around the top of the stacks, ladders, antennas, etc. I painted everything Haze gray using the Testors paints that I bought with the kit, and a cheap Badger airbrush. The horizontal deck surfaces on the aft superstructure are painted Euro gray using a brush and a lot of masking tape.
 
Speaking of antennas, the two antennas on the front of the aft superstructure are cast metal pieces that are butt-glued to a photo-etched platform. Well I've broken the platform and antennas off more times than I can remember, so the other day I deconstructed everything, drilled two holes in the platform, glued it back with a 1/32" brace underneath, and epoxied the antennas in the holes. They aren't going anywhere now.
 
Then today when I went to take this photo I broke the single antenna off the front stack. Looks like more deconstruction ahead.

Mast Construction,    32 days, 90 hours

The mast is made from 1/4" square basswood set on the diagonal and swept back 15 degrees. The yards are photo-etched brass reinforced with 1/16" square brass tubes glued with CA.
 

The yard braces are made from 1/32" square brass stock. The instructions said to glue these pieces together, but when it was time to sand them flush they just broke off.  Instead I soldered the main joint with long pieces, cut the braces slightly long with wire cutters, then sanded everything flush on a Proxxon disk sander. My other hobby is stained glass so I've done a lot of soldering.
 

It was hard to hold the mast in my vise because it is set on the diagonal, so I chopped a square hole in a piece of poplar to make a holder.
 
To make the platform braces I spun the brass stock against the sander to make a point that I shoved into the mast. I clipped the other end slightly long, sanded the end to match the platform, and glued both ends with CA. They are super strong.
 
The mast has a zillion tiny photo-etched pieces. I put on my magnifying headset and started snipping, filing, and gluing. The 8 little antennas on the top mast extension are about the size of a grain of rice and were especially hard. It's good that the kit includes lots of spares because several pieces went flying, never to be seen again. The two radar antennas are cast pieces.
 
The mast took about 20 hours to build. It was challenging but actually a lot of fun, and it looks beautiful.

Resin Parts
 
After my problems with the resin prop shaft pieces I decided to check all the resin parts. I discovered that one radar unit was missing and several parts had serious voids. I emailed Bluejacket and received a quick response from Nic. It took a couple of weeks to get the replacement parts, but I'm not ready for them yet anyway. The new parts look good.

Superstructure

I've added a lot of detail parts to the superstructure - extensions around the top of the stacks, ladders, antennas, etc. I painted everything Haze gray using the Testors paints that I bought with the kit, and a cheap Badger airbrush. The horizontal deck surfaces on the aft superstructure are painted Euro gray using a brush and a lot of masking tape.
 
Speaking of antennas, the two antennas on the front of the aft superstructure are cast metal pieces that are butt-glued to a photo-etched platform. Well I've broken the platform and antennas off more times than I can remember, so the other day I deconstructed everything, drilled two holes in the platform, glued it back with a 1/32" brace underneath, and epoxied the antennas in the holes. They aren't going anywhere now.
 
Then today when I went to take this photo I broke the single antenna off the front stack. Looks like more deconstruction ahead.

Getting Ready to Paint

No need for a fancy jig to mark the waterline. So far I've sprayed the top of the hull Haze gray, masked that off, and sprayed a coat of red on bottom. Photos coming soon.

Superstructure

I've added a lot of detail parts to the superstructure - extensions around the top of the stacks, ladders, antennas, etc. I painted everything Haze gray using the Testors paints that I bought with the kit, and a cheap Badger airbrush. The horizontal deck surfaces on the aft superstructure are painted Euro gray using a brush and a lot of masking tape.
 
Speaking of antennas, the two antennas on the front of the aft superstructure are cast metal pieces that are butt-glued to a photo-etched platform. Well I've broken the platform and antennas off more times than I can remember, so the other day I deconstructed everything, drilled two holes in the platform, glued it back with a 1/32" brace underneath, and epoxied the antennas in the holes. They aren't going anywhere now.
 
Then today when I went to take this photo I broke the single antenna off the front stack. Looks like more deconstruction ahead.

Mast Construction,    32 days, 90 hours

The mast is made from 1/4" square basswood set on the diagonal and swept back 15 degrees. The yards are photo-etched brass reinforced with 1/16" square brass tubes glued with CA.
 

The yard braces are made from 1/32" square brass stock. The instructions said to glue these pieces together, but when it was time to sand them flush they just broke off.  Instead I soldered the main joint with long pieces, cut the braces slightly long with wire cutters, then sanded everything flush on a Proxxon disk sander. My other hobby is stained glass so I've done a lot of soldering.
 

It was hard to hold the mast in my vise because it is set on the diagonal, so I chopped a square hole in a piece of poplar to make a holder.
 
To make the platform braces I spun the brass stock against the sander to make a point that I shoved into the mast. I clipped the other end slightly long, sanded the end to match the platform, and glued both ends with CA. They are super strong.
 
The mast has a zillion tiny photo-etched pieces. I put on my magnifying headset and started snipping, filing, and gluing. The 8 little antennas on the top mast extension are about the size of a grain of rice and were especially hard. It's good that the kit includes lots of spares because several pieces went flying, never to be seen again. The two radar antennas are cast pieces.
 
The mast took about 20 hours to build. It was challenging but actually a lot of fun, and it looks beautiful.

Resin Parts
 
After my problems with the resin prop shaft pieces I decided to check all the resin parts. I discovered that one radar unit was missing and several parts had serious voids. I emailed Bluejacket and received a quick response from Nic. It took a couple of weeks to get the replacement parts, but I'm not ready for them yet anyway. The new parts look good.

Superstructure

I've added a lot of detail parts to the superstructure - extensions around the top of the stacks, ladders, antennas, etc. I painted everything Haze gray using the Testors paints that I bought with the kit, and a cheap Badger airbrush. The horizontal deck surfaces on the aft superstructure are painted Euro gray using a brush and a lot of masking tape.
 
Speaking of antennas, the two antennas on the front of the aft superstructure are cast metal pieces that are butt-glued to a photo-etched platform. Well I've broken the platform and antennas off more times than I can remember, so the other day I deconstructed everything, drilled two holes in the platform, glued it back with a 1/32" brace underneath, and epoxied the antennas in the holes. They aren't going anywhere now.
 
Then today when I went to take this photo I broke the single antenna off the front stack. Looks like more deconstruction ahead.

Getting Ready to Paint

No need for a fancy jig to mark the waterline. So far I've sprayed the top of the hull Haze gray, masked that off, and sprayed a coat of red on bottom. Photos coming soon.

Superstructure

I've added a lot of detail parts to the superstructure - extensions around the top of the stacks, ladders, antennas, etc. I painted everything Haze gray using the Testors paints that I bought with the kit, and a cheap Badger airbrush. The horizontal deck surfaces on the aft superstructure are painted Euro gray using a brush and a lot of masking tape.
 
Speaking of antennas, the two antennas on the front of the aft superstructure are cast metal pieces that are butt-glued to a photo-etched platform. Well I've broken the platform and antennas off more times than I can remember, so the other day I deconstructed everything, drilled two holes in the platform, glued it back with a 1/32" brace underneath, and epoxied the antennas in the holes. They aren't going anywhere now.
 
Then today when I went to take this photo I broke the single antenna off the front stack. Looks like more deconstruction ahead.

Mast Construction,    32 days, 90 hours

The mast is made from 1/4" square basswood set on the diagonal and swept back 15 degrees. The yards are photo-etched brass reinforced with 1/16" square brass tubes glued with CA.
 

The yard braces are made from 1/32" square brass stock. The instructions said to glue these pieces together, but when it was time to sand them flush they just broke off.  Instead I soldered the main joint with long pieces, cut the braces slightly long with wire cutters, then sanded everything flush on a Proxxon disk sander. My other hobby is stained glass so I've done a lot of soldering.
 

It was hard to hold the mast in my vise because it is set on the diagonal, so I chopped a square hole in a piece of poplar to make a holder.
 
To make the platform braces I spun the brass stock against the sander to make a point that I shoved into the mast. I clipped the other end slightly long, sanded the end to match the platform, and glued both ends with CA. They are super strong.
 
The mast has a zillion tiny photo-etched pieces. I put on my magnifying headset and started snipping, filing, and gluing. The 8 little antennas on the top mast extension are about the size of a grain of rice and were especially hard. It's good that the kit includes lots of spares because several pieces went flying, never to be seen again. The two radar antennas are cast pieces.
 
The mast took about 20 hours to build. It was challenging but actually a lot of fun, and it looks beautiful.

Resin Parts
 
After my problems with the resin prop shaft pieces I decided to check all the resin parts. I discovered that one radar unit was missing and several parts had serious voids. I emailed Bluejacket and received a quick response from Nic. It took a couple of weeks to get the replacement parts, but I'm not ready for them yet anyway. The new parts look good.

Getting Ready to Paint

No need for a fancy jig to mark the waterline. So far I've sprayed the top of the hull Haze gray, masked that off, and sprayed a coat of red on bottom. Photos coming soon.

Mast Construction,    32 days, 90 hours

The mast is made from 1/4" square basswood set on the diagonal and swept back 15 degrees. The yards are photo-etched brass reinforced with 1/16" square brass tubes glued with CA.
 

The yard braces are made from 1/32" square brass stock. The instructions said to glue these pieces together, but when it was time to sand them flush they just broke off.  Instead I soldered the main joint with long pieces, cut the braces slightly long with wire cutters, then sanded everything flush on a Proxxon disk sander. My other hobby is stained glass so I've done a lot of soldering.
 

It was hard to hold the mast in my vise because it is set on the diagonal, so I chopped a square hole in a piece of poplar to make a holder.
 
To make the platform braces I spun the brass stock against the sander to make a point that I shoved into the mast. I clipped the other end slightly long, sanded the end to match the platform, and glued both ends with CA. They are super strong.
 
The mast has a zillion tiny photo-etched pieces. I put on my magnifying headset and started snipping, filing, and gluing. The 8 little antennas on the top mast extension are about the size of a grain of rice and were especially hard. It's good that the kit includes lots of spares because several pieces went flying, never to be seen again. The two radar antennas are cast pieces.
 
The mast took about 20 hours to build. It was challenging but actually a lot of fun, and it looks beautiful.

Getting Ready to Paint

No need for a fancy jig to mark the waterline. So far I've sprayed the top of the hull Haze gray, masked that off, and sprayed a coat of red on bottom. Photos coming soon.

Mast Construction,    32 days, 90 hours

The mast is made from 1/4" square basswood set on the diagonal and swept back 15 degrees. The yards are photo-etched brass reinforced with 1/16" square brass tubes glued with CA.
 

The yard braces are made from 1/32" square brass stock. The instructions said to glue these pieces together, but when it was time to sand them flush they just broke off.  Instead I soldered the main joint with long pieces, cut the braces slightly long with wire cutters, then sanded everything flush on a Proxxon disk sander. My other hobby is stained glass so I've done a lot of soldering.
 

It was hard to hold the mast in my vise because it is set on the diagonal, so I chopped a square hole in a piece of poplar to make a holder.
 
To make the platform braces I spun the brass stock against the sander to make a point that I shoved into the mast. I clipped the other end slightly long, sanded the end to match the platform, and glued both ends with CA. They are super strong.
 
The mast has a zillion tiny photo-etched pieces. I put on my magnifying headset and started snipping, filing, and gluing. The 8 little antennas on the top mast extension are about the size of a grain of rice and were especially hard. It's good that the kit includes lots of spares because several pieces went flying, never to be seen again. The two radar antennas are cast pieces.
 
The mast took about 20 hours to build. It was challenging but actually a lot of fun, and it looks beautiful.

Superstructure

I've added a lot of detail parts to the superstructure - extensions around the top of the stacks, ladders, antennas, etc. I painted everything Haze gray using the Testors paints that I bought with the kit, and a cheap Badger airbrush. The horizontal deck surfaces on the aft superstructure are painted Euro gray using a brush and a lot of masking tape.
 
Speaking of antennas, the two antennas on the front of the aft superstructure are cast metal pieces that are butt-glued to a photo-etched platform. Well I've broken the platform and antennas off more times than I can remember, so the other day I deconstructed everything, drilled two holes in the platform, glued it back with a 1/32" brace underneath, and epoxied the antennas in the holes. They aren't going anywhere now.
 
Then today when I went to take this photo I broke the single antenna off the front stack. Looks like more deconstruction ahead.

Mast Construction,    32 days, 90 hours

The mast is made from 1/4" square basswood set on the diagonal and swept back 15 degrees. The yards are photo-etched brass reinforced with 1/16" square brass tubes glued with CA.
 

The yard braces are made from 1/32" square brass stock. The instructions said to glue these pieces together, but when it was time to sand them flush they just broke off.  Instead I soldered the main joint with long pieces, cut the braces slightly long with wire cutters, then sanded everything flush on a Proxxon disk sander. My other hobby is stained glass so I've done a lot of soldering.
 

It was hard to hold the mast in my vise because it is set on the diagonal, so I chopped a square hole in a piece of poplar to make a holder.
 
To make the platform braces I spun the brass stock against the sander to make a point that I shoved into the mast. I clipped the other end slightly long, sanded the end to match the platform, and glued both ends with CA. They are super strong.
 
The mast has a zillion tiny photo-etched pieces. I put on my magnifying headset and started snipping, filing, and gluing. The 8 little antennas on the top mast extension are about the size of a grain of rice and were especially hard. It's good that the kit includes lots of spares because several pieces went flying, never to be seen again. The two radar antennas are cast pieces.
 
The mast took about 20 hours to build. It was challenging but actually a lot of fun, and it looks beautiful.

Mast Construction,    32 days, 90 hours

The mast is made from 1/4" square basswood set on the diagonal and swept back 15 degrees. The yards are photo-etched brass reinforced with 1/16" square brass tubes glued with CA.
 

The yard braces are made from 1/32" square brass stock. The instructions said to glue these pieces together, but when it was time to sand them flush they just broke off.  Instead I soldered the main joint with long pieces, cut the braces slightly long with wire cutters, then sanded everything flush on a Proxxon disk sander. My other hobby is stained glass so I've done a lot of soldering.
 

It was hard to hold the mast in my vise because it is set on the diagonal, so I chopped a square hole in a piece of poplar to make a holder.
 
To make the platform braces I spun the brass stock against the sander to make a point that I shoved into the mast. I clipped the other end slightly long, sanded the end to match the platform, and glued both ends with CA. They are super strong.
 
The mast has a zillion tiny photo-etched pieces. I put on my magnifying headset and started snipping, filing, and gluing. The 8 little antennas on the top mast extension are about the size of a grain of rice and were especially hard. It's good that the kit includes lots of spares because several pieces went flying, never to be seen again. The two radar antennas are cast pieces.
 
The mast took about 20 hours to build. It was challenging but actually a lot of fun, and it looks beautiful.

Superstructure

I've added a lot of detail parts to the superstructure - extensions around the top of the stacks, ladders, antennas, etc. I painted everything Haze gray using the Testors paints that I bought with the kit, and a cheap Badger airbrush. The horizontal deck surfaces on the aft superstructure are painted Euro gray using a brush and a lot of masking tape.
 
Speaking of antennas, the two antennas on the front of the aft superstructure are cast metal pieces that are butt-glued to a photo-etched platform. Well I've broken the platform and antennas off more times than I can remember, so the other day I deconstructed everything, drilled two holes in the platform, glued it back with a 1/32" brace underneath, and epoxied the antennas in the holes. They aren't going anywhere now.
 
Then today when I went to take this photo I broke the single antenna off the front stack. Looks like more deconstruction ahead.

Getting Ready to Paint

No need for a fancy jig to mark the waterline. So far I've sprayed the top of the hull Haze gray, masked that off, and sprayed a coat of red on bottom. Photos coming soon.

USS Arleigh Burke guided missile destroyer
 
I recently took a trans-Atlantic cruise from Rotterdam to Norway, Scotland, Iceland, Greenland, Newfoundland, Nova Scotia, and Boston. I saw so many unusual ships, both models and full sized, that I had to start another model. I was intrigued by the Aeronaut Bismarck model, but I couldn't find any useful reviews. Please let me know if you've had any experience with their kits.
 
Bluejacket Shipcrafters has a couple of WWII kits, but their kit of the Arleigh Burke guided missile destroyer caught my eye and I ordered it. It is by far the most expensive kit that I've ever bought. Please don't tell my wife. Is it worth the price? Well, lets see what's
 
Inside The Box

The model came in a large box packed full of styrofoam peanuts. It was a pain to separate the parts from the junk.
 

Here's what was inside.
 

The hull is machine-carved from a single piece of basswood.
 

The hull shape looks very good, but there are still attachment points that will have to be carved away.
 

There is a 65-page instruction manual that seems to be very thorough. Bluejacket offers a CD of build photos for an additional fee. I didn't order it. The kit includes hull templates printed on self-adhesive paper, a guide for painting the helicopter landing marks on the deck, and a big piece of styrene for God knows what.
 

The kit includes 5 pages of plans. You should be able to see the titles in the photo.
 

There are 5 sheets of laser-cut parts. The cut lines are crisp and nearly free of char. All of the deck superstructure will be made from these parts.
 

The instructions say that there are over 600 photo-etched parts. Whew.
 

The kit had a tiny box packed full of beautiful cast metal parts.
 

There are also a few cast resin parts. These don't look so great. I will be doing a lot of cleanup on them.
 

There is a small bag of wood strips, a bag of metal strips, and a spool of rigging thread. The brass pedestals were extra. You'd think that for what this kit cost they could throw in the pedestals.
 

I also ordered the optional paint kit. It came with a dozen bottles of Testors paints. I will probably spray most of the model gray and use the red and black for details. We'll see.
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

So, the last couple weekends have been a tough part of the build for me.   Going from the support beams to the middle rail was a tough bit.  Although the guidance warns against permanently putting the mid rail into position until everything is fitted - that didn't work for me. I had to glue the mid rail in before I could measure anything out.
 

 
   I started with the cathead knee, carving out a spot for it along the side of the ship and making an adjustment where the bottom meets hull.  
 

 
    However, I ultimately changed my methodology, and use the middle portion that links to the mid rail to the cathead knee as my focal point. I shaped and shaped and shaped some more to fit it along the hull, then notched out a spot against the hull where it would hopefully meet the cathead knee with as little deviation as possible.
 

 
   Here's a good comparison of how the parts started, and the degree to which they needed to be shaped. 
 

 
  Once everything was aligned, it became a sanding fest with a very small amount at a time until everything could get smoothed out.  I also added a bit of glue to the cracks of the moulding so that as I sanded, the sawdust would get caught in the cracks and fill in the gaps as much as possible. 
 

 
It was also important to sanded the moulding along the shape of the hull so the final product is the same width consistently throughout the bow.  In the end, it was a bit of funky tweaking, and each of the pieces has a very slightly different shade to it based on the grains and the sanding. But overall, it smoothed out pretty well I think.
 

 
Finally, I added the pre-stain and the stain, then touched up the decorative trim. Although the instructions only show the decoration to the base of the middle rail, I thought it more prudent to continue it the length of the middle rail.
 

 
I still have to add the half beam at the base of the bow, but I am pretty pleased with the end result.  Now to spend the next couple of weeks doing the port side...  Ugh.
 
- Bug

Hi Tim,
 
I noticed in your post on my Arleigh-Burke build that you had built several Bluejacket kits, and I finally got around to looking at your build logs. Now I'm sorry I waited so long! I got so many great tips:
Bondo glazing putty Krylon textured shimmer paint The Glue Looper PE bending tool I'll be following this liberty ship build closely to see what else I can learn.
 
One question - have you found any spray paint that matches the Model Master haze gray sold for the Bluejacket kits, or are you using an airbrush now?
 
Rod