alross2

This is one of the more unusual items Nic has had me create. It's at 1/24 scale and is intended to be planked on one side, left unplanked on the other. It shows about 20 feet of the actual hull and includes the tryworks. There are about 800 bricks in the tryworks, so it takes an hour or so to build...🙂

Visit Todd Woofenden's SUBCHASER ARCHIVES site https://www.subchaser.org Many photos and historical data on the WW1 boats. .

You may find these useful when you get to the detail stage. SC448 (2020_01_23 01_21_01 UTC)_Compressed.pdf

Changed the design of the cargo hatches a bit. They were more complex than necessary. However, the covering boards can be removed individually if the modeler wants to depict a load of cargo in the hold.

Keep in mind that the real RED BARON is a fiberglass boat, built before 2000. She's going to be very smooth. At this scale, any non-slip is going to be very, very, very fine. Even 600 grit sandpaper is probably too coarse a grain for simulating non-slip.

The deck on WYOMING will be done with 1/16" square basswood strips with 1/16" x 3/32" mast partners. The modeler will determine plank length to show butt joints. I haven't found any documentation that the planks were a consistent length. The photos I have don't show nibbing.

As a general rule, no, they don't. The only other limited editions were MAINE (2005 - 100 kits) and OLYMPIA (2006 - 200 kits).

No. It's a limited edition. BJ only produced 150 each of ALABAMA and KEARSARGE. The one pictured is the one I built for display in the BJ gallery.

When I printed out the initial General Arrangement drawing, the resulting sheet was 36" x 64" - kinda big for the average work surface. While it will still be included in the kit, I've broken down the deck plan into 11" x 17" sheets - fore, midships, aft. These will include measurements from a fixed point for placing the major structures. Here's the first draft of the Aft Section.

In a similar vein as the question on Soviet Navy colors in WWII... Am also looking for the official colors used by the Royal Netherlands Navy. Higgins built eight 70' sub chasers for the RNN (OJR1-6, H7, H8). The first six were shipped in a very dark scheme to Soerabaja, where they were soon scuttled to avoid capture by the Japanese. The other two boats were later shipped to the West Indies in a different scheme.

Thank you! This is precisely the type of information for which I am looking, despite it being post-WWII. Is this booklet scanned or otherwise available online? Are there other color chips in it? Do you know whether the colors changed post-WWII? This was the case with USN colors during and after WWII. The names remained the same, but the actual colors were different, sometimes remarkedly so.

In talking with a friend who was a gunners mate during Nam, I discovered that a few MK1s were retrofitted with the MK56, but it was not common practice. He also said that 105 was not one of them. As an aside, the manual for the PBR MK2 indicates that they were painted Marine Green 23, supposedly FS34052. This is the standard PBR MK1 mount and the MK17 mount from which it was derived.

I'm looking for the official paint names used by the Soviet Navy in WWII. In the US Navy, for instance, there was Haze Gray (5-H), Ocean Gray (5-o), etc., and I'm looking for the Soviet designations of their paints. Among other things, I'm trying to determine the colors used on this Lend/Leased Higgins PT, which was assigned to the Northern Fleet. The white is rather obvious, but the two darker shades are probably grays or blues. Not looking for conjecture or guesses. As SGT Joe Friday used to say, "Just the facts,.." Thanks. TK211

Here's a typical drawing for laser parts. This is a 1/16" basswood sheet with parts for cabin sides, trestles and cross trees, hoister house, cargo hatch battens, etc. All of the sheets have an ID number indicating the thickness, type of wood, and individual sheet number (if there are more than one). For instance, this one is 116B1, which indicates it's 1/16" basswood and sheet #1. In the building manual, each laser cut part is identified by description, number, and which sheet it is on, which saves you hunting around on x number of sheets for that specific part.

Some of the MK56 manual illustrations.

Instead of tied ratlines, the WYOMING had round slats of either wood or metal. Now, I could just include lots of brass rod in the kit and let you cut and place them individually.... However, that would be outside my normal level of cruelty, so I'm including strips of laser-cut slats on .030" laser board. There are two widths as the forecastle ratlines were across three shrouds and the rest of the masts across two shrouds. All you have to do is remove the strip from the carrier sheet, trim to length, slather the back of the strip with glue, and set it on the shrouds. When the glue has dried, you just trim the slats to length with scissors or clippers. The laser-board is a nice dark brown color, so you don't even have to paint. There are a couple extra strips of both widths, just in case...

For the moment, this is the generic mast assembly drawing showing block sizes and types. The forecastle and spanker masts have additional blocks and these will be apparent in the running rigging plan. Things may change as more drawings are developed.

Just stumbled onto this thread. That's a MK56 gun mount, which I've not seen mounted on a MK1. I have the NAVORD manual for it in PDF format. It contains detailed drawings of the mount and I can upload it for you if this format can handle PDFs.

Got this done today. If you're wondering about the numbering system, F before a number is a stock britannia casting or machined brass piece, FWY is a casting made specifically for this kit, LWY is a laser-cut piece specifically for WYOMING, and PEWY is a photo-etched part specifically for WYOMING. All of the plans are accompanied by building/assembly instructions in the manual. For a kit of this complexity, the manuals typically run 50 or more pages.

Drawings from the other two kits in progress. These are pretty much finished, although I will probably tweak them a bit as I build. There's always the opportunity for the "You dummy, what were you thinking when you designed that?" realization when you actually start putting things together.

Switching back and forth on the three projects, but mostly on WYOMING. Here's a page I finished up today. Photoetch for OREGON is almost ready for etching, so I hope to have that in a few weeks. Once that is in hand, I can get back on OREGON and start putting up some in-process photos.

Unless you intend to do a lot of lasering, you'd be far better off having it done by a service provider.

Looking good, Paul. There are a lot of relatively small laser-cut pieces to the pilot house, so take your time. On the display model in the gallery, I left the roof off. I reduced a copy of that Raquel Welch poster from "One Million Years BC" and hung it over the bunk in the captain's cabin.

The manuals are only 8.5 x 11 and also spiral-bound. Here are two facing pages from the OLYMPIA manual, which I wrote about 15 years ago. The regular sheet size for WYOMING plans would be about 36" x 66"!

Now that I'm using a computer drawing program rather than ink on mylar, I've changed the format for BlueJacket kits, beginning with the MORGAN cross section. I'd like some observations on the concept, good or bad. Essentially, the general arrangement drawings and (probably) rigging plans will be printed full scale on large sheets as before. But all of the subassemblies (deck houses, stacks, guns, boats, fittings, etc.) will be on 11" x 17" sheets in a spiral-bound packet. All subassemblies will be full size or identified by scale (if different from original) Schematics will not be to scale (although they will normally be close). My rationale for this is that, because the kits now contain a large number of laser-cut and photo-etched parts, they are intended to be built in subassemblies. The sub-assembly drawings contain alphanumeric codes for each part, which can quickly absorb a lot of white space on the large sheets, making them hard to read. This also allows me to incorporate color images of the completed assembly, thus providing a visual of the color schemes of each item that might not be clear in the general arrangement drawings. Of course, the plans are accompanied by a construction manual with step-by-step instructions. The last couple manuals I wrote were about 60 pages each. I'm including a few samples of completed or mostly completed drawings for you to get a feeling for what is being done. In order: construction and assembled fore house on WYOMING, stack drawings for OREGON, general arrangement drawings for the tryworks on MORGAN.