SS Stephen Hopkins by schooner - FINISHED - BlueJacket Shipcrafters - Liberty Ship

[Jim Lad]

She's coming along very nicely, Tim.

 

John

[Elijah]

Nice job! It's all very neat and precise!

[rvchima]

Tim,

 

I am really enjoying your build. It's a totally different ship than the Arleigh-Burke that I just finished, but the BlueJacket construction is exactly the same. And those tiny AA guns are amazing!

[schooner]

Thanks for all the likes and comments.

 

 

Cargo Booms

 

The two “Jumbo” booms (50 and 30 tons) are made up of nested tubing. I departed from the plans by making mine thicker for most of their length, which is how they look on the SS John Brown. The plans call for 2 eyes on the end of the boom but since I hope to go totus porcus on the rigging I will need 4. The eye bands available from BlueJacket work well so after drilling out the flanges they were easy to add.

 

 

The ten 5-ton booms are also made up of nested tubing. Here I also need 4 eyes on the ends but the eye bands looked oversize so I made individual ones from strip plastic and 3/32 split rings. It got pretty tedious to drill, cut, shape, assemble, glue, drop into the carpet, cuss, and repeat 39 more times but I’m happy with the outcome.

 

 

One less happy discovery was that the 5-ton booms would not fit into the kit-provided eyes that I had already attached to the mast houses. Even when opened up with pliers they still did not work. I found that the pad eyes from the BlueJacket catalog worked fine. The only problem was that their circular bases were too wide but they were soft enough that I was able to trim them with a Dremel sander. Here’s the replacements on the left, the original eyes are on the right:

 

[schooner]

Masts

 

The kit provides dowels, laser cut wood, crow's nest, blocks, vertical ladders and eyes to make up the masts.

 

Here’s what the Fore Mast looks like, minus the ladders which will be added later, and the eyes which I have replaced with scratch pad eyes:

 

 

 

I added additional details to include railings, the Forward Range Light, halyard blocks, pad eyes for the stays and shrouds, cargo blocks for routing the jumbo boom rigging, rings for stowing the 5-ton booms in the vertical position, and working lights (lenses for the lights will be added after the final painting). 

 

 

Here’s the finished mast dry-fitted to its mast house:

 

Edited December 27, 2016 by schooner

[cog]

Very clear details. Lovely work on that mast and the housing

[schooner]

Thanks Carl!

[Jim Lad]

​Very nicely detailed, Tim.

 

​John

[schooner]

Main & Mizzen Masts

 

Just like for the Fore Mast the kit provides dowels, laser cut wood, blocks, vertical ladders and eyes to make up the masts. They are basically the same except for the addition of the topmasts. Here’s what the masts, minus the ladders which will be added later, and the eyes which I replaced with scratch pad eyes:

 

 

 

I added additional details to include railings, the Aft Range Light, jib for the flag, pad eyes for the stays and shrouds, cargo blocks for routing the jumbo boom rigging, rings for stowing the 5-ton booms in the vertical position, and working lights (lenses for the lights will be added after the final painting).

 

 

[cog]

You're getting the hang of making those masts. Looking very good

[schooner]

Small deck fittings

 

I added the bitts and roller chocks and replaced all the scratch cleats along the cap rail since they were not secure. Some of them will be under tension from the rigging so I made new ones and drilled holes for them in the cap rail rather than just glueing them.

 

The small white things on the deck are scratch pad eyes for the mast shrouds and stays, most of them are pinned in place since they too will be under tension.

 

I had hoped to paint the hull today but the temp in my garage is now in the 20’s so I’ll have to find more small work to do while waiting for the weather to improve.

 

 

Edited January 7, 2017 by schooner

[cog]

Good decision on the roller chockes, now is easier to replace than when you are nearly finished

[schooner]

4-inch gun

 

With the exception of the earliest Liberty’s (like the Hopkins), almost all of them were fitted out with a 5”/38 gun for their main battery. The gun was power-operated, fast firing, and when paired with a fire-control system and VT-fused ammunition it was very effective against aircraft. Installed on virtually every class of US warships it was widely considered to be the best naval gun of the war. The kit provides a nicely cast Brittania metal gun.

 

 

Unfortunately for the Stephen Hopkins, the 5/38 production line was still working up when she was launched so she had to make do with a WWI leftover. The 4”/50 was mass produced after 1914 and was primarily fitted on the “4-piper” flush-deck destroyers. It was manually trained and elevated and did not have the capability to fire anything but basic point-detonating ammo, making it useless against aircraft. However, as I pointed out in my first post, with a trained crew it could be deadly against an unarmored ship at close range.

 

 

When looking around for materials to scratch build one I found that toothpicks scale out perfectly for the barrel, assuming it could be narrowed near the muzzle and built up near the center and breech.

 

I chucked one up in a Dremel and tried to trim it down but it quickly splintered. Soaking it in diluted white glue did not work. I tried thin CA and with some trial and error, reapplying CA after the surface layer was filed off I was able to get what I wanted. The CA also allowed for the drilling out of the muzzle - something that an unreinforced toothpick won’t stand up to.

 

The areas that needed to be built up were wrapped with thin tape as needed.

 

The rest of the mount was assembled with sheet and rod plastic and brass rod.

 

 

One item that I have found very handy for scratch building is this little set of punches for making discs. I had been using a set of hollow punches but they always produced ragged edges - this set does not.

Here’s the finished gun:

 

Edited January 11, 2017 by schooner

[schooner]

Anchor Windlass (and last post for a while)

 

The kit provides a 1-piece Brittania casting for the anchor windlass, nicely detailed:

I was all set to go with it when looking over my pix from my visit to the John Brown I noticed that the real thing stands about 4-1/2 feet high whereas the kit version, while correct for length and width, scales out at only a little under 2 feet high as you can see by the comparison photos (BTW my model will not be red - I just have not painted the hull its final color yet - the red is overspray form the red, underwater section):

I hope to be able to scratch build a new windlass and that job was made easier after I found a bag of used wristwatch gears online for about $2, with some plastic I-beams for the foundations it should hopefully turn out OK.

 

This will be my last post for a couple of months since we are in the process of moving to North Carolina and all my model stuff needs to get packed up. Hopefully I can resume work in April or May.

Edited January 26, 2017 by schooner

[Mirabell61]

good progress Tim,

and beautiful details....

 

Nils

[schooner]

Anchor Windlass

 

After a hectic 3 months we are now settled enough in the new house that I can break out the model and get started again.

 

As I said in my last post, I wanted to replace the kit-supplied windlass with a scratch one that would be more to scale with regard to height.

 

I made the bedplate, steam chest and pistons out of sheet, rod and I-beam styrene.

 

The main shaft and gear wheels are a combination of tubing, rod and a bag of watch gears I found on the internet.

 

 

Next up will be the capstan heads, brake controls and gear controls.

[cog]

Good to see you back at it Tim. Nice touch those watch gears. What's the difference in height compare to the kit supplied one?

[schooner]

Hi Carl,

The difference is between 2 feet for the kit casting and about 4 3/4 ft for my scratch one.

Tim

[schooner]

Anchor Windlass - final

 

The final details have been added to the windlass.

 The capstan heads and hand wheels are after-market, the brake bands, hand cranks and other stuff are scratch.

 

 

 

[cog]

Marvelous work on the windlass Tim. I know whom to turn to when I need one !

[schooner]

Thanks Carl, it did turn out better than I thought it would and it was also fun to build!

[Jean-Pierre]

you did a super job on your gun and on the windlass (as well as the rest of your build of course).

 

I think I remember that there are some linked chain available for a reasonable 1/100 scale.  Didn't you consider this?  I used some on a Flying Fish model at scale 1/96 and they look great (better than the rest of the (unfinished) model.

 

I'll love to watch the rest of your project.  I personally started a Victory Ship by Bluejacket but I got stuck although I had already corrected quite a few inaccuracies (prow is wrong, chimney as well, railings not the right type, correction of the half finished one piece hull a pain for me (partly due to poor tools on my behalf). A plank on bulkheads would have been far easier to build I think.

 

But you  are doing a great job on this one!

[schooner]

Thanks for the kind words Jean-Pierre.

 

I have seen very realistic anchor chain links in 1/100 scale, as you said,  but I have not been able to find any in this 1/192 scale so I'll just have to stick with this simple chain.

 

I think that many of the problems you found with the old Liberty ship kit have been corrected with this new updated version, so far I have been very happy with the accuracy and fit. I agree with you about solid hull versus plank on bulkhead, once your learn the tricks of POB it is easier to work with - my next kit will likely be a POB. 

[Jean-Pierre]

you're right.  It's about time some etchings specialist finds a way to produce lengths of linked chain at 1/200 and, why not, at 1/350 scale.  Plastic modelers would be thankful.

 

My model was in fact a Victory Ship, a superb ship that was both larger and faster than the Liberty's. But their general arrangement was similar.  They were discarded mostly during the sixties because they rusted very fast, and their turbines used huge quantities of fuel (some 75 tons a day at sea!).  But their speed of up to 18 knots would have made them a tough challenge for U-Boats.

 

The Bluejacket kit I bought had its superstructure made of mere blocks of wood that had to be piled up, and the general detail was rather simplistic.  I suppose the kit was (is?) a reissue based on plans by a Mr Boucher.

 

As a collector, I had bought in the past plans of this ship, which later appeared to be the ones of the kit.  And I was lucky to have done that, because the toner used for the plans in the kit was not burned in thoroughly, and I soon had large blind spots on my plans.  I'm sure Bluejacket would have replaced them, but I then used (much more carefully) the other set of plans.

[schooner]

Time to paint

 

Between “new house” chores and trying to hook a few more trout before the streams get too hot there hasn’t been much new with the model.

 

I did get the stack put together

and I scratched some “J” vents for the fuel tanks that will go along the bulwarks and the superstructures

I finally stopped stalling and broke out the airbrush and got to work on that. I chose Model Master's Ocean Gray since the early Liberty's were painted darker than Navy Haze Gray and given the scale effect this is what I was looking for. It has a little more sheen than I wanted but I'll be giving everything a coat of Dull Coat at the end so it should not be a problem.

 

With most of the big parts painted things should start moving along at a more respectable pace now.

 

[cog]

She starts to look like a ship, Tim. Good to see you back at the bench. Hope the "new house" chores won't linger on to long ...

[Mirabell61]

Hi Tim,

 

love your fitting out details like masts, windlass, and stack.....

beautiful work 

 

Nils

[JPAM]

looking fantastic. 

 

[schooner]

Thanks for all the kind words Carl, Nils & JPAM.

 

Foc'sle

 

I placed the anchor windlass in position and added the anchor chain. I was a little surprised to find no evidence of chain stoppers on the Liberty's, apparently they just let the anchors ride on the windlass brakes - must have made for some excitement in heavy seas.

The forward gun tub was next to be added. I'll wait on adding the guns to the very end of the build because they are fragile and I don't want to have to try and dust them.

There are a few more items to add in the bow area and then I will probably add the main deckhouse.

[cog]

If how the bow looks now will be the preview of what will be coming, we are in for a treat ... a big treat