SS Michelangelo 1962 by shipmodel - FINISHED - 1/350 scale

[michael mott]

Amazing work Dan, I am really enjoying following this build.

 

Michael

[shipmodel]

Hi Riccardo - 

 

Thanks for the compliments, especially from someone who knows the problems in this scale. 

 

To answer your question, the deck planking is simply printed on my ink jet printer onto acid-free art paper.  After overcoating with clear finish it is glued down to the subdeck wherever it will show.  Margin planks and stairway headers are cut from single strips of the paper.

 

Dan

[Guest Riccardo1966]

Hi Dan, Thank you for your reply, Will remember that one.

Cheers Richard.

[shipmodel]

Hi again to all –

 

Thanks for the likes and especially the comments.  This is mostly a solitary activity so all contact with colleagues is welcome.

 

The past two weeks have been pretty productive.  Much of the bow superstructure and decks have been built up and fitted to each other and to the model.  Although the area is small it involved some of the trickiest shaping, sequencing and fitting problems.  Fortunately, I managed to solve most without a lot of missteps. 

 

The first step was to determine how everything fit together.  Here is the profile view of the bow superstructures from the plans.  Actually, this is an enhanced and detailed rendering of the plans, which is much more useful than the plans themselves.  I only wish I had similar quality drawings for the decks, rather than just the profile.  But since it is a view from the side, it does not give me a good indication of the depths and interrelationships between the various decks.  Some of the questionable areas are indicated:  1) the large oval highlights a set of windows that connect the Lido deck to the Sun deck above it.  What these windows are and how they fit I could not determine from this view, or from any of the plans.  2) The arrow points to an area of the Lido deckhouse that seems to be inset, but not how or how much.  3) The small oval indicates the complicated angled supports that join the rails of the two decks.  And 4) at the extreme bow there is a smooth multi-deck forward face similar to the one built for the lower decks.  But here, although the center of the face is angled at the same 10 degrees, the ends of the face are vertical, requiring a compound curve with an ever-changing slope.  This was not an easy shape for me to imagine or construct.

I turned to photographs for help.  This photograph was taken from a slightly elevated angle.  Using the shadows I could start to see how the decks relate to each other and what some of those more puzzling details are.

The most informative view was this slightly simplified and stylized view as printed on a brochure from 1966.   Sometimes the most obscure source can give the most guidance.  Here it became clear that the Sun deck has long tapered wings that frame the main pool on the Lido deck.  These two decks are connected along the rail with a wall of windows that shields the pool from the wind.

This photo was taken by a passenger from the bridge wing.  From this angle you can see that the window wall is just that, and not supported by a deckhouse or other structure.  In the enlargement you can even see through the open space behind the wall to the pool area beyond it. 

So here is where the construction of the model in this area had reached.  The Lido deck is laid and its solid railing in place.  Its PE handrail will not be installed until the upper deck houses are ready for installation.  Since I thought I understood the details of the window wall I decided to work from there forward, making everything fit together as I went along.   

A while ago I drew out pieces for the window wall based on the plans and had them laser cut.  Turned out that my dimensions were off and I could not simply set each in place and glue it edge to edge on the existing rail as I hoped.  Instead, I had to remove a section of the current rail and replace it with the window wall piece.  This required making the piece much taller, which was done with strips of styrene top and bottom that were edge glued.  The window openings were closed with clear lexan, but this was too transparent, so I gave the back side a quick pass with black spray paint to darken them without making them opaque.  When glued on the effect was what I wanted.  But the large dark rectangle was visible, so I painted white frames for the individual windows.  At the ends of the walls a pair of PE stairways were painted, folded, and attached so their handrails were visible above the edge of the wall. 

These stairways then acted as stops for the Sun deck wings.  I built up the Lido deck house according to the plans, but had to tweak it a bit to fit the model, as built.  My dimensions and machining have been almost spot on throughout the build, but in this scale a variation of half a millimeter is huge, so small adjustments are constantly being made as needed.  Here the Sun deck wings were carefully cut to fit exactly between the window walls so the walls were vertical.

The deckhouse was slid out and detailed using the techniques previously explained for windows, doors and handrails.  Interestingly, this is one of the several spots on the ship that is not perfectly symmetrical.  Photographs confirm that the port side has 11 large windows, while the starboard side only has 8.  

The solid rails were cut and fitted so when the wings stopped against the stairways the two rail sections would meet. Here it is back in place.  The deckhouse is still not secured to the model, and it can be slid out to work on details.  With it removed I will have the clearance to install the PE railings on the Lido deck when the time comes.  The various joints between rail and window sections will be filled and sanded when the deckhouse is permanently installed.

As the detailing continued forward the stairways were temporarily set in place to check fit and placement.  You can see that at this point the forward face is still rough and slightly oversize, and some extra has been left on the forward edge of the bridge wings for the same reason. 

The details of the forward face are quite complicated.  In this photo you can see the line of bridge windows along the upper portion of the sloped face, and an upper solid rail that is set back from the top edge.  The outermost windows go through side pieces that connect with the bridge wings, which have wind deflectors on their upper edges.  Below the wings are walls with open archways and curved pieces that support the wings.

The side view of the same area clearly shows that the center of the forward face is sloped but the outboard pieces are vertical.  It also shows the way that the face is rounded at the top, and how it then curves up to meet the rail on the Belvidere deck. 

I started with the idea that the Lido/Sun decks' forward face had to be shaped as a unit, like the Boat/Superior deck face below it.  To do this I used the same solution that worked in that case.  That is, the forward portion of the Sun deckhouse was cut off square and glued to the Lido deckhouse assembly.  Then the forward end of the Belvidere deck was cut off even shorter and glued in place.  Here the forward face has undergone its initial shaping.  

That shaping was done, initially, on the disc sander.  The disc was set at 90 degrees to the table using an engineers’ square.  A 10 degree jig was constructed of scrap wood and clamped to the table.  The center of the face was sanded to the slope in the center using the jig and a bit of distance to either side.  Then the ends of the face were sanded using the vertical belt that can be seen just above the disc.

With these points established I could employ some simple geometry to get fair curves for the top and the bottom edges.  To have the ends of the face vertical while the center slopes back requires that the upper curve is flatter than the lower one.  The difference was not insignificant.  The upper curve has a radius of 55mm, while the lower one’s radius is only 45mm.  These were drawn on the wood and the face was block sanded to the lines by hand, checking often to see that I was getting the required flat face with a constantly changing slope.

            Once I was satisfied with the underlying wooden structure, it was sheathed.  First, the black backing of the bridge windows was painted on, then the laser-cut window piece was installed.  I had drawn it as having straight edges, but the slope of the face meant that it had to be slightly curved.  I made several partial cuts with a knife along the bottom edge which spread the plastic just enough to form the shallow curve needed.  Upper and lower sheathing pieces were added to cover the rest of the face.  The outer vertical pieces were shaped and installed, then the open windows were drilled, cut and filed into shape.

The growing subassembly was still removable, which I did repeatedly as it made adding detail elements much easier.  Here the aft portion of the Sun deckhouse has been shaped and sheathed, then topped with the Belvidere deck piece.  That deck had planking only about ¾ of its length.  The rest seems to have a similar surface as the working decks, so it was painted the same grey.  Two openings for stairways were cut into the aft end of the Belvidere deck.  At the forward end a solid railing follows the curve of the top edge of the forward face.

That top edge was rounded, as seen in the photos, and a line of putty was laid in to round the surface up to meet the rail.  Thinned putty filled the joints between pieces of the sloped face and was sanded smooth.  A coat of white and several coats of clear finish made everything seamless.  Ultimately that will be done for all of the joints between pieces.   The final bit of work for this posting was adding the railing pieces around the port side bridge wing, including the wind deflector on the forward side. 

I will continue the detailing of this assembly in the next segment.

 

Until then, be well.

 

Dan

[Jim Lad]

Thanks for your detailed explanation, Dan.  You've made great use off the resources available to solve what could otherwise have been some very trick design problems.

 

John

[BANYAN]

Great results from some meticulous planning and execution Dan.  As always, your explanations make easy reading and are very informative.

 

cheers

 

Pat

[druxey]

Well, that's a nice challenging piece of construction! Good going, Dan.

[KeithAug]

Dan, I am still wondering how you are able to do this. Do you have an army of nanobots secretly working away? Very informative explanation, thank you.

Edited January 30, 2018 by KeithAug

[shipmodel]

 

Hello again and thanks again to all for the likes and comments.  I am glad that you find my writing to be clear and the explanations understandable.  Sometimes I read over what I have written and wonder what I was thinking at the time.  Those are the 1 am rewrites that get rewritten the next morning.

 

Continuing with the detailing of the bow upper deck assembly, I turned to the last of the problem areas, the complicated piece that connects the solid rails of the Lido and Sun decks, under and aft of the bridge wing.

This area is one of the more intricate on the model.  In addition to the rail piece, there are cantilever beams that support the wing, three triangular fillets that support those beams, and the navigation lights.

Here is my first acceptable rail piece for the port side, partially finished.  It had to be mounted so the 0.020” thick piece lands exactly on the Lido rail and sits exactly vertically.  The side of the Sun deck was carefully shaped to make that happen with sanding blocks and files, using test pieces repeatedly until I was satisfied.  Once that was done I could secure the rail piece to the assembly.

The entire assembly was still unsecured at this point, so its position could shift slightly side to side since it was held in place only at the aft end where the window walls are.  It had to be made immovable before I could do any final detailing here, but it still had to be removable to install the lower handrails.  My solution was to build the front wall piece on the Lido deck with its passage archway, and the forward support fillet as one piece.  There is a slot cut in the piece that fits over the solid deck rail and keeps the assembly from moving to either side.

With the assembly fitted in place I trimmed the pillars of the rail piece and added the cantilever beams and support fillets under the wing.  No one may ever see those beams, but I will know that they are there.

The starboard rail piece was cut and fitted in a similar way.  Here the piece is roughly shaped and fitted to the edge of the Sun deck and under the wing.  With the whole assembly removed, further detailing was done, with doors, windows, and handrails being fitted using my usual techniques.

The last bit of detailing for the assembly was the brass handrail across the forward face and the windows just above it.  Here is another instance where there is no symmetry, with five windows to port of the center pair, but only a set of three to starboard.

With all of the detailing done the assembly was removed so the PE handrails could be added to the Lido deck.  The assembly was finally secured to the model and the various joints and seams between pieces were filled and sanded flush to each other.  Navigation lights were constructed and secured under the bridge wings and stairways installed leading from the Lido to the Sun deck. 

So here is what the superstructure looks like at this stage.  The symmetry is good, except where it shouldn’t be, and I think that it is starting to give a pretty convincing impression of the ship as it appears in the photographs. 

The next segment should finish up the Sun and Belvidere decks, which will complete the basic structure of the ship. 

 

Until then, be well.

 

Dan

[mtaylor]

Dan,

Marvelous work you're doing.  It's a real pity they don't build cruise ships (or ocean liners for that matter) like this anymore.  That ship is a work of art, IMO.

[BANYAN]

Nice work yet again Dan.  Starting to look like??  Your effort is every bit as good as a builder's model with perhaps even better detail.

 

cheers

 

Pat

[Jim Lad]

Very nicely done, indeed, Dan.  I think we all have 'no-one will ever know it's there' sections on our models - makes them just that little bit more special.

 

John

[Mirabell61]

fantastic build in detail Dan,

 

very accurate modeling of fine structures,

I love those tiny stairs up to the bridge wings, even they have brown painted handrails !!    

 

Nils

[dvm27]

Each layer just makes the model look cooler and cooler, Dan!

Edited February 8, 2018 by dvm27

[shipmodel]

Thank you all so very much.  I do this because I love it, and all the likes and comments from some outstanding modelers themselves are the icing on my cake.

 

Dan

 

 

[KeithAug]

Always a pleasure to catch up with your description Dan 

[shipmodel]

 

Hi again to my amigos who are following this journey.  I hope you all have romantic plans for Valentine’s Day.   Dinner with my first mate in the main salon is always a good start.  But enough mushy stuff, here is the latest segment.

 

When I last ended the log, the bow superstructure had been finished up to the Sun deck rail, its deck house built but not detailed or installed.   Above that, the Belividere deck had its deck laid and solid railing applied, but little else.

I first installed the PE railings around the perimeter of the Sun deck, having them meet the railings of the aft stairways.  This was a mistake.  I realized that there was now not much room to work on the main pool which will fit between the arms of the Sun deck.  Although the pool area will be built as a separate assembly off the model, it requires a hollow in the deck to accept the depth of the pool box.  But I had forgotten to plan for it when laying out the Lido deck and now had to cut it in with all the railings, stairways and other fragile details nearby.  I did not want to chance using a power tool since the odds of a catastrophic mistake in the confined space were pretty high.  I therefore took a mini-chisel and slowly dug away at the wood, being careful not to let the handle touch the PE railing or any of the other details, till I had the hollow needed.  I figure I added almost two hours of nervous, unnecessary work to make a hole no one will ever see. 

I made up a test pool and its surround to check that I had adequate depth.  The pool looks OK, but I was not happy with the color or surface of the surround, so Mk.1 will be used only as a pattern.

From there I used my usual techniques to detail the Sun deck house with its windows, doors, handrails and stairways.  On the Belvidere deck the PE railings were installed, along with the staircases at the aft end and their guardrails.  On deck there are two features.  The simple one is, I believe, the radio shack.  The radio antennae and masts sit on its top surface, while the sides are ringed by ridged features that seem to be ventilation louvres that would be needed to cool the equipment. 

     Forward is a ‘D’ shaped raised platform that I would call the ‘monkey deck’ for the ship’s officers, but neither the plans nor the photographs show a wheel or binnacle here.  In fact, unlike earlier ships, there are no telegraphs or other control devices anywhere on deck, even on the bridge wings.  I guess walkie talkies were already in use. There is a tall searchlight platform that will go on top of the monkey deck, and the large foremast mounts just aft of the radio room, but these are details for later. 

This would have been the finish of this segment, but that monkey deck worried me.  Even though its height had been correctly taken off the plans, from most angles it sure seemed too tall.

Looking at an enlarged photo I compared the height of the deck with people who appeared to be standing next to it.  From this it looks about 6 feet tall, or 5mm, rather than the 6.5mm measured from the plans.

Although the piece was already glued down, fortunately the PVA glue was still not fully cured and I was able to pry it up without damaging the railing around it.  I took off the PE stairway and, using my Preac table saw, very carefully removed 1.5mm from the bottom of the piece.   The lowered piece was reinstalled, then the stairway was trimmed at the bottom and reattached.

I think that the piece looks much better, and closer to the photos, even if it is further away from the plans.  Here are the Sun and Belvidere decks as finished.

In this shot from the stern you can see that the aft stairways have solid walls around them which make convenient storage spaces under the stairs.

So here is the completed forward superstructure, with a dime tucked against the rail for a bit of size comparison. 

With these last decks the basic structure of the ship is complete.   The funnel cages show some of what still needs to be done.

Next the detailing begins with the three pools and the bar that looks like a space ship.  More soon.

 

Be well.

 

Dan

 

[Jim Lad]

The beautiful work continues - and a very nice recovery on the swimming pool.

 

It's odd that there's no standard compass on the monkey island or gyro repeaters on the bridge wings - we are talking 1965, after all.  How did they take bearings?

 

John

[KeithAug]

Great job Dan.

[druxey]

Thanks for adding the coin to give us a better idea of the size of your model, Dan. Nice observation (and recovery!) on the monkey deck: the model looks like the photos now. It always makes one wonder about 'design' vs 'as built' plans!

[Guest Riccardo1966]

Looking most impressive, very nice work.

Regards

Richard

[BANYAN]

Very nice work Dan, that coin really shows the scale and level of detail.

 

cheers

 

Pat

[shipmodel]

Thank you all again.  I feel especially honored by the likes and compliments from such an international audience.  "A good deed goes around the world," they say, and I'm happy that it's true in our little community.   

 

Dan

 

 

[shipmodel]

Hi all –

 

Work on the Michelangelo has been going somewhat slowly for a while since I took a contract to restore and upgrade a model at the museum of the American Merchant Marine Academy at Kings Point, NY.  Here is a quick two-segment report on the work.  I was going to post it in a ‘Restorations and Repairs’ forum, but I couldn’t find it.  The moderators should feel free to move it to a more appropriate location.

 

The model was a large one, and I do mean large!  Here she is as I first saw her, with museum Director Professor Josh Smith next to her for a sense of scale.

The SS Zebulon Pike was a Liberty Ship during WW II, one of the thousands built in sections and then assembled in as little as four and a half days.  They were to a standard design, 441 feet long, 8,000 tons displacement.  This representation is built to a scale of 1:24, resulting in a model just over 18 feet long.   It was built by a graduate of the Academy, Wallace “Wally” Leiper, class of 1943, who served aboard the ship during the war.   Leaning against the model is a plaque honoring Wally with a photo taken in uniform.   And here is a photo of him when the model was delivered to the Academy.

The model was originally intended as a parade float for his Colorado chapter of the U.S. Merchant Marine Veterans of WW II.  According to Wally, one of the men offered to cut out a silhouette of a Liberty Ship, but he knew he could do better since he had experience making model airplanes.  2500 hours later he had a model made from ¼” plywood, chicken wire, paper mache, dowels, and paint sitting in his basement.  To get it out he designed it to separate into three sections, much like the original ship.  I don’t know if it was ever used in the parade.

            Although accepted by the museum, they didn’t have a space to display it, so it sat in a damp basement for a number of years, leading to several seams opening up as the plywood warped.  It now sits in the Conservatory room in the museum where it is dryer and much more accessible, but it needed a good deal of TLC.

It is an inherently interesting model, although the construction details are all over the lot in terms of historic accuracy and scale.  Here in the midships area the winches are nicely represented, and the fabric cover of the hatch is held down with working wedges.  But the chain for the hoists is much too large and the stays for the cargo mast just hint at the turnbuckles.

On the stern the 5 inch gun is a minor masterpiece, with realistic sights and scopes.  Even the traversing and elevating wheels are rigged so the gun turns and lifts when they are turned.   Yet it sits on a deckhouse put together with hinges and rivets, with open edges of the plywood exposed.

The 20mm Oerlikon guns are well detailed, but the figures of the crew, and especially this officer, are quite crude.  Behind the gun you can see the steering bridge with the figure of a railroad conductor standing there.  Yet I discovered while cleaning the model that the compass inside the binnacle is gimballed!

My contract was to clean and upgrade the model, especially the hull, and to populate it with several dozen figures in various poses around the ship.  The biggest task wasn’t a modeling one at all, but a carpentry one.  The model sat on three bases made up out of three quarter inch plywood covered in a black laminate.  They weighed almost 200 pounds each.  The bases had no feet and sat directly on the storage room floor with no air circulation inside.  Over the years the damp rose up through the wood to cause bubbles and chipping of the laminate.  Various other holes had been drilled or gouged into them over time.  I was tasked with making them look like new.

The bases were cleaned and sanded before the various bubbles were pierced and re-glued, ironing them down flat.  Missing pieces were filled in with similar laminate before everything was leveled with Bondo.  Sanding, priming, and painting followed.  The bottom toe-kick was cut down (or up) and sets of casters were installed to raise the bases up from the floor and allow air circulation as well as to make them easier to move.

            The model‘s hull was refurbished with carpentry tools and techniques as well.  The various open seams were closed with screws and glue.  Seams between the model sections were sanded as smooth as possible, then filled.  The entire hull was sanded with power tools before several rounds of priming and painting.

The original ship name and depth numbers were vinyl, but the wrong color and size, so they were removed before the hull was done.  They were replaced with new, white ones that matched wartime photos of Liberty ships.  There was no boot topping that we could see in the photos, but the lower hull was usually painted with anti-fouling red, so a line of it was painted at the bottom of the model’s hull.

The hull at the stern could not be finished with power tools, so there was a lot of hand work to get it to an acceptable surface.  Once the hull was done the entire model was cleaned and several spots that had been scuffed or stained were painted to hide the defects. 

Now the model was ready for the figures that would bring it to life.  I will go over them in the concluding segment.

 

Be well

 

Dan

 

 

[KeithAug]

Dan, I presume you didn't need the optivisor for this one? 

[mitbok]

I think I've seen this one live when doing Active Duty Training for NAVY Reserve at the academy. It is huge!

Is the model at the college museum now? (Kings Point has a nice small museum but it is not advertised much)

[mtaylor]

Dan,

 

Fascinating project.  Sounds like you had to pull more than a few strands of hair sorting things out.

For restorations, see this post:  

 

[druxey]

A poor excuse for neglecting Michaelangelo, Dan! Seriously, that is from the sublime to the ridiculous in terms of size and scale. At least you didn't have to clean off a 1/16" layer of sticky barn deposits as I just did from a model - a real hazmat situation! You have an interesting mix of sophisticated and primitive work on the Z. Pike model. Was it all made by the same hand?

Edited March 7, 2018 by druxey

[Jim Lad]

Now there's an interesting project to have undertaken!  It looks like you've really made some good improvements to the model, Dan.

 

Just a small detail regarding historical accuracy for anyone building a cargo ship of the period - the hatch wedges that can be so clearly seen in the third photo are actually hammered in from the wrong direction - a strange oversight for a professional seaman.  This is obviously No. 1 hatch, so the photos show the wedges hammered in from aft - they should have been hammered in from forward so that seas sweeping over the bow wouldn't tend to loosen the wedges.

 

John

[Hubac's Historian]

I love the insight, Mr. Lad.