USS ENGLAND (DE-635) by ccoyle - FINISHED - HMV - 1/250 - CARD

[Ian_Grant]

17 hours ago, ccoyle said:

 

I was 13 when the original came out -- saw it seven times in the theater and dreamed of being a Hollywood SFX model-maker. Of course it's mainly CGI now.

Andrew also talked about seeing one of their model makers open the trunk of his car, and it was stuffed with plastic model battleships etc, as a source for gun turrets for model spaceships 😄.

 

Another aside - While living down there, he played goalie on a hockey team of Canadian expats. One day Lucas had some NHL goalie come in to save shots while wearing one of those suits with all the sensors for position on them, however they work. Anyway Andrew later got a call from an admin, asking "You play hockey, don't you; do you know a goalie?". Apparently an entire pack of NHL-level goalie sticks was received just for that goalie's session in the suit and he left them all behind. "Do you want them?". Andrew said he was turning cartwheels across the parking lot 😃.

 

Sorry Chris for all the distractions. Back to your card model, which is looking great!

[ccoyle]

Bridge (cont'd)

 

Added the back wall to the bridge, plus its detail bits -- 28 more parts in total. Yes, that's my craft knife handle in the photo, for scale.

 

[ccoyle]

And yet again we have . . .

 

Bridge (cont'd)

 

More bridge interior details. Believe it or not, 24 more parts have been added since the last shot, but eight of them are support brackets, so you can't see 'em.

 

[Diver]

10 minutes ago, ccoyle said:

And yet again we have . . .

 

Bridge (cont'd)

 

More bridge interior details. Believe it or not, 24 more parts have been added since the last shot, but eight of them are support brackets, so you can't see 'em.

 

Just a quick question about card modells. Do they come colored or do you have to paint the pieces?

[BrianK]

Chris that binnacle-like thingie looks perfectly round and symmetrical. I know its got to be incredibly tiny but the extreme detail keeps betraying my sense of size. You better start including that 4" diameter penny in all your photos. 😃 

BrianK

[ccoyle]

1 hour ago, Diver said:

Do they come colored or do you have to paint the pieces?

 

They are printed. The cut edges need to be colored. Oh, and the mistakes -- they need to be colored, too, but hopefully not often!

[Ian_Grant]

23 hours ago, ccoyle said:

Bridge (cont'd)

 

Added the back wall to the bridge, plus its detail bits -- 28 more parts in total. Yes, that's my craft knife handle in the photo, for scale.

 

 

Oh come now, Chris, that's actually a broom handle you painted silver, isn't it?

[RGL]

Nice work! Can you weather it?

[ccoyle]

Yes, one could, in fact, by using weathering chalk. That's way beyond my abilities, though. I'll be happy just to finish this model -- I haven't even gotten to the hard parts yet!

[ccoyle]

Yet again we have  . . .

 

Bridge (cont'd)

 

It was finally time to glue the bridge to the superstructure, because now I need to glue stuff to the outside of it, e.g. handrails, that can easily be knocked off.

 

 

Another 18 parts, including the platforms for ranging and direction equipment, part of the next installment.

[ccoyle]

A just-for-fun pic -- Waratah and England side-by-side in the same 1/250 scale. Remember, a DE is considered a small warship!

 

[AKRYPTO]

On 1/27/2022 at 9:26 AM, ccoyle said:

Baby Steps

 

Well, one small triumph and one sorta boo-boo. I started by spraying matte clear finish on the parts. Such is my usual practice, but I had another reason to do so this time around. This kit is printed on semi-gloss stock, and the sheen didn't seem right for a fighting ship in the Southwest Pacific. I did a test-spray last night on a color swatch, and everything seemed okay, so I sprayed the remaining parts. And everything does look okay -- except for where anything is black, which, happily, is not too much. The black parts ended up looking a bit splotchy. Oh well  -- shouldn't be too obvious on the finished model. We'll call it weathering.

 

Next I set about making edge colors. Shouldn't be too difficult, right? After all, there's basically only two, and they happen to be different shades of the same color. Ha! The problem is, the color is USN Measure 21 dark blue-gray, but it's printed, not painted. Four-color printing creates colors by blending different saturations of black, yellow, cyan, and magenta dots, and you can actually see these if you squint closely enough. From a distance, the printed color looks gray, but if you look closely you can see that the "gray" has a kind of lilac tone to it -- created by the combination of cyan and magenta dots. It was really hard to recreate this effect, as you can see by my many attempts below.

 

 

I got the darker shade close enough after just a few tries, but the lighter shade was a booger. The difficulty lay in that red needed to be added to the mixture to push the tone from gray toward toward the desired lilac tone. But my first attempt, not shown, wound up missing the mark and being plain ol' dark purple (or dare I say 'Deep Purple'?) -- too much red. So, after many tweaks, I got the second attempt closer to the desired color (circled). It's not a perfect match, but it looks better in real life than in this crummy cell phone picture, and the tone is right if not the exact shade. My fear is that if I add any more red, I'll push the shade too far into purple territory and have to start all over again.

 

Next up will be cutting the hull sides and deck. Using the 3D-printed hull eliminates the need to cut out and glue forty-seven hull skeleton parts!

Been doing a lot of research on this colour and the origins of its use in Particular for the RAN during 1942-1943 in the Pacific.  Your outcome looks pretty bloody good.  Cheers. 

[lmagna]

On 3/1/2022 at 6:58 PM, ccoyle said:

Remember, a DE is considered a small warship!

Sometimes they can feel even smaller:

https://youtu.be/dGC5TLPkL2s?t=282

 

[Joe100]

I know we’ve discussed this before, but I don’t understand why card hasn’t caught on in some parts of the world. This is turning out awesome as usual. 

[amateur]

Exposire during childhood?

The shop I went to when I was around 10 years of age had a wall full of revell and airfix (mostly planes, and a Vasa, a hms victory and a santa Maria).

They also had some card (Leon Schuyt: frisian farmhouse, limburg farmhouse, city tower from Amsterdam). I’m pretty sure that mid-seventies that was the situation in all shops over here. 

And also: on meetings it is the platic guys that are very impressivevwith their weathering- and upgrading techniques. Card  is something for children that need something to do on a rainy sundayvafternoon

Jan

[Veszett Roka]

3 hours ago, amateur said:

Exposire during childhood?

The shop I went to when I was around 10 years of age had a wall full of revell and airfix (mostly planes, and a Vasa, a hms victory and a santa Maria).

They also had some card (Leon Schuyt: frisian farmhouse, limburg farmhouse, city tower from Amsterdam). I’m pretty sure that mid-seventies that was the situation in all shops over here. 

And also: on meetings it is the platic guys that are very impressivevwith their weathering- and upgrading techniques. Card  is something for children that need something to do on a rainy sundayvafternoon

Jan

 

Hi Jan,

 

yep, same situ here in Hungary. However, i was in a shipmodelers' meeting once, and a guy came with a 40*40 cm chess set, with all the board and figures was constructed from card. Of course, the figures were all different type of ships. The pawns were small boats with a single latin sail, the knights were frigates with 2 masts, the king was a ship-of-line and so forth, of course identical ships with black and white sails. You should have seen the dropped jaws there (mine included).

I think the hobby shops just followed the demands, shipmodeling is not too familiar due small scales, much more modelers interested for armor and planes. Also i remember when i had to order my Titanic abroad (Academy 1:350) in 1995 because nowhere i found a kit before the 1997 film, which skyrocket the interest again to her lately. Still have the original Korean instruction sheet

 

Edited March 3, 2022 by Veszett Roka
typos

[ccoyle]

Still more bridge stuff . . .

 

Sky lookouts, 5 pcs each.

 

Mounted on the bridge.

 

You can also see the windscreen (correct jargon?) fixed atop the bridge; I glazed it with diluted Aleen's Clear Gel Tacky Glue.

 

Cheers!

[Ian_Grant]

Chris......."sky lookouts"?  Are those for the lookouts to rest their elbows on while holding binoculars to the sky?

[ccoyle]

9 hours ago, Ian_Grant said:

Are those for the lookouts to rest their elbows on while holding binoculars to the sky?

 

Yes, sort of. In the screen capture below you can see that it's actually the lookout's binoculars that are held by the frame (which is slightly different in this image from the type provided in the kit). The lookout uses his hands on the frame to adjust elevation. The most commonly used US naval binoculars were 7x50s that weighed 2.7 lbs, so using one's hands to hold them at eye level for long periods would obviously be very fatiguing.

 

 

I've provided links to both the training video from which the capture is taken and to a website that describes the Navy's 7x50 binoculars in detail.

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FrdwAJ3YIaY

 

http://www.company7.com/library/sard_7x50_mk.html

 

[Ian_Grant]

Interesting! Thanks Chris. Boy, that's a slow-moving training video; I can imagine the audience falling asleep in a haze of cigarette smoke.

[ccoyle]

This is the second-to-last post about the bridge -- I swear it!! After this, there are only ten more parts left to do. For this update, we have range-finding equipment and a half-dozen more bits added to the exterior walls.

 

[Veszett Roka]

18 hours ago, ccoyle said:

 

Yes, sort of. In the screen capture below you can see that it's actually the lookout's binoculars that are held by the frame (which is slightly different in this image from the type provided in the kit). The lookout uses his hands on the frame to adjust elevation. The most commonly used US naval binoculars were 7x50s that weighed 2.7 lbs, so using one's hands to hold them at eye level for long periods would obviously be very fatiguing.

 

 

Those brackets purpose primarily the direction and elevation measurement. On the picture, you can see a bearing scale ahead of the crew, and on his left side you can see the elevation scale. With those scales the watchmen can give precise direction of incoming threats. Their binoculars were equipped with a very basic rangefinder in the right eyesight.

[ccoyle]

16: Bridge (completed -- yay!!)

 

Okay, the last bits of the bridge have been added (for now -- some other bits get added later). These include navigation lights and some electronic doohickey on the forward bridge wall whose function I do not know. This wraps up Step 16. Whew!!

 

Total parts count for this sub-assembly came to 142.

[ccoyle]

17: Aft Gun Tub

 

Next up was the aft gun tub for the #3 3"/50 mount. The depth charge mandrels really drove up the parts count for this sub-assembly, bringing the total to 106. Happily, I hit on a quicker way for assembling the mandrels by gluing their tubes to the laser-cut cradles and then painting the mandrels before cutting them free from the card fret -- a much faster process, with the added benefit of keeping all of the little parts together for as long as possible.

 

 

 

[ccoyle]

18: Funnel

 

This is the basic funnel structure. It's not difficult to build, but it would have been easier if I hadn't rolled the outer skin incorrectly. 😬 This necessitated some fiddling to correct the shape, but no 'special words' were required. There's much, much more to add to this (e.g. ducting and piping), but the instructions suggest skipping to Step 19 (20mm gun tubs and a few other bits) before coming back to add the funnel.

 

 

Cheers for now!

 

 

[ccoyle]

19: 20mm Gun Tubs

 

So, skipping ahead for a bit as suggested by the instructions, I thought I'd show a bit more of how one of the sub-assemblies comes together, featuring the second starboard 20mm gun tub. This took about 2 hours to build. 🤪

 

First, some of the sub-assemblies of the sub-assembly. Oddly enough, the laser-cut detail set did not include ladders for the two Step 19 tubs -- go figure.

 

 

To help maintain the shape of the tub while gluing its floor and wall together, I joined the two parts together around the end of a dapping tool handle.

 

 

And here's the finished tub mounted to the hull.

 

 

 

One more tub to go!

[BrianK]

Chris,

I continue to be in awe of your skill. To cut such small parts so accurately is so impressive. (straight cuts on straight lines and curved cuts on curved lines sounds simple but having tried my first 1/250th scale card model I know that is easier said.....)

 

While I continue to internally debate whether to leave the line or take the line on cuts, I am sure you are "spliting the line". 😃 

 

I do have one question:

On small parts like the sky lookouts do you hold the pieces with tweezers and paint the edges before glue and assembly?

 

BrianK

[ccoyle]

1 hour ago, BrianK said:

On small parts like the sky lookouts do you hold the pieces with tweezers and paint the edges before glue and assembly?

 

Sometimes yes, sometimes no. Sometimes it is easier to do the edge coloring after the thing is put together.

[ccoyle]

19: 20mm gun tubs

 

Step 19 is finished. Now it's back to Step 18 to continue work on the funnel.

 

[ccoyle]

Step 18: Funnel (cont'd)

 

Moving forward, or backward in this instance, we come back to the funnel. The basic stack has been glued down to the hull, along with two ducts (I assume one for each of her two boilers).

 

 

Here's where it gets dicey. There's a can-load of pipes to be added. These can be built using either flat parts or optional rolled tubes. Here's the parts for the tubes. 😬

 

 

Of course, what I'll likely do is attempt the tubes and fall back on the flat parts if things don't work out to my liking. Fingers crossed!