USS Arizona by DocRob - FINISHED - Eduard - 1/350 - PLASTIC

[DocRob]

On 2/24/2023 at 10:42 AM, Toolmaker said:

Hi Rob, yes spot on, that’s what I did in the end. The top half of the legs are hand painted although I had painted those curved railings prior to fixing them on.

It’s at this point you end up thinking why didn’t I just stick to armour, ha.

Ship building is so much more challenging. I went to 1/700 scale for a short while before moving to the wood stuff. That sure demands a steady hand.

Regarding my own Arizona, at the moment there are just a few pictures in the gallery here. I did a build log on another forum some years ago but it has since gone. I may eventually repeat it on MSW as a retrospective log, but for now I will happily continue to enjoy yours.

cheers

 

Thank you Paul, I will look your gallery pictures up and hope to see your re-log soon. 
I thought about pre painting the railing too, but decided against for these mast sections. I think, I will hand paint them with insignia white. The railings, which will enclose the main decks, I will pre paint, as the wooden deck will be in place, when I glue these on. 

I will not go below 1/350 scale wise and have only a few ships models in my huge stash. I started my first wooden ship build, the Duchess of Kingston, about a year ago and found it more relaxing, than the USS Arizona build. Despite being all new to me, working with wood and PVA, I found it easier to get into a building flow, where the Arizona build is more of a fight. The quality of te kit is a huge factor here. Vanguard's DoK is well designed, where the Hobby Boss Arizona is a plastic nightmare, only buildable into a decent result, using all the PE and printed parts.
After this build, I will continue with the rigging of the DoK, a part of the build I ever dreaded, but not so much anymore, after my Arizona experiences.

 

Cheers Rob

[DocRob]

I continued with some more on deck subassemblies. The second catapult and the stern crane were easy to build up and I thought about having some relaxing fun with the boats and their cradles, but PE-madness stroke back. The plastic hulls needed a lot of cleanup but the extremely fragile racks where very difficult to glue into place unbent and more or less on level. They do look a bit rough and I hope to hide the crudeness behind primer and paint, as I have no intention to rework them.

 

 

Cheers Rob

[Javlin]

Rob they look way better than most of us put together at least me in that regard stuff is so small and dainty.

[DocRob]

19 hours ago, Javlin said:

Rob they look way better than most of us put together at least me in that regard stuff is so small and dainty.

 

Thank you Kevin, I was a bit lucky, the back of the pic wasn't perfectly focused and I had a little blur to hide the imperfections. I hope under some color, all will look ok in the end.
The PE racks would have benefitted from a bit stronger material. The thin PE was warping and bending on eyesight.

 

Cheers Rob

[Toolmaker]

11 hours ago, DocRob said:

The thin PE was warping and bending on eyesight.

Love it,

I have definitely shouted lots worse. That there is frustration.

 

To be fair Rob, although you know the issues you have faced, your photo’s rarely show anything other than “job done”.

It all looks really good, those racks look great and will improve even further when fitted and painted. They will become just another part of an “amazing” assembly.

 

I got slightly involved in a conversation on here today about soldering, and your build here was at the forefront of my mind.

 

I can’t help but think you are batting way above the production level of this kit. The plastic doesn’t look good but your etch work does.

 

Cheers fella.

 

Thank you

 

Paul

 

[DocRob]

I started with the boats, hoping to find some relaxation, but was soon proved wrong. The flimsy racks didn't help and the last four of the twelve (I hope, I counted right) fought back wherever they could. fragile railings went on along with portholes and covers, which all went airborne on the first attempt and then stuck with the CA in unwanted places. I start to loose my patience with these ever more fiddly sub assemblies. The racks aren't looking too good, but they will have to do.

 

 

For my own sanity, only to show how far I've come with the build, most of the assemblies where loosely grouped on the decks for some brass shots.

 

 

 

 

 

Cheers Rob

[DocRob]

17 hours ago, Toolmaker said:

Love it,

I have definitely shouted lots worse. That there is frustration.

 

To be fair Rob, although you know the issues you have faced, your photo’s rarely show anything other than “job done”.

It all looks really good, those racks look great and will improve even further when fitted and painted. They will become just another part of an “amazing” assembly.

 

I got slightly involved in a conversation on here today about soldering, and your build here was at the forefront of my mind.

 

I can’t help but think you are batting way above the production level of this kit. The plastic doesn’t look good but your etch work does.

 

You are to friendly, thanks Paul, but the little misalignments, deformations, misplacements, etc. sum up little by little and that's not my style in modelling. I'm not a rivet counter, but I like my builds to be build clean and tidy, only to weather some heavily later . I like precision and detest shortcuts, but this build is starting to wear me down. 

I considered soldering, but only for a moment. There are too many parts, which needed to be glued with CA, like many of the railings, only glued on by tiny dots of CA and too fine to solder. There is even some plastic left, near the parts, which were best soldered. I did solder PE and self fabricated brass parts on other builds and now the technique well, but with this build, it would have been a wrong approach to my eye.

 

Cheers Rob

[Toolmaker]

1 hour ago, DocRob said:

it would have been a wrong approach to my eye.

Sorry for that Rob, just a bit of cross purposes. I agree with your approach on this.

In fact some of those bits are so small I would probably be sticking them on with varnish! The paint would hold them in place.

Cheers

[Javlin]

From My perspective you are ahead of the game and winning these little thing are not easy and yes frustrating.It will be great once you start painting then that's another log in itself.

[DocRob]

On 3/2/2023 at 12:21 AM, Javlin said:

From My perspective you are ahead of the game and winning these little thing are not easy and yes frustrating.It will be great once you start painting then that's another log in itself.

 

Thanks Kevin and the painting stage is close now and I'm looking forward to relax my stressed eyeballs a bit during priming and painting.

 

Cheers Rob

[DocRob]

Today in the morning, I fired up my trusted old compressor with the intent to prime all that glaring PE along the few plastic remains with some Mr. Surfacer. Inspecting the manual showed me that there are several parts better to add now, than later, as I initially intended, like railings on the superstructure and some ladders here and there and parts, where I believed, they had to be glued to the deck, instead they are to glue to the superstructure. Railings are especially painful and the rounded shaped are the worst.
 

I think the superstructures are finished now, except tiny antennas, AA-guns, searchlights and water pumps, which will be added after painting.

 

 

 

 

Last for today, were eight of these guns sitting on top of the deck. They are 3D printed and have brass barrels and are superbly detailed. The manual suggests to cut away the railings and substitute them with PE, but I think they look good as they are and handle safer. 

 

 

Cheers Rob

[S-boat 55]

Just caught up with your build, it's looking very impressive!

[DocRob]

2 hours ago, S-boat 55 said:

Just caught up with your build, it's looking very impressive!

Thank you S-boat, this build was only a substitution for a S-boat build on another forum (LSM), where there is a maritime group build taking place. I lost all the PE and brass parts from my S-38 kit, so the USS Arizona had to jump in and as it is my first small scale ship build, it is demanding, to say the least. 

I hope, I can continue with priming and painting soon, as I need a break from fiddly PE assemblies.

 

Cheers Rob

[DocRob]

Prim (er) Time - I used Mr. Surfacer 1200 for the job and used a bit more pressure than usual for the superstructures, to get the primer in the tiniest hidden spots. Next will be painting the hull, but before, I mark the waterline with my waterline tool, easy, because the bottom of the hull is completely flat.

 

 

 

Cheers Rob

[Edwardkenway]

It now looks pure WW2 as opposed to late 19th century steampunk!

Nice coverage, very even and flat. I imagine it is pretty easy to get drips, considering all the small parts, railings and crane jibs.

[DocRob]

18 hours ago, Edwardkenway said:

It now looks pure WW2 as opposed to late 19th century steampunk!

Nice coverage, very even and flat. I imagine it is pretty easy to get drips, considering all the small parts, railings and crane jibs.

Thank you Edward, the priming indeed changed the appearance a lot. No more fancy shining, only man o' war serious grey. The color scheme will be a little bit more interesting with blue grey, the contrasting red underwatership and divisional markings on the turrets and last but not least, the wooden deck.
I use airbrushes since decades, so drips are none of my problems. One of the biggest factors for successful airbrushing is to have the perfect thinning ratio for the purpose along the correspondent fitting air pressure. In this case, I thinned the primer down to a very thin mix and raised the air pressure a bit to have the paint particles distributed better into the nooks and crannies. You can't work with a high throughput of primer and to get the primer everywhere, I move the part permanently in random patterns, which allows the primed areas to dry rapidly. It's always berst to apply at least two coats, checking the coverage in between.
Mr. Surfacer primer is very forgiving, the way it settles and cures and is a perfect match with levelling thinner.

 

Cheers Rob

[DocRob]

After the grey primer, it was time to put some colors onto the Arizona. I started with the stripe around the hull. The hull got a wide spray of flat black around, then I took the measurements from the side view and marked 1mm under the lower border of the strip with my waterline marker tool. I used 3mm Kabuki tape, parallel to the pencil mark for masking the strip.

 

Afterwards the underwater ship was airbrushed with a mix of about 70% of Tamiya XF7 flat red and the rest with Tamiya XF9 hull red. There is a bit of modulation in the color to break the monotony of this large area.

 

 

The underwater ship was masked then, along the top of three gun turrets, which were beforehand painted flat red on the tops for divisional markings.
I read a lot about the coloring above the waterline and concluded with nothing is 100% certain about the hue. I decided to go with a very blue version of grey and looked through my stores, as I didn't want to mix the color, because, I will need it over a longer period of detail painting and corrections. My firs intention was to use Real Colors Intermediate blue, but than I found a jar of Tamiya's XF18 medium blue and liked it a lot. It was exactly the shade of blugrey, I was looking for.

 

 

After this application, I went to the upper superstructure, which many claim to have been white, others say light grey. I went with Real Colors Insignia White, but masking the areas off was tedious. I used Panzer Putty, which took away a railing or two and de-tacked Kabuki tape.

 

 

After peeling off the masks, The main components put together looked like this.

 

 

 

Now it's time for the wooden decks, but before, I have to decide, If I apply a clear coat and some weathering. I have the tendency to do so, but let's see.

 

Cheers Rob

 

[DocRob]

I've been busy over the last days with the USS Arizona. I decided to weather a bit, because no ship ever looks clean and because I wanted to learn weathering on ships.

But first to the decals. Luckily there are not many and that's definitely a pro for ship modeling. These here are the new incarnation of Eduard decals which have to be cut out, because the carrier film is not. After application, they looked like this with silvering and reflecting carrier film.

 

 

Eduard claims, the carrier film of these newer decals can be removed, leaving an almost painted on result. Hmm, sounds good, but after peeling off the carrier film very carefully all the decals had stencil lifts .. My underlayer maybe was not perfect, but it was not too shabby either with a coat of gloss GX100 from Mr. Color.

Before I try these again on a larger scale, I would test on some mules. With the carrier film on, they look worse than other decals, quo vadis Eduard?

 

 

Next I prepared some of the tiny printed parts for painting, like AA-guns and searchlights, which will be added to the superstructures after the weathering stage.

 

 

Like I said above, I gloss coated the model, to have a good base for weathering for which I used Tamiya panel liners, but mainly brown oil colors for the first step. My technique is to apply oils liberally and not to scarce with a larger synthetic brush. Different areas were treated with different mixing ratios of oil color and matte finish whit spirit. After a short period of drying, I spread the colors again with help of a bit of thinner and try to work in the direction of the flow, hull downwards and reduce the amount of oil color accordingly. This time, I used the oil color from one of AK's oil pens, and these oil are of a lesser quality, than my normally used from Abt 502.
 

This is where I am now, albeit after taking the photos, I knocked back the effect a bit more, a true benefit of oil rendered weathering.

 

 

 

Cheers Rob

 

[ddp]

i got some bad news for you.

1. the bilge keels are to far up the side of the torpedo blisters. look at the top picture of this link http://www.researcheratlarge.com/Ships/BB39/BOGP/RG19_ALPHA_Arizona_BB39_09.jpg

2. the 14" turret faces do not overhang the barbett but set back a bit. look at the 1st & 2nd pictures.

3. the main gun port openings do not have flat bottoms especially the center opening. look at 3rd picture

  

[DocRob]

On 3/22/2023 at 8:42 PM, ddp said:

i got some bad news for you.

1. the bilge keels are to far up the side of the torpedo blisters. look at the top picture of this link http://www.researcheratlarge.com/Ships/BB39/BOGP/RG19_ALPHA_Arizona_BB39_09.jpg

2. the 14" turret faces do not overhang the barbett but set back a bit. look at the 1st & 2nd pictures.

3. the main gun port openings do not have flat bottoms especially the center opening. look at 3rd picture

 

Thank you ddp, that is some great material. I'm absolutely no specialist on the USS Arizona and I'm well aware of some of the shortcomings of the kit. I don't want to correct all mistakes, as this is my first 1/350 ship build and I'm about to learn the needed skills.
I read about the bilge keels before and this is not the only strange area of the hull.
For the guns, you are correct, about the non existent overhang, but when I look at pictures from the late USS Arizona, the gun port openings seem to have flat bottoms. Maybe there was some change over time and the drawing doesn't say, it's an USS Arizona turret shown.

 

Cheers Rob

[DocRob]

After the rust oil weathering had dried, I started the next layer, salt residues made with a white naval wash from AK. I applied it on the sides of the hull and only a little in the bow area, which then was blended with white spirit.
Next were the shafts and propellers, which were rubbed with AK's old bronze wax, a perfect fitting tone. The shaft got Uschi van der Rosten's iron pigments rubbed in. Alignment is a little bit off, but I decided to let that be.
On to the wooden decks, which are self adhering. All fitted well, except the delicate bow section, where the wood material was not cut thoroughly, which led to some free handed cutting, with a half glued deck. Despite this, fit was exceptional, with the exception, where PE parts substituted plastic, so no fault by Artwox. Most of the on deck assemblies will be added now, after the deck application, exactly for this reason.
On some spare deck material, I tried a varnish first, but decided against it, as I didn't like the looks. If I weather the decks, it will be done later, with pigments, I guess.

 

 

 

 

 

Cheers Rob

[ddp]

no problem. i'm using Revell's 1/429 scale USS Arizona as a base to kitbash all the old battleships from the Wyoming class to the Colorado class. a work in progress.

http://www.shipmodels.info/mws_forum/viewtopic.php?f=59&t=165105

[DocRob]

14 hours ago, ddp said:

no problem. i'm using Revell's 1/429 scale USS Arizona as a base to kitbash all the old battleships from the Wyoming class to the Colorado class. a work in progress.

That's an interesting project ddp, converting these kit dinosaurs with a lot of scratch work. No wonder, you are familiar with the details and drawings. For me USS Arizona is only a short stint into small scale ship modeling, as I do all kinds of modeling and like to continue with my wooden Duchess of Kingstons rigging and some other plastic kit projects.

 

Cheers Rob

[DocRob]

Slowly pacing through the on deck applications. This build is testing my patience a lot and the last nagging bit are the gun shields for the middle artillery. They are made by PE and the enforcing struts, tiny triangles needed to be bent in place. I dreaded this part of the build, because the first shield, I tested, lost a lot of the tiny struts through breaking. The others, I annealed had less broken parts, but still some. Some of the sensible struts were too long and had to be shortened with unshivering hands. Nothing is glued, because the parts will be airbrushed off the deck. You will notice, that I left the cut out deck segments in place, which would have to be removed for the original plastic. Leaving them, will look more convincing, I hope.

 

 

Cheers Rob

[ddp]

Rob, the catapult on turret 3, is it glued in place or just sitting there as it is supposed more angled then what you currently have it? look at the main deck drawing i've posted. the tubs for the quad 1.1" guns on the main deck are supposed to be raised not sitting directly on the deck & same for the quad 1.1" director tubs. look at the outboard profile drawing i've posted & the link. what is that thing that will be standing between the front 2 legs of the main mast on the upper deck as not shown in the link or plans? http://www.navsource.org/archives/01/013921a.jpg

http://www.navsource.org/archives/01/39a.htm

Edited March 31, 2023 by ddp

[DocRob]

On 3/30/2023 at 9:04 PM, ddp said:

Rob, the catapult on turret 3, is it glued in place or just sitting there as it is supposed more angled then what you currently have it? look at the main deck drawing i've posted. the tubs for the quad 1.1" guns on the main deck are supposed to be raised not sitting directly on the deck & same for the quad 1.1" director tubs. look at the outboard profile drawing i've posted & the link. what is that thing that will be standing between the front 2 legs of the main mast on the upper deck as not shown in the link or plans? http://www.navsource.org/archives/01/013921a.jpg

http://www.navsource.org/archives/01/39a.htm

These are great drawings and photos ddp, thank you for that. 
You are right about the angled catapult, I somehow missed it in the manual and I have to see, what I can do about it.
The proposed quad gun tubs are raised, but somehow, it doesn't show on the picture. I've read, that the tubs were readily installed, but there were no guns mounted, when USS Arizona was attacked. 
The 'thing' you mentioned, is only there for a condensed view in the picture. It belongs behind the single mast of the main mast structure, between the boats.

 

Cheers Rob

Edited April 1, 2023 by DocRob

[ddp]

did you use crazy glue to glue the catapult to the turret roof? the guns for the empty tubs where to be installed sometime in the 1st half of 1942 if the war with Japan did not breakout. that thing, is that the chair locker as shown on the main deck drawing i posted that sits partly under the rear overhang of #3 14" turret between the 2 40' motor boats? do a comparison for the empty gun tubs height of your model with that with the navsource jpg link i had posted above.

Booklet of General Plans 1941 http://navsource.org/archives/01/pdf/013939p.pdf 

[DocRob]

Thanks again ddp, I corrected the catapults angle and the housing will be, where it belongs.

 

Cheers Rob

[DocRob]

It looks like I've done nothing, but that's not true,  did many little things, indeed very little things.

I folded lots of boxes and hatches from PE along with ladders, which are time consuming, because I bent all the single steps with a sharp blade and a very fine pair of tweezers. There are more boats with racks and a big range of other tiny PE assemblies, some shown here. All these are now painted up and ready to install.

 

 

Next were the Kingfishers, which received a two tone camo. The planes were primed light grey and then all undersides where covered with liquid mask, brushed on and then sprayed with the top color mix of light blue grey.
I thought about how to  paint the windows and tried black panel wash and liked it, as it pronounced the framing and dries glossy for contrast. Now they are up for decaling.

 

 

 

Before I install all the larger subassemblies to the decks, I will apply the figures, which is easier due to better accessibility. These figures from Ion Models are really tiny and it took a while, to cut them off the print sprues. Luckily only one leg was lost, the print material has a bit of flexibility and is not too brittle.
I grouped the 74 sailors onto double sided adhesive tape for painting and prime them white with the airbrush and continue with brush accentuation .

 

 

Cheers Rob

[DocRob]

Phew, I painted up the figures. The printing quality is excellent for the scale and these little guys will bring some life onto the decks of USS Arizona.
The figures were primed matte white with the airbrush and then followed by skin color, light blue and blue gray, brown for the shoes and some other details, applied with a 000 brush. Last, I brushed on a mix of grey oil paint and matte thinner as a wash, to let the detail pop a bit more.

 

 

And here there are the first officers and sailors on duty (or resting).

 

 

 

 

Cheers Rob