USS Enterprise (CV-6) by ted99 - Trumpeter - 1:200 - PLASTIC

[ted99]

Next in my set of major WW II Combatants.  Started with Bismarck, then Yamato.  After Enterprise is done, it'll be capped off with USS Missouri.  Dobbed in a pair of Subs for good measure.  All in 1:200.  Except for the Amati Bismarck they are all plastic because that's the only available kits in 1:200 scale.

 

Looked through all the build logs for another 1:200 CV-6 and found none.  I'll skip unboxing as I did find videos on Youtube from Midwest Model Shop and the first three are excellent "unboxing" descriptions.  Episodes 4 and 5 start the building process, and will continue.

 

I selected the KA-Models detail set with full wooden deck over the Pontos set because it seems to be more aligned with my skill set.  According to the Midwest video, the Pontos set has a lot more PE, is finer scale brass, and does not have 3-D printed small caliber guns.  After struggling with the PE from Fujimi for the Yamato (very fine brass and gobs of little bitty pieces), I am going with the KA set.

 

I am not going to chase absolute accuracy or any particular date, but am just going to build it as it comes in the kit.  I am also going to please myself by painting it a traditional peacetime gray and use the natural wood decks because I like the looks best.  If I were a better modeler, I would chase those ideals, but I'm not.

 

To start, I've attached the hanger deck to the hull at the outset.  I've learned that getting a good hull to deck join with minimal need for filling gaps requires some brute strength pressing hull sides in and the deck pieces down.  I'm doing that before I put anything else on the hull and deck.  In looking over the instructions from Trumpeter, I could not see any reason why I shouldn't do this.  If one does appear later, I'll be sure to mention it so that future builders can benefit from my experience--one of the main reasons for a build log, I think.  Unlike the Amati Bismarck, which has a detailed step-by-step set of instructions, the Trumpeter instructions show which pieces fit where, but there is no "assembly" instructions, per se.

 

Photos show how I have used masking tape to do an initial fabrication before gluing.   More hand-pressing together is needed as the joints are glued.  After a day of curing, I'll remove the tape and put solvent glue down the previously-covered joints.  A note about solvent glue.  I show "The Same Stuff" from Micro-Mark and a bottle of "Plastruct"  Even though the Plastruct is about the only solvent that works on ABS plastic, it does a very good job on Styrene as well.  It is actually a stronger solvent than the MM stuff and better for the hull/deck join in my opinion.  It's too hot for small pieces, though.

[ddp]

i use masking tape too as i hardly use clamps. take a look at this link as might come in handy even tho for 1940 Yorktown.

CV-5 USS Yorktown Booklet of General Plans (1940) https://archive.org/details/cv5bogp1940

[yvesvidal]

Interesting Build log for sure. I like the choices you made and your approach: Fun must dominate the build, otherwise, it is just punishments.

 

Yves

[Canute]

I use tape when working on alignment issues, but some parts are OK to use clamps. All depends on what the situation requires. And I'm glad to see a model of the Big E here. She was a mainstay for the US Navy. She should have been preserved after the war.

[ted99]

I had to use clamps to get the Nichimo Yamato's hull in alignment with the decks.  Very heavy plastic and warped, either thru age or lousy casting.  Tape would never have done it.  This is my first Trumpeter build and I'm very impressed with the precision of the castings.  From pictures, it looks like the Trumpeter/MRC Yamato and the Titanic have very extensive internal bracing, which CV-6 does not have.  Running improvements?  But, the Enterprise is a very narrow hull, compared to the battleships, and perhaps extensive bracing is not necessary--certainly wasn't for me.  I guess the narrow carrier hulls were a legacy of their Cruiser beginnings--and that airplanes weigh a lot less than heavy armor and 16" gun turrets.

[ddp]

what do you mean by "legacy of their Cruiser beginnings"?

[Roger Pellett]

US Naval strategy between the wars was heavily influenced by the Panama Canal.  If the need arose to concentrate the fleet in either Ocean the ability of ships to fit into the canal locks shortened the time required compared to steaming completely around South America.

 

I would assume that this would have influenced the design of these fleet carriers.

 

Roger

[ted99]

An illustration on how good the Trumpeter hull/deck join has been.  No filler necessary, except for a small area at the bow.  The Midwest Model video has the builder adding styrene sheets to the hull sides to give the impression of hull plating.  I agree that the lack of plate details in the model makes for too "flat" a surface on the hull sides and I also wish that Trumpeter had included panel detail in the casting.  However, I think the styrene sheet is too thick.  I've put on 10mm-wide masking tape in alternate bands and will spray a thick coating of primer on the unmasked parts to make up a little extra thickness.  Hopefully, once the tape is removed, and after a color coat, there will be some nice panel edges.  Before the color coat, I'll scribe vertical lines in a brick pattern on the alternate bands to complete the illusion of plating.  I brushed a coat of micro-flat on the tape edges to minimize bleed thru (and also add a little thickness).  We'll see.

 

I pictured the Milescraft "ScribeTec" which I used for penciling in the lines to align the masking tape.  What a joy this little device is, compared to my previous method of getting the correct height by stacking CD sleeves or books/magazines as a pencil rest.

[ted99]

3 hours ago, ddp said:

what do you mean by "legacy of their Cruiser beginnings"?

My memory is that under-construction Cruiser hulls were re-purposed as carriers at the outset.  Is that wrong?

[gak1965]

Saratoga and Lexington were repurposed battlecruiser hulls. Under the Washington Naval Treaty, they could be either scrapped or turned into aircraft carriers.

 

Yorktown and Enterprise were designed as carriers from the ground up, and was based on the US Navy's first such clean sheet design, USS Ranger, although both were much bigger than Ranger. Wasp was a smaller ship, more like Ranger because of the available limits under the Washington and London Naval Treaties. After the treaty system was concluded, the Navy built Hornet to the Yorktown specification.

 

George K

[ddp]

Roger, Panama lock dimensions hardly influenced the design of these fleet carriers as it was the Washington Naval Treaty that influenced those ships. that treaty only allowed 135,000 tons to the USN for aircraft carrier builds so out of that limit deduct 72,000 standard tons(Navsource) total for the Lexington class aircraft carriers which leaves 63,000 tons which was used on the next 4 aircraft carriers not including CV-8 USS Hornet.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Washington_Naval_Treaty

https://www.navsource.org/archives/02idx.htm

the reason the Hornet was built to the mostly Yorktown class specs as it was faster to use that class drawings then to wait for the Essex drawings to be finished & start building to those specs.

[ted99]

After 4 coats of Rust Oleum rusty metal primer and a coat of flat black at the waterline for the boot stripe, which is masked off with 8mm masking tape.  I'll spray with bottom-color next.  Won't strip off the 8mm boot stripe mask until after spraying the gray topsides.  The shiny bit at the top edge of the masking is where I ran a line of micro-flat to seal the tape edge from edge bleed of the bottom paint--A tip I was given back in the Bismarck build.

 

The bottom strakes still had small gaps at the hull/strake join, so instead of filler, I ran a small bead of medium CA and allowed an overnight cure.  Perfect fillets and a MUCH more secure anchor to the hull.

Edited June 6, 2023 by ted99
additional thought

[ted99]

After stripping the masking tape intended to simulate panel lines, but leaving the boot stripe tape in place.  Looks like it's going to have the desired effect.  4 coats of the primer gives a good, but not too "good" edge to my fingers and eye.  Color coat will tell.  Doing the PE degausing detail next.

 

Does anyone know what color the exposed screw shafts should be?  I've never seen exposed shafts in dry dock.  I wouldn't see a need for anti-fouling paint for an active service vessel, but I don't know.

 

In reading the history of CV-6, she was one of the few "night-qualified carriers in WW II.  Too late now, but it might have been interesting to model the dark deck.  I'll do a search to see if the dark deck is available as a "deck only" detail.

 

It would be nice to do a 90 deg rotation of the picture, but I don't see a way to do this.

[gak1965]

1 hour ago, ted99 said:

Does anyone know what color the exposed screw shafts should be?  I've never seen exposed shafts in dry dock.  I wouldn't see a need for anti-fouling paint for an active service vessel, but I don't know.

Can't say for WWII. However, if you go here: https://www.dailypress.com/2019/10/29/the-aircraft-carrier-john-f-kennedy-to-float-in-dry-dock-12-at-newport-news-shipbuilding/ and go to the third picture, you will see that on modern ships at least, the shafts are painted.

 

Edited June 7, 2023 by gak1965

[ddp]

same color as the lower hull but not the props as they are somewhat a bronze color.

[ted99]

Thanks for the info on prop shafts.

I placed the Mk-1 PE detail for the degausing wires, but they looked too flat.  The Midwest models guy added styrene rods to simulate the actual wires and I liked the looks of that.  So, I added .025" styrene rods on top of the PE brass.  Looks good to my eye.  But, I only purchased one package of 10 of the .025 rods thinking it would be enough--wrong.  Took all 10 for one side, with the left-overs visible in one photo.  Gotta buy another package, but it's going to be in .020 size.  The larger rods are a little crowded on the PE, and could stand to be a "slightly" smaller dia.  Not concerned as it's the opposite side of the hull and only I will notice.

[ted99]

Degausing cables completed.  Used .020 on one side and .025 on the other.  The .020 does not "fill" the full width of the PE simulation of the cables, while the .025 does.  The diameter of the .020 looks to be more scale-like.  The added stiffness of the .025 made for an easier attachment of the first cable in a run to the PE brass, but the subsequent "cables" are equally easy to apply.  Having the PE brass made a very useful guide for placement of the cables, and it looks a little like bracketing for the cables.

The lack of a "step-by-step" assembly manual means one is left to one's own devices on assembly sequence.  It's a Rubik's cube kind of thing, for me; as one is juggling how big to go on subassemblies before painting.  At the moment, I'm attaching all the smaller plastic pieces to the larger pieces and deferring to later for the PE details.  The hanger deck is like the first deck of a battleship, except that parts of the hull extend upwards in front of the internals of the hanger deck blocking a later painting; so these parts will have to be painted (along with internal sides of the hanger deck) before assembling the internals.  If this is done after painting, it means using CA glue and not plastic cement for attachment.  Also complicating things are roll-up doors that can be modeled open or closed.  If open, it will give a view to aircraft stowed on the hanger deck if one peers thru the doors.  Decisions, decisions.

[ted99]

I've been dry-fitting the sides of the hanger deck.  Absolutely necessary as the little locating tabs and other small areas need to be trimmed to get the pieces to sit tight to the deck.  Also helpful to planning which side doors to leave open and sequence for painting.

[Roger Pellett]

A bit of degaussing cable trivia.  

 

During WW2 then Captain H.G. Rickover who went on to become the “father” of the navy’s nuclear propulsion program was the commander of the electrical section of the US Navy’s Bureau of Ships.  A major problem that he was involved with was engineering of degaussing cables.

 

At approximately the same time, my father and mother were temporarily living in Niagara Falls, NY where my father was responsible for construction of a pilot plant to manufacture a new material; Poly Vinyl Chloride.  One day, he was approached by a Royal Navy Officer who was investigating use of PVC as an insulating material for degaussing cables.  The British were having major problems with magnetic mines sown in the North Sea shipping channels by the Germans and natural rubber was in short supply due to Japanese control of Far East rubber plantations.  PVC degaussing cable insulating material supplied to the Royal Navy was the BF Goodrich Co’s first war related product.  It went on to become a major product with many uses.

 

As far as I know, my father had no contact with either Rickover or the US Navy.  That happened in the next generation.

 

Roger

[ted99]

I had a number of interactions with ADM Rickover.  If you have ever heard a "Rickover story", it is probably true.  When I was going through Nuclear Power School the first time in 1961 as a white hat Electronics Technician, I groused about how all the electrical controls for the reactor used Magnetic Amplifiers instead of the "modern" transistors.  I was told that Rickover didn't want to use any technology that was newer than 20 years because of potential reliability issues.

[mtdoramike]

Oh boy, I'm definately tuning into this build. Ted, I'm finishing up on the Trumpeter Missouri now and found the best glue foe me was Tamiya Plastic cement in the orange labeled bottle. I used some scrap plastic from the kit and glued a few pieces together and placed them in water for a month to test out whether it would work for the under water portions of the build and the pieces were fused together and didn't come apart in the water. 

[ted99]

^^^Thanks for that info, Mike.  I've rotated between the Plastruct for Large plastic sections, the MM "Same Stuff" for smaller pieces and the tube Testors when there is a large piece that would "dry-out" the brush-applied cement before it could be properly placed (and the inevitable extra cement that would spread at the edges of a brush-applied joint that would be difficult to clean up).  I bought a jar of the Orange back when I was doing Bismarck, but haven't used it yet.  I don't know what sets it apart from the other cements, but I bought it because Tamiya seemed to be positioning it as a "premium" cement.

 

I've completed the sides of the Hanger Deck.  This was not a simple task as some adjusting the locating tabs of the side pieces and actual length of two of the side pieces is necessary.  As I mentioned before, dry-fitting is absolutely essential to work out the assembly sequence and which tabs need to be made smaller to allow the side pieces to take up a proper position. The fore and aft ends of the hanger deck should be first.  Everything else uses them as their anchor ends.  One needs to cement in the large structure directly under the superstructure next.  There is no ambiguity about where it fits and it needs to be firmly in place for some of the more physical efforts on other side pieces later.  For me, I got the port and starboard fore and aft side pieces in place next with only trimming off some of the edges of the tabs to get them to firmly seat to the fore and aft ends.  It's the long pieces in the middle of either side that needed to be trimmed in length slightly (less than 1/8" each) to fit.  This is not a problem because the area that needs to be "trimmed to fit" is a flat section.  But, in each case, there is a small locating bump on the back that needed to be removed for a flush fit.  Hard to describe, but when you are actually doing it, it becomes obvious.  I view this as a casting error by Trumpeter (or they did it deliberately to accommodate building variance).

 

I painted the bow and stern before cementing in the aft bulkhead and attached elevated "box" because subsequent steps will make it very difficult to get paint on the deck beneath the elevated "box".  The next several days will see me cleaning up excess cement and masking and painting the interior of the hanger deck.  It'll be easier to do before some of the elevator and support beams are added later.

 

I decided to leave as many of the roller doors open as I can to allow looking into the hanger deck.  I now plan to put some of the aircraft provided by Trumpeter on the hanger deck where they can be seen.  I think I'll also model the middle elevator at it's lowered position with an aircraft sitting on it.  There are two of the roller doors that open to a blank bulkhead, so I placed the doors down, there.  There were also two places where the very thin between-doors supports needed some reinforcing, so I put the doors in place at those locations.

[ted99]

Hull is masked for painting of the interior, which needs to be done before some interior supports are installed.  Unfortunately, the current weather conditions have the lower jet stream flowing directly over TX, and the wind makes my outdoor balcony paint booth unusable.  In the meanwhile, I've started on the superstructure.  All the plastic pieces are in place and some of the major PE parts need to be done before painting.  The smallest PE parts, like railings and ladders will come after the first painting.

 

The Amati Bismarck really spoiled me for a super instruction manual.  The Trumpeter "instructions" leave a lot to be desired.  It's a constant search of previous pages where subassemblies are "sometimes" illustrated.  I still have plastic pieces on sprue's that I cannot yet identify where they go--and this is with most of the plastic parts assembled.  I am also not thrilled with the "instructions" for the MK 1 details.  It's mostly just a series of pictures of the assembled model and VERY difficult to identify numbers for the PE sheets.  I have ready in the closet the Trumpeter Missouri and the Pontos detail set.  The Pontos set seems to have better instructions, but it will wait until I start that build for a definitive conclusion.

[ted99]

Continuing to work on the Island.  Doing the PE pieces that will be painted.  I plan to use the Jax Flemish gray on many of the brass detail pieces and apply them after the whole superstructure is painted gray.  This is experimental, for me, to see if more of the fine detail of the small brass pieces is preserved this way.  I had to pre-paint parts of the structures on top of the tri-pod because of hard to reach parts.  My PE skills have improved a lot since my first foray into this with the Amati Bismarck.  A lot of this has to do with figuring out which applicator to use and when to use thick v. medium CA.  At times with Bismarck, I thought I had more CA than brass on a part.

 

The interior of the hull has been painted, but I'll keep working on the Island until I've got all the parts on I want on before painting.  This Island has a lot of the super-detail that one finds on a BB superstructure, but because of the narrowness, it seems easier to get to.  Most of the rest of the super-detail is around the periphery of the hanger deck.

[ted99]

For future builders of this kit, a piece of advice.  Look very carefully at all of the brass pieces in a super-detail set so that you understand which pieces of the Trumpeter-supplied plastic is being replaced.  This is very difficult with the MK-1 set because of the nature of the "instructions".  The instructions are simply a set of pictures of the assembled model with SOME of the PE detail parts identified.  It could be my inexperience, but I see a LOT more PE pieces than there are pictures of identified part numbers.  The MK-1 PE sheets are very well marked with part numbers, but the corresponding picture sheets seem to be missing pictures of many of these parts and their location.  For instance, the PE sheets have 6 different kinds of hatches, but there are "zero" pictures of where these different hatches are located.  Trumpeter is no help as their "molded-in" hatches all look the same (and nothing like any of the different types of hatches on the PE sheets.  I suppose that this is where one supplements the build with reference materials.  IMO, at the price these detail kits command, this information should be included with the kit.  When I finally get around to the Missouri and it's Pontos detail kit, I'll find out if there is any difference compared to MK-1.

 

I'm not finding the Midwest Models U-tube videos of the build very helpful.  The latest video is focused on weathering of their blue hull paint.

[MikeDy]

Ted,

         Can you take a more detailed picture of how your hull plating turned out, I was thinking of doing the same thing. I don't like the way Midwest did his, looks way out of proportion. The Norwegian Bench Modeler scribed his panels, that looks Ok but I like the paint idea better.

 

Thanks

[ted99]

I'm waiting for the wind to die down enough to use my balcony "paint booth" to spray the final hull color.  Once that's done, I'll be able to assess the painted hull panels.  I've painted the interior of the hanger deck and masked all of this area in preparation for hull painting.  Enclosed is a picture of the painted interior.  I have attached all the PE brass pieces to the hull that I am wanting to be painted hull color (mostly hatches).  The rest of the PE brass is going to be chemically treated for a gray color before assembly and placement on the hull.  I'll have more details on this later.

 

In painting the hanger deck, I initially used Rust-oleum 2X gray primer, but after application, it was closer to a dark blue than gray.  After seeing this, I reappraised my thoughts on paint color.  The 2X primer looked very much like the "Measure 21" camo scheme, where all vertical surfaces were 5N "Navy Blue"--a very dark blue with gray tones.  This camo scheme persisted from mid-'42 to '45.  Horizontal surfaces, including the flight deck were 20B "Deck Blue", which was a lighter color.  CV-6 was one of the few Fleet Carriers certified for night operations, so the idea of modeling this period became attractive.  I was initially going to do the usual Gray hull and wood deck, but that would only have been indicative of a post-WWII period.

 

I repainted the hanger deck with Rust-oleum Automotive gray primer, which is my stand-in for battleship gray and when I do the hull, it will be with the 2X primer.  MK-1 does not do a blue deck (Pontos-only) so I plan to stain my wood-colored deck with Minwax semi-transparent oil-based "Navy Blue".  So, that's the plan for now.

[mtdoramike]

The PE looks great. I had a love hate relationship with it myself.

[yvesvidal]

3 hours ago, ted99 said:

I repainted the hanger deck with Rust-oleum Automotive gray primer, which is my stand-in for battleship gray and when I do the hull, it will be with the 2X primer.  

No wonder they were out of stock.... It took me two months to get 6 cans of that Automotive Primer.... 🙂

 

Yves

[Roger Pellett]

Ted,  If you can find it (EBay?)  Humbroil used to sell a US Navy deck stain.  You’d probably have to corner the market for a model of your size as it came in tiny cans.

 

Roger