LST 750 by Jimbo1963 - BaD Ship Models - 1:96 scale - a retro build

[Jimbo1963]

Greetings to all. While I'm new here to MSW, and haven't thought I'd have anything to contribute yet, I did realize that I completed a build back in 2007 that might be of interest to you all, so I'd like to share with you what follows, if you'll all indulge me. Allow me to take some time to explain this build, and how and why it came about, as it has been what, 18 years since its ultimate completion.

 

As I wrote about in my introduction, I have been a professional model maker for my entire career, and beyond, a model maker since my early childhood. But, what is germane to this build log is that I was contacted in 2002 by a “friend of a friend” who had a desire to have a model built of an “LST” (Landing Ship Tank) from World War II. This friend is a businessman in Pittsburgh, PA, where it happens that a great many LST ships were built during the crush of wartime manufacturing of WWII. It is well known that a great deal of warship building took place along the Ohio and Mississippi River corridors thanks to their easy access to the open sea at New Orleans, and my client, who was involved in an initiative to recognize this activity in Pittsburgh wanted to have an LST model built.

 

SO. He reached out, explained his situation, and, of course, I was interested. (I'll diverge here a short bit and explain; my birthday was June 6, 1963, the 19^th anniversary of the D-Day campaign. For as long as I can remember, I have been a student of this aspect of WWII, so, yeah, natch...).

 

As it turns out, my client had purchased a partially-built model of an LST. He brought this partial build to me, where I was able to truly assess the task before me. The kit was manufactured by an outfit called “BaD Ship Models”. Well, it was just that, it was bad. It was rough. This was not die-cut parts, it was parts seemingly hand-cut from dubious original patterns. It was a combination of thin plywood and balsa. Not basswood. The hull had been “assembled”. But it looked as if the builder had mixed up the order of the frames; there was a strange shape to the hull. The bow area in particular needed some attention. The details were cast in resin, but from masters that for the most part looked as if they were sculpted by a 5-year-old. There were a few castings that looked OK (from the proverbial 'arm's length'). Needless to say, there was a fair amount of 'parts replacement therapy' in front of me,,,

 

So, with all of this said, I will dive in to my presentation, with build notes as I proceed. It may take me a while to get this posted so I thank you in advance for your patience.

 

Jimbo

 

 

 

Edited October 11 by Jimbo1963
corrected log title

[Jimbo1963]

So, here we go. this is a photo of my client, Denis G, with his completed LST 750 in October 2006. There will be a post-script to this story and the model so, stay tuned 🙂

 

[Jimbo1963]

As I mentioned, this started as a build that someone else started (not my client). It. was. rough. Here's a photo of him after receiving the partially built hull:

 

Jimbo

 

[Jimbo1963]

My client was able to provide me with a copious amount of reference photos etc. but, still, at the time I worked on this job, to me there were not a lot of references available. So, I did the best I could. I had no real plans, nor any decent photos. Bear in mind, I was also working on a great many other professional modeling jobs at the time, as well as dealing with the unexpected loss of my father in 2004. So it took a while to get this really going.

 

So, this was a kit from an outfit called "BaD Ship Models".. I know there have been some positive "reviews" and commentary about this outfit, but from 2002,  they were not really that good.

 

I had to do a copious amount of filler work to the bow contours:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Jimbo

[Jimbo1963]

Here are a few photos of the progress in shaping (or re-shaping) the hull, especially the bow section. If you're at all familiar with the architecture of these ships, you will see the oddities on this model's hull. Oh well, i had to work with what I had to work with 🙂

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

[Jim Lad]

An interesting project, Jimbo. It's always "interesting" to sort out someone else's errors on a model that you're re-doing.

 

John

[Canute]

Looking forward to the rest of your" rescue", Jimbo.

[TBlack]

My Navy service was aboard LST 1123, a slightly later version of your model, but still of the 542 class. Naturally I’ll be following along.

Tom

[Jimbo1963]

Thank you John, Ken and Tom, and thank you for your service Tom, so glad to have you aboard! Please feel free to correct any terminology I may get wrong, it would be much appreciated.

 

As you can see in the previous photos, the main deck and above-deck fittings and bridge deck etc were originally supplied in 1/8" plywood. They were ok, but since I knew I was going to be doing a lot of scratch-building, I copied the main deck in .060" styrene and epoxied it to the hull assembly. Then I was able to move forward with building the deckhouse, bridge deck and gun tubs and other appliances out of styrene and laser-cut acrylic parts. Here, the hull has been primed and I am test-fitting the deckhouse.

 

 

 

You can see the kit-supplied resin casting of the stern winch, and also some blocks that will support the stern gun tub. These were fabricated from a tooling resin called REN Shape, used by the auto industry and model makers for prototyping. Its expensive but a fabulous material for carving and shaping as it has no grain. Bad to breathe the dust though...

 

Also in this bottom view of the stern, I have fabricated the propeller skegs out of that same material, and fitted the kit-supplied resin rudders, and brass props. The skegs aren't quite right, the real ones were much deeper and had guards attached to the bottom of the rudder posts to protect the props during beaching, what these ships were designed to do:

 

 

Up next, more deck fittings... Thanks for looking!

 

Jimbo

[Jimbo1963]

As mentioned previously, I upgraded the deck to styrene so I could more easily attach plastic scratch-built assemblies. Here are some views of that process.

 

Gun tubs and vent tubes are either cut from styrene tubing or fabricated from styrene sheet. The forward deck ramp is a composite of the aforementioned REN Shape, acrylic and strip styrene details. The bow winch, ammo boxes and companionway housings are kit-supplied resin castings:

 

Another view; you can see I have begun drilling holes for the railing stanchions...

 

 

Here are a couple of stern views; you can see that the kit-supplied resin LCVP davits are sorely lacking in detail; they are just posed here and will be replaced with laser-cut acrylic assemblies for far greater detail.

 

 

 

Thanks for looking!

 

Jimbo

 

[Jimbo1963]

As an aside, my grateful thanks to the mods for the assist with this build log title. A rookie faux pas, I’ll get it right next time. I figured out the scale of the kit as 1:96 and so have added that myself. 
 

jimbo

[Jimbo1963]

Some more progress, adding more kit-supplied resin parts, deck hatches and vents, and the hawse-holes. and started on the prop guards - they looked like 8-inch diameter pipe...  I used lengths of wire clothes hangers.

 

Also added [what I think is] the armored con up on top of the bridgehouse, as well as [what I think are] covered vents/companionways fabricated from REN Shape and styrene on the forward-starboard wall of the main deck house.

 

 

 

 

Thanks for checking in!

 

jimbo

[TBlack]

These "T's" were altered many times over their lifespan, so the model will represent a particular time period in its life. The box that you are calling an armored conning station was the captain's sea cabin on our ship (1123) with the conning station above that. I was going to add, "nice work so far", but we've seen the finished product and the delighted recipient.

Tom

[Jim Lad]

She's really taking shape, Tom.

 

John

[Jimbo1963]

Thanks fellows, so much. Here's my next update. The build progressed significantly since the previous set of photos  (the elapsed time between the last photos and these was about 2 months). Here you will see a lot of detail additions. First a couple of overall photos:

 

 

 

And some close-ups, where I'll explain the additions. Next you can see the guns have been installed in the gun tubs; some were kit parts and others were complete scratch-builds. basic, to be sure, but they get the idea across. Also seen are the railings, which are simply thick wire stanchions with thinner wire strung along them, and glue/paint thickening the attachments. Also you can see the side rub-strakes (?), here added with styrene strip:

 

 

 

Next a close-up of the stern area. Again, guns in their tubs, railings, the mast and, most importantly, the LCVPs in their davits. I drew up and laser-cut davit parts and built them up in layers, approximating their detail as bast as I could. As for the LCVPs, I used the kit-supplied cast resin hulls, which were very rough, to say the least. I cleaned them up as best I could, and added styrene detailing, laser-cut bow ramps, and steering wheels (from model railroad brake wheels):

 

 

 

I'll add a couple more photos in a follow-up reply so as to not overload this one with photos. Thanks for checking in!

 

Jimbo

[Jimbo1963]

As promised here are more detail photos from this phase of this build. Here you can see the prop guards, built up with coat-hanger wire and styrene rod, as well as the stern anchor guide:

 

 

 

I'll add that, as I mentioned about the kit-supplied LCVPs, they were quite crude and had no bottom definition at all as they were flat-cast; I had to add planks of REN Shape and sculpt the bottom contours; you can't really see the nice curves that Higgins designed into these work-horse crafft, but they are quite elegant, and I did my best to model them...

 

 

 

Thanks again for checking in. Next time - paint! Cheers all;

 

Jimbo

 

[Jim Lad]

You're making very nice progress on that, Jimbo. It's looking really good.

 

By the way, as you're working on an L.S.T. (I always thought that was an acronym for 'large slow target' 🙂), I thought these images might be of passing interest to you. When the American military occupied Nanumea in early September 1943 they brought their forces in a n L.S.T., which they unfortunately beached just a little too hard on the unforgiving coral reef and, as far as I know, it's there to this day. These images were taken in 1971.

 

John