The Ship Model Forum

Please don't! You're doing so good so far.

One more thing:

Just got an order in from Blackcat Models. First, I'm quite jealous of the name, as I have a wonderful black cat myself. Second, their 5"/25 guns are fantastic. I dared to remove one of them from the print raft, to compare with the resin part. I suspect that the resin part was near the limit of what could be cast at the time. Technology has come a long way since then.

Mike

And now for something completely different:

I've painted the tops of the turrets. From top to bottom we have Arizona, Nevada, and Oklahoma.

To the right is my Arizona paint mule (using the Dragon kit). The hull around the quarter deck is in Vallejo 70.900 French Mirage Blue, which is a close match to 5-S sea blue, which Arizona (and Tennessee, Maryland, and West Virginia) apparently had at the time of the attack. The turrets and superstructure are painted in Vallejo 70.836 London Gray which is a close match to 5-D but a bit lighter for scale effect. I like the look of the French Mirage Blue as 5-S, so I think I'll go with that.

Mike

Hello:

I've finished adjusting the bow profiles for Arizona, Nevada, and Oklahoma.

For Nevada (or maybe it's Oklahoma) there was either a casting flaw or the tip of the bow broke off, so I filed the area flat and glued on a bit of sheet plastic with a liberal amount of superglue. Once that set, I filed it down, using drill bits like pin gauges to get the right depth to the curve.

Arizona needed a lot more help. I glued on bits of sheet plastic, slathered it in superglue, then slathered that in putty. A bunch of filing later and we have the final bow as seen here. I similarly used drill bits to get the right depth to the curve.

Mike

Hello:

Here are pictures of the Oklahoma kit and the real ship, from the bow to turret 1. The thing I noticed is that the casemates are too tall, and the lower edge could be brought up to increase the downwards slope of the hull line forward of the casemates.

Mike

Agreed! Also, remove that degaussing line from the side of Oklahoma's hull. That was a short lived temporary deguassing line that was replaced with the permanent line at the deck edge.

can you post sideview pictures from the anchors & aft to show both bow casements while still posting the 2 photos of the real ships as I see a possible issue with Oklahoma.

Hello:

One thing that was bothering me is that the profile of the bow for Oklahoma and Nevada (tan resin) compared to the Hi-Mold Arizona (green resin). The bow profiles look quite different, since the Oklahoma and Nevada being very straight, and Arizona quite curved.

For comparison, I found pictures of the bows of Oklahoma and Arizona. Oklahoma is the top picture, Arizona is the lower picture.

My conclusion is that the bow of Nevada and Oklahoma are not curved enough. The bow of Arizona is too curved, and the point where the bow meets the waterline is aft of where it should be.

Mike

Hello:

Turret 3 had the catapults on them, and were dark gray on top. Since the tops weren't painted white, red, or blue, there isn't a need to a white base layer. The same goes for Nevada's turret 1, which appears to have not been painted red on top. So don't worry about the three turret 3s...they're just set aside and not in the picture.

Mike

no turret 3 for the Nevada class? shame of you.

Hello:

I've started working on the boat deck area of Arizona. As they'll be depicted as they were in Pearl Harbor, the boats will be off the ship and in the water, and so there won't be the usual stack of boats behind the funnel. I got the Tom's detail set that has the boat racks so that this area wouldn't look empty. The kit has resin parts for this, but they're much heavier than the photo-etch.

On one side of Arizona, I've painted the casemate guns in their final color. The photo came out a bit dark, and the color is quite dark, but the last photo shows what it looks like.

I've also primed and started to paint the turrets. I've assigned each turret to its final location, and labeled them all on the bottom of the turret. At the point, the tops are all white so that there's a light background for the red or blue later. Turret 2 of Nevada will stay white.

Mike

Love the eye candy.

I decided to scratch build the 'bird bath' machine gun platform on Nevada. Whereas the bird bath is mounted at a 45 degree angle to the long axis of the ship on Oklahoma and Arizona, it was mounted square to the long axis of the ship on Nevada. The kit bird bath is a bit out of square, and is a bit of a parallelogram. On Oklahoma, where it's mounted at an angle, this is harder to see, but it's more obvious on Nevada.

In the photo, the new bird bath is mounted on the main mast, and I'm holding the kit resin part in the tweezers.

And just for a bit of eye candy, here are the three ships in their current state.

Mike

Hello:

Work on the battleships has been slower lately due to distractions from other projects (specifically a 1/32 F-14 and the Yamashiro in 1/350). But I have gotten all of the 5" casemates installed for Arizona and Oklahoma. Here's what it looks like in Arizona. I've made a few of the guns elevated a bit just to add a little more visual interest.

The last photo shows what it looks like from below. I measured the depth of each pocket with a caliper, and wrote it on the part. I then filed each gun to that height. So, although the guns are glued to the overhead, the base will sit on the deck or at least very close to it.

Mike

Nice.

Here's a test install of the first casemate gun. From the green resin you can tell that this is Arizona.

The key to this install is that the gun is glued to the 'ceiling' of the casemate. I did it this way because:
1) If they were glued to the main deck, I couldn't install the superstructure deck because the lower 'wall' of the casemate would hit the gun barrel. I can't install the gun afterwards because the opening in the casemate isn't large enough for the gun to pass through
2) It allows me to position the gun correctly relative to the casemate, instead of relative to the main deck.

Photos (like the one linked above) show that the gap above the gun is a bit larger than the gap below. I glued a 0.5 mm shim above the gun to set its height correctly. I measured the depth of the casemate 'pocket' (in this case, 2.2 mm), and filed down the base of the gun so that its overall height (with the shim) to 2.2 mm. Having done this, when the superstructure deck is placed onto the main deck, the base of the gun will also be on the main deck. I positioned the gun so that 4 mm of the barrel sticks out. I used white glue so that I'd have time to adjust the position of the gun.

One down. 69 to go...

Arizona's Booklet of General Plans I linked on pg 2 of this thread would have done the same thing.

Hello:

Yes, I used those drawings to calculate the scale length of the two guns. I also used the following picture of Pennsylvania to measure how much the 5"/51 barrel should stick out from the casemate:

http://navsource.org/archives/01/038/013803c.jpg

Mike

Mike, is this what you used?
http://www.navweaps.com/Weapons/WNUS_5-51_mk7.php
http://www.navweaps.com/Weapons/WNUS_5-25_mk10.php

Very nice work! Thanks for sharing!